April 29, 2014
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We no longer heed the advice of Major General Smedley Butler, who said “war is a racket.” As a World War I veteran and a Medal of Honor recipient, Butler decried war as “possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious” of conniving schemes. Corporations and foreign interests want Uncle Sam to wage war on their behalf. Armchair generals bask in the prestige. The neoconservatives”who occupy both sides in the political class”love fomenting democratic revolution worldwide. The military-industrial complex gets its payoff. The proles are left paying for the wars, or manning the front lines.
This is how war has always been. Someone wins, and many lose. But even so, brutalism has never been so apparent as it is with progressive relativism as a reigning ideology. For all the deaths that go unheard, for all the children left fatherless, for all the families broken apart, we must ask: Is the planet any more peaceful? Have we really conquered our barbaric former selves?
The answer is fairly obvious when you account for the millions of deaths rendered to maintain the democratic, liberal order.
Lest the reader be mistaken, this isn”t a plea for pacifism. It’s only a call for reconsideration of why young men continue to go off to die. Christ declared in Matthew 10:34, “I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” The statement can be taken in many ways, but the intention is fairly straightforward. Christ came to fulfill the law”a law embedded in the universe by our Father. It’s a law that tells us to use caution when murdering people on sacred days. It’s a law that tells us to put the truth above what a government tells us. It’s the plain, simple morality we understand as children, but forget as propaganda infiltrates our heads.
We”ve simply forgotten what’s right and what’s wrong. There is hardly a peep about nonstop war. Troop casualties rarely make news headlines anymore. It’s all background noise to the gossip and banal celebrity news that defines our culture.
So what are we fighting for? Money, power, and prestige in the hands of men least deserving, that’s what.
