Thanks to Laurence Vance for sending me this most interesting article by Howard Zinn. Zinn, one of my favorite left-wing historians, is always interesting, and sometimes right. He says:
We’ve got to rethink this question of war and come to the conclusion that war cannot be accepted, no matter what the reasons given, or the excuse: liberty, democracy; this, that. War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate.
It took me a while, despite my Loyalist ancestors, to come to the same conclusion about the Revolutionary War. It was unecessary, like the rest of our wars. For example, the king–a sweetheart compared to almost any US president–would have conceded internal independence to the 13 colonies, so long as they remained officially British. And as the examples of Australia and Canada show, with British colonies that became peacefully independent, there is far more decentralism than in the US, and far less militarism and belligerent nationalism. Of course, may they remain monarchies, and never become republics, for all the reasons Hans Hoppe demonstrates.
8:49 am on July 7, 2009
