{"id":47,"date":"2014-08-08T20:00:03","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T20:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/?p=47"},"modified":"2014-08-20T14:44:57","modified_gmt":"2014-08-20T14:44:57","slug":"a-state-of-war","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/08\/a-state-of-war.html","title":{"rendered":"A state of war"},"content":{"rendered":"

La vertu est un \u00e9tat de guerre, et que, pour y vivre, on a toujours quelque combat \u00e0 rendre contre soi.<\/em><\/p>\n

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself.<\/p>\n

Jean-Jacques Rousseau<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

A new contribution in\u00a0my series of anti-statist essays<\/a> was published at Dissident Voice<\/em> on Monday 4th August. Titled “What is the Nation?”<\/a>,\u00a0the article was (unintentionally)\u00a0well-timed in that it came out at the time of a major World War One\u00a0Centenary event. It was written essentially as\u00a0an exploration of the ambiguous nature of the claim\u00a0to\u00a0being part of a nation, and the ways in which this concept has\u00a0really become\u00a0redundant in Western countries in the Twenty-First Century. Astonishingly, many people not only still subscribe to the view that they are part of a nation-state, but that its offerings of young lives on the alter\u00a0pointless wars somehow secured their “freedom”.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

World War One was pointless. In total, over 37 million people died in it. Western politicians and\u00a0media actually try to invoke memory of that war\u00a0in the face of today’s aggressive NATO\u00a0posturing towards Russia over the Ukraine crisis. Inadvertently, this does nothing more than confirm that the existing NATO\u00a0posturing is like\u00a0World War One\u00a0in\u00a0threatening to waste people’s lives for what they don’t care about<\/em> (the politicians care least of all, since they’d be off to hide in the bunker and do not intend to sacrifice any of their comforts in such a war).<\/p>\n

One irritating argument commonly expounded\u00a0by\u00a0nationalists, warmongers and patriots is the view that the deaths of soldiers or others for a cause, usually for a nation, somehow validates<\/em> the cause for which they have fought. An appeal to the honor of the dead\u00a0is, to date, the only argument in existence for the concept\u00a0of revering a nation and its symbols or military objectives. Many political speeches and quotes with a nationalist ring typically invoke the memory of the dead to justify the nationalist cause or the existence and preservation of the integrity of nations in any form. These speeches are\u00a0fallacious, as they appeal only to martyrdom in order to assert their claims. Martyrdom to a cause does not say anything about whether the\u00a0cause is just.<\/em><\/p>\n

As sad and as hard\u00a0as it might be to accept, the fact that many\u00a0died for a cause<\/em> does not mean they died for a just cause<\/em>. We know this, because many people have died for many wrong causes throughout history. We do not know how many Roman legionaries gave their lives for the Senate and People of Rome<\/em>, but we know that they all died for nothing, because the empire for which they fought ceased to exist. Its\u00a0citizens grew so tired of its corruption that they even flung the\u00a0gates open and embraced their own deaths.<\/p>\n

Exactly like\u00a0those Roman legionaries, the 4,487 <\/span>American soldiers who gave their lives in the Iraq War died for nothing<\/em>. This does not reflect badly on the\u00a0personal honor and integrity of each of those soldiers, but it does confirm\u00a0that the state\u00a0for which they fought is little more than a liar and\u00a0a murderer of innocent sons. The\u00a0evil\u00a0regime that existed under the George W. Bush administration\u00a0wasted those\u00a0lives for nothing, knowing full well that the cause for which these men died was empty and hollow. To this date, none of the weapons of mass destruction allegedly possessed\u00a0by former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to threaten the security of\u00a0the United States have been discovered. After the smoke cleared, it should have become abundantly obvious that the only mortal threat to the “American people”\u00a0is their own aggressive\u00a0regime, so eager to waste their lives while sacrificing none of its own comforts.<\/p>\n

As we see continued nationalistic ramblings about who gave their lives for what<\/em>, in the face of modern strategic tensions with Russia, and foolish justifications of\u00a0sacrifice (albeit economic, given that it is unlikely to go beyond this), we must remember that states\u00a0always\u00a0want to sacrifice everyone\u00a0on the altar of their own greed and incompetence. The people of Europe themselves have nothing to gain from a conflict with\u00a0Russia, whether economic or military. The only agency behind this conflict comes from the brutal and selfish governments of individual NATO countries, which\u00a0live by some kind of\u00a0maxim that the people\u00a0must be prepared to sacrifice but the regime\u00a0mustn’t<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n

By Harry J. Bentham<\/a><\/p>\n

\"HJB<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

La vertu est un \u00e9tat de guerre, et que, pour y vivre, on a toujours quelque combat \u00e0 rendre contre soi. Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself. Jean-Jacques Rousseau A new contribution in\u00a0my series of anti-statist essays was published at…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":577,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[11,36,30,29,2,10,31,19,9,23,34,28,32,33,35],"class_list":["post-47","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-antistatism","tag-anti-statism","tag-centenary","tag-cold-war","tag-conflict","tag-lordre","tag-nation-state","tag-new-cold-war","tag-patriot","tag-state","tag-statism","tag-the-state","tag-war","tag-world-war-one","tag-world-war-one-centenary","tag-ww1"],"yoast_head":"\nA state of war - L'Ordre<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/lordre\/2014\/08\/a-state-of-war.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A state of war - L'Ordre\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"La vertu est un \u00e9tat de guerre, et que, pour y vivre, on a toujours quelque combat \u00e0 rendre contre soi. 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