War Quotes

[AZJoe]

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism maybe traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. - James Madison, Political Observations, The Most Dreaded Enemy of Liberty, April 20, 1795.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it. - Alexis de Tocqueville.

In America they claim to love freedom but at the first imperial trumpet blow—the war to make the world safe for democracy, the Cold War to contain the red menace, or the War on Terror—they line up to get registered, inspected, searched, probed, approved, and certified.There seems to be no violation of their liberty so great that they would protest, nor any violation of anyone else’s that they wouldn’t applaud, and no expenditure of funds so extravagant that they would bother to ask questions. - Bill Bonner, Empire of Debt, p 79 (2006).

War is just a racket ... I believe in adequate defense at the coast line and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we’ll fight. The trouble with America is ... the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn’t go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. … Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty-three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country’s most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, … Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. … I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. … I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests … I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers … I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests… In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. " - General Smedley Butler, speech given 1933.

It is in War that the state really comes into its own: swelling in power, in number, in pride, in absolute dominion over the economy and the society. Society becomes a herd, seeking to kill its alleged enemies, rooting out and suppressing all dissent from the official war effort, happily betraying truth for the supposed public interest. - Murray Rothbard, War, Peace, and the State.

Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing. - Dwight D. Eisenhower.

War against an external foe is a most excellent means of distracting the population from grievances at home. - General Douglas MacArthur.

War serves many purposes. It distracts from the malfeasance of the political classes as it busies giddy minds with foreign quarrels. It creates a symbiosis in which the media serves the state in its relentless grab for bigger budgets and greater police powers; while the state feeds the media’s need for high drama and the narcotic of fear. It provides for the deification of the state, which is then entitled to command all resources — human and material — without challenge or objection. If the state is divine, enemies and dissenters alike must be evil and dealt with accordingly. - Charles, Goyette, Money and Markets, July 31, 2014

There is nothing conservative about war. For at least the last century war has been the herald and handmaid of socialism and state control. It is the excuse for censorship, organized lying, regulation and taxation. It is paradise for the busybody and the nark. It damages family life and wounds the Church. It is, in short, the ally of everything summed up by the ugly word ‘progress.' - Peter Hitchens.

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures. - Ron Paul, Conscription- The Terrible Price of War, November 21, 2003.

When one person can initiate war, by its definition, a republic no longer exists. - Ron Paul, War Power Authority Should Be Returned To Congress, March. 9, 1999

Determined as we are to avoid, if possible, wasting the energies of our people in war and destruction, we shall avoid implicating ourselves with the powers of Europe, even in support of principles which we mean to pursue. They have so many other interests different from ours, that we must avoid being entangled in them. We believe we can enforce those principles, as to ourselves, by peaceable means, now that we are likely to have our public councils detached from foreign views. - Thomas H Jefferson, To Thomas Paine, March 1801.

Every war in American history has been the occasion for a great leap forward in the power of the State to interfere in and regulate every aspect of our lives. - Justin Raimondo, April 3, 2017.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny. - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. - Sapientia Saeculum

"America should have minded her own business and stayed out of the World War. If you hadn't entered the war the Allies would have made peace with Germany in the Spring of 1917. Had we made peace then there would have been no collapse in Russia followed by Communism, no breakdown in Italy followed by Fascism, and Germany would not have signed the Versailles Treaty, which has enthroned Nazism in Germany.If America had stayed out of the war, all these 'isms' wouldn't today be sweeping the continent of Europe and breaking down parliamentary government - and if England had made peace early in 1917, it would have saved over one million British, French, American, and other lives." - Winston Churchill, 1936.

Naturally the common people don’t want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. - Hermann Goering.

If Americans win a war and lose the Constitution, they will have lost everything. - Lance Morrow, Time Magazine, March 13, 2003.

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. - Ronald Reagan.

The term “isolationist” has been used, since the 1930s, as a slur by those upper-class and foreign-owned Americans who want the United States to intervene in other peoples’ wars … Non-interventionism… is, after all, the foreign policy the republic’s Founders …Because [the Founders] knew history and human nature better than any current U.S. politician, and because they also knew that history always repeats itself, the Founders believed that war brought death,deep debt and high taxes, internal divisions, and the tyranny that is the inevitable product of the war-engendered growth of excessive executive power. - Michael Scheurer, September 8, 2016.

War is the tool through which the remaining Constitutional restraints on government and rights of the people will be destroyed. War will be the gateway through which total statism in any of its forms (fascism,socialism, communism) will be imposed upon the United States. They will rally the people’s patriotism, and give the laws Orwellian sounding names like the “Patriot Acts”, and “Freedom Laws”and cries of “America First,” but these acts will be anti-patriotic, anti-freedom, and anti-American. At the core of all these activities will be one purpose – to impose ever increasing control over the citizens, marching toward total statism. They will suspend due process and Constitutional restrictions proclaiming“extraordinary times” require extraordinary measures. At first they will only be used against a few select atrocious and most heinous individuals with unfamiliar appearance, customs and beliefs.Initially, it will simply be a matter of degree, but the precedent is now set. Extraordinary measures solely for extraordinary individuals,but slowly and then more rapidly the extraordinary will become the ordinary until such measures apply to anyone. They will deride anyone who opposes these Orwellian acts as dangerously naïve, as pacifists, as isolationists, as unpatriotic, as sympathizing with“the enemy” whoever “the enemy” may be at the time, and as un-American. They will make war with vague, ever changing goals and objectives. They will make war on elusive, obscure enemies by proclaiming wars against “subversives” or “guerillas” or“militias” or “revolutionaries” or “aggressors” or“terrorists” or whatever ambiguous name they can imagine so that the “enemies” will always be elusive, never eliminated or fully defeated. There will always be more “enemies.” War will be perpetual, lasting years or even decades. War will be the final mechanism that destroys America from within; and the people will proudly cheer and defend and support the dismantling of their rights and destruction of their Constitutional Republic, all out of supposed“necessity” to support “the war.”