Everywhere is war, me say war

Well, last Thursday came and went without mention, so for those of you just aching for some of my random thoughts, prepare to rejoice - your ship has come in.

I'm on a war kick today. I really don't know why, other than I just happened to recall an abominably stupid comment from a dried-up old hippie chick at a war protest four or five years ago. She had a sign that read "War is never the answer [insert fifteen exclamation point equivalents]," so I asked her "Was war the answer in 1776?"
Of course, she couldn't say yes because that would contradict her idiotic sign, but she couldn't bring herself to say no either, because she knew she didn't have an argument to explain how else we would currently be enjoying the freedoms secured in that war. After 10 or fifteen seconds of slack-jawed hemming and hawing, the best she can muster was "Well, I should think we've evolved since then," and quickly shambled away from me before I could ask her if war was also not the answer in 1812.

Edwin Starr was wrong. (Huh! Good God, y'all!) War is quite useful for defending one's own way of life against... say... religious fanatics who would impose their own ideology upon a subjugated population. (Say it again!)

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
- John Stuart Mill

Peace out.