These are some of the most brilliant things I've read lately:
"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
--John Quincy Adams, Speech to the U.S. House of Representatives [July 4, 1821]
And
WAR IS A RACKET
Smedley Darlington Butler
Major General - United States Marine Corps [Retired]
Born West Chester, Pa., July 30, 1881
WAR is a racket. It always has been.
It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.
In the World War a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.
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Full Text:
http://www.lexrex.com/enlightened/artic ... racket.htm
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Holy Crow! Smedley Buttler was born in my father's home town! He may well have known my grandfather's family.
A multitude of laws in a country is like a great number of physicians, a sign of weakness and malady.
--Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)
