The Zero-Sum Game of Perpetual War » CounterPunch: Tells the Facts, Names the Names

“Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the U.S. military machine to turn. If the world were peaceful, we would never put up with this kind of ruinous expenditure on arms at the cost of our own lives. This is where the thousands of CIA destabilizations begin to make a macabre kind of economic sense. They function to kill people who never were our enemies-that’s not the problem-but to leave behind, for each one of the dead, perhaps five loved ones who are now traumatically conditioned to violence and hostility toward the United States. This insures that the world will continue to be a violent place, populates with contras and Cuban exiles and armies in Southeast Asia, justifying the endless, profitable production of arms to ‘defend’ ourselves in such a violent world”

Making Hamburger from Sacred Cows : The Freeman : Foundation for Economic Education →

“Adults don’t like it when children point out that they might be wrong. We have a tendency to say, as does one of Dahl’s great villains, “I'm right and you're wrong, I'm big and you're small, and there's nothing you can do about it.”

If Morrison is unhappy to see young adult literature exploding the pieties of his generation and pointing to the flaws in their plans, he is supposed to be. He’s not the audience. He’s the guy at the head of the classroom lecturing about what’s good for you, and young adult literature is the wisecracking kid who just stole his audience. Perhaps if Morrison were not so unthinkingly certain that he is right and young adult fiction is wrong, that he is big and they are small, there might be something he could learn from these novels. Maybe there are some lessons in these books about the fears and the hopes of the generation that is growing up while we watch.”

A Principled Parent Deflects a Military Flesh-Peddler – LewRockwell.com

“I asked, `Who is this?’ `Sergeant [whatever his name was] from the United States Army! I hear he is graduating soon, and I’d like to discuss some career opportunities in the US Army with him!’ I held the phone away from my face, and yelled across the room, clearly, so the sergeant could hear: `Hey, Junior, there is some guy on the phone. Wants you to go to Iraq and kill brown people until you run over a mine in your jeep and blow your balls off!’
Junior laughed.”

“I said to the recruiter, `Sorry, he’s busy playing Nintendo’ — then hung up.”

Advance to Barbarism

"Americans like to think of themselves as a progressive people living in a progressive age. And yet the twentieth century – whatever its marvels – has been above all the century of total war. Despite the fact that technological advance has made total war increasingly absurd and grotesque in an era of nuclear warfare; despite the progress of preceding centuries in civilizing and limiting warfare, and in keeping civilians out of harm's way; war to the death has returned in full flower. Herbert Spencer brilliantly realized that the advance of mankind from barbarism to civilization could be summed up as a shift from "military" to "industrial" society. Yet, in the twentieth century, we have starkly reverted to the military way; in so doing, we have repudiated the very humanism, the very principles of peace and freedom, upon which a modern industrial system ineluctably rests. This has truly been, in the words of Harry Elmer Barnes' friend and revisionist colleague, F. J. P. Veale, an "advance to barbarism.""

- Murray N. Rothbard

Trainload of war machines rolling eastbound through Auburn, AL this morning

It had already been rolling by for several seconds before I could begin recording.

On Facebook, Will Grigg responded with this fitting song.