“We talk of peace and learning,” said Ruskin once in addressing the cadets of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, “and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilization, but I found that those were not the words which the muse of history coupled together, that on her lips the words were peace and corruption, peace and death.” Hence this man of peace glorified war after no doubt a very cursory examination of the muse of history.”
War for a Certain Interpretation
“The surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston brought the struggle to an end. The South was crushed . . . “the ground of Virginia had been kneaded with human flesh; its monuments of carnage, its spectacles of desolation, it’s altars of sacrifice stood from the wheat fields of Pennsylvania to the vales of New Mexico.” More than a billion dollars of property in the South had been literally destroyed by the conflict.
The palpable tragedy of violent death had befallen the family circles of the South’s patriotic not merely twice as frequently as in times of peace, or three times as frequently, or even ten times, but a hundred times as frequently. Within the space of four years was crowded the sorrow of a century. Mourning for more than 250,000 dead on battlefield or on the sea or in military hospitals was the ghastly heritage of the war for the South’s faithful who survived. The majority of the dead were mere boys.
Many strong men wept like children when they turned forever from the struggle. As in rags they journeyed homeward toward their veiled and stricken women they passed wearily among the flowers and the tender grasses of the spring. The panoply of nature spread serenely over the shallow trenches where lay the bones of unnumbered dead – sons, fathers, brothers and one-time enemies of the living who passed.
War is at best a barbarous business. Among civilized men wars are waged avowedly to obtain a better and more honorable peace. How often the avowed objects are the true objects is open to question. Avowedly the American Civil War was waged that a certain interpretation of the federal Constitution might triumph.
To bring about such a triumph of interpretation atrocities were committed in the name of right, invading armies ravaged the land, the slave was encouraged to rise against his master, and he was declared to be free.
“The end of the State is therefore peace,” concluded Plato in his Laws – “the peace of harmony.” The gentle and reasonable man of today has not progressed much beyond this concept. “War is eternal,” wrote Plato “in man and the State.”
The American Civil war strangled the Confederacy and gave rebirth to the United States. It brought forth a whole brood of devils and also revealed many a worthy hero to both sections. Seen through the twilight of the receding past a war is apt to take on a character different from the grisly truth.”
(The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, William Watson Davis, Columbia, 1913, pp. 319-322)
Yes, that is one interpretation.
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Here is my interpretation:
* The Confederacy was, is, and will continue to be a lawful sovereign nation.
* Lawful boundaries of this sovereign nation were illegally violated.
* Many hundreds of thousands of atrocities -- recognized war crimes -- were committed by the invaders.
* Civilians and non-combatants were intentionally targeted by the invaders in violation of international law.
* After forcing an illegal surrender, the invaders committed, and continue to commit, illegal actions against civilians and non-combatants.
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The invaders were, and are, unethical and immoral.
I see no productive value in continuing any relationship at any level with the progeny of such individuals.
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Taking this to its logical and inevitable end, I believe all evidence points to the invaders attempting to pervert everything they touch into duplicates of themselves.
That is unacceptable to me.
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But I am doddering into my dowtage, and fully understand the consequences of expressing my long-term views to a society with short-term attention-spans.
I understand I am in a shrinking minority.
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I understand Shifting Baseline Syndrome, the human adaptation to 'the new normal' enforced by our attempts at daily (hourly?) survival.
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After knowing incredible freedoms of travel and association, I am dismayed at all we lost just in my few decades.
I am not saddened nor angered, but merely astonished at the meek acceptance of limitations upon my friends and family.
Their yokes are not yet heavy.
Thanks.https://freenorthcarolina.blogspot.com/2021/10/comment-on-war-for-certain.html
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