How many people on earth die for their country and their love for their country every day? How many of them die for the benefit of their country? How many of them die for the benefit of arms makers, politicians, dictators, oil companies, religious belief and religious leaders? How many die for the pay of a soldier? How many die for their love of the military? How many die for their love and excitement of war and killing?
How are those who die taught to die? Was it the flag and the national anthem? Was it the father or older brother who taught them the glories of war, patriotism, and obedience to authority? Was it the clergymen, priests, rabbis, ayatollahs, voodoo-men, who taught that a rock or place where long-dead bones lie merits their deaths to protect those inanimate shrines. Moses, who died on Mount Nebo, buried himself in an unmarked and unknown grave for the just purpose of preventing the deaths of those who are taught that his grave was worth dying for because he was a "holy man."
Friends, Romans, Countrymen,
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 with patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so.
How do I know? For this is what I have done.
And I am Caesar. (Or Mao, or Arafat, or MacArthur, or the pope, or deGaulle, or Komeini - or Genral Motors, Boeing, or Krupp?)
William Shakespeare
The true sorrow of humanity lies in this; not that the mind of man fails, but that the course and demands of action and of life so rarely correspond with the dignity and intensity of human desire.
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