There is no such thing as life without bloodshed.
War endures “because young men love it and old men love it in them.” Blood Meridian
What is constant in history is greed and foolishness and a love of blood and this is a thing that even God – who knows all that can be know – seems powerless to change. All the Pretty Horses
What he came to value most was neither rationality nor contentment, but diversity, versatility, fullness of life – the unaccountable leap of individual genius, the spontaneity and uniqueness of a man, a group, a civilisation. What he hated and feared was narrownness, uniformity, the crippling effect of persecution, the crushing of individuals by the weight of authority or of custom or of public opinion.
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes…known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few…No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. –James Madison, Political Observations, 1795
There are some real bastards in this department who don’t mind breaking a few eggs to make an omelette, but thank god there are the new boys like me who want to maintain decent civilized standards of terrorist eradication. We’ve got the upper hand for the moment, but they’re waiting for us to slip-up, and a little slip-up like this is just the chance they are looking for.
I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no ‘brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.