by
Robert Higgs
Independent
Institute
Recently by Robert Higgs: Why
This Gigantic ‘Intelligence’ Apparatus?
There is something
monstrously out of whack about going to war for a large nation state.
I can understand
why a man might take up arms in defense of himself, his family,
his friends, perhaps even his neighborhood or his town. But once
we get past the lived-in milieu, a man’s risking his life,
limbs, health, and mental composure to fight for a large politically
defined unit makes less and less sense, the larger the unit. Why,
for example, should a man from Arizona go to war on behalf of people
from New Jersey, people with whom he is not acquainted, people about
whom he knows little or nothing. The man from Arizona might well
have more in common with and greater concern for a typical “enemy”
soldier than he has for the people of New Jersey. He might even
dislike people from New Jersey and like the enemy people.
I do not care
much for many Americans. I find their apparent values and modes
of life offensive or worse, although I am personally acquainted
with only a handful of them and so I may be doing a disservice to
many of those with whom I am not personally acquainted. But in view
of the constraints everyone faces, no one can really know, much
less like, more than, say, a few hundred other people. What am I
to make of a demand that I bear great personal risks in defense
of hundreds of millions of complete strangers – for all I know,
these people don’t even exist, and the Census Bureau has perpetrated
a gigantic fraud in its declarations that they do.
On the opposite
side of the ledger, I do know and like – indeed greatly admire
and esteem – scores of people in other countries. I cannot
imagine going to war against them; I’d sooner go to prison
than harm them. So, if the U.S. government went to war against Guatemala,
for example, it would have to count me out; I’ve far too many
dear friends there even to consider joining in such violence. I
wonder sometimes how many of the U.S. soldiers who went to Iraq
to kill people there had ever seen, much less been acquainted with,
an Iraqi previously. What impels a man to kill perfect strangers,
especially perfect strangers who pose no threat to him or to those
he cares about at home? To me, it defies basic elements of humanity.
One might say that such killers are responding more to their allegiance
to their own government’s leaders, but why should they have
such a loyalty in the first place? Not one soldier in a thousand
has ever personally encountered a top American political leader.
Unless the soldier is extraordinarily dense, he understands vaguely
that such people are all liars and crooks. Why should he kill other
people and risk being killed himself merely because these political
kingpins want him to do so? Does he fail completely to see the government’s
propaganda for what it is?
July
3, 2013
Robert
Higgs [send him mail] is
senior fellow in political economy at the Independent
Institute and editor of The
Independent Review. He
is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. His
most recent book is Neither
Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government.
He is also the author of Depression,
War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy, Resurgence
of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9/11 and Against
Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society.
Copyright
© 2013 Robert
Higgs
Republished with permission from: Lew Rockwell