{"id":47376,"date":"2013-07-03T04:50:01","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T03:50:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-go-to-war-for-a-nation-state\/47376\/"},"modified":"2013-07-03T04:50:01","modified_gmt":"2013-07-03T03:50:01","slug":"why-go-to-war-for-a-nation-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/why-go-to-war-for-a-nation-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Go to War for a Nation State?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n <\/p>\n

by
\n Robert Higgs<\/a>
Independent
\n Institute<\/a><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n


\n Recently by Robert Higgs: Why
\n This Gigantic ‘Intelligence’\u00a0Apparatus?<\/a><\/span><\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n \"\"<\/a>
\n <\/p>\n

There is something
\n monstrously out of whack about going to war for a large nation state.<\/span><\/p>\n

I can understand
\n why a man might take up arms in defense of himself, his family,
\n his friends, perhaps even his neighborhood or his town. But once
\n we get past the lived-in milieu, a man\u2019s risking his life,
\n limbs, health, and mental composure to fight for a large politically
\n defined unit makes less and less sense, the larger the unit. Why,
\n for example, should a man from Arizona go to war on behalf of people
\n from New Jersey, people with whom he is not acquainted, people about
\n whom he knows little or nothing. The man from Arizona might well
\n have more in common with and greater concern for a typical \u201cenemy\u201d
\n soldier than he has for the people of New Jersey. He might even
\n dislike people from New Jersey and like the enemy people.<\/span><\/p>\n

I do not care
\n much for many Americans. I find their apparent values and modes
\n of life offensive or worse, although I am personally acquainted
\n with only a handful of them and so I may be doing a disservice to
\n many of those with whom I am not personally acquainted. But in view
\n of the constraints everyone faces, no one can really know, much
\n less like, more than, say, a few hundred other people. What am I
\n to make of a demand that I bear great personal risks in defense
\n of hundreds of millions of complete strangers \u2013 for all I know,
\n these people don\u2019t even exist, and the Census Bureau has perpetrated
\n a gigantic fraud in its declarations that they do.<\/span><\/p>\n

On the opposite
\n side of the ledger, I do know and like \u2013 indeed greatly admire
\n and esteem \u2013 scores of people in other countries. I cannot
\n imagine going to war against them; I\u2019d sooner go to prison
\n than harm them. So, if the U.S. government went to war against Guatemala,
\n for example, it would have to count me out; I\u2019ve far too many
\n dear friends there even to consider joining in such violence. I
\n wonder sometimes how many of the U.S. soldiers who went to Iraq
\n to kill people there had ever seen, much less been acquainted with,
\n an Iraqi previously. What impels a man to kill perfect strangers,
\n especially perfect strangers who pose no threat to him or to those
\n he cares about at home? To me, it defies basic elements of humanity.
\n One might say that such killers are responding more to their allegiance
\n to their own government\u2019s leaders, but why should they have
\n such a loyalty in the first place? Not one soldier in a thousand
\n has ever personally encountered a top American political leader.
\n Unless the soldier is extraordinarily dense, he understands vaguely
\n that such people are all liars and crooks. Why should he kill other
\n people and risk being killed himself merely because these political
\n kingpins want him to do so? Does he fail completely to see the government\u2019s
\n propaganda for what it is?<\/span><\/p>\n

Read
\n the rest of the article<\/b><\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

July
\n 3, 2013<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n

Robert
\n Higgs [send him mail<\/a>] is
\n senior fellow in political economy at the Independent
\n Institute<\/a> and editor of <\/i>The
\n Independent Review<\/a>. <\/i><\/span>He
\n is also a columnist for LewRockwell.com. <\/i><\/span><\/span>His
\n most recent book is <\/i>Neither
\n Liberty Nor Safety: Fear, Ideology, and the Growth of Government<\/a>.
\n He is also the author of <\/i>Depression,
\n War, and Cold War: Studies in Political Economy<\/a>, <\/i>Resurgence
\n of the Warfare State: The Crisis Since 9\/11 <\/a>and <\/i>Against
\n Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society<\/a><\/i><\/i>.<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n

Copyright
\n \u00a9 2013 <\/span>Robert
\n Higgs<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

The
\n Best of Robert Higgs<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/b><\/span>
\n
\n <\/span><\/b><\/span><\/p>\n<\/td>\n

Republished with permission from: Lew Rockwell<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Robert HiggsIndependent Institute Recently by Robert Higgs: Why This Gigantic ‘Intelligence’\u00a0Apparatus? 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-47376","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47376"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47376\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47376"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47376"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47376"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}