Sixteen million world war veterans wonder when wars will cease.
Found on a monument:
Erected A.D. 1949 by J.O. Varnedoe Camp No 14 U.S. W.V. and their Friends in memory of Spanish American War Veterans.
At the historic Lowndes County Courthouse:
The namesake of that camp was James Edward Oglethorpe Varnedoe (1842 – 1927), a veteran of the Spanish-American War, about whom the Valdosta Daily Times obituary said “Funeral of Valdosta’s First Citizen Today”. He was my great-grandfather Thomas Shepard Quarterman’s second cousin (and fifth cousin, but that’s a very long story).
When wars will cease?
-jsq
Short Link:
The only antidote to war I know of is democracy. We do need a way to shuffle the assets every generation or so. Change the distribution. We’ve done that through wars for a long time. What World War II left behind was more freedom and the all-time longest, deepest boom in absolute terms.
I’ve always thought of war as a biological habit descended from fighting among rival males for the most fertile does. Every mating season is preceded by competition. Headhunting missions. Raids on the neighbor tribe, taking their women. I don’t think we can ever do away with a biological instinct, but we can diffuse it.
You make some great points Jim; I just wanted to mention that one of the things I find most disturbing about modern warfare is the way it actually perpetuates and maintains the same inequalities over and over – the upper class (or the banks or the corporations) want the war, the lower classes fight it because they have been sold a false bill of goods, and the middle class goes along with it all in an aspirational belief that one day the upper class will include them. Your argument about biology is an intriguing one, and it makes me think that we should raise both men and women differently if we want to have a peaceful society. Men need to be taught other ways to settle disputes, and women need to be raised to not put up with men who have the warrior mentality.