The Welfare/Warfare State “Culture”
April 21, 2017
The culture of government, of Washington, D.C. and all other federal, state, and local capitals, in other words.
“The welfare state . . . buffers people from any need to behave like civilized human beings . . . . In the marketplace, a foul-mouthed boor will be fired from his job. In the welfare state she can remain just as she is — and the checks will keep coming. In the marketplace, hanging out as a street corner tough all day is a short route to homelessness . . . . In the welfare state . . . such a lout can go home to a public housing project, his rent and food paid for by the same pedestrians he has spent the day menacing and insulting . . .”
–James Bidinotto, “Cultural Pollution”
“The culture of war . . . is not like the culture of ordinary peace-time life. It is a culture dominated by fear, blood, and sadism, by irrational actions and preposterous . . . results. It has more relation to science fiction or to absurdist theater than to actual life.”
— Paul Fussel, “The Culture of War,” in John Denson, editor, The Costs of War, p. 354
“What distinguishes man from animals is the insight into the advantages that can be derived from cooperation under the division of labor. Man curbs his innate instinct of aggression in order to cooperate with other human beings. The more he wants to improve his material well-being, the more he must expand the system of the division of labor. Concomitantly he must more and more restrict the sphere in which he resorts to military action.”
Human cooperation under the divison of labor “bursts asunder,” however, when “citizens turn into warriors.”
–Ludwig von Mises, Human Action, 1998 Scholars Edition, p. 827
This last quote by Mises demonstrates the ass-backwards thinking of all the neocon warmongers who accuse the advocates of peace and commerce as being “isolationists.” The exact opposite is true: It is war and military aggression that isolates peoples from one another; peace and commerce bring them together for mutual advantage.
Alliance With Bernie?