What Madison Said

[ThePilgrim]

Just reading and musing about things eternal and not so eternal this morning, things like liberty, justice, and the American way, and that sort of stuff.  I ran across a quote from James Madison in his Political OBservations:

 

"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; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare."

 

Seems like my lifetime from 1938 to today has been filled with one war after another, for one reason or cause after another.  Were the reasons or the causes just or right?  I have my opinions, but then they in the end are just my opinions and so won't give them.  After all this is not about the reasons or the causes of war, it is about some of the things war causes.  

 

I think Madison hit the nail on the head.  Continuous war makes it impossible for the continuance of liberty.  

 

It just seems to go on forever.  When I was a child and even as a young man I gloried in the glorious victories of our military in it's various wars and thought it was a wonderful thing that our nation would set out to right all the wrongs on this planet.  But as I have grown older I have come to realize that it was an impossible task for any nation to do militarily what can only be done spiritually.  Even within a nation nothing can really be changed by force or coercion.  Only God can bring peace either to the world or the human soul.  

 

Forgive my musings.  Just reading the news seems to bring on these spells.  Sometimes I think I would be much happier if I couldn't read and were just really ignorant of what goes on in the minds of men.  

[HappyChristian]

Madison was a very wise man.