"Secondly, war has always been the occasion for a huge, catastrophic leap into statism, a leap that occurs during the war and lasts as a permanent legacy afterwards. As the great libertarian Randolph Bourne warned, as we entered the disaster of World War I, "war is the health of the state." Time and again, war and foreign intervention destroyed our ancestors—the classical liberal movement in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In England, Germany, France, and the United States, this tragedy repeatedly took place. In the United States, the big leaps into statism came with war: the War of 1812, the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and the Cold War."
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Anarchists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesAnti-war activistsPeople from New Jersey
Original Language: English
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Sources
Murray N. Rothbard, "The Presidential Campaign: The Need For Radicalism," The Libertarian Forum 12, no. 2, ed. Murray N. Rothbard (New York, NY: Joseph R. Peden, March–April 1980; mislabelled vol. 13), p. 1, adapted from a speech given at the convention of the Free Libertarian Party of New York, in Albany, N. Y. on 29 March 1980.
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Randolph Bourne
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