EconLog’s David Henderson is one of today’s most eloquent, thoughtful, and principled opponents of the warfare state. (Governments are really quite good at waging violence. And if the state has a specialty at which it excels above all, it is in the art and science of killing innocent people.) David’s post – featuring insights from the great monetary economist Dick Timberlake – on this Memorial Day is especially worthwhile
(David’s post prompts my vanity to prompt me to link to this [somewhat] related 1994 essay of mine in The Freeman – an essay that tells a true story of two veterans of WWII, both of whom I knew quite well. When all that a human being sees of his or her destructive actions are little puffs of smoke, or the equivalent, no good should be predicted from such actions. Under such emotionally antiseptic conditions, even the most tender-hearted people will be prone to commit massively brutal atrocities.)
And see, while you’re at it, David Boaz’s Memorial Day post.
