War and Humanity

Will Durant and his wife Ariel wrote "The Story of Civilization," which consists of 11 volumes and more than two million words. After their life-long labors they summarized their efforts into a very readable "The Lessons of History," in which they noted that "war is one of the constants of history, and has not diminished with civilization or democracy. In the last 3,421 years of recorded history, only 268 have seen no war." Their considerable effort was completed when the world faced annihilation as after WWII the great atomic powers of communism and liberalism contended for world influence. The political filter of their times may have framed their hesitant view of classical liberalism's advance, for which the US experiment was founded; they and many others did not know that communism would fail its great expectations in just two more decades. Nevertheless, their important work, as summarized in the Lessons, suggested that we could expect little respite from conflicts, which, at this moment, erupt among long suppressed national and religious philosophies, which origins the Durants also wrote about.
From time to time friends and family ask about the course of history and our personal moment on earth. As posted below, I recently revisited another familiar book, Ayn Rand's "Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal" (1966), for comment on Alan Greenspan's recent best-seller. Again, I am not an Objectivist, and have found my philosophy among many diverse observers of civilization, a subject for future posts, should I live that long.
Rand also commented on war. In her Chapter 2. "The Roots of War," Rand writes: "Observe the nature of today's alleged peace movements. Professing love and concern for the survival of mankind, they keep screaming that ... armed force should be abolished as a means of settling disputes among nations, and that war should be outlawed in the name of humanity. Yet these same peace movements do not oppose dictatorships; the political views of their members range through all shades of the statist spectrum, from welfare statism to fascism to communism."
Clearly, the wars of external and internal ideologies, the goad to history's rampages, continue despite clear warnings. Rand and the Durants were consistent commentators on such wars, from within and without, as were many others. For us the question is less about conflict per se than about continuing the advance of classic liberalism, which requires defense against those who would abort that historical moment in which we live long and prosper. We no longer can hide between distant shores; we live in energetic and opportunistic times. To keep the inheritance of civilization, we must defend those principles. Or repeat history.