"The Roots Of War" - Ayn Rand

"The Roots Of War"

Ayn Rand

1. Tribalism and statism hold that men achieve goals by "initiating" force against other men for some notion of public "good."

2. Rand: "Statism is a system of institutionalized violence and perpetual civil war."

3. Statism is "gang rule." It is not a system conducive to security and peace.

4. Rand: "Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by production."

5. The period from the end of Napoleonic power (1815) to the beginnings of World War I -- the period the Left abhors because of its unbridled (though not necessarily "pure") capitalism -- was a period of relative peace.

6. Rand: "During the nineteenth century, it was free trade that liberated the world...wrecking the remnants of feudalism...and statist absolute monarchies."
7. War profiteers of mixed economies curry favor with custodians of government largess; in free markets, fortunes from death would not occur.

8. Both Roosevelts and Woodrow Wilson believed that the "benighted" areas of the world needed varying doses of freedom (in FDR's case, four).

9. Rand: "If men want to oppose war, it is statism that they must oppose."

10. For war to be outlawed, the "rule of force" must cease.