Monday, 5 December 2011

History of war in pictures: 1000 years of conflict in five minutes

It’s not entirely accurate , but this graphic presentation of the wars and battles of the last thousand years—with explosions (not always) showing the number of casualties—is sobering viewing.

Since the birth of history, men have been finding reasons to kill other men en masse and to gain values by conquest.

They never have.  They have succeeded only in destroying values, and lives.

“If men want to oppose war,” argued Ayn Rand, “it is statism that they must oppose. So long as they hold the tribal notion that the individual is sacrificial fodder for the collective, that some men have the right to rule others by force, and that some (any) alleged ‘good’ can justify it -- there can be no peace within a nation and no peace among nations.”

Herewith, Exhibit A:

9 comments:

Bizarro #1 said...

OT: Alex Tabarrok's (of Marginal Revolution) new ebook on how to encourage innovation is out, seems the sort of thing you might be interested in.

Peter Cresswell said...

OT: It is, thank you.

Kiwiwit said...

It is so obvious to state, but any political philosophy based on the tenet that the good of society trumps individual good can only achieve its aims by killing lots of individuals.

Hal Incandenza said...

You mean like the US invasion of Iraq? That was a just libertarian war though, so the thousands upon thousands lives lost and trillion dollars spent were fine just fine.

Hal Incandenza said...

Libertarians are warmongers just like George Bush.

Anonymous said...

Go away idiot.

James said...

H I.....could you have posted anything that would have made you appear any more of a douche..?

Andrew B said...

The inaccuracies being?

And how the hell did you spot that on something so small?

Ross said...

Ayn Rand was right. Now hopefully Israel will listen and leave Iran alone