And there is no one who spells out the nit and gritty of where it is we find ourselves today more than old Marine Gen. Smedly Butler who earlier in this past century wrote: “War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surly the most vicious. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and losses in lives. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small ‘inside’ group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.”
And Lord Acton best describes our overall plight when he once observed: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”
To have become the most powerful nation in the history of mankind, truly has been a remarkable achievement, but it has, also, taken a considerable spiritual toll. We’ve gotten ourselves drunk with power.
The ultimate adventure, however, “testing whether a nation or an individual can long endure,” is to face up to one’s self and deal, like old Odysseus of yore, with the reality of where it is we find ourselves down the road of time — from home, from our ideals.
It’s so easy to get blown off course. And when realized, it’s best to make a serious course correction, exercising the “will to life,” in the spirit of Susan Butcher or Odysseus, just because.
Tim O’Leary
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