War -- A Disreputable Scuffle for Loot

[fastpat]

Identified years ago by the legendary Albert J. Nock, here's the gist.

"A Disreputable Scuffle for Loot"
Posted by Lew Rockwell at January 4, 2007 10:18 AM

Albert Jay Nock on war, from Memoirs of a Superfluous Man:

“The outcome of the [1914] war bore hard on those who had swallowed the jobholders' glib mendacity about the enterprise being a war to end all wars and to make the world safe for democracy. When it finally became clear that the war was no such noble undertaking as all that, but was merely a disreputable scuffle for loot, exactly like the wars which for untold ages had preceded it, those who had accepted it in good faith as a crusade for righteousness felt that they had been outrageously let in, and made no bones of saying what they thought about it.

“I was not one of this number, for I had already cut my eye-teeth on the Spanish War. My observations of foreign affairs since the days of McKinley and John Hay convinced me that what British jobholders were wanting in 1914 was exactly what British jobholders had wanted in 1898. It was clear to me in 1898, as I have already said somewhere in these pages, that the British Foreign Office had constantly before its eyes the vision of a world at peace, dominated and operated by British imperialism, with the United States kept in hand to act as a bouncer and pay heavily for the privilege, whenever malcontents became obstreperous. I could make nothing else of Mr. Hay's conduct; of the British Colonial Secretary's ‘blowing the gaff’; and of our military and diplomatic doings in the Pacific.

“The Spanish War had turned out to be a tradesmen's war; there was no doubt of it. So when the war of 1914 came on, I bent a jaundiced eye upon its officially-advertised aims and motives, for I knew too much of what had been going on in European politics since 1910 to believe a word of them. When the secret treaties came to light after the Bolshevist revolution, and the reports of Belgian diplomatists in Berlin, Paris and London were published, the whole rationale of the war was shown to be just what one would know it must be. When the peace-terms were seen to correspond with the terms of the secret treaties and not with those of the infatuated Mr. Wilson's Fourteen Points, it could surprise no one. When the League of Nations proved to be only a blind for jobholders intent on maintaining the status quo, what else could one expect?

“I felt somewhat sorry for the gudgeons who had been hooked by the lies of jobholders and their tagtails of the press, pulpit and platform, as one must always feel sorry for the victims of any set of common swindlers; but I did not see how anything could be done about it. I thought the hardest trial they had to bear must be the memory of all the appalling drivel they had poured forth in their spasms of pseudo-patriotic ardour. During the war I often witnessed the sorry spectacle of old acquaintances, normally quite cool-headed persons, emitting great volumes of lurid nonsense about "the mad dog of Europe" and his murderous designs on the world in general; and how if Britain and France should fall, the whole structure of Western civilisation (for so they naïvely called it) would collapse in ruin. What must they have thought of themselves when daylight finally broke in on them!”
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[Scott at Pelican Parts]

Does Lew Rockwell pay you to promote his site?

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Scott at Pelican Parts
Does Lew Rockwell pay you to promote his site?

No, Scott, I don't receive payment from any place I acquire information.

[spencejm]

What information? I saw some ramblings that could be construed as an opinion but no information.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by spencejm
What information? I saw some ramblings that could be construed as an opinion but no information.

That piece was based on people being knowledgable about World War One, if you're not knowledgable, then it might be hard for you.

Here's a good resource on the time: Wilson's War: How Woodrow Wilson's Great Blunder Led to Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, and World War II. There are many others, but that one should suffice.

[tobster1911]

Originally posted by fastpat
If you don't agree/speak well of what Pat pastes, you're not knowledgable, then it might be hard for you.

Here's a good resource on the time:
Link to someone else's opinion that agrees with Pat...

Fixed for accuracy....

[fastpat]

Originally posted by tobster1911
Fixed for accuracy....

Your facts are...where exactly?

Do you know about World War One?
Do you know the main plank of Wilson's campaign?
Do you know what the British and French were on the verge of doing in 1917?
Do you know why Wilson entered into the war?

I quoted just one book that explains all of the above under one cover, there are volumes of support to my position, and of course to Nock's position written in the 1920's, he was contemporary to the events.

Yet, all you can post is that I quote a book that supports my position as if that's problematic?

Do you want me to scan in entire volume's and post them here?

No, I thought not.

That's the problem with the booboise, take a well supported position about which they know nothing and they complain that you're too knowledgable.

[Eric 951]

Originally posted by fastpat
Do you know about World War One?
Do you know the main plank of Wilson's campaign?
Do you know what the British and French were on the verge of doing in 1917?
Do you know why Wilson entered into the war?

.

Yes to all of the above.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Eric 951
Yes to all of the above.

Don't hold back.

[hatpix]

Don't feed the Troll

[RoninLB]

I thought this was going to be about Nancy Pelosi ?

[hatpix]

No, its going to be about not feeding the Trolls.

[Moneyguy1]

Look up General Foch before you accuse Wilson.

[tabs]

Wilson was a naive College Proffessor.

Patsy always seems so surprised and outraged upon finding out that Politiicans etc have alterior motives and agendas, whereupon he besmirches them as being no good evil doers.

U might say Patsy keeps himself in this idealized state of innocent outraged virtue..which if he were really that virtious he wouldn't last 5 minutes on the streets of NYC, Detroit, Washington or anyother major Bad a$$ city. Yet Patsy to have lived so long is somthing other than the virtious soul he believes he is.

For me its not that he digs up these historic truths its his virtious interpetation of evil doing and outrage as a moral innocent that I find disconcerting as that is where his veracity falls short of the mark.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by Moneyguy1
Look up General Foch before you accuse Wilson.

I think I can safely say that General Foch did not order the US Army into France.

[fastpat]

Originally posted by tabs
Wilson was a naive College Proffessor.

Hardly.

Patsy always seems so surprised and outraged upon finding out that Politiicans etc have alterior motives and agendas, whereupon he besmirches them as being no good evil doers.

I'm not surprised, but many do not know this fact. Certainly, no government school teaches this information, even Universities seldom do in required classes.

U might say Patsy keeps himself in this idealized state of innocent outraged virtue..which if he were really that virtious he wouldn't last 5 minutes on the streets of NYC, Detroit, Washington or anyother major Bad a$$ city. Yet Patsy to have lived so long is somthing other than the virtious soul he believes he is.

You might say that, but not with any accuracy. Further, why would I wish to be in a septic tanksuch as NYC, Detroit, Washington (assuming you mean DC), or any other crime ridden city. Those places are like that because people who live there want them to be like that. Fortunately, here in South Carolina, our tolerance for such behavior is rather low. That's true in many other locations as well. You like septic tanks, go live in them. As far as me lasting in them, well, I wouldn't last very long in the vacuum of space either, so I don't go there.

For me its not that he digs up these historic truths its his virtious interpetation of evil doing and outrage as a moral innocent that I find disconcerting as that is where his veracity falls short of the mark.

Tabs, sometimes, you're silly at the most infantile level, this is one of those times.

[bigchillcar]

lol.

[tabs]

Dear patsy...In talking about your not lasting....I was saying you present yourself as having NO STREET SMARTS...it has nothing to do where U live...

"Silly and Infintile"..Patsy U are to be commended about digging up these historic truths. but its your perception and the conclusions U draw about the historical actors motivations that is 180* off...and that sir is why people tell U to flush it.

As a Baby Boomer our History classes painted the USA as being Lily White with only virtious intentions. Washington, Lincoln and Roosvelt were portrayed as being Knights on White Horses. As we got older and started to look around we found that we had been told falsehoods and lies, that our government had NEVER been virtious and that our contemporary government was flawed. Boomers didn't paticularily like the deception that was Vietnam and out of their idealism thought that they could change things to make a brave new world with endless summers of love. Unfortunately the system has just asorbed them, coopted them and corrupted them, like it does every generation.

[Moneyguy1]

pat

The good general was the one who would not accept anything proposed from Germany and prolonged the war as well as being the power behind the conditions that Germany had to accept. Those conditions ruined the German post-war economy and created the unrest that led to the rise of A.H. andwhat has been called World War II, which actually was a continuation of the previous war.