>>>Well, playing the devil's advocate; if one doesn't like having weapons pointed at oneself, then one ought to refrain from invading other countries.
>>
>>Or one should invade with the idea of making the consequences of pointing weapons such that it is discouraged in the future. ( "Hey, you don't hear much from the Cartheginians anymore ... ")
>
>You don't hear from those who crushed them, either.
Quite true. They stopped dismantling cities stone by stone and sewing salt into the ruins, let corrupt politicians who were themselves aristocrats but demagogued the plebes by giving them subsidies replace a civic sense and traditional values with relativism and sophistry, went into denial about threats from without, accusing those who warned of barbarians at the gate of exploiting fear, denigrated military service and let the army fall into ruin.
But they lasted 600 years longer than the Carthegenians and their like wasn't seen again for a thousand years.
Charles Hankey
Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.
- Thomas Hardy
Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don't mean to do harm-- but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.
-- T. S. Eliot
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch.
Liberty is a well-armed sheep contesting the vote.
- Ben Franklin
Pardon him, Theodotus. He is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.
