quotes tagged with 'military' 
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes..., known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
There will be two great political parties in this country. One will be called the Republican, and the other the Democrat party. These two parties will go to war and out of these two parties will spring another party which will be the Independent American Party. The United States will spend her strength and means warring in foreign lands until other nations will say, “Let’s divide up the lands of the United States,” then the people of the U.S. will unite and swear by the blood of their fore-fathers, that the land shall not be divided. Then the country will go to war, and they will fight until one half of the U.S. army will give up, and the rest will continue to struggle. They will keep on until they are very ragged and discouraged, and almost ready to give up—when the boys from the mountains will rush forth in time to save the American Army from defeat and ruin. And they will say, “Brethren, we are glad you have come; give us men, henceforth, who can talk with God.” Then you will have friends, but you will save the country when its liberty hangs by a hair, as it were.
Author: Joseph Smith, Jr., Source: Autobiography of Mosiah HancockSaved by cboyack in politics constitution liberty government war republican division democrat military 10 months ago[save this] [permalink]A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
Author: Martin Luther King, Jr., Source: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilenc...Saved by cboyack in government society spirituality military budget 11 months ago[save this] [permalink]I have tried to offer [these desperate, rejected, and angry young men] my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. But they ask -- and rightly so -- what about Vietnam? They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent.
Author: Martin Luther King, Jr., Source: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/mlkatimetobreaksilenc...Saved by cboyack in war foreignpolicy violence military vietnam iraq hegemony 11 months ago[save this] [permalink]The key to a solution of the problems in Vietnam is an understanding that we have no business being there in the first place — at least not under the present conditions or authority. Nevertheless, we are there and we are involved, so what do we do now? Since we shouldn’t be there in the first place, we should now concentrate on doing whatever is necessary to bring our boys home.
Author: Ezra Taft Benson, Source: An Enemy Hath Done ThisSaved by cboyack in war foreignpolicy military vietnam iraq 11 months ago[save this] [permalink]We are a warlike people, easily distracted from our assignment of preparing for the coming of the Lord. When enemies rise up, we commit vast resources to the fabrication of gods of stone and steel --ships, planes, missiles, fortifications -- and depend on them for protection and deliverance. When threatened, we become anti-enemy instead of pro-kingdom of God; we train a man in the art of war and call him a patriot, thus, in the manner of Satan's counterfeit of true patriotism, perverting the Savior's teaching:
"Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;
"That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven." (Matthew 5:44-45.)
We forget that if we are righteous the Lord will either not suffer our enemies to come upon us -- and this is the special promise to the inhabitants of the land of the Americas (see 2 Ne. 1:7) -- or he will fight our battles for us (Exod. 14:14; D&C 98:37, to name only two references of many). This he is able to do...
Author: Spencer W. Kimball, Source: http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/conferences/other/kimball_f...Saved by cboyack in defense preparation war peace protection enemy kingdomofgod military pariotism 1 year ago[save this] [permalink][W]hat other kinds of conduct would you expect from people who want to make lifetime careers out of the lawful exercise of violence against others? The state operates on no other principle than that of the use of coercion - deadly, if need be - to enforce its will upon others. We need to get over our grade-school conditioning that "the policeman is our friend" and recognize that the entire state system is nothing but the institutionalization of violence. The common police motto "to serve and protect" does not embrace you and me as the objects of such purposes.
Author: Butler Shaffer, Source: http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/014466.htmlSaved by cboyack in defense law protection violence force police military coercion 1 year ago[save this] [permalink]Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
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The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement.
We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
This is, I repeat, the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. . . .
This is one of those times in the affairs of nations when the gravest choices must be made, if there is to be a turning toward a just and lasting peace. It is a moment that calls upon the governments of the world to speak their intentions with simplicity and with honesty. It calls upon them to answer the question that stirs the hearts of all sane men: is there no other way the world may live?
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