War Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning, by Chris Hedges

[Combanitorics]

I think Gibbon nailed it.

“As long as mankind shall continue to bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than their benefactors, the thirst of military glory will ever be the vice of the most exalted characters.”

― Edward Gibbon

I seem to remember reading that quote in Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, which is basically a Tory polemic against the revolution, written at exactly the same time as the revolution was being fought.   Where do you stand on that?  Were George Washington and co. "exalted characters" thirsting for military glory, or was the race of English people competing amongst itself to see who constituted the fittest part to survive.  Did the American Revolution bring about a split in the race of English people, as Churchill states in The History of the English Speaking People?  Did it create new ethnic subsets?  Did the war in Yugoslavia effectively create new ethnic subsets where there were none before?