A common and natural result of an undue respect for the law is, that you may see a file of soldiers ... marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences.

Does it sound familiar? It is very similar to a quote by Gaius Julius Caesar. The Roman general, statesman, and notable author. He played a critical role in the events that led to the demise of the Roman Republic and the rise of the Roman Empire. “Beware the zealous leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a fervor, for this is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights (under the law)of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by hatred, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader, and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done. And I am, Caesar.”

We must have checks and balances before storming off to war as a human, as a nation and as humanity.

War is criminal, and all of us are complicit with its existence.

What's more dangerous in its consequences: an undue respect of law or an undue disrespect of law?
PS Is there an undue respect for woman?

Grady opined: War is criminal, and all of us are complicit with its existence.

Not so. My father was a conscientious objector and went to prison for his stand. I too was ready to do the same, but they stopped conscription three months before my call up was due.

Einstein pointed out that to make the world a better place for everyone, we must change our thinking
to include everyone. Not so much to think as one organism, but to recognize every individual as
being a fully constituted member of one people. In that regard if we want to eliminate war from
the human experience, each individual must take responsibility for preventing war from occurring
and recurring and recurring. Discovering the means to prevent war or poverty or starvation requires
the same diligent single-mindedness that went into curing smallpox or yellow fever or polio.

We continue to change and refine our thinking about agents of infection or disease, making
large strides to reduce global mortality rates and ease suffering. And the prohibition against
war is taking hold: Despite the loss of life in recent years in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt,
Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia and South Sudan, the number of individuals killed or wounded by warfare
is at an historic low. The argument should not be whether previous wars were right or wrong.
The change in our thinking defines war itself as wrong, criminally wrong.

We have reached a time in our growth as one people to possess the means to intervene, if we choose to,
in the first instances of war to defend victims and dispatch perpetrators, but we still have a long way
to go to reach agreement on how to govern those means of intervention. Many political sides still ask
who is to decide with no intention of hearing any answer other than their own. With 7.2 billion people
now depending on each other and this dynamic planet to survive, the future looms large on the horizon.
I'm optimistic we are making progress to groom a not so distant future generation that will know how to
work together to the benefit of everyone and everything. May we keep on coming together.

"War is criminal, and all of us are complicit with its existence."

To ithink, in particular:

I believe gradyone was referring not to individuals or individual actions, but to our humanity--to the condition of being human. And because this human condition, intrinsic to us all, we all are implicated as accomplices to war. For without this condition, war would not and could not exist.

Surely there are saints among us, but it requires a quantum leap in our thinking for all of humanity to metamorphous and change the nature of our beings, as gradyone in a later post writes, when:

"The change in our thinking defines war itself as wrong, criminally wrong."

Abs writes - "People when left to their own devices will live peaceably until a government rises up and sets them against one another".

Maybe so, but remember that governments are made up of people, and, left to their own devices choose to Divide and Rule.