James E. Miller at Takimag, here:
Man has a proclivity for safety, not liberty. Human history is littered with war after war, conflict after conflict. Whatever liberty we eke out of our constant warring state is always in danger of being lost. As philosopher John Gray noted, “To think of humans as freedom-loving, you must be ready to view nearly all of history as a mistake.”
As the ancients maintained but we never seem to remember, even when we study them:
WAR IS THE FATHER OF EVERYTHING.
