I fight for me, myself, my beliefs. I am an army of one. That might be hard for you to understand even though you also exist in a highly individualized society. I fight against everything that is society, wherever I may find it. I am the eternal outsider, for reasons that are beyond this argument. An outcast that will stop at nothing to accomplish his goals, which is no matter how I twist and turn myself, the destruction of society as we know it. Hopefully not falling in the Hitler trap in the process even if that is always a possibility with people like me.
The goal would be either to form a new better form of government, as a full blown technocracy or just recycle and start again as new democracies without any of the corrupt people who currently makes up the politic body.
I guess I would subscribe to Plato’s republic in that people must be replaced and recycled. As your own Thomas Jefferson said, "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants". Though many interpret his words as a calling to die for one’s country on some dark and foreign battlefield instead of looking within for the real enemies of freedom and peace.

But your assumption that I am idle or a victim just because I do not support your course of action is quite frankly staggering. Simplistic and biased. If anyone is a victim is it is you, and of fear and your own government.

I can’t even tell very well what you’re against. Just us (US).

What would you do about 9/11, or muslim doctrine or …

Is there anything worth fighting for? Or are you just a professional victim?

"Democracies Do Not Make War on One Another … or Do They?"
http://users.erols.com/mwhi...
I am warning you once again that you take for granted concepts that are in reality subjective, even on an academic level. That truly building a house of cards.

That saying is in the end another handy but ultimately empty proverb.

And also what does it matter? As you can probably see, I’m holding the US, a democracy by most definition, responsible for some of the most outrageous atrocities of the last two centuries. And arguably the only one country that didn’t pay for their crimes. Not that I’m so vindictive, but as an american I am sure you can relate to vengeance. It seem to have no temporal or spacial boundaries for you.
Butchering and raping your way thru Vietnam sure wasn’t hampered by the fact they you’re a democracy. And with the same pathetic excuses as you give me now. It’s all about "protecting myself and my loved ones" and hunting phantoms of the mind. Then it was communism (and a great deal of anti-asian racism). Now it’s something else.
From another perspective, Robert MacNamara, in Fog of War while desperately trying to not appear a war criminal, said that "proportionality should be a guideline of war" (http://www.agni.org/braindu...). I believe so too. In a way he embodies everything sick and dialectic about America, yet he comes across as thinking and sympathetic. So what, 4000 people died on 9/11. That doesn’t give you the right to kill tens of thousands all over the world and disregard treaties and humanitarian policy. You probably killed more than 4000 people in Afghanistan alone.

I do no doubt that people have always invested time for thinking about war in writings and plays. After all it is the most horrid form of organized and sanctioned crime that our species knows. I don’t draw my empirical knowledge from Greek drama however. Whats next? The Da Vinci code?

Furthermore. What you’re asking for is a witch-hunt. And the concept of democracy that you cherish does have more aspects than just elections. It guarantees the upholding of international agreements, fair trials and so on and so forth. It is ironic that you and your kind have, through your so called ‘fight for democracy’, abandoned the very things it stood for. Your so called democratic country takes part in oppression and terrorism every day and that is the only guarantee I see.

And one more thing. I don’t see how a reduced military would be a problem. Even with a billion soldiers could you guarantee control over the planet. Conjecture. If you people used your head a bit more you could prosper without sending a single GI overseas. But I see that is not the way it will be.

Yes, Heinlein did write that "TANSTAAFL" and I put it to you that it is in fact the US that has been believing in the "free lunch" for the last couple of decades.

I think that believing that war is not ‘natural’ denies all the evidence. When man first learned to write, the writing was about war. The ancient Greek play <i>Lysistrata</i> is about how to stop war. It didn’t work. About the closest way modern man has to stop war is to have a democratic form of government. After all, no two modern democracies have gone to war against one another. The US hasn’t been at war with Sweden in a long time. I have no doubt that, had Saddam had the capability of sending a Nuke to Washington, there would already have been a mushroom cloud over the White House.

Since I understand that, it means that I have to take steps to protect myself and my loved ones. How do I do that?

1) I vote for a man for president who will ‘mind the store’ in that way. Clinton did not. He reduced the size of the military by 40%. We’re paying for that now. Bush does. The ‘Bush Doctrine’ is one aspect of ‘minding the store’ that I agree with.

2) I work to try to put democratic governments in places where we have an interest and there are not democracies now. The Middle East, North Korea, China, etc.

TANSTAAFL !

What you’re saying presupposes that violence is a sort of natural state of things and we can’t and shouldn’t try to change that even if it was possible. "Because that is the way it has always been."
I also wonder if that quote relates to you or me or us both. I do not see presently how someone would be acting out violence in my best interest.
And in your case, you don’t recant violence as you just approved of said methods. Or did I understand you wrong? Plus, the idea of a democratic nation-state (even if I do see the many limitations of the system) is rather to elect someone to speak for and act on BEHALF of the people. Not to get the biggest butcher in town. Then we are really grasping the last straw. And in the end it comes down to you as "the people", do you support this course of action? I’m not asking your president, I’m asking you. Do you believe it is necessary? And for the moment, lets just assume that I’m a really dry bureaucrat who needs crystal clear argumentation and utilitarian justification in the form of real benefits, not conjecture. One who is impervious to fear and rhetorics and who will need a real world explanation before he will even requisition you a pencil, much less a jet aircraft.

Hmmm. I recognize this logic all too well. It’s the old "draft dodger" routine or whatever we should call it. It does effectively shift the blame from those that are obviously committing atrocities in one form or another to those that brought up the charges. And it doesn’t really have anything to with dodging the draft, it’s just the first thing that entered my mind. At any rate it’s a very clever form of demagoguery and rhetorics.
It borderlines what Robert Heinlein brought forward in his day, and indeed reveals a part of the "american soul" which probably still exists, particularly through Starship Troopers. Though it should be noted that Heinlein was completely serious in his love for the kind of fascist system he outlined and was in real life passionately anti-communist with all that it entails.

"Those who "abjure" violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf."

It has always been so. It will continue to be so. That’s why we elect presidents and give them the obligation (and the power) to protect us.

Who was it that said that ‘only a criminal can fear a police state’? I find the prospect of being carted off in the middle of the night to be disturbing at best. And for more reasons than I care to list. This little affair broke just about every rule in the book. I couldn’t have done a less moral job even if I put on my best Gestapo uniform and tried.