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And among all the Western Empires, the British and the American have always been the most adept at the use of phony moralizing to spin a web of excus… - Randolph Bourne
" "And among all the Western Empires, the British and the American have always been the most adept at the use of phony moralizing to spin a web of excuses for their acts of conquest and to sucker the American and British publics into enthusiastic support of "their" Empires. It is the old trick of inducing the citizen to identify with "his" State; but the trick has always been most effective in time of war, real or imagined. That is just one of the reasons that the libertarian Randolph Bourne, during World War I, called war "the health of the State."
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About Randolph Bourne
Randolph Silliman Bourne (30 May 1886–22 December 1918) was a progressive writer and leftist intellectual born in Bloomfield, New Jersey, and a graduate of Columbia University. Bourne is best known for his essays, especially his unfinished work The State, discovered after his death.
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Alternative Names:
Randolph Silliman Bourne
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Randolph S. Bourne
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Additional quotes by Randolph Bourne
The modern State is not the rational and intelligent product of modern men desiring to live harmoniously together with security of life, property, and opinion. It is not an organization which has been devised as pragmatic means to a desired social end. All the idealism with which we have been instructed to endow the State is the fruit of our retrospective imaginations.
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Randolph Bourne has not been forgotten, not completely. People are still reading his work. They're still talking about his ideas and about his memorable phrases. The most famous of these has gradually become so widely quoted in our culture that millions of people have heard it, even heard it repeatedly, without ever learning who originally wrote or said it: "War is the health of the State."
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