To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (3963 ) 5/21/2006 9:29:00 AM From: DuckTapeSunroof Read Replies (2) | Respond to of 4006 Periods of war historically (and naturally enough...) mark episodes where the size and power of central government seriously expand. Any so-called 'endless' war would produce even more of the same.... ========================================================= It is always the natural tendency of politicians and bureaucrats to seek to exploit temporary crisis, to expand permanently their powers over the public. "Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions against danger, real or pretended, from abroad...." --- James Madison to Thomas Jefferson, May 13, 1798. "The true danger is when liberty is nibbled away, for expedience, and by parts." --- Edmund Burke "The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." --- Edmund Burke (1784) "The greatest threats to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." --- Justice Brandeis "Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes... known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." --- James Madison, 4th U.S. President, Political Observations, 1795 "Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction." --- Ronald Reagan "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." --- Benjamin Franklin "Timid men... prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous seas of liberty." --- Thomas Jefferson "When the people fear the government, you have TYRANNY, when the government fears the people, you have FREEDOM" --- Thomas Jefferson