WAR AND LIBERTY

"No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." I see this James Madison quote a lot lately. I get it: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, now Syria? Still, I'm inclined to question it. What is "continual" warfare? Does it mean total mobilization? We haven't had anything like that since 1945. Even Korea and Vietnam were only as traumatic as they were because we still had the draft, hence their wrenching effects on American society and politics. But what about a nation with relatively small, professional volunteer armed forces? Like ours. Or like the British at their imperial apogee in 1815-1914. It would be hard to find a year in that century when British troops were not fighting somewhere. If not India or China, then Africa or the Crimea. All the while, Britain became steadily more democratic, with less privilege and more careers open to talent, less given to monopoly and protection and more to free market capitalism, less insistent on religious conformity and more open to freedom of belief and expression. Almost all these British wars were controversial. Some ended in victory, some in defeat. Some inflicted real psychic wounds, notably the Indian Mutiny, which aroused feelings of undeserved betrayal, as well as racial fears, and the Boer War, because of its unexpected duration and moral ambiguities. Most had few such effects. The press treated some as virtual sporting events. None, interfered much with the advance of "British liberties." Honor the Founding Fathers, learn from them, but don't necessarily assume that a quote from Madison, Washington or any of them is necessarily definitive.