The State thrives like a parasite by feeding upon the decay of human sovereignty, prosperity and dignity.  Government grows like a cancer, by dividing us into malignant groups of cells which have forgotten they may be part of a common body, each cell with distinct and inviolable purposes.  We may be interrelated, but like the cells of the body, each of us has individual function and appropriate autonomy.  When cells interfere with each other and cause each other to malfunction, it's a state of disease, no less so in society than in the human body.  A cancer metastasizes at the expense of its host; the success of its growth depends on corrupting healthy cells, or tricking them into changing their behavior.  The cancer cares only for its own survival, though it too must perish when the host is no longer able to fight it.

What we have is an invasive cancer spreading throughout our society. Does that require cultural chemotherapy, or drastic lifestyle change?  Suppose each cell of the body politic which is capable of it ceases to interfere with other cells, and refocuses on its own unique reason for being, with a sense of urgency and determination.  Every cell returned to well-being is one less cancerous cell, which has gained resistance to malignant mutation, and one which may exert positive tension upon other cells to resume salutary activity.  The coherence of society depends on the freedom of its members to function with unhindered integrity; to the extent that personal freedom is lost, social cohesiveness is lost as well.

War will allow the parasitic, cancerous state to flourish.  Bombs are brutal tools used by those who intend to inflict terror (or empire), in order to spread the disease of human poverty and despair, the soil in which serfdom grows most pervasively.  If agents of the State (or empire) wished to excise evil or heal illness, they would employ the deft skill of the surgeon or the dedication of the saint; not the random, rapid fire of the psychopathic marksman, or the hellfire and brimstone of the hoodwinked preacher.  "By their fruits ye shall know them", and by the fruits of the State ye know it.

When war is necessary for a people (as opposed to a regime), it will probably not be called a war.  It will not require a draft, or a formal declaration, or require propaganda to manufacture support.  When out of desperation, outrage, or necessity, a people revolt against their oppressors, history books may later deem it a war; but to the people it is a revolution, a protest, civil disobedience, or armed resistance.  People will fight this battle because the cost of not fighting outweighs the cost of fighting.  It's a decision based in moral economy and cultural values, weighed against foreseeable and calculable costs, and arrived at by participants with great personal conviction.  This sort of battle is never trivial, or undertaken for specious reasons.  People who understand who they're fighting or what they're fighting for don't need to take orders which entail relinquishing reason, or forcibly enlist the unwilling.

There is no solace, no grace to be found in war; only a brute justice that inevitably fails to be just.  War causes further wrong, and deepens grief; it spreads injustice, intensifies rage, and entrenches conflict.  War is akin to the justice which cuts off the hands of a starving man who steals to feed his family, which stones the adulteress for the sin of misplaced affection or powerlessness, and condemns the bastard child to a loveless existence.  The finest sense a man possesses is that which knows right from wrong; never surrender that, but apply it properly.  It's not a sword to be used against others; but it may serve as a yardstick or a tuning fork, with which you may take the measure of others or strike harmony with them.

The best hope we have for the future is the rising up of the individual in power against the state.  Those who prize a monopoly on dominion and malevolence would soon reap rewards appropriate to their efforts.  Is anyone really prepared to trust official ventriloquists and scary clown bureaucrats (who have all but destroyed our once benign medical and educational systems) with a matter as grave as war, or a system as malignant as empire?  It's lame logic to be complicit in such sinister schemes for the sake of democracy.  The right to vote does little good when we use it so ill, and results abuse us so vexingly in return for our trouble.  Does the value of a vote register on honest scales, or is it a futile exercise, an abstention from real responsibility, a plea for clemency from the atrocious ambition of the malice in man that straddles power?

Shrug off the psychological fetters of democracy gone bad, the chains of good intention gone awry, and dispel the ghosts of unhappy consequences lurking in the graveyard of our founding fathers' dreams.  Recall where true strength lies; refuse despair and take up personal principles, pens, and ploughshares, the weapons of peace.  Let's raise up our wits, hearts, hands, and voices as dams against decay and desperation, and nurture hope instead of nursing grievances.  Let's fine tune our inner ears to the whispering of conscience or of spirit, and focus our inner eyes upon the glimmering of perception and aspiration.  Let our language serve as a bridge to the world, and not a barricade against it; but guard the  bridge well, and bar the passage of deceit and distortion.  Beware of anything that marches across that bridge: Truth may meander across, fly over it, or wait to be carried, but propaganda has a martial stride.