International Law

The people who live in the capital feel scarce any inconveniency from the war

By Rob Hyndman

Just noticed this quote from The Wealth of Nations in a recent Glennzilla post on Slate’s series of articles by liberal hawks on why they got Iraq so wrong (a series I simply had to finally stop reading, so transparently self-serving were the explanations offered):

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war.

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Full post as published by Rob Hyndman .com on April 04, 2008 (boomark / email).