Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Schumpeter on Imperialism, Part 2

Here's another nice quote from Joseph Schumpeter cited by Claes Ryn's America the Virtuous (p. 11). Schumpeter cited Rome as
the classic example of that kind of insincerity in both foreign and domestic affairs which permeates not only avowed motives but also probably the conscious motives of the actors themselves--of that policy which pretends to aspire to peace but unerringly generates war, the policy of continual preparation for war, the policy of meddlesome interventionism.
I believe Scumpeter wrote his essay on 'Imperialism' in 1919 so he wasn't writing on the basis of having observed post-World War II America. Schumpeter died in 1950.

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