http://www.bigeye.com/thewar.htm
Here Bourne is calling for a radical rejection of the 'intellectual' support of World War I. He argues that the intellectuals started the war for selfish reasons and attempt to cover their tracks by eyes of the common-man.
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Although Bourne is a champion of the anti-war movement, it's ironic how his tone in this essay almost makes it as though he's declaring war on the intellectuals whom he believe created it: "A war made deliberately by the intellectuals! A calm moral verdict, arrived at after a penetrating study of inexorable facts!"
ReplyDeleteHowever, I think his arguments are still pertinent today. Not in so much as the intellectual community should be blamed for the wars we are in now but how intellectuals often make extreme decisions and assumptions from the comfort of their isolated homes. As he said, intellectuals are too quick to rationalize about events they are too far removed to make judgments on.