{"id":1689,"date":"2013-11-12T00:29:38","date_gmt":"2013-11-12T00:29:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/?p=1689"},"modified":"2014-02-09T00:09:02","modified_gmt":"2014-02-09T00:09:02","slug":"remembrance-day-2038","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/blog\/2013\/11\/remembrance-day-2038\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembrance Day 2038 – Short Story by Bradley Doucet"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\"The<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Bradley Doucet
\n<\/big><\/big><\/strong><\/span><\/div>\n
November 11, 2013<\/big><\/span><\/div>\n
Recommend this page<\/a>.<\/strong><\/div>\n
******************************<\/div>\n

One hundred years ago, humanity was on the verge of global war.\u00a0Hitler\u2019s Germany had already annexed Austria, and Hirohito\u2019s Japan had invaded\u00a0China, Mongolia, and the USSR. Tens of millions of people would die in the\u00a0ensuing Second World War, the deadliest conflict in human history. Today, we\u00a0remember the fallen, both military and civilian, in this and other wars. We\u00a0remember, and we give thanks for the current peace, which we have good grounds for believing will be an enduring one.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0recently as 25 years ago, such optimism would have seemed na\u00efve. Though the\u00a0world was already becoming much less violent in general, the terrorist attacks\u00a0of September 11, 2001 were still an open psychic wound for many Americans, and\u00a0isolated wars raged on in many regions. Fears of nuclear proliferation\u00a0threatened to spark further conflicts in the already volatile Middle East.<\/p>\n

But\u00a0parallel to these political events and tensions, the global economy kept\u00a0growing, spreading the benefits of industrialization and trade to more and more\u00a0people in more and more countries. The more obvious the connection became\u00a0between basic economic freedom and rising standards of living, the harder it\u00a0became for even the most authoritarian regimes to resist the push for freer\u00a0markets. Dire poverty has now been all but eradicated and real economic security\u00a0is commonplace. And as people have more to live for, they are less willing to\u00a0die for their countries. Pragmatic negotiations have become more attractive, and violent conflict less so.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0change that humanity has undergone can be summed up by a simple but profound\u00a0slogan: Make trade, not war. As we have become more accustomed to seeing our\u00a0neighbours as potential trading partners in positive-sum exchanges, killing them\u00a0no longer seems to make a lot of sense. We remember today the wars of the past,\u00a0that we might better appreciate our present peace and extend it indefinitely into the future.<\/p>\n

Bradley Doucet is\u00a0Le Qu<\/strong>\u00e9<\/strong>b\u00e9<\/strong>cois Libre<\/a>\u2018s English Editor and the author of the blog Spark This: Musings on Reason, Liberty, and Joy<\/a>. A writer living in Montreal, he has studied philosophy and economics, and is currently completing a novel on the pursuit of happiness. He also writes for The New Individualist<\/a>, an Objectivist magazine published by The Atlas Society, and sings<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bradley Doucet November 11, 2013 Recommend this page. ****************************** One hundred years ago, humanity was on the verge of global war.\u00a0Hitler\u2019s Germany had already annexed Austria, and Hirohito\u2019s Japan had invaded\u00a0China, Mongolia, and the USSR. Tens of millions of people would die in the\u00a0ensuing Second World War, the deadliest conflict in human history. Today, we\u00a0remember the fallen, both military and civilian, in this and other wars. We\u00a0remember, and we give thanks for the current peace, which we have good grounds…<\/p>\n

Read More Read More<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,8,6,5],"tags":[89,64,323,18,84,315,59,1245,1598,62,95,322,1662,63,43,2599],"class_list":["post-1689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-fiction","category-history","category-politics","tag-bradley-doucet","tag-commerce","tag-economic-growth","tag-economy","tag-freedom","tag-futurism","tag-liberty","tag-middle-east","tag-negotiation","tag-peace","tag-progress","tag-prosperity","tag-short-story","tag-trade","tag-war","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1689"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1690,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1689\/revisions\/1690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rationalargumentator.com\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}