… but what if they threw a war and no one came?
… but what if they threw a war and no one came? This anti-war slogan from the 1970s apparently did little to change public opinion that … what? …war is inevitable given human nature? For centuries, Mennonites, Quakers, Doukhobors and various secular peace movements have responded to the appeal to fight in wars by refusing to show up. They’ve always been minorities; the consensus being that the right, the patriotic response to aggression is counter-aggression-in-kind. W.B. Yeats wrote The Second Coming in 1920 just after World War I and at the beginning of the Irish War of Independence. An exceedingly difficult time for humanity with little reason to hope for the Peaceable Kingdom any time soon. He might well have been writing about today: Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of pas...