Friday, March 30, 2007

Another biting anti-statist Onion satire

I reported a while ago about the Onion's article "New Poll Finds 86 Percent Of Americans Don't Want To Have A Country Anymore". Now the Onion has another anti-collectivist article, this time against nationalism and militarism, in "I'm Prepared To Give My Life For This Or Any Country":

As a true patriot, I would gladly die in battle defending my homeland. I love my country more than my own life. But I would also be more than willing to give my last breath in the name of, say, Mexico, Panama, Japan, or the Czech Republic. The most honorable thing a man can do is lay down his life for his country. Or another country. The important thing is that it's a country...

There comes a time when all of us, no matter who we are, heed the call to the battlefield. It is a call we cannot and should not ignore, no matter where it is coming from. And if I must die, in the service of this or that country, I only hope I can at least take as many of the enemy with me as possible before I fall and breathe my last. Unless of course, they're also fighting for a country. In which case, their deaths, at my hands, will have been honorable—because they, like me, would have died for a country.

Without nationalism, our deaths in the countless wars we constantly wage to defend our own nations against others defending their own nations against us would seem arbitrary, almost meaningless. But as long as we have a higher purpose—the love of whatever country we happen to be fighting for—we will always know we did not lose our lives in vain.


There is a Market Anarchist writing for the Onion, of that there is no doubt...

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