Clearly, just because a nation or any other group was founded or claims to be founded on certain principles doesn’t mean the nation itself adheres (or has adhered) to those principles. Those things you name are all just words that remain empty without consistent actions showcasing their meaning. I think I would prefer celebrating all those ideas in practice instead of celebrating either lip-service to them or their part of a tribal self-identity.

Especially when someone else does the fighting and dying.

Probably people that are like you would think it witty, and people unlike you would find it crass. People that have actually fought in wars and experienced its misery firsthand would find it naive and trite.

And there is the slavery issue, of course.

But the best way to support all troops everywhere would be to stop the wars ASAP.

Robin, this is not necessarily true: many an army has paid its soldiers in loot. Think of Adrimal Croft in Persuasion, who feels sympathy for unfortunate postwar midshipmen, with no promotion or prize money to look forward to.

I understand the survivalist point of the colonies banding together in the 18th century, but it seems to me that the US Civil War may have been the Iraq War II of its time: a huge waste of resources. No one was going to conquor the North by the mid-19th century if they let the South secede, British fantasies notwithstanding.

“Or were you just born with a heart full of neutrality?”

Forgive me for returning, gentlemen. But I saw Zapp & immediately remembered, on this day when we are meant to contemplate liberty:

“[Wisdom consists] in emancipation from personal prejudice. . .I think the essence of wisdom is emancipation, as far as possible, from the tyranny of the here and now. . .No one can view the world with complete impartiality; and if anyone could, he would hardly be able to remain alive.

But it is possible to make a continual approach towards impartiality, on the one hand, by knowing things somewhat remote in time or space, and on the other hand, by giving to such things their due weight in our feelings. It is this approach towards impartiality that constitutes growth in wisdom.

Can wisdom in this sense be taught? And, if it can, should the teaching of it be one of the aims of education? I should answer both these questions in the affirmative. . .It is commonly urged that a point of view such as I have been advocating is incompatible with vigour in action. I do not think history bears out this view.

Queen Elizabeth I in England and Henry IV in France lived in a world where almost everybody was fanatical, either on the Protestant or on the Catholic side. Both remained free from the errors of their time and both, by remaining free, were beneficent and certainly not ineffective. Abraham Lincoln conducted a great war without ever departing from what I have called wisdom.”

– Bertrand Russell, Knowledge & Wisdom