Ayn Rand

“Just as [Woodrow] Wilson … led the United States into World War I, ‘to make the world safe for democracy’ – so Franklin D. Roosevelt … led it into World War II, in the name of the ‘Four Freedoms.’ … In the case of World War II, [those overwhelmingly opposed to war ... were silenced and] smeared as ‘isolationists,’ ‘reactionaries,’ and ‘American-First’ers.’ ”

“World War I led, not to [Wilson’s] ‘democracy,’ but to the creation of three dictatorships: Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany. World War II led, not to [Roosevelt’s] ‘Four Freedoms,’ but to the surrender of one-third of the world’s population into communist slavery.”

“If you have accepted the Marxist doctrine that capitalism leads to wars, read Professor Ekirch’s account of how Woodrow Wilson, the ‘liberal’ reformer, pushed the United States into World War I. ‘ He seemed to feel that the United States had a mission to spread its institutions – which he conceived as liberal and democratic – to the more benighted areas of the world. ’ It was not the ‘selfish capitalists,’ or the ‘tycoons of big business,’ or the ‘greedy munitions-makers’ who helped Wilson to whip up a reluctant, peace-loving nation into the hysteria of a military crusade – it was the altruistic ‘liberals’ of the magazine The New Republic …”

“Observe the link between statism and militarism in the intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries. Just as the destruction of capitalism and the rise of the totalitarian state were not caused by business or labor or any economic interests, but by the dominant statist ideology of the intellectuals – so the resurgence of the doctrine of military conquest and armed crusades for political ‘ideals’ were the product of the same intellectuals’ belief that ‘the good’ is to be achieved by force.”