Imperium Americanum

I can cross Empire off my to-​read list now.

For any of you polit­i­cally and/​or mil­i­tar­ily minded folks, it’s a great read. Orson Scott Card sets up a hypo­thet­i­cal Sec­ond Civil War in Amer­ica that is fought between the red and blue states. Also expands on the America-​Roman Empire com­par­isons you may be hear­ing in the news. In fact, after read­ing this, I def­i­nitely want to study more US his­tory and Roman history.

Besides the book itself being awe­some, Card includes lit­tle quotes at the begin­ning of each chap­ter from works such as Sun Tzu’s Art of War. My favorite one is this:

“Armies have spent a lot of time and effort train­ing their sol­diers not to think of the enemy as human beings. It’s so much eas­ier to kill them if you think of them as dan­ger­ous ani­mals. The trou­ble is, war isn’t about killing. It’s about get­ting the enemy to stop resist­ing your will. Like train­ing a dog not to bite. Pun­ish­ing him leaves you with a beaten dog. Killing him is a per­ma­nent solu­tion, but you’ve got no dog. If you can under­stand why he’s bit­ing and remove the con­di­tions that make him bite, some­times that can solve the prob­lem as well. The dog isn’t dead. He isn’t even your enemy.”

Some­thing we should all think about, not just in war, but for all the con­flicts in our lives.

Any­way, if you want to bor­row the book, just holler.

Tags: America, Dinhternet, Work