"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded," wrote James Madison, "because it comprises and develops the germ of every other." "No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare," he said. This is why, wrote John Quincy Adams, that "America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy."

A good philosophy for the times in which a wooden ship with cannons had to cross the oceans in order to attack us.....this is a different world now. One that these two fine gentleman had no idea would evolve.