War

War is organized violence between groups, and it continues through time. In war, the makers of war hide or deny, with intention, individual consent and the identification of victims. War emerges when authority claims the right to force individuals to harm or to receive harm, for collective goals. That violates self-ownership, and it makes mass victims without individual causation or restitution. War is collective punishment and collective responsibility made into a weapon. In war, authority strikes innocents because of association, not because of action. War breaks the Golden Rule as a system. The persons who cause harm frequently do not meet the consequences, and the persons who receive harm frequently caused no wrong act. From logic, war cannot be legitimate unless each participant consents, and unless each act of harm has a specific victim who violated boundaries first. Those conditions occur almost in no war. Thus war is a collapse of nomocracy into tyranny. True defense against aggression is justice: stop the harm, and repair the victims. War is the perversion of that defense into coercion without limits.