'Doing God's Work'

by Murray N. Rothbard


This essay originally appeared in the March 1993 issue of The Rothbard-Rockwell Report.

And so to every sailor, soldier, airman, and marine who is involved in this mission, let me say you're doing God's work.
~ President George Bush December 1992

In his scintillating article on the Somalian incursion, Harper's editor Lewis Lapham, one of the few left-liberals who remains staunchly anti-foreign intervention, quotes the above words from our recent president. (Lewis H. Lapham, "God's Gunboats," Harpers Magazine, February) Lapham notes that Bush issued his "prelate's benediction" to the troops even though lacking "both the miter and the shepherd's staff." He also notes – in a timely reminder to those conservatives who have not yet re-examined their devotion to the preceding president – that on that very same December day Ronnie Reagan, speaking at Oxford University, urged the United Nations to develop "an army of conscience" to confront the "evil (that) still stalks the planet" even after the death of the Soviet Union. Since it is difficult to imagine evil stamped out from the world very quickly, this presumably implies a permanent standing world army to vanquish and keep down evil and sin in whatever quarter of the globe they might raise their ugly heads. In short, a permanent global Crusade.

Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard80.html