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Warlike passions

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Often appears with: trade, markets, and merchants · standing armies · siege and fortification · military discipline and training · democratic desire for peace · aristocratic versus democratic officer ranks

Usually: argument (1) · crisis of belief (1) · detachment (1)

Democracy in America — Volume 2 secondary

Alexis de Tocqueville · 1840 (2nd part; published in 1840)
Book Two: Influence Of Democracy On Progress Of Opinion In the United States. > Chapter XXII: Why Democratic Nations Are Naturally Desirous Of Peace, (1/5)

He claims democratic nations desire peace because property and equality weaken warlike passions, yet they still need standing armies, whose officers and soldiers behave differently in democratic versus aristocratic settings.

And Democratic Armies Of War The same interests, the same fears, the same passions which deter democratic nations from revolutions, deter them also from war; the spirit of military glory and the spirit of revolution are weakened at the same time and by the same causes. The ever-increasing numbers of men of property--lovers of peace, the growth of personal wealth which war so rapidly consumes, the mildness of manners…