War & Peace Quote by Robert M. La Follette

“Divine right” is the knife twist here. La Follette reaches back to the language of kings to frame wartime nationalism as a kind of temporary monarchy: not elected, not argued with, just obeyed. It’s a politician’s line, but not the glad-handing kind. It’s meant to warn that in a crisis the loudest faction stops acting like a coalition and starts acting like a church, claiming moral authority so absolute that dissent becomes heresy.

The phrase “war party” does double duty. It points to a real bloc - lawmakers, editors, industrial interests - and it hints at something darker: war as an identity people join, complete with rituals of loyalty. Once you’re in, you get a ready-made vocabulary to discredit opponents. La Follette names that mechanism with brutal clarity: opponents aren’t debated, they’re branded. “Unpatriotic” and “cowardly” aren’t arguments; they’re social penalties. They attack belonging (patriotism) and masculinity (courage), turning public deliberation into a test of character designed to be failed.

Context matters because La Follette’s era normalized exactly this move. From the run-up to World War I through the Red Scare, dissent was policed through law, media pressure, and vigilante intimidation. His intent isn’t pacifism as posture; it’s constitutional. He’s defending the idea that democratic consent requires disagreement, especially before a war hardens into inevitability. The subtext is blunt: if war can’t survive scrutiny, it doesn’t deserve unity.