Daily Inspiration Quote by Scott Nearing

War isn’t framed here as tragedy or fate but as a strategy: organized coercion with guns. Scott Nearing, a lifelong socialist activist who watched the United States cycle through industrial war, Red Scares, and Cold War militarism, strips the concept down to its machinery. No flags, no glory, no “defense of civilization” rhetoric - just a group, a will, and the blunt instrument of armed violence. The sentence works because it refuses the comforting myths that make war feel inevitable or even noble. It treats war as a choice made by actors with interests, not a storm that simply arrives.

The wording is doing quiet political work. “Attempt” matters: war is not only immoral, it’s uncertain, wasteful, and frequently incompetent. “Group” matters too: Nearing avoids the romantic singular “nation,” which lets leaders hide behind an imagined unified public. Groups have factions, classes, and profiteers; Nearing’s era made that hard to ignore, with munitions industries booming while ordinary people paid the price in bodies and taxes. The definition also implies that war is not an aberration but the escalated form of the same power struggle that plays out in policing, labor repression, and colonial control - the moment persuasion and consent fail, violence steps in.

There’s an activist’s insistence on clarity here: if war is coercion, then appeals to honor are often just camouflage. Nearing’s line is a pressure test for any justification. If the goal is to impose will, whose will is it, and who benefits when it succeeds?