While browsing through some books at home, I came across a rather remarkable passage in a story by Mark Twain. This quote strikes me as the sort of thing that may have already made the rounds on liberal blogs, but even so, it's worth reading again.
The loud little handful—as usual—will shout for the war. The pulpit will—warily and cautiously—object—at first; the great, big, dull bulk of the nation will rub its sleepy eyes and try to make out why there should be a war, and will say, earnestly and indignantly, 'It is unjust and dishonorable, and there is no necessity for it." Then the handful will shout louder. A few fair men on the other side will argue and reason against the war with speech and pen, and at first will have a hearing and be applauded; but it will not last long; those others will outshout them and presently the anti-war audiences will thin out and lose popularity. Before long you will see this curious thing: the speakers stoned from the platform, and free speech strangled by hordes of furious men who in their secret hearts are still at one with those stoned speakers—as earlier—but do not dare to say so. And now the whole nation—pulpit and all—will take up the war-cry, and shout itself hoarse, and mob any honest man who ventures to open his mouth; and presently such mouths will cease to open. Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any reputations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.*Wow.
—from The Mysterious Stranger by Mark Twain, published posthumously in 1916 (Thanks to ahab for the correction.)
*Samuel L. Clemens, "The Mysterious Stranger," in The Complete Short Stories of Mark Twain, ed. Charles Neider (Garden City, NY: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1957), pp. 664-665.
[That's all, folks]
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