The Fairbairn Manual Of Knife Fighting by William L. Cassidy

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11 What was the American Century if not the belief that America represented mankind’s destiny? In Mailer’s novel Hearn may refer to a process of osmosis: claiming that having defeated fascism the United States would itself become a fascist state. And Cummings’ philosophy can be interpreted in fascist terms, although to do so would be to misread not only the book but America as a nation. For Cummings is really a follower not so much of Nietzsche as the idea of ‘the will to power’, and that will included not only power over 28 Humane Warfare 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111 others but also power over oneself.

27 What was important about the drug culture was its preoccupation with the present. In The Doors of Perception (1954) Aldous Huxley had suggested that mescaline and LSD were drugs of unique distinction which offered a visionary feast for the young, for those with an open mind. 28 Not surprisingly the book became a set text for the beat generation and later the hippies in the psychedelic 1960s. The Doors, whose lead singer Jim Morrison became one of the defining icons of the age (rendered more iconic still by his drug-induced early death), named themselves after it.

When Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany in 1917 he confidently asserted that ‘our object is to vindicate the principles of peace . . 12 The idea that war was being fought for peace was the ultimate conclusion of America’s historic mission to rid the world of tyrants whether they took the form of eighteenth-century kings or twentieth-century German gauleiters. It was War and the renunciation of cruelty 29 1111 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 1011 1 2 3111 4 5 6 7 8 9 20111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 30111 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 40111 1 2 3 4 45111 only inevitable that Soviet commissars would later be added to the list.