S.
Congress, President Nixon spoke of "our goal of building a structure of
lasting peace in the world." At the same moment the Washington
administration was feeding the fires of war in South East Asia and
asking the United States Congress to increase 1975 U.S.A. defense
appropriations from $80 billion to $90 billion per year.
When war ended in 1945 there was a planet-wide sigh of relief and a
devout hope that after so many years of local and general wars, the time
had come for western man to take a long decisive step in the direction
of peace. The United Nations Charter expressed this hope to end the use
of war as an instrument of policy.
Since the period of general social relaxation usually known as the Dark
Ages was superceded by the multiple innovations of the Reformation, the
Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the scientific-technical developments
of the 1750-1970 Revolution, man the dreamer, inventor, designer,
planner, architect and engineer has modified many aspects of nature and
transformed the social environment.
Until the Reformation and the Renaissance, European ruling oligarchies
in territories along the Mediterranean and throughout western Europe
were able to perpetuate their privileges and preserve the life styles of
an agricultural-feudal society. Improvements in navigation and the
growth of trade, commerce and industry opened the way for the bourgeois
revolution with its rapid growth of cities and the parallel increase of
wealth, income, and living standards among the newly-enriched
businessmen and their associates and dependents.
Pages:
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256