Randolph Bourne (1886–1918)

05/17/2011 Jeff Riggenbach

The State manuscript and Bourne’s famous phrase within it - War is the health of the state -was only discovered after his death. Bourne’s radical anti-war views earned him the focused wrath of the pro-war group. The Randolph Bourne Institute and the website Antiwar.com are his memorial.

His radically antiwar views on the eve of the US government’s intervention in World War I got him fired from the New Republic . He stuck to his principles and produced some of the best antiwar and antistate writings of the 20th century. Bourne speaks to us today.

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