Originally Posted by The_Jazz

There's a line in The Gulag Archipelago by Solzhenitsyn that throughout history wars where a country emerges victorious end up causing a more conservative society afterwards. A defeat ends up with a more liberal society. There's also a theory that a war is inevitable for every generation since we forget how bad the experience actually is.

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There are lots of counter-examples and certainly not a perfect theory, but I think it makes an interesting addition to this discussion.