Even the most bellicose of militarists will hardly contend that all wars have been socially helpful, or deny that some have been so destructive of social values that it would have been infinitely better if they had not been waged.
Dewey reflects on the destructive nature of some wars, questioning their social value.
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The invasion of the community by the new and relatively impersonal and mechanical modes of combined human behavior is the outstanding fact of modern life.
Freedom presented itself as an end in itself, though it signified in fact liberation from oppression and tradition.
The easiest way out was to go back to the naked individual, to sweep away all associations as foreign to his nature and rights save as they proceeded from his own voluntary choice, and guaranteed his own private ends.
They persist as emotional cries rather than as reasoned ideas.