And the motto of one of the New England states (Vermont?) is...?

"Live Free or Die"

And who was it who said...?

"Give me liberty or give me death!" Patrick Henry, I believe.

And then there was the famous American Cold War slogan:

"Better dead than red!"

Like I said, everyone who fights is under the impression that he is doing it for the same reasons: The lives and liberty of the people who espouse the values that HE has come to believe in. What he's most familiar with in other words.

No one has any business saying that his people love life and freedom and somebody else's people don't, because it's total, absolute bullshit to say that. Everyone loves life and freedom. Some people will also make a fetish out of dying gloriously for their cause, but it isn't because they don't love life and freedom! It's because they have convinced themselves that their cause is the only one that really favors life and freedom, and they are willing to die on behalf of their community and their cause...so that others they love may "live in freedom" (as they interpret the word 'freedom'...).

Such is the tragedy of human conflict, and ever has been. Not one blow that wasn't supposedly struck for someone's freedom somewhere.