Sparks: US, Iran trade threats as Tehran stages mass weddings for couples ready for 'sacrifice'

A republic's strength lies not in its capacity for sacrifice but in its construction of interests so aligned that sacrifice becomes, for the citizen, an irrational calculation.

Threats are a currency that devalues with use, while a public ceremony binding private love to public duty converts sentiment into a more reliable instrument of state.

You are asked to trade your life for a quarrel you did not start, a quarrel that will be settled, as all such quarrels are, by old men who will outlive you.

The bow's life is war, the string's tension both its unity and its readiness to break.

Observe how the political economy of conflict consumes the most valuable domestic capital - the future of its young families - and calls it an investment.

From this desk, I see power mistaking the roar of the crowd for wisdom, and the young mistaking a public vow for a private destiny.

All the intricate theories of statecraft reduce, in the end, to the simple, terrible arithmetic of how many brides must be made widows to prove a point on a map.

Wager everything on the infinite, if you must, but never on the finite vanity of princes who would stake your soul to settle a score.

A most efficient proposal to solve both the demographic anxieties of the state and the logistical burden of future widowhood in a single ceremonial act.

To understand the institution, you must stand where those brides stand, hearing the cheers meant for them but calculated for an audience of old men in distant capitals.

That same principle of sympathy which binds a marriage is systematically perverted by the statesman to manufacture a collective passion far more dangerous than any private interest.

The state provided the flowers and the photographers, reserving the right to later provide the monuments, all with the same efficient cheer.

In Delhi I saw the Sultan raise an army, and in Fez I saw a qadi settle a feud, but nowhere have I seen a judge so seamlessly merge the wedding contract with the death warrant.

Before you tear down the fence of peace to build a monument to war, at least explain why your grandfather, who saw war, built the fence in the first place.

'Ready for sacrifice' - the phrase performs its function with three words, converting human beings into the grammatical object of a sentence whose subject is always elsewhere.