Fighting has gotten a bad name; it should not be so. Fighting itself is neither moral nor immoral; only its object can be said to be so. We may count the ability to fight well, when applied to a just cause, among the virtues. To be moral is not to fight no one; to be moral is to fight those who vitiate life and civilization. In Consilience, Edward Wilson writes that, if moral aptitude is like every other trait studied to date, it forms a bell curve, has a natural genetic distribution: some human beings are moral, others amoral or immoral.

Our chief concern should be for, first life, then civilization; fighting may foster life and civilization, and not fighting harm them. That the moral are far less willing to fight than the immoral has always hurt societies. If we truly wish to make the world a better place, we should sometimes fight. Many moral advances have consisted not of eschewing force across the board, writes Steven Pinker in The Better Angels of Our Nature, but of applying it in carefully measured doses.

We learn how to fight well by studying great fighters. The art of war is an art with principles, said Napoleon, and these principles must never be violated. Life Fighting explicates the principles by showing how Caesar, Richelieu, Talleyrand, Napoleon, and Gates applied them.

The website of Life Fighting is: www.lifefighting.net