America Won, Americans Lost by Robert Higgs

Whether the U.S. government's publicly pronounced rationales for entering the wars be viewed as self-serving falsehoods or as mere mistakes, however, the ultimate outcome of waging the wars was the same. As William Graham Sumner wisely wrote, "It is not possible to experiment with a society and just drop the experiment whenever we choose. The experiment enters into the life of the society and never can be got out again."33 Thus, although the wars eventually ended, society never reverted fully to the relatively freer status quo antebellum.