Word: clausewitz
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...with an almost ritual quality. They are unlike fatal quarrels of husband and wife, random slaughter in delicatessen holdups and bar brawls, and the other killings that constitute the vast majority of murders in the U.S. Instead, the Mafia practices a drama of implacable tribal will: just as Clausewitz defined war as foreign policy by other means, La Cosa Nostra regards murder as an instrument of business-often conducted with a vengeance. The peculiar vogue that the Mafia is now enjoying in films and books may spring from a kind of stylish atavism that Americans recognize in a brute feudal...