W: LP: GRP: StPk: Story from Steampunk II

I've been reading two volumes of short stories from the Steampunk genre, entitled Steampunk and Steampunk II, ed. by Ann & Jeff Vandermeer. Though the stories are of varying quality, I found that I enjoyed them all, because each has something unique that I liked. I'm about half-way through the second volume now, and I came across a story entitled "As Recorded on Brass Cylinders: Adagio for Two Dancers" which had a small paragraph worth quoting related to my social philosophy. Here it is:

The Company's damned motto echoed in the silence that spiraled out between them as the voices of the past faded. Commune bonum. The Common Good. They used such words in their speeches, on their posters, in the printed material distributed in schools in conjunction with words like 'valor' and 'honor' and 'for the glory of the Empire!'...words war-tattered about the edges and stained with tears. Vomit. Blood.
Such words lured children onto the battlefield and wrapped their battered, broken bodies in a winding-sheet for transport home to weeping families. Such words were thin consolation, rough with all the things left unsaid. Such words were diamonds dangled before starry-eyed girls, to whom honor and glory were jewels beyond compare, brighter than circlets of gold slipped upon a willing finger.