The Capital Times was founded 99 years ago to support Wisconsin Sen. Robert M. La Follette’s courageous stand against World War I and the war profiteering and assaults on civil liberties that threatened the American experiment during those war years.

La Follette left no doubt about his priorities.

“If it is important for us to speak and vote our convictions in matters of internal policy, though we may unfortunately be in disagreement with the president,” he said in 1917, “it is infinitely more important for us to speak and vote our convictions when the question is one of peace or war, certain to involve the lives and fortunes of many of our people and, it may be, the destiny of all of them and of the civilized world as well.”

The founder of The Capital Times, William T. Evjue, shared those priorities and made them central to the paper’s stance from its founding in 1917 until the last years of his life, when Evjue championed Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy’s anti-Vietnam War challenge to President Lyndon Johnson in 1968.

Evjue knew, as we all should, that every presidential race is about war and peace.

So what should we make of this year’s contest?