American fascism

The author is the father of two other famous and scholarly Kagans, and all three are widely respected war lovers.

Democracy Requires a Patriotic Education

How did America survive its early years when multitudes received no education at all?

His talk about democracy is just routine conservative bullshit and his claim that in a democracy the people decide freely whether to serve in war is true of them collectively only in a direct democracy and individually only so long as the government does not impose a draft.

Anyway, he wants education to produce docile - nay, enthusiastic - canon-fodder, and he does not settle whether he means enthusiastic volunteers for service or draftees prepared to serve at least without too much riot, mutiny, or desertion.

Certainly part of what he means is a population rather more supportive of our country and its wars than the population we have, whose shortcomings in that regard are a key part of his essay.

A crucial role of education is, for him, to mold the young into good, loyal, and disciplined soldiers.

His piece on the notorious opinion page of the Wall Street Journal is not about anything as trivial as the Pledge.

He says the currency of anti-war and unpatriotic attitudes typified by Katha Pollitt and academics whose politics he does not approve are proofs that our educational system does not sufficiently successfully inculcate the patriotism that, according to him, democracy requires.

This guy is a dyed in the wool war lover, and makes no bones about it.

And, to be clear, he writes this.

Many have been the attacks on patriotism for intolerance, arrogance and bellicosity, but that is to equate it with its bloated distortion, chauvinism. 

My favorite dictionary defines the latter as "militant and boastful devotion to and glorification of one's country," but defines a patriot as "one who loves, supports, and defends his country."

His idea of what it takes to defend America seems quite on all fours with the ideas we generally find on the WSJ opinion page.

A call for purges of the universities and for government action to make education at all levels shape up does not conclude his essay.

The reader is left waiting for that shoe to drop, convinced it did not only because the ground has not been sufficiently prepared.

Donald Kagan

Robert Kagan

Frederick Kagan

Exactly the sort of immigrant warmongering against which I have repeatedly warned.

The three are notorious Jewish neocons (nearly all the media neocons are in fact Jews).