As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.An Illinois High School football star will be sitting out his senior year because he was so vulgar as to enlist. You see, Boot Camp kept him from pre-season practice, and
- Oscar Wilde
To get shot at by the Taliban, yes. But Football is harder. To carry 100 pounds of gear in the desert heat perhaps, but Football is harder. We should be convinced, because the Ruling Class of Blue State Illinois said so. Oooooh kaaaaay.
The lad clearly needs to be punished, as he was so vulgar as to shrug off all Progressive State attempts to save his soul.
Yes, makin' mock o' uniforms that guard you while you sleepThe Progressive Era was explicitly about improving the "lower" classes, making them safe from their bad decisions. Eugenics sought to make them safe from their bad sexual decisions; temperance and prohibition sought to keep them safe from Demon Rum. Now progressives seek to keep the lower classes safe from the military. I for one predict the same success rate this time around.
Is cheaper than them uniforms, an' they're starvation cheap;
An' hustlin' drunken soldiers when they're goin' large a bit
Is five times better business than paradin' in full kit.
Then it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Tommy, 'ow's yer soul?"
But it's "Thin red line of 'eroes" when the drums begin to roll,
RUM, n. Generically, fiery liquors that produce madness in total abstainers.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Divtionary
Sad. and pathetic.
ReplyDeleteNot to contradict you in your own home, but I think you may have it backward. Prohibition, eugenics, etc. was never about keeping us safe from our decisions. It was about keeping them safe from us.
ReplyDeletejetaz, perhaps. But it was justified explicitly "for their own good". The Progressives weren't afraid, they were bound and determined to build the New Jerusalem.
ReplyDelete