Two recent seemingly incongruous events present symptoms of a larger disease in the American polity.
First, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has promised to nuke the United States, and according to recent testimony before Congress, a North Korean EMP attack could kill 90% of the American population within one year.
Second, on Monday, October 16, the National Infantry Museum in Columbus, GA dedicated the “Global War on Terrorism” memorial. Highlighted are the over 6,000 American soldiers killed since 2002 in the modern campaign to “make the world safe for….”
The world wasn’t too safe for them or apparently for the almost 300,000,000 people who could be wiped out by a reckless Marxist thug with an itchy trigger finger. They are real and potential casualties—symptoms—of a disease that has consumed American life since the early twentieth century: American sabre rattling.
You see, the anthem protests, our worship of the military industrial complex, and making every event from the local civics meeting to an NFL game a setting for “patriotism” has provided the kindling for a massive military bonfire.
All it takes is a little spark. But it hasn’t always been so.
The modern neo-cons will tell you that Americans have been warlike from the beginning, that almost unanimous support for World War II was the rule rather than the exception. That is a lie.
There is a long-standing anti-war American tradition.
Probably half, perhaps the majority, of the British North American colonists wanted a peaceful solution to the constitutional crisis that became the American War for Independence. “The Penman of the Revolution” John Dickinson’s famous “Olive Branch Petition” was not some shot in the dark….