History and Moral Philosophy

The American Illness

The tile above refers, as some of you will doubtless be aware, to Robert Heinleins’ novel Starship Troopers. History and Moral Philosophy is a compulsory element of every stage of education the protagonist of the novel undertakes and is basically a course in militarist, right-wing brainwashing.

At this particular moment, two ideas from that course are kicking around in my mind:

“…their citizens (all of them counted as such) glorified their mythology of ‘rights’ . . . and lost track of their duties. No nation…