Posted on 01/08/2015 4:07:53 PM PST by Jacquerie
The service academies are all Potemkin villages, facades with nothing behind them: they don’t teach morals, they don’t make better officers, and they cost you a bundle. Most fundamentally, they combine two incompatible goals: military obedience and the freedom to question offered by knowledge. This is a combustible mixture as students ask why things are as they are and are told sharply that this is the way things are, and are punished if they insist. One day the lid is going to blow.
A confession: I believe in their mission, and so I am a disillusioned former True Believer, as indeed most of the students are. I would give anything if the service academies represented a real alternative to the largely soulless “take one course after another” factories of modern education. Or the only-liberals-allowed prepping for McKinsey.
I wish the academies were the mixture of Athens and Sparta that might solve the problems with today’s academics, the fusion of the Cartesian halves of body and soul. But they aren’t: they’re hollow self-serving grinds where perfectly nice kids suffer.
Still, it’s all paid for by somebody else and the head office assures your parents you’re doing fine. People fawn over you in your spiffy uniform in airports, and thank you “for your service.” Liberals are scared to object for fear of seeming anti-military. And you’re the Ken dolls of the conservatives.
(Excerpt) Read more at salon.com ...
Extensive article. The author has long criticized affirmative action policies at the Naval Academy.
Is she the ghost of Benedict Arnold?
How about abolishing Harvard and confiscating all their funds?
The “leaders” they produce would more rightfully be called unconvicted felons.
Well can’t they at least wait until they beat Navy?
I’m not getting the point this author is making. Sounds like screed to me.
“they don’t teach morals, they don’t make better officers, and they cost you a bundle”
is west point a public school?
If each state had something along the lines of VMI, The Citadel, Texas A&M or Norwich, we wouldn’t really need them.
The West Point money would be better spent on Muslims who hate us and illegal aliens who have hopped our border.
“People fawn over you in your spiffy uniform in airports, and thank you “for your service.””
That is exceedingly demeaning to all service members who by the wear of the uniform show they are willing to die for American ideals.
He doesn't seem to have any problems taking their money for the last 28 years.
Lets’ abolish Salon.
It’s paid for by your tax dollars and is run by the government, as are the Merchant Marine Academy, Air Force Academy and Naval Academy.
Sounds like a case of throwing baby out with bath water
I did not read the article but I suspect that whatever issues the Acadamies have are a result of liberal civilian policies forced upon them.
Harvard is a private institution, and while it and its graduates certainly have been damaging to the Republic, I see no jurisdiction government should have to shut it down.
Publication in Salon practically guarantees that it’s a screed.
Every Reserve Officer I ever met has all the same criticisms.
And almost every AFIT officer I ever met was smarter on average then the Academy grads I knew.
And every NCO who ever did the night school thing followed by OTS will claim experience over class ring any day.
Flame away, folks! Just a few observations...
Go away,Bruce.
“Lets’ abolish Salon.”
Yup, where is ISIS when you need them/s
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