This is an online dictionary definition:
1. A strong military spirit or policy.
2. The principle or policy of maintaining a large military establishment.
3. The tendency to regard military efficiency as the supreme ideal of the state and to subordinate all other interests to those of the military.
So far, so bad.
But what about this quote from Thomas Friedman’s column in Sunday’s New York Times:
“Why do we all jump up and applaud at N.B.A. or N.F.L. games when they introduce wounded Iraq or Afghan war veterans in the stands? It’s because the U.S. military embodies everything we find missing today in our hyperpartisan public life. The military has become, as the Harvard philosopher Michael Sandel once put it, “the last repository of civic idealism and sacrifice for the sake of the common good.”
Maybe a fourth clause should be added:
4. In a society torn by partisan politics, the military may become the last repository of civic idealism and sacrifice for the sake of the common good.
What would be the definition of common good of Canada’s involvement in Afghanistan. As far as I can see the only thing I can see is bed bugs. Apparently they were imported from Afghanistan.
RE: Militarism
Plato placed soldiers right below guardians in the moral scale he devised for his Republic, but being a soldier is not to be confused with militarism. Militarism is bulleying.
Oh my lord – and how many times has your number ’4′ suggestion been used to justify military interventions and dictatorships (look at what is happening in Egypt…? not to put down honest and brave military people but…) If we need military idealists to stand up for basic freedoms than where are the rest of us? And what good are we? (and if you hear Bob Dylan or Tom Jones singing ‘What good am I, if I’m like all the rest…” Good – you should.