Von Braun

[Monte Davis]

Laura writes:

> ... But 
> there has been a resurgence of "Best Generation" rah-rah 
> we're-the-good-guys patriotism.  You'd think, though, that 
> the Iraq Invasion would be clobbering the hell out of it.

That goes hand in hand with the culture wars of the last two generations.
>From the civil rights and Viet Nam years into the 1970s (and still to an
extent greater than I'm comfortable with in some academic bubbles) the left
had some success challenging the previously regnant Pledge of Allegiance,
John Wayne version -- and went overboard with AmeriKKKa, dead white fascist
imperialist patriarchal etc's as a cancer on the world, etc.

In a successful counterattack, the right managed to label not just that
wretched excess but almost *any* questioning or qualification of Our
superiority over Them as "moral equivalence." Me, I'm stuck in the middle: I
find it possible to believe simultaneously that it's a Very Good Thing the
Allies beat the Axis... and that in the course of doing so we looked into
the abyss too long, and came to take for granted things that would have
horrified us before the war (and should horrify anyone at any time).