Thucydides Was Almost Right

After reading a recent pile of organic fertilizer from Colman McCarthy, I came to the conclusion that when Thucydides said, “The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.” he was almost right. He should have added that the thinking will also be done by fools. For example,

ROTC and its warrior ethic taint the intellectual purity of a school, if by purity we mean trying to rise above the foul idea that nations can kill and destroy their way to peace.

I thought the intellectual purity of a school was tainted by professors who pretend their ideas are based on evidence or reasons when they're not. (This can actually be measured for each intellectual field.)

But wait, there's more:

When I suggested that Notre Dame's hosting of ROTC was a large negative among the school's many positives, Hesburgh disagreed. Notre Dame was a model of patriotism, he said, by training future officers who were churchgoers, who had taken courses in ethics, and who loved God and country. Notre Dame's ROTC program was a way to "Christianize the military," he stated firmly.

I asked if he actually believed there could be a Christian method of slaughtering people in combat, or a Christian way of firebombing cities, or a way to kill civilians in the name of Jesus. Did he think that if enough Notre Dame graduates became soldiers that the military would eventually embrace Christ's teaching of loving one's enemies?

The interview quickly slid downhill.

His Lord Jesus Christ said:

Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword.

This guy can't even be dogmatic right.

Addendum: The double negative in the original post has been corrected.