Dan’s Reviews > God Forgives, Brothers Don't: The Long March of Military Education and the Making of American Manhood > Status Update

Here we have the conflation of religion and Christianity. CHRISTIANITY “casts death as an honorable sacrifice that secures deliverance” and “view[s] pain and punishment as pious.” There are only three instances in Judaism where death is preferable to the violation of mitzvot, and Judaism is supposed to bring our lives beauty meaning—you don’t get extra points for torturing yourself.

I don't know too much about California history, but I'm having trouble squaring how a cadet was enrolled in West Point but was discovered to be living in Orange County. California was still part of Spain in ~1818, so was a Spanish national enrolled in USMA? Or was there Anglo settlement there a lot earlier than I thought?

“the brass always needs bodies. . . . They have turned to . . . military-style reform schools packed with troubled teens. The resulting class . . . leading enlisted troops into battle includes Rhodes Scholars and former juvenile delinquents.”

Unless things have changed, you need a waiver to enlist with a criminal record, and officer standards are higher. So I’m not sure where this assertion is coming from.