More Lukacs

Here’s a piece John Lukacs wrote last year on the increasing “militarization” of the image of the presidency. Catch anyone at the Heritage foundation writing something like this:

Like the boy soldier salute, the sentimentalization of the military is juvenile. Television depictions of modern technological warfare, for example, make it seem as if a military campaign were but a superb game, an occasional Super Bowl that America is bound to win – and with almost no human losses. (“We’ll keep our fighting men and women out of harm’s way” – a senseless phrase that emerged duringthe Clinton years.) The exaggerated vesting of the president with his supreme role as commander in chief is a new element in our national history.

When the Roman republic gave way to empire, the new supreme ruler, Augustus chose to name himself not “rex,” king, but “imperator,” from which our words emperor and empire derive, even though its original meaning was more like commander in chief. Thereafter Roman emperors came to depend increasingly on their military. Will our future presidents? Let us doubt it. And yet . . .