E. Merrill Root

Not the kind of thing I read cover-to-cover, but great for a little dose of ironic pleasure. Some of the specific textbook criticism seems to have merit, but the big point of Root's argument is that "The United States is losing the cold war" (flashback to the fifties, here) not because of "military weakness," but because American education fails to instill enough patriotism to protect American soldiers' minds from Communist "intellectual erosion and. . . political indoctrination." But you don't need to be pinko-commie-scum to believe that the best defense against political indoctrination--i.e., brainwashing--isn't to just step up the good old-fashioned American political indoctrination.

Bonus:
My copy came with a small pamphlet, "UN TRACT No. 2," dated 1959: "THE TRUTH... ABOUT THE U.N." by TRYGVIE LIE. About a third of it is devoted to a summary of the first UN TRACT, and the rest uses caps, exclamation points, and bold typeface to assure the reader that "WE NOW HAVE THE PROOF ! ! !" It alludes to "DOCUMENTARY evidence--evidence that that 'secret agreement' caused the U S. to lose the first war in our entire history--evidence that [it] MURDERED 145,000 American boys in Korea!"… (mais)