Tom Friedman misinterprets what’s going on here. The government school monopoly does not excell at producing selfless individuals who volunteer for “public service” in Iraq, as he asserts. The fact is, the government schools are so rotten that they graduate millions of illiterates whose only chance at something better than working at the Wendy’s window for minimum wage is the military. This is not to say that there are not a lot of well-educated people in the military, but that there are also, in fact, an awful lot of illiterate, uneducated “grunts” of the sort who were put in charge … Continue reading re: Friedman Freaks Out