Before Bacevich, Babbitt
From Irving Babbitt’s Democracy and Leadership (1924):
A chief danger both to ourselves and others is that we shall continue to have a frontier psychology long after we have ceased to have a frontier. For a frontier psychology is expansive, and and expansiveness, I have tried to show, is, at least in its political manifestations, always imperialistic.
Do the neocons (many of whom are of NYC origin and some of whom, quite famously, consider Central Park to be too much nature for them) suffer from a “frontier psychology”? Maybe vicariously-as in the ME.