arol Gilligan reviewed Stephanie Gutmann’s book on the feminization of the military for the New York Times Book Review Sunday. The result was the mix of tendentiousness and wishful thinking one expects from Gilligan, the propagandist and feminist shill who became famous posing as a scholar.

Where to begin? Gutmann’s book, The Kinder, Gentler Military, deplores the slippage of standards and the assault on the "warrior culture" that has attended efforts to make the military an institution fit for Oprah’s America. Gilligan is, of course, scandalized.

She opens her review by noting that "a growing chorus of men and women is calling for the transformation of the military into a peacekeeping force so that the planet itself will make it." A peacekeeping force? What does that mean?

The last time I checked, American armed forces in World War II were a pretty effective "peacekeeping force" — bequeathing to us the stable, (relatively) peaceful world we live in today — but it required taking out German 88’s in the Ardennes and blasting the Japanese from their bunkers on Guadalcanal. Would the girls in Gilligan’s latest hate-the-patriarchy Harvard seminar be up to the task?

Somehow I doubt it. Which is why Gilligan tries to deny the necessity of war in the first place. For her, it’s just a cultural construct, one brought to you by the boys, natch. "The assumption that ‘full-scale war’ is inevitable is debatable," she writes, "Human cultures exist that do not go to war."

This is rubbish. I doubt Gilligan can name one human culture that doesn’t feature some form of violence – because the perfectly pacific society is a figment of the Rousseau-influenced imagination of liberal anthropologists. For more on this topic, see War Before Civilization, a study demonstrating how early men were routinely bashing in one another’s skulls even before the patriarchy had a chance to get up and running.

Later in her review, Gilligan again takes issue with the idea that violence is an inherent human — mostly male — quality. "This argument has been severely challenged by researchers studying peoples as well as cultures." Rubbish, again. Gilligan is about 15 years behind in her cliches, as the latest research shows that primates are nasty bastards, given to violent competition and quasi-wars. For more on this unpleasant topic, see Demonic Males, a study of blood-letting among our noble primate friends.

Gilligan continues her rubbish tour by citing Margaret Mead in support of the idea that women can be just as fierce as men. Margaret Mead! Mead, you will recall, is the woman who traveled to Samoa and either fabricated data to the effect — or allowed herself to be duped by the guileless natives into the proposition — that Samoan society was a barefoot, nonviolent, free-sex paradise. To read just how wrong Mead was, check out The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research.

That Mead would still be an authority for Gilligan shouldn’t be surprising, considering her own work. Christina Hoff Sommers’s new The War Against Boys includes a devastating critique of Gilligan’s "research," which first identified a "crisis" among teenage girls and then a "crisis" among young boys, both owing to — what else? — the workings of the patriarchy. In identifying these highly publicized crises, Gilligan seems to have abjured such male constructs as peer-reviewed publication and verifiable evidence. You go girl!

Mencken famously defined a puritan as a person aghast at the notion that somewhere, someone is having a good time. Gilligan is one of those feminists appalled that somewhere, some 18-year-old guy enjoys taking orders, painting his face, and jumping out of airplanes — when will it end! Gilligan wants to eliminate that guy, never mind that tens and tens of thousands just like him lie in Arlington Cemetery. This is why she is not just stupid and dishonest, but a disgrace.