The Weekly Screed (#648)

How the Pentagon
saved America’s schools
by David Benjamin

“Having talked incessantly about how useless and destructive government can be, House Republicans are now testifying to their reverence for what government does for veterans, health research, sick children and lovers of national parks, especially war memorials.”
— E.J. Dionne, Washington Post

MADISON, Wis., 10 October 2025 — Students and faculty at War Memorial High School today celebrated the tenth anniversary of the school’s dramatic fiscal and academic revival in 2015. This opulent event took place in the luxurious Gen. David Petraeus Rooftop Lounge, as participants indulged in punch, cocktails (for the adults), peeled shrimp, caviar, smoked salmon, Ritz crackers and other delicacies. The guest speaker, Vice President Paul Ryan, led the gathering in a toast to the Pentagon and Dept. of Defense, which saved this and other Madison schools from budget cuts and crummy test scores a decade ago.

War Memorial High School principal Reince Romanczyk reminisced about a chance suggestion by one of the school’s history teachers, ten years before, to change the school’s name — strategically — from “Memorial” to “War Memorial.” This subtle difference, said Romanczyk, plus the erection in the school quad of a crude student-sculpted “memorial” statue depicting an American G.I. being shot through the heart, opened the sluicegates of federal largesse.

“And we haven’t looked back once!” Romanczyk crowed. Indeed, by turning the building into a memorial to America’s fallen heroes, the Madison School Board made the school, literally, a ward of the Pentagon — which remains the only part of the U.S. government sacrosanct from Congressional budget-cutting.

“When money’s tight everywhere,” said Romancyzk as he popped a fresh bottle of Dom Perignon, “the Pentagon’s budget goes untouched. Nobody ever asks what the generals are buying. And when times get better? Whoa, Nelly! Democrats and Republicans fight over how much more money they can spend on tanks, guns, drones, ray guns in space, you name it. And statues. Especially statues. I can’t figure out why Congressmen love to put up bronze effigies of dead soldiers, but when we unveiled our new $6 million, goldplated 'Sgt. Rock' statue three years ago here at WMHS, we had 27 Congressmen from as far away as California, every one of ‘em clutching their hearts to ‘God Bless America’ and bawling like babies.”

Recalling the moment, Romanczyk said, “Course, I took the opportunity to make a little speech about how the school district couldn’t afford to build our new Olympic-size U.S. Navy Seals Memorial Swimming Pool, Natatorium and Sauna, which was dedicated to the  memory of the heroes who raided Abbottabad and blew Osama bin Laden’s brains out only to be later disrespected by the grandstanding civilian president who sent them on that deadly mission. Well, that was all I had to say. Within a week, the House and Senate were gift-wrapping a billion dollars for our pool. Hell, we only asked for $10 million!”

Madison was the first city to recognize Congress’ fatal weakness for cannon fodder. Shortly after Madison Memorial High changed its name, it gained federal protection as a national war monument and became eligible for unlimited largesse from 535 members of Congress, each desperate to prove that he or she is more rabidly patriotic than Audie Murphy. Two weeks after War Memorial High got an emergency refurbishment grant directly from Congress (by acclamation) another local school, which had been named after notorious peacenik Robert M. LaFollette (one of only two Senators to oppose U.S. entry into World War I), was re-christened Ronald Reagan Cold War Victory Memorial High.

Within a month, RRCWVM High had so much money that it started serving school lunch three meals a day, including weekends, for all students, plus every resident of Dane County who had previously received food stamps (a program killed by the historic Obama/Cruz Debt-Ceiling Grand Bargain of 2013).

Soon, three other Madison high schools, East, West and Edgewood, had been re-dubbed Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Desert Storm Victory Memorial High, MIA/POW Memorial High, and Semper Fi Memorial High. As each was flooded with a king’s ransom of federal assistance, the School Board seized the moment. It proceeded to name every middle and grammar school after dead soldiers, wounded warriors, Marines, sailors, generals, admirals and the odd chicken colonel (with one self-explanatory exception: the John Wayne Memorial Middle School).

In the following year, the war memorial  movement swept the nation’s schools. Today, the only schools in America not dedicated to the memory of past wars, dead heroes and crippled veterans are run by Seventh-Day Adventists, Quakers, Amish, Scientologists and those Montessori people.
 
Rep. Ryan, who presented War Memorial High with the Rush Limbaugh Memorial Congressional Freedom Medal for a decade of devotion to the global war on Islamofascism and marijuana, said, “Critics in the media criticize Congress for blindly feeding the military-industrial complex at the expense of our society’s takers and moochers. What they don’t understand is that high schools like this are crawling with kids who will end up as takers and moochers. These social parasites are going to get their handouts no matter what. But politically, it’s easier to do it under the cloak of national security. America owes War Memorial High an eternal debt for creating this option and bringing peace to the Washington budget debate.”

Principal Romanczyk put the issue more simply. “We devised a single-payer system for graft,” he said. “No one dares to bellyache about waste, fraud, sleaze and official corruption if — first thing you do — you shove the money into an aluminum coffin and wrap it up in Old Glory.”