I'm just reading Sinclair Lewis' (1936) novel 'It Can't Happen Here'
https://www.english.ox.ac.uk/ten-minute-book-club/lewis-it-cant-happen-here
and came across this passage (words of one of the characters)
The youngsters today - Oh, the aviators have plenty of nerve. The physicists, these twenty-five-year-old Ph.D.'s that violate the inviolate atom, they're pioneers. But most of the wishy-washy young people today - Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere - not enough imagination to want to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible... Pap-fed flabs! ...
Wouldn't it be hell if... we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don't want on a bet) to put some starch and grit into these marionettes we call our children?