PS: But the glamor of "dying for a country" has warn off. We're at the end of an era. The Russian fellow testifies to the UGLINESS of sacrificial death (one can see it in his face). It is no longer "sweet and fitting to die for one's country."

• The desire to die and kill--in war, genocide, revolution and terrorism--grows out of attachment to an ideology conceived as absolute.
• Dying and killing are undertaken with the purpose of validating an ideology (“proof of the pudding”).
• Dead and mangled bodies on the field of battle testify to the “truth” of some entity or idea: that which is the cause of the dying and killing. People cannot conceive that dying and killing occur in the name of no thing.
• The nature of the entity or idea for which people die and kill is fungible. People have died and killed for France, for Germany, for the British Empire, for the Communist revolution, for Allah, for the Emperor, for a Tamil homeland, to preserve the Union, and for “freedom and democracy.”
• Each culture has its own preferred absolute. Rarely does a society believe that there is "nothing to kill and die for" (John Lennon).
• The methodology of verifying the sacred ideal remains the same regardless of the content of the ideal: regardless of whether the ideal if "good" or "bad;" regardless of whether we like or approve of the idea of ideal.