As I graduated high school a very young 17, I could not find a full-time entry-level position with a company due to insurance regulations. As I had no interest in college then, the choice before me was either to find employment allowable for high-schoolers or join the military. So I enlisted in the Marine Corps to take care of the military obligation early, then decide what to do with my life.
We joined to serve… and to fight… with full awareness that we may have to die… or have to kill… largely leaving the politics to others and the orders to our superiors…
We obeyed the orders, or else, without thinking much about those who gave them. As we learned, they also obeyed orders, and their superiors, and so on toward the top brass and Washington, D.C.
We barely took notice of the race of the men in the other bunks. We did not care that much. We shared in an assumption that we were warriors for freedom to be prepared for combating the enemies of our peculiar brand of liberty, and for the freedoms of others.
It was only a little later when we began to question what we had committed to, what we fought for, in a foreign war and even among our own people…
Did we fight for a “right to abortion”, to kill a human infant not yet born? Did we serve to watch our neighborhoods and our schools be destroyed by a system of forced busing imposed by federal judges apart from any local legislative actions and irrespective of the consequences or of other cures for the true problem? Had we fought for a nation that came to despise our brand of honor, displaying its hostility by throwing dog excrement on our uniforms in airports as we returned? Or confronting us with hate-driven mobs if we decided to attend college after having served our country? Or to take our firearms, thwart our freedom to speak our minds and of our broadcasters to do the same?
Now the nation’s military is ordered by the administration to “go woke”. Critical race theory and so-called “gender” issues are these days mandated in military training sessions. Portrayals of national defense via television advertisements are directed more at defense of Leftist concerns and societal revisionism than persuading our young men and women to have their own part in the armed-and-ready defense of our Republic. Additionally, the appointment of one Bishop Garrison to be senior adviser to the Secretary of Defense for combating “extremism” within the ranks raises concern, as Lloyd Austin wants extremists defined and purged and Garrison reportedly believes that all Trump supporters are extremists. I do wonder if they intend to ban supporters of Antifa’s hate-riddled ideology or BLM’s Marxism? Other Leftists? Just ask Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier who was recently exorcised from the Space Force.
But then, I never tire of noting that extremists always, always, always regard themselves as the ‘center’ and therefore the undisputable saviors of the nation.
It seems strange that only a handful of Republican congressional types can protest these decisions in a letter. And it seems shallow when the gravest criticism to be raised against military ‘wokeness’ is that enlistments and commissioned career choices may decline.
But how many take notice that if the military forfeits its connection to the majority of the American public, it may be ordered in the future to turn on that very public if we refuse to comply with the creeping socialist agendas? Those who scoff at that prospect are called to remember the comment of the arrogantly ignorant Swalwell of California who famously said that “the government has nukes, and it will be a short war indeed”, later having to back-peddle from that horrid tweet although his design is impossible without injuring and killing his own support given the distribution of firearms in our country. As I have heard similar comments to the effect that we the people are simply outgunned by government, and consequently that the Second Amendment is an irrelevancy, we might as well hand our firearms over and have done with it.
Students and cancel mobs are already calling for the abolition of Memorial Day. But when pride in a nation’s military is gone, the nation goes with it.
And Memorial Day in such a future time may become in memoriam to America’s military…
Father David+