Critical Race Theory Is Driving Away Our Best and Brightest
My father served in the United States Navy from 1930 to 1934. He had been a very fast star running back for the Paragould, Arkansas, Bulldogs in high school. He wanted to go to college and become a high school coach. But graduating from high school at the start of the Great Depression had cut off most of the opportunities for school or good jobs. He was attracted to a U.S. Navy recruiting advertisement for pilot training but failed the test for 20-20 vision. He became a Navy seaplane mechanic but began to hope for something different. A friend suggested he look into a new opportunity posting for a Navy specialty then called “Aerology.” We now call that career field, meteorology—forecasting the weather—all important in aviation. He was good at math so they sent him to aerology/meteorology schools at Annapolis and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). It wasn’t long after he left the Navy that he found the airline industry was eagerly hiring meteorologists, and that led to a long and well-paid career in the airline industry. He worked for several airlines but retired from Delta Airlines after 30 years, working in meteorology and related positions.
All this is to say, the Armed Forces offer many training and experience opportunities that make for a rewarding life and better and more productive citizens.
I was in the Air Force from 1961 to 1969, which included both “Cold War” and Vietnam War experience. I occasionally have the opportunity to speak to young men and women that are interested in military service. The military is not for everybody, but I generally recommend military service as a possible consideration given compatible educational, family, career, and life goals. Moreover, I believe having a talented, well-trained, principled, and highly motivated military force is essential for the survival of American civilization and freedom.
However, I am deeply concerned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other Neo-Marxist social nonsense being imposed upon our military by the Obama/Biden Administration is destroying our military, driving out our best and brightest personnel, and driving away our most talented and patriotic potential volunteers.
Critical Race Theory is not a theory; it is a PLAN to destroy American civilization. CRT indoctrination of the military and purging military and civilian defense personnel who might oppose it are essential steps in the Neo-Marxist plan to destroy American civilization and rebuild it into a globalist secular society run by an elite cadre of Social Marxist oligarchs. Gone will be Constitutional limits, legal due process, free speech, and freedom of religion. Political truth will replace objective truth, reasoned truth, spiritual truth, and historical truth. CRT is anti-white, anti-Christian, and anti-merit. It is accompanied by extreme feminism and coercive gender confusion. Its diversity, equity, and inclusiveness subparts are vast distortions of traditional concepts of social justice. Its diversity is arbitrary discrimination and bullying. Its equity is not equal opportunity but highly politized favoritism in the form of politically correct quotas, and its inclusiveness is actually bullying by cancel-culture. Unity of purpose and effort is essential for a strong military, but CRT is divisive and from it spring counter-productive resentments, distrust, enmity, and the destruction of credibility and critical thinking. CRT opposes almost every American tradition that has guarded and blessed our country. It would be hard to make up something so destructive of national unity. But national destruction is the intentional Marxist objective of CRT. What is most tragic is that so few are willing to stand up against such colossal intentional destruction of American culture.
Several months ago, a young man about to graduate from high school and who had also recently received his pilot license told me he wanted to be an Air Force pilot, but he had two great reservations. What were they? The Biden Administration and CRT! I told him to keep flying and finish college. Surely American voters would insist on being rid of Biden, anyone like him, and CRT in a few years. But will we get rid of them before they destroy us? It is actually more urgent than two or three years. We are already in a proxy war with Russia that could envelop Europe in war, even nuclear war. Much of this current danger is the result of Obama. Biden, Clinton, and Kerry mishandling of Ukrainian and Russian diplomacy going back before 2014. But my point here is that many of the best, brightest, and patriotic young people needed in the military now see military service under CRT and the Obama/Biden Administration as undesirable and politically uncomfortable.
There are many cultural and economic problems that could make military recruiting and retention more challenging than in the past. Increasingly high tech warfare will demand more mental selectivity. Yet the quality of secondary level public education seems to be declining, and the largely needless Covid school shutdowns have taken their own toll. Secularist culture and more government handouts have not encouraged good work habits or positive attitudes about individual responsibility. Health problems, especially over-weight and drug problems are more common. Military family traditions once encouraged military service for children and grandchildren. There are fewer veteran parents now, only 13 percent compared to 40 percent in 1995. and popular culture makes them less influential. According to Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville, only 23 percent of Americans aged 17-24 are qualified to serve without a waiver, down from 29 percent in recent years. Moreover, a Defense Department survey indicates that only 9 percent of those eligible have any inclination to do so, the lowest since 2007. There are difficulties enough in recruiting and retention, and CRT is far more than the proverbial straw that could break the camel’s back. CRT lays a two-ton block of concrete on the camel’s already strained back
CRT lays on injustice upon injustice—a deemphasis of advancement on the basis of merit, and the high probability of outright enmity, discrimination, and politicized social environments especially unfavorable to conservatives, Christians, and other principled patriots. No one outside of a madhouse could believe these factors would not devastate recruiting efforts and the morale and retention of military personnel, severely damaging national security. The 2021 National Defense Survey, conducted by the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute found the only 45 percent of Americans had great confidence in our miliary, down 25 points from 70 percent in 2018.
Every branch of the military, except for the Space Force, is struggling to meet 2022 recruiting goals. Yet there is no interest in measuring the multiplying harm of CRT. CRT could destroy the military, but the public will be given bold lies and bold excuses.
The Heritage Foundation publishes military recruiting and other statistics on a timely basis.
At the end of June 2022, the Army had met only 40 percent of its annual recruitment goal ending in September 2022. Although summer is their best recruiting season, it looks like the Army will have to cut its size by 12,000 this year.
The Space Force will make its goal of only 500. Being very high-tech and increasingly of critical importance, the USSF is offering generous recruiting and retention bonuses to do so, up to a maximum of $50,000. In general, the Armed Forces are having to rely increasingly on generous recruiting and retention bonuses. Highly qualified technical personnel are not something national security can allow to be in shortage.
The Air Force must recruit 50,000 but is running 4,000 short of where it should have been at the end of June. The Air Force has not missed its goal since 1999.
The Navy is using the summer movie Top Gun Maverick extensively and may make its goal.
The Marine Corps is having the hardest recruiting time in decades but should make its goal.
The Coast Guard has so far filled only 55 percent of its 4,200 targeted active enlistments.
Let us hope that such figures from Armed Forces Public Affairs and Recruiting Commands will continue to be available in the future. However, bad government usually covers itself when the news is bad. No news in this case will mean embarrassing or bad news.
The worst recruiting sign would probably be massive enlistment of foreign nationals. Recruiting DACA applicants is already being discussed. It is not inconceivable that the Obama/Biden Administration, judging from their Border Security attitudes, could allow or even encourage a foreign majority in the military. That would be a threat to domestic peace, American sovereignty, and national security. This may seem wild speculation, but most major policies of the Obama/Biden Administration seem to reasonable people a deliberate attempt to destroy American culture, national security, public safety, and economic sufficiency and prosperity. The Obama/Biden polices governing energy, the economy, inflationary spending, the border, Covid, fake climate science, foreign policy, education, the military and public safety are so stupid, incompetent, flagrantly dishonest, and destructive that it must indicate deliberate evil.