The Political Radicalization of the American Military
Leftist ideologies typically blind their adherents to reality. Furthermore, Leftist enforcement of ideologies that contradict reality and therefore don’t work tends to force them to ruthless coercion and violence.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”—George Orwell, 1984
Victor Davis Hanson makes the point in his 2017 book, The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won, and his lectures, that war is the ultimate test of military realities—what works and what does not. These realities apply both to what is successful in conducting and ending wars but also what is successful in deterring wars. Military realities include geography, natural resources, and the means of defense and offense—weapons, transportation, and logistical technologies and systems, and, of course, manpower and leadership.
Hanson also points out another classical military dictum: “the winning side is the one that most rapidly learns from its mistakes, makes the necessary corrections, and most swiftly responds to new challenges.”
National security depends upon civilian and military leadership with a strong hold on reality. They must be able to discern reality and keep seeking truth and reality despite waves of confusion, fashionable unrealistic ideologies, and wishful thinking. Political ideologies that dismiss the realities of human biology and human nature are particularly dangerous to military preparedness and effectiveness because they tend to blind us to important realities of what works and what does not work in war and the deterrence of war.
In his 2020 book, Human Diversity, Charles Murray published a list of 10 propositions regarding human diversity that have widespread published support in biological, neural, genetic, and social sciences, but largely contradict fashionable social and political ideology. Murray is highly accomplished intellectually and an able writer, but I have paraphrased some of his science jargon here, although it may be more precise.
(1) Sex differences in personality are consistent worldwide and tend to widen in more gender-egalitarian cultures. Sex differences in personality are remarkably similar despite culture.
(2). On average, females have worldwide advantages in verbal ability and social cognition while males have advantages in visuospatial abilities and a higher percentage of individuals with superior levels of mathematical ability.
(3) On average, women worldwide are more attracted to vocations centered on people and men on vocations centered on things.
(4) Many sex differences in the brain correspond with sex differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior, i.e. sex differences are not a social construct.
(5) Human populations are genetically distinctive in ways that correspond to self-identified race and ethnicity.
(6) Natural selection is important and often manifests itself most strongly in local populations.
(7) Average continental population differences in personality, abilities, and social behavior are common. Note that these are average differences and not absolute differences. Individuals should be treated as individuals, not politicized identity categories.
(8) Genetics plays a significantly greater role in personality, abilities, and social behavior than shared social and cultural environment.
(9) Genetic inheritance is an important factor in class differences. Children tend to inherit genetically many abilities that were important to their parents’ and grandparents’ success.
(10) Government interventions typically have minimal effects on personality, abilities, and social behavior. Parental genetics and influence far outweigh the results of government programs.
Not all of these propositions are what we would like to hear or believe, but this is what the overwhelming findings from reputable research indicate is a high probability of being reality. It would be foolish to throw out reality or probable reality, which often coincides strongly with common sense, to satisfy ideological purity, especially notions contradicting common sense.
This means that color blind policies using the same criteria for all make good common sense military personnel policy. Yet it is essential to remember men and women are different. It means “identity politics” is the road to dysfunctional weakness threatening military capabilities, retention, morale, and discipline.
Murray is optimistic that these largely genetic realities will push America back to practical common sense culture and governance. However, given that the Soviet Union was able to suppress economic reality for nearly 70 years, I am more cautious. Moreover, it only takes a few years of hysterical policies to implode a nation and make them vulnerable to conquest.
About 86 percent of Air Force pilots are white males, but we should make recruiting and training decisions based on abilities and factors that have proved important to the job they must perform safely and well. We must not drop criteria that work to strengthen our military effectiveness. Candidates for flight school should be evaluated as individuals, not as gender or ethnic quota political pieces. A massive purge and gutting of sensible qualification standards to satisfy Leftist ideological purity would have a high probability of national preparedness disaster. Surely the Chinese and the Russians would be pleased to see such hysteria. Weaknesses encourage enemy attack.
There are thousands of jobs in the Armed Forces where high abilities are critical. Navy submariners are specially screened to endure the psychological pressures of long underwater operations. Special Forces personnel get intense screening and training. Compromising or lowering standards could prove a deadly mistake substantially weakening military effectiveness and national security. Expecting every rank and specialty to be 50 percent female and 42 percent minority is unreasonable and would certainly be counter-productive to military effectiveness and national security. We would be inviting hostile aggression against our national interests and open to conquest.
The principles of the American Left are the Jacobin principles of the French Revolution, leveling everybody to the equity of prisoners and uplifting government to the status of deity. The Left’s Cancel Culture is in reality unforgiveness culture, filled with bitterness and vengeful hatred. The principle of the American Revolution has always been the principle of equal opportunity—the very antithesis of the woke socialism and identity politics of the Biden Administration.
On March 25, U.S. Senator Tom Cotton (R, AR), an Army combat military veteran, introduced a bill attempting to counter the worst damage of Secretary Austin and the Biden oligarchy. Cotton’s legislation would remove what he called “divisive” and “anti-American” ideas from U.S. military training. This includes Critical Race Theory (CRT) and other anti-white and anti-American literature being pushed by the Biden Administration and his Cultural Marxist allies in schools. According to Senator Cotton,
“Our military's strength depends on the unity of our troops and the knowledge that America is a noble nation worth fighting for…Critical race theory teaches that race is a person's most important characteristic, and that America is an evil, oppressive place. That idea may be fashionable in left-wing circles and college classrooms, but it has no place in our military. Not only will such racist ideas undermine our troops' faith in each other, they’ll also erode their trust in our country’s guiding principles. The United States military shouldn’t be promoting such divisive, un-American ideas.”
Cotton's bill, however, faces an uphill battle with a 50-50 Democrat-Republican division and radical leftist Vice President Kamala Harris able to break the tie in favor of the Democrats. Moreover, if passed, Biden would probably veto it. American patriots are in a desperate fight to save our military and our country.
“He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks….Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley.”―Sun Tzu