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Boats 07-18-2021 04:59 AM

Wokeness is sabotaging the military academies
 
Wokeness is sabotaging the military academies
By: John Cooper - The Washington Examiner News - 07-18-21
Re: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/o...tary-academies

Professor Lynne Chandler Garcia recently published an op-ed in the Washington Post in which she defended indoctrinating her students on the concepts of critical race theory, or CRT.

Normally, this wouldn’t raise any eyebrows. A member of the intelligentsia teaching her students a boutique academic theory? Hardly shocking. What did get people’s attention was Garcia's place of employment. None other than the U.S. Air Force Academy.

CRT presents a nebulous set of beliefs that encourage people to look at every issue through the prism of race. Its next step is to sort individuals into groups of "oppressors" and "oppressed." It’s a poisonous ideology that accuses white people of being oppressors and asserts that minorities cannot succeed in America without perpetuating white supremacy.

At its core, CRT is a race-based way of looking at the world. Which is somewhat ironic for a philosophy ostensibly about "anti-racism!" It essentially advocates burning down those basic American structures, norms, and institutions that CRT theorists deem unacceptable. The goal? Undermining and ultimately replacing these norms and institutions.
One of those institutions on which CRT theorists have set their sights is the United States military.

As my Heritage colleagues Mike Gonzalez and Dakota Wood have previously explained, the creeping influence of CRT on the military jeopardizes the health and strength of the armed forces. Introducing CRT’s racial division and resentment will erode camaraderie. CRT will undermine the instrumental unity that is essential for the U.S. military to successfully protect our national interests. But CRT theorists are not content to just push these radical concepts on the force at large. They are working to indoctrinate the next generation of officers, as Garcia makes plain.

To be clear, informing cadets about controversial concepts is not the issue. Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton echoed this sentiment at a recent Heritage event, saying that he would be surprised if a Western philosophy class did not cover Karl Marx and communism, given the impact of Marx’s ideology on world history.

The same is true of CRT. Making cadets aware of the concept is not the problem. Indoctrination and extensive academic focus is the problem. Just as professors at the service academies should not be endorsing communism in the classroom, they shouldn’t be endorsing CRT. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what is happening.

Indeed, senior military leaders seem to be endorsing CRT. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Mark Milley, recently told Congress he wants to "understand white rage." Adm. Michael Gilday, chief of naval operations, included Ibram Kendi’s "How to Be An Anti-Racist" on his professional reading list (which recommends selected works for the Navy).

James Hasson, a U.S. Army veteran, recently wrote about the slow but steady acceptance of woke concepts at the service academies in his book, Stand Down: How Social Justice Warriors Are Sabotaging America’s Military. While chronicling documented cases of woke ideology run amok at the service academies, Hasson writes, "It might surprise the average American taxpayer to learn that civilian professors at the service academies are as leftist as any other group of professors…their 'scholarship' is often indistinguishable from what might be found at the most progressive, leftist university." Indeed, as Hasson points out, cadets such as communist-sympathizer Spenser Rapone have been radicalized at the service academies.

To serve as an officer in the U.S. military, the government requires men and women to pledge their service, their careers, even their very lives, to the defense of the Constitution. Rightly so. But how does this coalesce with the teaching of CRT principles which suggest that the Constitution is a racist, dehumanizing, flawed document?

I have yet to hear CRT advocates successfully square that circle.

Our service academies should be focused on one thing: training and equipping young men and women to be the best warfighters and leaders in the world. To be ready to keep those under their command alive and to complete the mission. Sadly, it seems our military leaders have a different priority. China and Russia must be celebrating.

About this writer: John Cooper is the associate director for institute communications at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org) and a veteran of the United States Air Force.
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Personal note: You have this type of movement all around the globe. Somehow some way these racial issues are in constant flux. I don't believe in racism - I'm color blind until that issue involves me. I get along with most everyone. Though there are some argent SOB's that like to press the issue - or make demands that are not applicable to that subject or movement. We are all humans - what's good for one must be good for all - or this crap will go on and on.
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Boats

Boats 07-29-2021 11:59 AM

Here is something I found that I think is quite important.

Topic: Statement: A New Conservatism Must Emerge (02-16-21)
Re: https://dc.claremont.org/a-new-conse...m-must-emerge/

America is currently engaged in a regime-level struggle that will preserve or destroy the purpose that has defined it. On one side stands the American way of life, characterized by republican self-government and the habits of mind and character necessary to sustain it. On the other side stands identity politics, which demands the perpetual punishment and humiliation of so-called oppressor groups combined with the unquestioned rule of the so-called marginalized. These two regimes are in conflict and cannot coexist.

The regime of identity politics has already conquered nearly all of America’s major institutions and dominates the moral high ground. The universities and schools, Fortune 500 companies, much of the media and image-making industries, Big Tech, and the administrative state are put to use waging war on the American way of life. Many of these institutions attack, ban, and slander everything for which America stands, alleging that the rule of law is racist; that freedom of speech is white supremacist; that the family is misogynist and homophobic; and that anything short of open borders is xenophobic. The nation cannot survive this trajectory.

But the conquest of these institutions does not prove that the arc of history bends left. Rather, it has occurred largely because of the weakness of the opposition. Mainstream conservatism today cannot reverse these potentially fatal trends and cannot conserve the American way of life because it lacks clear understanding of its own purpose. In its purposelessness over the last generation, it too often outsourced its thinking to economists, while allowing the Left to define its conscience — and its culture. This mistake will prove disastrous if not corrected.

With some notable exceptions, much of the conservative establishment came to view the pinnacle of human life as private consumption and personal license, defining national health by GDP growth. It did not understand that this perspective led not only to spiritual enervation, the weakening of patriotic sentiment, and the demotion of political liberty but also to the creation of a new oligarchic elite openly hostile to the nation.

The will to fight cannot exist without real purpose, which is why many establishment conservatives simply fear the Left while also secretly craving its prestige and praying to its gods. Many have been shamed into becoming radically feminist, making them incapable of adequately defending the differences between men and women, let alone conjuring the manliness necessary to defend borders. Still others may soon support identity politics, no longer willing to defend either genuine standards of merit or equality under the law, the central principle of our country.

Intellectual and moral confusion on the Right helped accelerate the Left’s fanaticism. Once the party of the working class, the Left now stands for identity politics, which demands the perpetual punishment of, and open hatred and discrimination against, so-called oppressor groups while anointing so-called marginalized groups as pure, blameless, and deserving of unquestioned rule. This ideology requires the destruction of America’s foundations, including freedom of speech and the equal rule of laws. The Left, using its institutional powers, forces Americans to make a choice: Comply and submit to this ideology, or become a hated, persecuted enemy, denied employment and civil rights, deemed worthy of harassment and even violent assault. These doctrines and tactics, unworthy of a great and just nation, cannot but produce hatred and conflict, and will bring economic and scientific decline. They will either lead to tyranny or they will provoke genuine resistance.

In the struggle between these two regimes, institutional power and political momentum currently favor the Left. The Right, at present, is not up to the fight. A new Right is needed, one that understands itself as rooted in the noble cause of the American Revolution — unabashed and zealous in its determination to restore political liberty and politics itself.

A restored Right must take two broad approaches. First, its immediate energies must focus on disrupting and weakening the Left’s institutional centers of power. Only parity of power can moderate the Left’s fanaticism. A new Right needs a tougher, more sober approach to the Left’s assets: the adversarial press and media, Big Tech oligopolies, and corrupt universities. This approach requires new legal strategies on issues that the professionalized Right is too scared to touch; bold new actions in the states to liberate them from the Left’s consolidation of powers; and large-scale activism. New strategies are needed for a new world.

Second, and most important, the Right needs to reclaim its mental and moral toughness, and that can come only from reviving its purpose — the preservation of the American way of life. The Right must be morally unflinching in refuting the Left’s ideologies. It must speak clearly and confidently about the effects of radical feminism, “antiracism,” and globalism. It must be prepared to protect its children, its property, and its standards from encroachments. And it must ground its efforts firmly in America’s central principle: equal protection under the law, without exception. This is the basis for forming a common good that the majority of Americans still desire. But achieving it will require that the Right reinvent its political party. Unless it does so, there will be no future political victories — and no country left to defend. Ultimately, this is much more than the cause of conservatism. It is the cause of America itself.

The Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life in Washington, D.C. will be the home of this reinvigorated and restored conservatism.

* * *

Originally published by RealClearPolicy.

Boats 09-03-2021 03:16 PM

Part 3 - Follow up: End Military Extremism By Ending War
 
Part 3 - Follow up: End Military Extremism By Ending War
By: William Astore - Common Dream News - 09-03-21
Re: https://www.commondreams.org/views/2...ism-ending-war

Today's extremism feeds on war, anger, aggression, fear, hatred, and racism. To end it, we must first abolish war, reject lies, and embrace one another without rancor.

Note: It's been said: A constant state of war—shrouded in mendacity, rife with profit for a few—created the conditions for extremism in America.

War is an extreme condition. Twenty years of seemingly endless war in response to the 9/11 attacks is an extreme situation, especially for a self-avowed democracy. After the American Revolution, James Madison warned Americans that long wars favored autocracy, eroded individual rights, and fed corruption, which would weaken democracy. A weaker democracy means that ordinary Americans have less say. They perceive a government that is beyond entreaty and suasion. Citizens may then look for answers elsewhere: to cult-like demagogues promising to make America great; to fringe organizations dedicated to "taking back" America from someone, some enemy, often an enemy within (perfidious Democrats, undocumented immigrants), sometimes an enemy without (China, Russia)--and at times, both.

In the latest report on military extremism, which I helped author, we uncover a harsh truth: America's 20-year global war only spreads terror further. The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were based on lies. There were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There was no way to bring freedom and democracy, or a "government in a box," to Afghanistan. Military leaders knew the "surges" in these wars had no staying power ("fragile" and "reversible," General David Petraeus then said). So it proved. More than $6 trillion was wasted. Thousands were killed; tens of thousands were wounded in body and spirit—and that's only counting American casualties.

A constant state of war—shrouded in mendacity, rife with profit for a few—created the conditions for extremism in America. Troops alienated by official lies and unwinnable wars predictably became bitter and cynical. With the mainstream media selling corporate-driven happy-talk and featuring senior ex-CIA and military generals presented as unbiased experts, veterans sought answers elsewhere, in some cases joining or following QAnon, the Oath Keepers, and similar organizations espousing false or fringe ideologies, including white supremacy. Lies begat more lies, but the original sin was war.

If the first casualty of war is truth, the persistent casualty of endless war is the very integrity of democracy.

Nearly one in five rioters charged in the protest at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, were veterans. Many of these same protesters also faced financial difficulties and Covid-related debt. The Air Force veteran killed at the Capitol, Ashli Babbitt, was one of them. She was also a fervid supporter of Donald Trump. Military service values action and commitment to a cause perceived to be larger than oneself. Veterans like Babbitt believed they were "stopping the steal," urged on by a civilian commander-in-chief who was eager to exploit their energy and anger (and gullibility) for his own selfish purposes. But let us not blame Trump alone. Wars fought for false causes, wars in which harsh truths were so often suppressed, created the estrangement and anger that an aggrieved and petulant leader tapped into and so cynically exploited.

Stopping extremism within the military won't be done by creating "woke" warriors. More diversity training and celebrations of LGBTQ accomplishments aren't enough. Militarizing the police isn't the answer, nor is domestic surveillance and suppression, manifestations of the war on terror brought home to American soil. Endless foreign wars, endemic militarism, insidious lies: these are the root causes of extremism. The solution is to stop the wars and end the lying.

It's also about stopping forces within American society that prosper when Americans are kept divided, distracted, and downtrodden. "Divide and conquer" is a time-tested stratagem. To succeed as a democracy, America must overcome the forces of division and come together. This includes class division, the yawning gap between the haves and have-nots, and the deepening chasm between those two groups and the have-even-mores (think Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates).

"Canceling" extremists won't achieve this. What works is instilling common purpose, banding together, restoring America's democracy by rebuilding it equitably and inclusively. Unite Americans behind the ideal of a nation guided by a Constitution to which all are citizen-believers, for which all are willing, if necessary, to die defending.

Extremism in the pursuit of a more democratic, more united America is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of ending wars and the violence and profiteering they breed is no virtue. It's time for Americans to become a new kind of extremist—extreme in their love of democracy, of justice, of virtue, of honor, of peace.

Today's extremism feeds on war, anger, aggression, fear, hatred, and racism. To end it, we must first abolish war, reject lies, and embrace one another without rancor. We must acknowledge our anger, pursue more diplomatic courses, embrace cooperation and collaboration and especially compassion, as we care for those who have borne war's burdens. Achieving a just and lasting peace, among ourselves and with all nations, will end extremism. Nothing more than this—and nothing less—will suffice.

About this writer:
William J. Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF), who has taught at the Air Force Academy and the Naval Postgraduate School, and now teaches History at the Pennsylvania College of Technology.
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Personal note: We all agree with much that was written but getting the American's to
believe there is another way will be quite difficult - based on current issues on TV and
in publication.
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The fix will not be quick - it will take time to put the pieces back together and reduce the
tension within the public. Trump stirred them up that was the trigger - his so called bravado was not Presidential it was revenge against the American's who could no longer tolerate his behavior and his demeanor. He's a street hood along with pack of dogs who were milking the position to make profit for himself as well has his cohorts.
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I once again say any new President should not be older than 56 years of age. Even Biden scares me a little. He or she could due two terms if they country shows promise. But no more 65+ should be President. It's a tough job and you must have all your facilities.
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Hell I'm in my mid-70's and my mind & health are slowly taking a dump - plus I've two VA cat-scans coming up in about week or so - they think I've got lung cancer or some other organ about burst. (not to thrilled to hear that. W/A
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Boats


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