Change in government begins with Personnel = Policy. Put your people in the jobs for top-down direction. Changing the whole institution requires systemic transformation. First, change behavior. Over time, hearts and minds can be changed. Can. Consider the U.S. Service Academies.
The Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had a Zoom call with the Superintendents of the U.S. Service Academies. He posted on X “My message was simple: stick to leadership, standards, excellence, war fighting, and readiness. These are MILITARY ACADEMIES, not civilian universities. I was impressed by the changes already underway and look forward to visiting each institution. Social Justice and DEI are OUT; History, Engineering, and War Studies are IN. We must restore the warrior ethos to the department of defense — and it starts with our future leaders.”
At the United States Military Academy (USMA), the Deputy Commandant put out a memo disbanding cadet clubs known as Shared Interest Group (SIG) clubs. They weren’t common interest clubs, like chess, kayaking, orienteering, or skydiving, etc.
They were based on immutable characteristics of “race” or gender. And, one club was based on the sexual behaviors formerly celebrated during Pride Month.
So far, so good.
Now, there’s considerable push back on social media from West Pointers. “Old Grads” is the joking nickname for all graduates regardless of age.
Some may see ending the clubs as an exercise in partisan politics. Some may see it as the return of racism and White Supremacy, or Christian Nationalism. Most objections probably ask what’s the harm if Korean-American cadets want to have a club? A club sponsored and paid for by the government?
- Division is divisive. D’uh, but necessary to say. Dividing any organization by race, gender, and sexual behavior is bad for the whole group. If the shared “interest” is identity, there’s a problem. A soldier’s identity is with his unit, branch, the Army, and the Nation. The division of phony diversity destroys an Army. Former soldiers should know this in their bones.
- Division becomes real differences. All groups won’t be treated perfectly equally. The differences are perceived as privilege. Creates grievances, however unspoken in public, among the excluded “others”. Leads to bean counting by color of skin across the Army for admissions, commands, schools as well as other opportunities, and promotions.
- Many groups aren’t allowed. Substitute “White” or “Men” in the title of any shared interest group. How does that sound? Is it acceptable? If it is wrong from one race or gender, it’s wrong for all.
Furthermore, the folks pushing back for shared interest groups don’t see the clubs as stalking horses for Cultural Marxism.
- The list of groups based on immutable characteristics of birth and sexual behavior fits Cultural Marxist intersectionality. It’s all about identity > ideas. That group identity is immutable and generalized. That people aren’t individuals, but proles in groups.
- Only the politically correct list of oppressed and marginalized people groups are allowed. Accepting the trope that groups of Americans are permanently, systemically oppressed or marginalized is Cultural Marxist propaganda.
- Race is especially onerous as a group identity, because it’s a discredited, 19th Century social construct used for invidious purposes. Ethnicity is biology. Race is bogus. Many ethnicities are glommed together as a race when those separate ethnicities are distinctly different in important aspects of anthropology and sociology. Race is the substitute for class warfare used by Cultural Marxists.
- Anyone deflecting Cultural Marxism as the culprit needs to do more reading. Connecting the dots from the Human Secularist Totalitarianism of the French Revolution to today’s Cultural Marxism is a freshman studies-level intellectual inquiry.
The Old Grads clamoring for a return to identity-based clubs at the Service Academies may claim the clubs helped them and didn’t hurt them in their military service. Good for them. That’s like the true warfighters who have graduated despite Wokeness at West Point in the past 20 years or so. They are great soldiers and officer despite the indoctrination drivel, not because of it.
Let’s watch for any imbedded Cultural Marxists trying to re-create the politically-correct identity groups.
Let’s see if West Point actually puts any institutional concrete against their return in a future Leftist Administration.
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