The U.S. military is no place for “woke” policies to exist

October 7, 2025

The U.S. military services have a very specific, narrow and critical duty: to protect the United States from its enemies. That requires the personnel in all of the individual services to be highly capable, well-trained, well-disciplined and laser-focused on and heavily devoted to their duties.

Those who served during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and in the years following know well how the military operated, and how the various branches were focused on their duties.

In recent years, particularly during the tenure of former-President Joe Biden, that attention to the critical and highly focused job of the military took a sharp turn away.

Some of the mis-focused elements came before Biden took office, but they reached a critical level during those horrible four years.

Two people in the highest military leadership positions during that time were Lloyd J. Austin, the Secretary of Defense, and General Mark A. Milley, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and were guilty of pushing these ideas.

For many years the “woke” syndrome infected the military, replacing sensible ideals such as military capability and lethality, with foolishness like diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). This caused division among members of the military forces, and diverted needed funds away from the necessities of the military.

One important thing the military had been emphasizing for decades was discouraging racism. But in June of 2020, Mark Esper, the Defense Secretary at the time, employed a new idea: teaching service members about “implicit bias.” This is the idea that there is an unspoken bias favoring white male service members, to the disadvantage of female and non-white service members.

He also established a system of DEI, which expanded during the Biden administration. Spending on this system totaled $68 million in 2022, increased to $86.5 million in 2023, and in 2024 the Department of Defense requested $114.7 million for DEI. 

The DEI system included pushing critical race theory, which is a Marxist concept where everyone is either an oppressor or is oppressed. Ideas such as white privilege, and systemic racism even infected the military academies, accompanied by encouragement of academy students to report any private conversations that contradicted the DEI concept.

Instead of military personnel spending their time maintaining and improving their high levels of performance and their sharp focus on military readiness, much of their time and mental attitudes were sidetracked toward ideals that are not just non-military, but are anti-military.

So, a bad trend that began small quite a few years ago has been growing, and growing quite fast in the last few years. But blessedly, the newly elected Donald Trump administration has a much clearer view of how the military must function, and why.

A new day has dawned at the Department of Defense. And two things are now prevalent and have created much controversy. The second of those is the decision by Trump to return to the Department its original title: The Department of War. As with everything Trump does or says, this has brought criticism.

But not nearly so much as the first of those two things: his choice for the Secretary of the then-Department of Defense, Pete Hegseth. Prior to his nomination, Hegseth worked for Fox News as a co-host on the network’s Fox and Friends Weekend program. 

Needless to say, the left went wild with criticism of his background at Fox News, and other things that the critics found to complain about. A predictable and fair question was, what qualifies him for this job?

Hegseth does have a military background, although some say it isn’t deep enough and broad enough for him to be in charge of our military forces. Some think that a better choice would be a flag officer with 20 years of service.

However, before his work in TV, Hegseth completed Reserve Officers’ Training Corps training while attending Princeton University. He later served as an officer in the U.S. Army National Guard from 2003 to 2021. He attained the rank of captain, and was deployed to Iraq in 2005-2006 with Army National Guard’s 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division. 

He was deployed to Afghanistan in 2011-2012. He served in Kandahar province with the Minnesota National Guard’s 1-194th Armor Battalion. And during his service he was awarded the Bronze Star.

Hegseth has offered a 10-point strategy to clean up the military branches, and to restore the military’s former and necessary discipline and focus. Those 10 points are:
1. Ending “politically correct leadership”
2. Imposing new physical fitness standards
3. Tackling ideological “garbage”
4. Eliminating anonymous complaints
5. Reinstating discipline and grooming standards
6. Focusing on military strength
7. Emphasizing merit
8. Redefining “toxic” leadership
9. Purging “woke” leadership
10. Revising personnel record retention

The hoopla over gender and ethnicity equality must be put aside. The gender and ethnicity of service members are irrelevant. What is relevant is each person’s ability to meet a set of standards designed to put the most qualified people in uniform. We want and need the most qualified people possible, and the mix of gender and ethnicity will be whatever it turns out to be, based upon choosing highly qualified people.

The idea, “go woke, go broke” is one we are seeing more frequently

August 20, 2024

The current mentality that is gaining acceptance considers so much of our culture and history as false or troublesome and in need of replacement, and is succeeding to a dangerous degree. 

Commonly known as being “woke,” the beliefs it supports are things like white people are automatically and always oppressors and non-white people are always oppressed, that historical things and people that are viewed as bad by the “woke” should be removed or destroyed, that what has been traditionally taught as American History is false, and so on.

In trying to calm things down, people frequently join the parade in removing and changing things so that they are less upsetting to those who find them offensive. In some cases, this might be acceptable.

This movement has caused a lot of confusion and emotional distress. And there is at least one area where this is very dangerous and must be stopped. That is in the military forces of the United States of America.

Those who are or have been in our military, or are otherwise familiar with it and its nature, understand how dangerous this is. Even so, some in higher positions have been infected with this idea to the degree that they are imposing changes to how our military operates in order to smooth things out.

However, in smoothing things out, they are making the military less well equipped and weaker to the point that it is less able to do the only thing it exists to do: Defend the country and its interests, protect us from threats and invaders, and eliminate anyone who seeks to harm the USA.

In 2015 a Marine Corps study showed that gender-integrated combat formations — those with both men and women in combat — did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately as men-only units, and that women were twice as likely to suffer combat injuries. The Secretary of the Navy at the time, Ray Maybus, rejected the study because it did not meet the Obama/Biden administration’s political agenda.

However, that same year Defense Secretary Ashton Carter imposed “gender-neutral” operational standards so that female service members could meet the qualifications for combat positions. When it turned out that women were scoring lower than men, the standards were abandoned, and despite their lower performance on qualifying tests, women were, and presumably still are, allowed to be in combat units.

In 2016 Maybus ordered a change in Navy job titles, doing away with titles like “corpsman” and replacing them with gender-neutral titles. However, the enlisted sailors strongly objected, preferring the historic titles from previous decades, and the Navy reversed that change. As “wokeness” continues to infect the military, this change may be, and perhaps has been, reinstituted.

In 2021, the Navy began using a training video explaining the importance of using the correct pronouns. In order to not upset some sailors, inclusive language is now required, such as saying “hey everybody” rather than “hey guys.”

Outside of the military and in the country generally has been promotion of the idea that America is actually a country where racism and white privilege abound. This flawed concept has crept into the military, where men and women service personnel are required to sit through indoctrination programs. These sessions push the Marxist-based idea of critical race theory, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and other similar ideas.

However, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told the House Armed Services Committee: “We do not teach critical race theory, we don’t embrace critical theory, and I think that’s a spurious conversation.”

Others in the Pentagon argue that critical race theory actually is being taught, and that charge is supported by abundant evidence.

Even if CRT was a valid aspect of America, taking up the time of military members with these indoctrination sessions is at odds with the duties and responsibilities of our military services. And the reported billions of dollars of costs associated with these new ideas is a dangerous use of military funds, which should be used for national security and military readiness purposes only.

As the late conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh frequently said, the role of the military is to “kill people and break things” in defense of our country. It is precisely the most improper place to indulge in promoting social issues.

Whether our military forces are all white, black, Asian, or Hispanic, or all male or female or some mixture of all of those, it must be the absolute best equipped, most highly trained, and most efficient military possible.

You might expect that, of all people, those in leadership of the Defense Department would understand that. However, many of those in top positions have apparently abandoned their sworn duty and common sense. Fortunately, the rank and file personnel under their leadership — the ones that put their lives on the line and live or die from their policies — do understand the true purpose they must fulfill.

We must quit playing games and focus only on the mission of the nation’s military forces. With the existing threats to our national security, we cannot allow our service personnel to be required to worry about using the proper pronouns, and other idiotic ideas that weaken our security.

The introduction of wokeness into our military weakens it

August 29, 2023

Last July a retired U.S. Army general spoke to an audience on the state of the nation’s military forces. Thomas Spoehr attained the rank of Lt. General in his career spanning more than 36 years in uniform. During that time, he served in positions in the Pentagon, with the 82nd Airborne Division, the 1st Armored Division, and as Deputy Commanding General of U.S. Forces in Iraq.

Spoehr was concerned with some things that had transpired that worked against the efficiency and strength of our military, and shared his concerns with the audience at the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series at Hillsdale College. Following are some of his concerns. 

In 2015, a U.S. Marine Corps study concluded that gender-integrated combat formations did not move as quickly or shoot as accurately, and that women were twice as likely as men to suffer combat injuries. The study was rejected by then-Secretary of the Navy, Ray Maybus.

Later, the Department of Defense under Secretary Ashton Carter opened all military combat jobs to women, committing to “gender-neutral standards” that ensured that female service members would meet the requirements. The Army began to put in place the gender-neutral test promised by Carter. 

However, after finding that women were not scoring as highly as men, the Army threw out the test. Now there is no test to determine whether any soldier can meet the fitness requirements for combat specialties.

Also, that year, President Barack Obama initiated a change to the Pentagon’s longstanding policy on transgender individuals in the military. But after he was elected President, Donald Trump put that change on hold. His Defense Secretary, James Mattis, had information showing, among other things, that transgender individuals suffering from gender dysphoria attempted suicide and experienced severe anxiety at nine times the rate of the general population.

The Trump administration then imposed restrictions on military service personnel suffering from gender dysphoria. However, as one of his first actions, newly elected President Joe Biden signed an executive order that cancelled those restrictions and allowed all transgender individuals to participate in our military services. Later, Biden’s administration allowed active duty military personnel to take time off from their duties to have sex-change surgery, related hormones and drugs, which would be paid for by taxpayers.

The Biden administration has also removed a policy that prohibited personnel with HIV from serving in combat zones, due to the need for special medications and the danger of transmission through shared blood. 

And in recent years, our military’s strenuous physical fitness standard has been weakened, with the goal of “leveling the playing field.” This allows people previously not up to the physical standard to now serve.

In July of last year, a drag queen story hour was scheduled at the base library of Ramstein Air Base in Germany. A drag queen was going to read to children of Air Force personnel stationed there. However, when this news reached lawmakers in the U.S., who complained to the Secretary of the Air Force, the event was cancelled.

Also, in 2021, the Navy released a video instructing Navy personnel that they need to create a “safe space for everybody.” This includes using “inclusive language,” such as saying “hey everybody,” instead of “hey guys.” Spoehr wondered what other “woke” changes might follow. 

Taking things a few steps further down the path, Biden required through an executive order that all organizations in the military services must create Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) offices, and to produce DEI plans and track the progress toward those goals. The purpose of this is to advance “equity for all.”

Spoehr also mentioned that Critical Race Theory (CRT) and the idea that capitalism is racist are also being used to indoctrinate personnel. The charge of CRT being used was denied by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, but Spoehr said much evidence contradicts Austin’s denial. 

Legislation introduced this year in Congress would halt the use of CRT, the creation of diversity offices, and the easing of physical requirements. Whether this legislation will pass is an open question.

In a write-up of Spoehr’s address printed in Hillsdale’s publication, “Imprimis,” is this: “Wokeness also comes in the form of conflating the mission of the military with environmental ideology. A year ago, President Biden told a group of overseas Air Force airmen that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had determined that the greatest threat facing America was global warming—a claim the Joint Chiefs had to walk back. 

“In the same vein, Biden signed an executive order imposing a massive regime of environmental goals and requirements for the Department of Defense. These goals included transitioning to all electric non-tactical vehicles by 2035, carbon-free electricity for military installations by that same year, and net zero emissions from those installations by 2050. As a result, the Pentagon recently announced it will devote over $3 billion of its already stretched-thin military budget to climate-related initiatives in 2023 alone.”

The job and responsibility of the U.S. military is to protect and defend the United States. Social experimentation and political ideology weaken its ability. The military must have at every position the best qualified and capable person possible, regardless of race or gender.

Shakespeare was right: The past is prologue. We must pay attention.

Many of you will remember Richard (Dick) Lamm as a former Governor of Colorado. He ran for, but did not win, the Reform Party’s presidential nomination in 1996. Back in 2003, Lamm attended and spoke to an overpopulation conference in Washington, DC, filled to capacity by many of America's finest minds and leaders.

Among the other speakers was scholar and historian Victor Davis Hanson, who talked about a book he had written titled Mexifornia, addressing immigration, both legal and illegal.

Following Hanson’s address, Lamm gave a stunning speech on how to destroy America. The audience sat spellbound as he described eight methods for the destruction of the United States. He said, "If you believe that America is too smug, too self-satisfied, too rich, then let's destroy America. It is not that hard to do. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that 'An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.'"

First, to destroy America, he said, "Turn America into a bilingual or multi-lingual and bicultural country. History shows that no nation can survive the tension, conflict, and antagonism of two or more competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; however, it is a curse for a society to be bilingual.”

Second, to destroy America, "Invent 'multiculturalism' and encourage immigrants to maintain their culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal. That there are no cultural differences.”

Third, "We could make the United States a 'Hispanic Quebec' without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity.”

"I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with the salad bowl metaphor. It is important to ensure that we have various cultural subgroups living in America reinforcing their differences rather than as Americans, emphasizing their similarities."

"Fourth, I would make our fastest growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated, and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from high school."

"My fifth point for destroying America would be to get big foundations and businesses to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of 'Victimology.'”

"My sixth plan for America's downfall would include dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would celebrate diversity over unity. I would stress differences rather than similarities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other — that is, when they are not killing each other.” He said. 

“A diverse, peaceful, or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity! Unity is what it takes to keep a nation together. Look at the ancient Greeks. The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games.”

"Next to last, I would place all subjects off limits — make it taboo to talk about anything against the cult of 'diversity.' I would find a word similar to 'heretic' in the 16th century — that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like 'racist' or 'x! xenophobes' halt discussion and debate."

"Lastly, I would censor Victor Hanson Davis's book Mexifornia. His book is dangerous. It exposes the plan to destroy America. If you feel America deserves to be destroyed, don't read that book."

There was no applause. The audience sat in stunned silence. Every American in that room knew that everything Lamm had said was proceeding methodically, quietly, darkly, yet pervasively across the United States right then.

As stunned as the audience was in 2003, should we not be more stunned today?

FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform) reported that in 2019 there were 14.3 million illegal aliens — the politically correct term for which is “undocumented immigrants” — in the U.S. That is the number of “known” illegals, and it is rising daily. Are these millions all assimilating by learning to speak English and adopting American values?

Has not the focus on diversity taken a big jump, even in the military, where such distractions are a true threat to our national security? Is America not more divided than it has been for many decades?

Are there not far more “racists” in the country day-by-day, as we are told? And victimhood is at an all-time high, as small sub-groups now spurn long-accepted standards and clamor for attention and acceptance?

Have we not noticed our educational standing among nations having dropped over the last several years? The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development rated the U.S. the sixth best education system behind Canada, Japan, Israel, Korea and the United Kingdom.

Do we not see the danger of the anti-testing movement and lowering or eliminating some standards for high school graduation? Oregon has eliminated reading, writing and math requirements to “help” certain student groups?

In a recent poll by Politico’s “Morning Consult,” 61 percent of Americans believe the country is on the wrong track. Like George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, Lamm’s speech was prescient.

Israel’s right to defense and the rise of a woke culture

It is hard to understand why so many people dislike Israel, and believe that Israel is responsible for the recent fighting. Many of those Americans who dislike Israel are Democrats, which is especially odd, since Jewish voters in America lean heavily Democrat.

Are they cowering in the face of strong opposition from the Left’s anti-Semitic faction, which includes Black Lives Matter, Antifa, the notorious Squad of Congresswomen, and others?  

Israel gets the blame for the deaths of innocent Palestinian civilians in the Gaza Strip. However, that narrative ignores important facts. 

First, Israel did not start the fighting. Israel was attacked by Hamas terrorists, firing rockets from Gaza, and is merely defending itself. Hamas, along with other Arab terrorist groups, believes Israel has no right to exist, and is working to bring about that reality. The terrorist organization has fired what now totals more than 4,000 rockets into Israel.

When you are attacked, you must respond. And Hamas, that wonderful organization that boldly and purposefully puts the safety of the Palestinians living in Gaza at risk, set up its offensive weaponry in populated areas, knowing that Israel would, out of necessity, respond with retaliatory attacks. And it knew that when the Israeli response happened to kill civilians, used as shields by the terrorists, Israel would be blamed by the gigantic anti-Semitic faction around the world.

Prior to the recent cease-fire, more than 200 Palestinians reportedly had died in the war, and roughly two dozen Israelis have been killed. Why the large difference?

Because Israel has a defense mechanism called the Iron Dome that intercepts and destroys many or most of the terrorists’ rockets before they can do any damage, although some do get through. Some 16 percent of Hamas’ rockets reportedly fell short of their target, and landed in Gaza, and may have killed Palestinians. 

And the Palestinian death toll is a fraction of what it could be because of Israel’s efforts to keep civilians as safe as possible, even warning occupants of certain targeted buildings that an attack is imminent so that they could escape, and by carefully picking its targets.

All the while Israelis get the blame for Palestinian civilian casualties who were put at risk by Hamas terrorists firing rockets at Israel from Palestinian neighborhoods.

* * *

In today’s upside-down America, math is now both racist and something which no longer requires accuracy and correct answers.

An opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal describes the situation: “If California education officials have their way, generations of students may not know how to calculate an apartment’s square footage or the area of a farm field, but the ‘mathematics’ of political agitation and organizing will be second nature to them. Encouraging those gifted in math to shine will be a distant memory.”

A proposed new curriculum framework for math is now being considered by the state’s Instructional Quality Commission. The new framework recommends that teachers use a manual titled “A Pathway to Equitable Math Instruction: Dismantling Racism in Mathematics Instruction,” which The Journal commentary called “a troubling document.”

“This manual claims that teachers addressing students’ mistakes forthrightly is a form of white supremacy,” the article states. “It sets forth indicators of ‘white supremacy culture in the mathematics classroom,’ including a focus on ‘getting the right answer,’ teaching math in a ‘linear fashion,’ requiring students to ‘show their work’ and grading them on demonstrated knowledge of the subject matter. ‘The concept of mathematics being purely objective is unequivocally false,’ the manual explains. ‘Upholding the idea that there are always right and wrong answers perpetuates objectivity.’ Apparently, that’s also racist,” the article continues.

While 2+2 still equals 4, and the multiplication tables are still accurate, that is not as important as being sure that those who aren’t good math students don’t feel bad about it. 

This is just one more component of the new woke attack on a merit-based selection process. The anti-merit faction would prefer to have a fair distribution of genders and ethnicities providing medical care, piloting airliners, manning classrooms at all levels, leading and serving in the military, holding management positions, etc. Yet a student who was behind his/her classmates in math or science, or any subject, will likely not do as good a job as a teacher as someone who had a high ability and a love for the subject.

As woke-ism progresses, no doubt this foolish concept will creep into other subject areas, as well.

Does this really make any sense in a country where having a thriving society, and the country’s very survival, depend upon having very capable people in all important positions?

Woke-ism is a truly bizarre development. The number of people who favor it is shocking. But the scariest thing is how foolish and non-sensical these concepts are. If America does not get its feet back on the ground very soon, our future is very uncertain. We need to pay much more attention to what China and Russia are doing, and be less concerned with trying to guarantee equitable outcomes among unequal people.

Is woke-ism a new pandemic? Is it a greater threat to our future than COVID-19? It could very well be.