How Democrat administrations have corrupted our service academies

It's hard to imagine a better education than the Air Force Academy provided decades ago.  All our professors were PhDs.  There weren't any "graduate assistants" or "teaching assistants."  And until my senior year all our profs were military officers.

Today only a small percentage of Americans have military experience, so if you don't, let me tell you something about good military officers and NCO's:  They are no-nonsense, straight-to-the-point people.  They get right to teaching exactly what you need to know.  The reason should be obvious: War-fighting is very unforgiving to those who aren't totally proficient in what they're doing.

When I was a senior I finally saw my first civilian professor--a guy from the State Department who taught international affairs.  From later courses at civilian universities I'd say he was about as good as most civilian professors I've seen--but the difference between this fellow and the military officers was huge.

The impression I and the other students got was that this guy was either faking it or just hapless.

Fast-forward to 1994, when a Democrat-controlled congress forced all the service academies to hire a significant number of civilian professors--like Lynne Chandler Garcia, an associate professor at the Air Force Academy who teaches "critical race theory."  The Academy's course catalog describes her course as a ”contributor to the development and assessment of the National Security of the American Republic.”  

Really?  As we'll see, that's not quite right.  What she's actually teaching is Marxism.

When Garcia taught logic at a community college one student described her as "the worst professor I've ever had"--making her the perfect hire if you wanted to sabotage the service academies.

Recently Garcia penned an op-ed for the Washington Post announcing her enthusiasm for injecting Marxism into the Air Force.  "I teach critical race theories to our nation’s future military leaders because it is vital that cadets understand the history of the racism that has shaped both foreign and domestic policy,” the historically illiterate logic teacher wrote.

The Air Force Academy admitted that “some elements from CRT canon are included in the course."  Oh, but only "to encourage critical thinking."  The Academy also claimed that critical race theory is "not endorsed by the institution as institutional doctrine.”

So the Academy now teaches CRT, but they just don't specifically label it "doctrine."  Got it.  That makes everything fine.

So Lynne Garcia is shaping the military leaders of tomorrow by teaching them Marxist propaganda today--and not in the context of "This is dangerous stuff," but quite the opposite.  Got it.

This crap is standard fare at virtually all civilian universities and K-12 schools, but until 1994 we hadn't seen it at the service academies.  But starting decades ago Democrat congress-creeps and Dem presidents began warping the curriculum even at the service academies.  One must wonder: WHY?

As the BLM riots burned and looted American cities last year, former superintendent Jay Silveria told cadets that it was "a time to acknowledge that *disparities exist* in our nation and within our Force, and that we must all be willing to talk about the realities of social injustice."

First: If the U.S. is a hotbed of "social injustice," how the hell did Americans elect a black socialist president TWICE, eh?  

Second:  Obviously "disparities" in outcomes between people exist.  But except among Marxist wokies--thousands of professors, plus "elites" and race-hustling freelancers-- those “disparities” of outcomes are the result of dozens of individual choices and talents: choosing whether to study hard and work hard to achieve, or (for example) to become a drug seller or user, or merely someone content to draw welfare and drink and smoke dope all day.

Even a leftist professor must surely recognize that hard work, study and dedication matter, and that all of those are matters of choice and have nothing to do with racism.

Former AFA superintendent Silveria echoed the order from his bosses, calling on cadets to be outraged over the fentanyl-induced death of George Floyd, and using that to claim America was "systemically racist."  It's crap, and smart people recognize it as such.  So why would the top generals in the military push this crap on future leaders of our armed forces.  Who benefits from such a policy?

In July the academy's football coaches released a video--on one of the AFA's official social media accounts-- supporting Black Lives Matter. “Educate yourself on the role that race plays in our history,” a white coach demanded. "It’s time for me to recognize my bias," another white coach confessed.

Let's review: The American people apparently elected a black president--twice.  The overwhelming majority of those votes were cast by whites.  Can that point be any more clear?

Not only did superintendent Silveria not reprimand the coaches who made and posted the video--again, on an official AFA social media account--but instead he doubled down on his support for teaching "critical race theory," falsely claiming that the U.S. is awash with "systemic racism."

Instead of disciplining the coaches involved, the commander of the AFA issued a memo to "improve diversity and inclusion" and claiming that "systemic racism" affects not just blacks but also "gender and sexual orientation."

Whoa!  You just saw a *huge* goalpost shift!  Having mentally prepared his audience by guilting them about "racism," Silveria used that mind-set as a springboard to guilt cadets for what he claimed was bias based on "gender and sexual orientation."

Frankly I suspect that by "gender" he didn't mean male/female, but was really pushing for full acceptance of trannies in the military--as biden's secretary of Defense has already done.

If you wanted to destroy military morale, Silveria would be the ideal choice for superintendent.  And the same thing is happening at the other service academies.

It may discomfort snowflakes but the sole purpose of the military should be to be better at destroying enemy forces than any other military on the planet.  When socialist pols and their appointees turn the military into a wokie therapy group, it undermines the military's only legitimate purpose and makes us vulnerable to our enemies--whose societies, ironically, are the most oppressive and racist on earth.

Yet at the orders of Democrats in congress and the White House, our military and its leaders are being mentally crippled--something that helps our enemies.

The new CRT policies being pushed at all service academies undermine unity and cohesion, instead urging those who identify as members of allegedly-oppressed groups to segregate themselves and complain about their status in the military.  It's a plan tailor-made for weakness and defeat in combat.

The identity-politics rot continued when Silvera was replaced by the AFA's first black superintendent, General Richard Clark.  Instead of using his appointment as obvious, unequivocal evidence of the country’s incredible opportunities for blacks, the new superintendent trashed America as racist.  Perhaps he was just following orders.  It's impossible to know.

Earlier this year, the Academy announced that in response to Floyd’s drug overdose death and the accompanying BLM riots, it was opening a special "reading room" in its stunningly beautiful library.  The new reading room was for reading about "Diversity and Inclusion."  

The new reading room featured a whiteboard encouraging students to write out what diversity meant to them.  You can bet everything you have that every gung-ho, ass-kissing cadet who wants to be a general will have filled that sumbitch with exactly the right politically-correct testimony--and probably signed his name to get credit for having done so.

Seriously.  Even decades before CRT, these types existed, just as they do in big companies.  And we all recognized 'em.  They were the guys who would eagerly rat out a classmate to show their devotion to the rules, but would ignore egregious violations by upperclassmen.  They'd sell their souls to get early promotion.

The transformation of the Air Force Academy into just another radical campus has angered many of its alumni, who remember a very different institution.  For example, since its beginning the faculty at the Academy had been composed exclusively of military officers.  That helped protect the Academy from the anti-Americanism that has taken over almost all civilian universities.

By contrast, the new civilian professors immediately began pushing their leftist politics on students, just as in civilian universities.  But where leftist students at a civilian school presumably can't do too much damage (Bill Ayers would disagree), leftists who will eventually be military commanders can lose battles.

In past years the Academy focused on courses like physics, chemistry, electrical engineering, astronautics and the like.  Hard, hard courses.  Now the civilian profs offer courses titled "Class, Race and Ethnicity in Society," and "Gender, Sexuality and Society."

We studied the history of dozens of classic battles, and entire wars.  Today the AFA's history department asks future military leaders to "analyze WW1 through the lenses of colonialism, race and gender."  Seriously.

Lynne Chandler Garcia is not an outlier.  She’s just one of the few civilian professors to go public outside Air Force circles about what’s really being taught at the Academy.  When Garcia boasts of teaching "critical race theories to our nation’s future military leaders”, she’s taking pride in weakening the defenses of a country she appears to hate.

The Clinton administration and its allies in Congress gave the orders that started putting the likes of Lynne Garcia and other leftist radicals into the service academies, and the Obama administration continued policies to undermine the unity, integrity and allegiance of the AFA and all the service academies--and much of the rest of the military.  And the Biden administration is continuing Clinton and Obama’s harmful policies.

Today virtually all our nation's top generals have been promoted by Democrat presidents, after showing that they totally support Democrat social policies.

Two keys to winning wars are great leadership, and unity among the troops.  Current academic courses at the service academies destroy unity, and partisan promotions by Dem presidents threaten to sacrifice great leadership for diversity and quotas.  

Winning future wars begins with restoring the academic soundness of all the service academies.  Our country is at huge risk from woke government and woke corporations.  Unless we change course, if armed conflict returns our military is likely to be defeated.  "Woke" is a recipe for losing wars.