Henry V was a power-hungry imperialist rather than an English hero, the Globe’s latest production of the William Shakespeare play will suggest.
Rather than lauding a “band of brothers” defeating the French against the odds at Agincourt, the new staging will show audiences the “devastating cost” of Henry’s “bombastic pursuit of power”. *** It will be directed by Holly Race Roughan, who has said that she found the play to be “the pinnacle of English mythologising, and white supremacy, and toxic masculinity”.
White supremacy? Why? The French were white, too. There are no non-whites in the picture. And, true, masculinity is on display. But that was once thought to be a good thing.
Speaking to The Stage about her vision for the new production, she said: “I felt like I’d discovered the dirty, murky roots of English nationalism.”
Some would say that English nationalism has been a tremendous force for good through the centuries. But to a left-wing 21st-century eye, its roots can only be “dirty.”
While details of the staging and set design are yet to be announced, Race Roughan has promised a “very dark” version of Henry V, and Michelle Terry, the Globe’s artistic director, has said the production explores whether the king was an imperialist aggressor against France.
It is absurd to impose contemporary political notions on the dynastic politics of the 15th century, but when has that ever stopped a liberal?
Now–wait for it–Ukraine!
She added that the play has been a “400-year-old presence asking us questions about war, peace, power, and ambition”, which has again been made relevant following the invasion of Ukraine. *** A statement from the Globe explained the relevance of the play, saying: “Shakespeare’s plays are packed with so many universal ideas, that they remain intriguingly relevant to contemporary society hundreds of years on. However, occasionally, one of his plays speaks to the present moment so directly, that it takes your breath away.
“Staging Henry V with the backdrop of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II, Brexit, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, feels like one of these moments.”
Yes, Brexit. Don’t forget Brexit. Just think, if England had won the 100 Years War, it might never have been necessary.
Note from Glenn: I first came upon Shakespeare’s Henry V when I was in the fifth grade at Horace Mann school in St. Paul, Minnesota. World War II was coming to an end and Great Britain, (ENGLAND) had survived and Nazi Germany had not.
We were being taught Shakespeare with Henry the Fifth a star in one of the plays. I LOVED THE STORY…even though I couldn’t read.
Henry, England’s fifth, had won one of the most overwhelming victories in human history by defeating the powerhouse French in, what was it….the fifteenth century? The Taxus spears were murderous killers by their super spears powered by the English tree. Its bending could overwhelm every weapon of its day!
Why did the English win, while they were underpowered by the French by about 15 to 1?
YEW got in the way…..That evergreen one native to the English from its Taxus crowd produced at that time weapon spears far beyond what the French could defend. The tree spear power assault from this British Taxus became THE ATTACK weapon of the fifteenth century when needed.
Democrats lie and hope that our attention spans are short, as do their media allies. Recently, The Atlantic published an article in which the author called for a “pandemic amnesty” and that we need to forgive each other because “we were in the dark about COVID.” Lies.
We were not left in the dark at all. The media, Big Pharma, and Big Government all worked together to destroy our freedoms and ruin the lives of many Americans. Not because we didn’t know what COVID might do to us. But because we were emphatically told that these tyrannical policies of eliminating church services, closing down businesses, and trying to force a national vaccine mandate was going to save lives. There was no ambiguity in what was being promoted and for what reasons.
With inflation raging across the country, grocery bills skyrocketing, and an economy teetering on the brink of stagflation because of our asinine mishandling of COVID, we are also told that “democracy is on the ballot.” Of course, what about democracy and our rights and liberties during the COVID lockdowns? The destruction of democracy and the erosion of social trust was far more ruinous during the pandemic lockdowns than anything else.
Furthermore, if the future of democracy rests upon the next generation then the COVID lockdowns have done extraordinary harm to the development of American children. This doesn’t even touch on the propaganda being pushed in public schools. However, plummeting mathematics ability and reading comprehension because of COVID lockdown insanity is going to have consequences for years to come, perhaps even generations.
Free and responsible government depends on a virtuous and educated citizenry. This was one of the great insights of our Founding Fathers. This was reiterated by Alexis de Tocqueville in Democracy in America. It was proclaimed again by Peter Viereck in 1940, one of the first American intellectuals to embrace and popularize the term “conservative” in his 1940 article in The Atlantic (when that publication was still worth reading), titled “But—I’m a Conservative!”
We hardly have a virtuous citizenry nowadays. And COVID may have ruined any possibility for a generation of an educated citizenry. This, of course, is good for big government totalitarianism. It is not good, however, for democracy as Tocqueville saw it in America: the moral and spiritual self-improvement of people under the protection of the Constitution which shielded individuals from soulless institutions and bureaucratic barbarism. Viereck, in his aforementioned essay, noted
Our job is to prove right here in America that democracy means, not destructive wrangling, but effective cooperation in solving our spiritual and economic problems.
Some of us were sounding the alarms on COVID tyranny when it was first starting. Lockdown policies were never about saving lives but a test to see how many liberties and rights the government could take away without much pushback by the population. Fear is the main path tyrants take in trying to strip freedom from their citizens. Scare citizens enough and they will enslave themselves to whatever dictates the dear savior will come up with.
This is replaying itself as we approach the November 8 election. Democrats destroyed entire families through their COVID lockdown policies which eliminated businesses, put stress on homes, and harmed the intellectual development of children. Those are years that will be hard to recover, if at all.
COVID tyrants are hoping Americans forget their debacle in handling the pandemic and the tyranny that so many experienced because of it. Families were unable to visit loved ones. Churches were shut down, some never to reopen. Businesses, once staples and pillars of the community, suddenly vanished and are now vacant and rotting with overgrown weeds and mold.
Those who do remember the totalitarianism of COVID communists are now being beaten over the head by the “Orange Man bad” derangement syndrome and “Christian nationalists are Nazis” rhetoric to hide the fact that they declared war on democracy through COVID tyranny and have continued to promote their war on democracy in the name of COVID fear. Unable to complete their tyrannical plans as quickly as possible and sensing the tides are turning against them, now they want us to forget and fear the invisible threat that anyone who votes Republican is destroying democracy. Republicans are trying to save democracy and pass on an America worth loving to the next generation.
Democracy as the expression of the rights and liberties of the American people and their self-determination is at stake going forward. The war against the rights and liberties of the American people because of COVID policies have been far more pernicious and destructive than supporting the MAGA movement or the Trump Presidency. The war against the self-determination of the United States to control its border and national sovereignty is meant to break the back of the United States so we are pawns to globalist bureaucrats and managers.
Don’t fall for the lies that Republicans are a threat to democracy. Democrats are the threat to democracy. They have shown themselves willing, and wanting, to erase our rights and liberties, violate the Constitution’s protection of life and property, and ignore the enforcement of border laws all in the name of their globalist ideology which is, by nature, antithetical to democracy.
I agree that the most important issue in this election is saving American democracy. That means improving the economy, lowering inflation, and controlling the border. American democracy is not the stagflationary, COVID totalitarian, open borders globalism dressed up as democracy being offered by Joe Biden and every Democrat running for election or reelection this year.
Wow. Angry, creepy, sleepy Dementia Joe gave another one of his atrocious Sieg heil! speeches on Wednesday blaming MAGA Republicans for his failures, and the wannabe tyrant could not have come off more revolting. (Could he be any more despicable? — sorry, Chandler Bing.) If his imbecilic ranting had any strategic objective, it got lost (much like Biden) in the disgustingly un-American backwash frothing from his vitriol. He sounded like some mad-hatted, off-kilter offspring of Stalin, Hillary Clinton, and a caca-throwing howler monkey. It is a wonder that he refrained from calling for public MAGA executions right then and there! Our mentally-challenged, child-grooming, puppet dictator was clearly going for the dumb, pervy, pro-gulag vote with a mindless diatribe meant to do nothing but threaten and divide Americans.
As has evidently become official U.S. government policy, Slow-Joe’s speech consisted of nothing but vilification, calumny, and lies. He tried to paint the hammer-wielding commie Castro nudist who Houdini-ed his way past security to invade Paul Pelosi’s personal space as a card-carrying member of Team Trump, yet the absurdity of turning a far-left, drug-addled hippy into a MAGA mascot was far too removed from reality to resemble anything but flagrant propaganda. The speech (such as it was) went downhill from there. It was evil MAGA did this, insurrection that, democracy is hanging by a thread, Oceania must defeat Eurasia — regurgitated gibberish all! For as little sense as his insults and threats made, Slanderous Joe might as well have screamed, “Trunalimunumaprzure, du eshuur dez whee vild mehrca, argle-bargle, jiggery-pokery, bark-bark. I’m Jill Biden, and I approve this message.”
Oh, and Mail-In-Ballot Biden went out of his way to warn Americans that it would take many days for midterm votes to be counted before this year’s elections are “officially” concluded. Criminelly, tell me you plan on stealing the elections without saying you plan on stealing the elections, why don’t you! (Get out and vote anyway! The best laid plans of mice and men oft go astray.)
The ol’ child-sniffer-in-chief sounded more like a Latin American commie crook than an American politician. Maybe Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez never actually died but came up north disguised as a doltish, decrepit, corrupt, third-rate Delaware politician with the inside skinny on how best to rig an election. If that’s not Chávez wearing a Joe Biden mask, then what’s left of Go-Low-Joe’s pudding mind is pure Marxist malevolence. What a disgrace!
Forget unworthy comparisons to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Reagan, or Trump. Ventriloquist Dummy Biden couldn’t — in his wildest dreams — manage to lead an army, write and speak eloquently, or succeed in the private sector beyond the safe confines of quid-pro-quo corruption and life on the public dole. He has no talents or gifts that distinguish him in any way. His singular accomplishment is that he has managed to hold office in Washington, D.C., for half a century. Yet that feat distinguishes him as a mere barnacle clinging to the ship of State, sponging off the accomplishments of other larger-than-life American leaders who swam the Potomac’s currents as political whales. What is more, American voters have known this about him for decades, as they overwhelmingly rejected him in two previous humiliating runs for the White House before Basement-Dwelling Biden managed to collect enough mail-in ballots (wink-wink) to make him the most popularly elected president in American history. You see, if you harvest enough ballots (and break enough election rules), you can miraculously go from worst to first in no time. Uff-da.
wo questions kept running through my mind as I watched the sleazy spectacle unfold: (1) How has America fallen so far?; and (2) Who in their right mind would ever go fight a war overseas for this fraud?
As for the first question, the answer’s pretty obvious: slow and steady ruination orchestrated from within the cesspool of government. You spend the last century undermining America’s federalist system by stealing inherent powers reserved for the states and the American people and transferring them to some unholy Frankensteinian D.C. monster recklessly wielding unconstitutional authority. You distort the delegated separation of powers so completely that the Supreme Court writes laws, the Executive Branch declares war, unaccountable bureaucratic agents browbeat ordinary American citizens, and Congress conducts show trials, while cashing checks from the big-monied interests politicians actually represent.
You go out of your way to teach America’s children that Almighty God is not real and that God-given freedom is made-up; and then you spend decades teaching those children’s children that Big Government is the highest power, and that the almighty State will reward “politically correct” subjects with a lot of “free” stuff if they remain well-behaved. You mock virtue and sacrifice, character and courage; and you place sin, vice, and other cheaply obtained pursuits of no worth high on a pedestal, as if they should be idolized as precious luxuries to be pursued and adored.
You open America’s borders to too many outsiders who don’t share the nation’s values or history. You disrespect citizens and ignore their needs and complaints. You orchestrate fraud-filled elections that destroy trust and breed hostility. You redefine the plain meaning of words, peddle propaganda, and smother truth. You turn the “free” press into controlled organs of the State. You transform the courts into a two-tiered criminal (in)justice system that protects the powerful and persecutes the powerless. You disgrace the Department of Justice by using FBI agents and federal prosecutors as political partisans, inquisitors, and cheaply bought whores.
You do all this, shake the whole sordid mess in society’s giant tumbler until it’s ready to explode, and throw the nasty, stinking awfulness out back until it smells like vulture vomit baking in the hot summer sun. Then, and only then, have you created a concoction so revolting and unsavory that someone as venal, petty, and repugnant as Joe Biden can walk past the stench without anyone much noticing.
As for the second question, I honestly don’t know why anyone would sacrifice life and limb to defend China Joe’s woke, trans-obsessed, identity politics-oriented Defense Department or the Pentagon’s Big Brother pals in the Deep State today. If anyone needed more proof that politics — not warfighting or service members’ survival — reigns supreme, the disastrous and deadly Afghan retreat was a searing and unpleasant reminder. Furthermore, it’s no longer clear just whom Biden’s apparatchiks consider the real enemy. When the U.S. Intelligence Community is used to hunt American citizens for their political beliefs, it’s way past time for Americans to question why they would fight for those who are already waging war against them. On Wednesday, Biden all but declared MAGA Americans “enemies of the State.” On Thursday, his chief of staff, Ron Klain, went so far as to frame Biden’s hate-fest as “one final warning” to us all. Threats don’t exactly inspire loyalty. And nobody follows a fool into battle.
It’s as Mel Gibson’s William Wallace correctly averred in Braveheart: “Men don’t follow titles; they follow courage.” In any walk of life, this observation is undoubtedly true. What people do with their lives, how they conduct themselves, whether they reach for the heavens, and by doing so, inspire others to do the same — or whether they prey on our worst impulses, divide and conquer, and drag us down into their own pits of despair — this is what separates the weak and wicked from those who possess great strength.
Biden, of course, is a weak, wicked, and cowardly man, and no title stitched before his name could ever beckon any American of worth to follow his lead.
I’m looking forward to January because a Republican majority will take over at least one House of Congress and slow down the rout of our national well-being. President Biden looks forward because the wasteful and destructive provisions of the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act take effect. See if you can follow the “thoughts” he struggled to articulate yesterday:
So, we — we’re making real progress. And, by the way, a lot of it is just going to kick in beginning in January because we passed this profound legislation on — whether it’s dealing with the environment or dealing —
I mean, for example, it’s estimated that what we did under the envi- — we passed legislation providing $368 billion in help to deal with global warming. Well, guess what? It’s estimated that that’s going to save just — what’s available to people for their homes to deal with weatherizing their homes, solar panel — a whole range of things. It’s estimated it’s going to save the average family in America at least $500 a year. And it’s going to save the environment.
Biden reminds me of the lines in the e.e. cummings poem:
Q: how numb can an unworld get? A: number
In this case the Q and A would go:
Q: How stupid can he think we are? A: Stupider
Biden’s remarks came as he talked up his utterly lawless student loan giveaway at Central New Mexico Community College in Albuquerque (White House transcript here).
The slogan “Get woke, go broke” is appealing, but unfortunately it often is not true. Wokeness has turned out all too well–so far, at least–for too many businesses.
But injecting left-wing politics into contexts where they don’t belong can have consequences. As Jimmy Kimmel proudly tells us:
ABC’s late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel has made Trump bashing a central part of his TV persona. Now he has publicly admitted that his decision has cost him “half of my fans — maybe more than that.”
But it was worth it!
In an interview this week with the Naked Lunch podcast, Jimmy Kimmel portrayed himself as a rebel, claiming he defied network bosses who hinted that trashing tens of millions of potential viewers might not be a good idea.
“There was at one time, maybe, I don’t know like right around the beginning of this whole like Trump thing where … that was kind of hinted at,” Kimmel said. “But I just said, ‘Listen, I get it. I don’t disagree. I mean, you’re right.’”
I would hope there are industries where losing half your customers would be a problem more than gently “hinted at,” but television apparently is not one of them.
“I have lost half of my fans — maybe more than that,” he said. “Ten years ago, among Republicans, I was the most popular talk show host, at least according to the research that they did.”
Kimmel continued: “I just said, if that’s what you want to do, I understand and I don’t begrudge you for it, but I’m not going to do that. So if you want somebody else to host the show, then that’s fine. That’s OK with me. I’m just not going to do it like that.”
What do we infer from this? Kimmel has plenty of money, so pushing his partisan political views on television is worth it to him. What’s the worst that can happen? ABC could replace him with someone else and he could retire, or go on to something different, with many millions in the bank.
But what about ABC? Maybe the network’s execs have scoured the landscape for late night hosts and concluded that Jimmy Kimmel, having driven away one-half of his audience, still draws more viewers than anyone else they can find.
That seems like the only rational basis for ABC’s tolerance of Kimmel’s self-indulgence. But it is hard to believe that ABC couldn’t find someone who would do better, because Kimmel isn’t doing that well:
[T]he once invincible Kimmel has been experiencing ratings problems in recent months. ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live has recently lagged behind two Fox News shows — Gutfeld! and Fox News @ Night.
I conclude that the people who run ABC’s entertainment division share Kimmel’s political biases and would rather indulge them than try to maximize revenue for their company. This is a sickness, unfortunately, that has infected many of America’s large companies.
Alarmism and crass projection come from those who desire a one-party state.
DAVID HARSANYI
Schadenfreude doesn’t normally do it for me, but I have to admit watching people who think they’re about to lose political power engage in panic-stricken hysterics has a certain appeal.
I’m sure, by now, you’ve heard that the end is near-ish. About a week away. Sure, there were rumblings it was coming when we passed net neutrality. Those who survived were subjected to the fiery lake of burning sulfur known as the Trump tax cuts, which Nancy Pelosi had presciently noted was “armageddon.” “People will die if Trumpcare becomes law,” she warned. Then came the overturning of Roe v. Wade — a decision that “released the whirlwind.” And, now, here we are at the midterms of 2022, the most momentous election not only in your life but perhaps in the history of mankind.
Last night, the President of the United States, a man whose pathological lying has been ratcheted up to surreal levels lately, gave one of the most transparently toxic partisan speeches in memory. Biden, quite paradoxically, warned that American “democracy” could only survive if the nation functioned under one-party rule. Despite historic early turnouts, the president lied about widespread attacks on voting rights, preemptively engaging in the kind of election denialism he contends is “un-American.” Biden has probably forgotten that virtually every major Democrat was an “election denialist” not only in 2016 but in 2000, as well.
The president then blamed the actions of the mentally ill, drug-addled individual who viciously attacked the husband of Nancy Pelosi on all of MAGAdom — which, according to Democrats, includes everyone who disagrees with any of their positions, including a pro-life movement that’s been around forever. Biden, who has likely engaged in more blatant executive abuses than any post-war president, leads a party that makes little distinction between “democracy” and its own power, treating any deviation, whether it be by the courts or voters, as illegitimate and “undemocratic” — a word that has been sapped of any real meaning.
This corrosive hyperbole isn’t only found in the rantings of hair-brained Twitter celebrities or in the desperate, last-ditch campaigning of a cognitively suspect president. Erstwhile historian Michael Beschloss, a man who imparts his alleged wisdom on the president, warned that the nation was “six days away” from a new GOP dictatorship in which innocent children were at risk of being “arrested and conceivably killed.” This is not the first time Beschloss has dropped insane hyperbole, not long ago claiming “that we are all in existential danger of having our democracy and democracies around the world destroyed,” and it surely won’t be the last.
Sunny Hostin, a cohost of the most popular daytime television show in the country, claimed that white suburban women who backed the GOP were “like roaches voting for Raid.” Hostin is a historical illiterate, perhaps, but surely even she understands that comparing people to bugs is dehumanizing, racist language that would never stand if “white” was replaced by any other identity. But, then, identitarianism is now so firmly embedded in left-wing rhetoric, I doubt she even realizes it. If Tucker Carlson had suggested something similar about anyone, we would be knee-deep in a national conversation, and the ADL would be sending all-points bulletins declaring the country at Defcon one.
That’s just in the past 24 hours.
No one is innocent, of course, but there is a popular myth that maintains the left generally engages in prudent, thoughtful, scientific, non-inflammatory rhetoric, while the right does little more than incite violence and luxuriate in its “sadism.” The “cruelty is the point” is the kind of vacuous phrase that brainless partisans living in hermetically sealed bubbles think is smart.
The media will be out scouring the land to find some nuts who are mocking the Pelosi attack to prove that one side is hankering for violence while largely glossing over the outlandish rhetoric regularly spouted on our biggest platforms. Most Democratic voters surely don’t see the world in these Manichean terms. The “election-denying” left-wing punditry class and media, however, who spy Hitler lurking behind every milquetoast Republican governor, have no problem smearing all those with a slightly different worldview as fascists. In this world, there is no policy debate; there is only alarmism and crass projection from those who desire a one-party state.
In the lawsuit challenging Harvard’s affirmative action practices, a group of senior retired military officers filed an amicus brief, which argued that maintaining affirmative action was a “national security imperative.” Those signing off include four former chairmen of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, six former superintendents of the service academies, and 17 retired four-star generals, including Wesley Clark and William McRaven.
Recruiting an adequate number of troops and increasing their quality also seems pretty important. But we know that recent efforts at recruiting have been a disaster, amplified by the mass expulsion of troops who refused the COVID vaccine.
While things carried on for a while out of habit, eventually the patriotic, mostly white, rural Americans who formed the backbone of the military started doing an about face. Polls show that fewer veterans now want their kids to follow in their footsteps. Conservative Republicans, once the most stalwart supporters of the military, have lately become more critical and less trusting.
Woke Military Has Difficulty Recruiting
The reason for these trends is obvious: the military leadership has lost its way and its moral compass.
As the ruling class ethos has shifted leftward, military leaders have become imitators and flatterers of the powerful. That is, top military leaders have decided to move away from the military’s traditional nonpartisanship and color-blindness and instead identify with the managerial class leftism and identity politics of Washington, D.C. This is why they have gay pride events and talk about “white rage.” They confused this ideology with the values of the country as a whole.
One might respond that military service is good even under these conditions in order to get useful training and make a living. But even under such a self-serving standard, the incentive to do so is declining, as white men within the military are subject to a rigged game, where it is harder to get ahead, and the old standards of excellence no longer matter. This will only get worse without a dramatic reset in the culture of our military and political leaders.
Right now, at least superficially, the military seems like a good place for whites and men, especially compared to politically correct corporate America. White men are overrepresented in the military leadership compared to universities, large corporations, and other institutions fully committed to the au courant value of diversity. But this is because military leaders’ demographics are a lagging indicator; those at the top mostly reflect the composition of the service in the 1980s and 1990s, when today’s senior officers joined and when the country’s demographics were very different. Such opportunities are unlikely to continue 20 years hence, when who advances among the current cohort will be shaped by diversitydominatingevery decision. Look at big-city police departments for the level of leadership quality one can expect from diversity-driven personnel decisions.
Mercenary Values Arise
A very different story forms a useful bookend with the ex-generals’ affirmative action brief.
A retired Marine Corps aviator was arrested in Australia for lending his expertise to the highest bidder: in his case, the Chinese government. Apparently, a sizable cohort of British pilots are also in on the act. According to CBS News, “the foreigners train Chinese pilots in Western air combat techniques, offering firsthand knowledge of how the Royal Air Force and other air forces fight.”
This only seems unusual if one ignores the broader mercenary trend among the American armed forces. Many follow a path like Lloyd Austin. He was an undistinguished general with no obvious talents, the combatant commander for failed military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nonetheless, he went on to become a millionaire at Raytheon after his retirement because of his access to decision-makers.
Now, as secretary of defense, Austin makes decisions on contracts for companies that will pay him many more millions when he returns to the private sector. Retired generals James Mattis and David Petraeus also cashed-in within the military-industrial complex. This happens to a lesser degree with almost every retired senior military leader, in spite of laws designed to limit the practice.
Not content to make money at home, some retired generals and subject matter experts have been heading to United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia to cash in. We witnessed an earlier, smaller-scale iteration of this trend during the wars in the Middle East, when special forces operators were leaving the service en masse to make six-figure incomes at private military contractors like Blackwater and Triple Canopy.
Even without the foreign intrigue element, the corruption, expense account abuse, and self-dealing within the U.S. military have become the stuff of legend. It turns out that the avarice and low integrity of contractors and the leadership tend to rub off when a military ostensibly devoted to national defense instead pursues imperial and commercial goals. As the Marine Corps hero Smedley Butler figured out, “war is a racket.” Some fighting men conclude it’s a sucker’s game to refrain from cashing in, as money-making is the principle guiding the entire enterprise.
The economic dynamics of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) probably also has something to do with the rise of mercenary values. The AVF and the advertising associated with it—“Be All That You Can Be!”—reimagined military service as a form of self-help and self-improvement, a way to acquire marketable skills and make a good living. The AVF led to better pay, comparable, or in many cases far in excess of private sector compensation. Those who make it a career, in addition to getting a good salary, also receive a pension, something that has largely disappeared from the private sector.
Recruiting in this way encourages a different type of person with different motives to join the military. These commercial values conflict with the military’s legacy values of duty and service. The latter, more ancient commitments are why military service has long received praise and respect from civilians. Such public honor may be considered part of the non-monetary compensation for military service.
In the years following World War II, almost every man of military age served, with most being drafted and returning to civilian life after the war. As conscripts, they were paid poorly, but a grateful nation did provide them respect and a privileged place in postwar America.
Few of these men had a rosy view of the military, a theme explored by Paul Fussell in his book Doing Battle: The Making of a Skeptic. But this was the age of actual “citizen soldiers,” who served during an emergency and returned to their lives, with their civilian lives informing their approach to the military, and their military service providing a useful perspective as citizens.
Citizen-Soldiers or a Warrior Aristocracy?
During the War on Terror, lavish praise for military service flowed from a widespread feeling of guilt. After the 9/11 attacks, the country wanted safety and revenge—but, other than service members and their families, very few Americans carried the burdens of war. The civilian-military gap was amplified by the increasing self-perception of servicemembers as “warriors,” rather than mere soldiers. From this romantic view of military service as a superior way of life undertaken by superior people, we see the first seedlings of a warrior aristocracy.
A constitutional republic and a warrior aristocracy are polar opposites. The European aristocracy found its origins in rewards for battlefield merit, where particular acts of bravery led to a title bestowed on the hero and his heirs, as well as land, the right to income from taxes for land-bound peasants, and exemption from taxes otherwise owed to the king.
In his lesser-known book, The Ancien Regime and the Revolution, moderate French republican and erstwhile aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville described how over time the aristocrat class became selfish and rapacious, exploiting the growing mercantile classes through privileges and taxation. Subject to an unworthy aristocracy and the crushing burden of taxes on the private sector, the grievances of the mercantile French bourgeoisie had much to do with the French Revolution.
Today, the various discounts, tax breaks, easier access to federal employment, pensions, lifelong health care, and custom-made jobs in the military-industrial complex are akin to aristocratic privilege. These rewards have led to a change in attitudes, including the “thank me for my service” view one sometimes encounters, as well as the heavy-handed uses of military service by candidates who center their political campaigns on their status as veterans.
Returning to the theme of veterans selling their skills to foreign regimes, this is entirely unseemly and likely very dangerous. It is not as if there is some deep, abiding connection between the United States and the sheikdoms and monarchies of the Middle East. And our relationship with China, while highly intertwined commercially, is mostly that of a hostile competitor and borderline enemy.
Just as there are limits on exporting sensitive military technology, we do not want our expensively-trained military men to share their tactics, techniques, and skills with a potential enemy.
Only a Nonpartisan, Color-Blind Military Can Protect the Republic
In exchange for the prestige and perquisites of military service, one thing is absolutely essential: loyalty to the country, the Constitution, and the American people. Without patriotism, the military becomes a very sophisticated gang, one that easily can be turned against the American people. Some will scoff that such a prospect is unthinkable, but one would have thought General Mark Milley undermining the commander-in-chief or a Marine selling his services to the Chinese were impossible too.
It is unlikely the military or any institution by itself will unite the country, when the country is disunited by the ideology of diversity and racial spoils, which encourage a zero-sum, mutually hostile internal politics. Fourth Generation Warfare theorist, Bill Lind argued that such a military and such a country may fragment into component pieces reflecting these more visceral subnational identities of race, sex, religion, and sexuality.
Along with these disunifying ethnic politics, the culture of graft and self-dealing within the military only further erodes noncommercial values such as patriotism, integrity, and service, which were more pronounced parts of the military’s culture before the institution of the AVF.
It would be nice if the laws we already had were enforced, and the culture of the military would frown upon the flagrant cashing-in with defense contractors, overseas regimes, pseudonymous writers, and other interested parties. But this seems unlikely.
While in the past the military served to increase national unity with its treatment of members as interchangeable, ranked by a culture of high and color-blind standards, the ideology of “diversity” only encourages ethnic loyalties to remain dominant and primary, a substitute for our national identity as citizens. Rather than contributing to national defense, affirmative action and pursuing diversity accelerates national division.
The military now reflects the selfishness and fragmentation of our culture. Welcome to the looting-the-treasury phase of imperial decline.
About Christopher Roach
Christopher Roach is an adjunct fellow of the Center for American Greatness and an attorney in private practice based in Florida.
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MN Prager Discussion Group 
