The coming ruin of the armed forces—and of whatever else is left of not-yet-thoroughly liberalized America

The core of the U.S. military—meaning, the fighting parts of the military—has consisted largely of conservative, Red State men, particularly Southerners, many of them evangelical Christians. Will such men continue to want to have careers in a military in which acceptance and approval of homosexuality are now to be required? It’s hard to imagine that this will be the case.

Many say that homosexualization doesn’t matter, because feminization has already ruined the institution. In fact, notwithstanding the enormous damage done by feminization, the core of the military—its fighting parts—kept its strength and ethos, largely because women were formally barred from fighting units. Male homosexuals will not be barred from fighting units. And even if few male homosexuals seek to serve in fighting units, it will only take the presence of a few to cause a complete transformation. A single, objectively meaningless “harassment” incident, such as Tailhook in the Navy some years back, will be enough to bring about a forced inculcation of the new “approved” attitudes among everyone, meaning total approval of homosexuality in both its sexual and its social manifestations. Thus, both through non-enlistment of the best men, and through homosexualist brainwashing of the men who do enlist, it’s hard to see how the fighting parts of the Army, Marines, Navy and Air Force will, in ten or twenty years, be anything like the forces that fought in Iraq in 1991, in Afghanistan in 2001, and in Iraq in 2003.

In its ever-forward march, liberalism, meaning the principle of non-discrimination, progressively destroys every institution, culture, and society over which it gains power. And with much of the so-called conservative movement, including its commanding heights, now embracing or silently accepting the non-discriminatory principle even when it comes to homosexuals in the military, there appears to be no force left in mainstream American politics to oppose the complete leftist destruction of whatever non-liberalized, “discriminatory” institutions still remain, particularly the institution of marriage.

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John Hagan writes:

The sandbagging of Captain Owen Honors of the USS Enterprise was a brilliant move by the elite egalitarians who want to normalize homosexuality in the military. It’s obvious that they held these damning videos of Honors for just the right moment in time. These nameless, faceless functionaries did two things: 1. they released these videos to show how homosexuals are denigrated by command. 2. they blunted any serious support for Honors from the public because in fact he comes across like a blithering idiot who lacks a basic understand of decorum.

Roger writes:

What bothers me most about all this, Larry, is the lack of will to oppose these changes on the part of conservatives, especially in the military. I was never worried about rank but I did reach lieutenant colonel. If I had worked the system tactfully and deftly, I would have made full bird. However, I always felt it my duty to address issues honestly and frankly. The really good senior officers seek out truth tellers, but they are in the minority. Many, if not most, full bird colonels, but especially brigadier generals and above are sycophantic politicians. The George Pattons and Chesty Pullers are rare today. On the homosexual issue most people, as far as I can discern, focus on the male homosexual. I think the most immediate and dramatic effect, however, will be on the distaff side. Lesbians probably already account for half of women Marines (WMs)—or as we once termed them, BAMs (Broad-Ass Marines). If homosexuality becomes opened and protected, the lesbians will quickly come to dominate the straight gals. At that point, when critical mass is achieved, it will be near impossible to recruit heterosexual females knowing the fate that awaits them.

Debra C. writes:

As I wrote elsewhere, if God is dead, as per Nietzsche, then all things are permissable, as per Dostoyevsky.

And additionally:

It is frightening, the implications this has for our society, when “God is dead” becomes the prevailing—read that: elite, political, and university—worldview.

The truth is that God is real, alive, and active in our world. This is the very first principle of traditionalist conservatism that we must insist upon. Secondly, this world is moving toward a decisive conclusion, whether that is by one’s individual death, or the end of time at Christ’s Second Coming.

Men need to be reminded that there will be a reckoning. And I believe the push to water down sin are in fact efforts to numb God-given consciences—the conscience that tells us we are lost without a Savior. The homosexualization of the military denies that there will be a reckoning. This is the real cost for our society of the homosexualization of our military. We would not be at this sorry juncture had much of the church, 200 years ago, not succumbed to higher criticism of the Bible, denying its God-breathed inerrancy and self-authenticating authority. Much of the church, in essence, “went Nietzschean,” in my estimation.

Ferg writes:

I tend to think of it like a college fraternity. What normal college boy would want to join a fraternity that accepted openly homosexual men? I would not. I count my fraternity experience and the life long friends I made there as amongst the best experiences of my life. All that would be lost and will be lost when those groups are forced to accept openly gay men too.

Roland D. writes:

You wrote:

“The core of the U.S. military—meaning, the fighting parts of the military—has consisted largely of conservative, Red State men, particularly Southerners, many of them evangelical Christians.”

When you say “core,” this used to be a valid generalization of the officer corps and, to a lesser degree, the senior NCO corps.

But it hasn’t been true of the general enlisted base for many years, and is less and less true of the officer corps and NCO corps. [LA replies: your remarks are off-topic, since I was not speaking of the officer corps and the NCO corps in general. I was speaking of the fighting units, and, as we saw in ‘91 and ‘03, the ethos and competence of the fighting units were still impressively intact, notwithstanding feminization and other destructive liberal trends that had degraded the military in general.] One of the many negative aspects of the disastrous shift from general conscription to an all-volunteer force is that the armed forces have essentially transformed themselves into social welfare organizations, bribing enlistees with all kinds of over-the-top credentialing benefits while simultaneously imbuing them with an unjustified sense of entitlement and inflated self-esteem, and of course a healthy dose of political correctness and the accompanying moral relativism.

In effect, the armed forces have for many years incorporated the worst aspects of the welfare system and of the public education system, serving both to corrupt enlistees as well as provide corporate welfare for defense contractors.

The evidence for this is clear—after 10 years of wasted effort, the United States military and defense establishment are both unwilling and unable to subdue a couple of tinpot, Third World countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. [LA replies: This is poor reasoning. The non-victories of our forces in those countries are due to policy decisions at the top, to the very nature of the policy, not to the ethos and competence of the fighting units.]

Americans simply don’t have the stomach and the requisite ruthlessness for empire; therefore, we shouldn’t even try. As matters stand, we’re in the process of devolving from a dysfunctional republic into a mere democracy, and then from there into an incompetent empire. The disarray and feeble gigantism of our armed forces are merely the most visible symptoms of this general trend.

Don’t idolize the U.S. military; they don’t deserve it, and haven’t for the last 35 years or so. [LA replies: Another off-base remark. I was not idolizing anyone, least of all the U.S. military. I was speaking of the fact that in recent wars, the fighting units of the U.S. military, when they’ve been assigned to fight, not nation-build, have been—for anyone who has noticed, which evidently does not include yourself—highly effective, notwithstanding the liberal decadence of the military and the country as a whole.]

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 06, 2011 07:42 PM | Send