If the goal of Barack Obama’s third term in office was to continue to chip away at the “white supremacy” that Joe Biden continually warns about, then we might now be seeing the fruits of that labor.

“There is debate among scholars as to the extent of the quiet quitting phenomenon,” writes Jeremy Carl in American Greatness, “but there is increasing evidence that white Americans are increasingly quiet quitting America’s leading institutions. And the possible implications of that for American society are profound.”

Carl, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, has written a book about all this: The Unprotected Class: How Anti-White Racism Is Tearing America Apart. The book’s premise, if it isn’t already obvious, is that whites are the one class of citizens that is “openly discriminated against in every sphere of public and private life.” He calls this a “manifest and dangerous injustice,” and we can’t disagree.

The consequences of this go far beyond grievance, though, and far beyond some leveling of a playing field. What we’re seeing now is being borne out in the phenomenon of “quiet quitting,” which is an erosion of the vaunted American work ethic. And it’s being driven by whites who seem to have finally gotten fed up.

Quiet quitting shouldn’t be confused with outright quitting. These angry and disillusioned whites aren’t simply throwing up their hands and walking off the job. Instead, as the Harvard Business Review notes, “Quiet quitters continue to fulfill their primary responsibilities, but they’re less willing to engage in activities known as citizenship behaviors: no more staying late, showing up early, or attending non-mandatory meetings.”

Thus, what we’re seeing is less of the behavior that has long separated America from the pack of competing countries: the critical competitive advantage of a willingness to go the extra mile, a willingness to put in the extra effort that defines the difference between “good enough” and “great.”

“Little surprise then,” writes Carl, “that more and more young whites, especially young white men, are looking at the overall environment and saying, ‘Thanks, but no thanks,’ to our leading institutions. Last week, the armed forces announced that the number of white recruits had fallen precipitously over the last five years.”

Marine combat veteran-turned-conservative talker Jesse Kelly recently offered this ominous take: “My sons will not serve. I don’t have a single veteran friend who’s encouraging his sons to serve. Most are actively discouraging them from doing so.”

The white flight from the American military might well be the canary in the coal mine. Our military is perhaps the crown jewel of American institutions, and it’s been steadily eroded by the Left. As Carl continues:

A collapse in any demographic’s willingness to serve in the military would be a concern, but a collapse in (disproportionately conservative) whites in the military is more likely to precipitate a readiness crisis. White soldiers are far more likely than non-whites to be the “tip of the spear,” taking on the most dangerous and important combat tasks. In Iraq and Afghanistan, approximately 80% of special forces were white. Despite heavy diversity recruitment efforts in recent years, 84% of Navy SEALs are white. These special forces teams are filled with objective qualifications, performance, and candidate interest. It may be politically incorrect to say, but as a matter of math, in the current environment, a military that is less white is also a military that’s almost certainly less capable.

This is a wake-up call. As we noted in November, no one has gone broke lately underestimating the intelligence of the U.S. military’s marketing and recruiting geniuses, but maybe they’re finally getting the message. As Homeland Institute Executive Director David Zsutty wrote in an article titled “A Thousand Good Reasons Not to Enlist,” there’s a battle brewing for the soul of the American military: “In a 180-degree reversal after years of celebrating Bio-Leninist rejects, the US Army recently released a recruitment video featuring white [alpha males] jumping out of an airplane.” Happily, the Army’s animated recruitment shorts are no longer being pushed, nor is its soldier girl with the two moms. But is this awakening too little, too late?

We’ve documented the Army’s recruiting woes rather extensively during the Biden presidency, as well as the administration’s unwillingness to face the fact that the twin scourges of weakness and wokeness are to blame.

It isn’t just the military, though. It’s everywhere. And it’s the consequence of subtle and not-so-subtle actions by leftists and useful idiot do-gooders all around us. As Carl writes, for example, “For decades now, the government has dispensed valuable contracts to preferred constituencies on the basis of their not being white — at the federal level, such contracts for which whites are ineligible run to tens of billions of dollars annually.”

Try as we might, we cannot undertake to lay our finger upon that article of the Constitution that allows our government to engage in such naked racial discrimination.

The quiet quitting of whites — both in the military and across corporate America — is a grave threat to the American experiment. Without a course correction, we’re doomed.