A commander in chief can bypass Congress on many of his executive branch agendas — he just issues marching orders to cabinet secretaries and that becomes policy. Yes, Congress has some ability to object by way of vetting nominations and budgets, but the Left’s social devolution agendas bypass those checks and balances.

As those agendas go, perhaps the most harmful implementation was between 2009 and 2017, the years Barack Obama was able to install military leaders who would carry out his social agenda across service branches – particularly his homosexual agenda. There has been and still is much degradation in the ranks as a consequence of his deep-state residuals among military “leaders.”

There was no better place to implement those destructive agendas than in our nation’s military service academies, where future officers are taught military doctrine. Despite the fact their principal obligation is “to support and defend” our nation’s Constitution, they are now expected to support and defend leftist social doctrines.

Last fall, I highlighted the case of an overtly communist cadet at West Point. His anti-American rants were known by USMA commanding officers, who, despite his violation of UCMJ regulations, were unwilling to take action. That case was not so much about the cadet as it was about the failure of military leadership.

However, as service academies go, it is the Air Force Academy that became the primary target for implementing Obama’s social agenda, because it was the most faithful and conservative of the institutions. In 2013, The Patriot Post uncovered and halted an effort by the Obama administration to remove “so help me God” from military oaths, starting with the USAFA cadet and officer oaths.

Obama’s parting shot at USAFA was his elevation of Kristin Goodwin to take over as commandant of the U.S. Air Force Academy. BrigGen Goodwin has sufficient qualifications for the post, and most military officers would dutifully say that if she has the skillset, that is what matters most. But the qualification that most interested Obama was not her skillset, but the fact that she has a “wife.” Despite concerns registered with Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis last year, neither the Trump administration nor Congress were going to object to Goodwin’s appointment at risk of offending the largest block of “gay” sympathizers, women voters.

Once Goodwin arrived at USAFA, it did not take long for the effluent of her appointment to emerge. At USAFA’s 25th National Character and Leadership Symposium this month, the theme was “Ethics and Respect For Human Dignity.” Nobody is against that!. But what that translated into under Goodwin was as described: “This year’s NCLS speakers’ stories will focus on the value and importance of ethics and respect for human dignity across personal and professional cultures. The challenges of a multicultural world require individuals to cast aside their own overt or covert biases towards gender, racial, religious, or sexual identities in order to create an environment that facilitates ethical leadership and decision-making as well as personal and professional respect for their fellow human beings.”

In other words, among the symposium’s featured presenters were gender-confused military personnel and Marxists, selected to model the “ethics and character” military officers need to adopt, once they “cast aside their own overt or covert biases,” in order to be effective leaders. Trump may be CINC, but military readiness continues to take a lot of “friendly fire”!