By Jason D. Hill

It is not often that I write a book review and find that the book has gotten under my skin, so to speak. When this happens, as was the case in reading Don’t Give up the Ship: Woke Politics are Endangering our Military and our Nation by The Calvert Task Group, it is because I felt as if I were in the presence of a rare and lost breed of military men: patriotic and possessed of punctilious courtesy, refined manners, liberal education, and personal honor.

Such is the nature of the men who are the authors of this unprecedented book. They are a group of Naval Academy graduates from the Class of 1969. The moniker for the group is derived from Vice Admiral James Calvert who was the inspirational Superintendent of the Naval academy during their attendance. As you read this stupendous book of personal stories, policy recommendations and, as importantly, an analysis of the way in which woke ideology is weakening our military and demoralizing the Department of Defense (DoD), you will witness a phalanx of honorable men, devoutly dedicated to the armed forces of America and to their country who are still putting up a brave fight. They have given every American a secular Bible functioning as a moral inoculant against the idea pathogens infecting our military.

The ultimate goal of the book is to describe and provide solutions for the manner in which Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) policies, and Critical Race Theory (CTR) are destroying our military.

A Great Reset is taking place in the military of our beleaguered republic. All this is happening while China and Russia are mocking the United States and expanding and accelerating their imperialist plans.

As two of the authors, Brent Ramsey and Michael D. Pefley, point out in one of the essays, Social Justice imposed by the state is annihilating the military. Despite the fact that 45% of the military identify as minorities, the DoD insists that DEI are military necessities.

But let us define our terms here. The authors spell out very clearly what is meant by DEI. Diversity is the promotion of division based on identity quotas or targets; Inclusion is a code for exclusion of specific groups based on race, gender and sexual identity; and Equity—not to be confused with equality—is based on equality of outcomes (usually quotas) which is reformulated Marxism.

If you want to know why today’s youth are not motivated towards military service and the ways in which they are unqualified from an academic and physical-readiness perspective, then read this book and process the solutions and recommendations offered by its authors.

There are mores and protocols that guide and sustain comradery and fraternal order in the military. DEI initiatives destroy the consecrated order that governs and protects the lives of military men and women.

The most alarming details that emerge from the book are the nefarious ways in which CRT and woke ideology have infiltrated our most elite military institutions. The level of indoctrination taking place at West Point Academy and the United States Military Academy is shocking. The ideas of bestselling “anti-racist” Ibram X. Kendi, who promulgates the idea that white supremacy is a hallmark of American society, and that the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination, are taught alongside those of slavery reparations proponent Ta-Nehesi Coates. The latter implicates all whites as racists, and indicts American civilization as imperialistic, and as intrinsically and irreversibly bigoted. The books of these America-bashing authors are required reading for our service men and women.

The inexorable consequence of sadistically accusing white military service men and women that they are racists, and responsible for every disparity between blacks and whites, is an exodus from these elite military academies by some of its most honorable and patriotic and non-racist cadets.

To read of the priorities of the DoD is to encounter a strange citadel. There you will find the origins of the crushing woke policies that followed Joe Biden’s declaration that white supremacy today was the greatest threat to American democracy. Those policies invade every aspect of military life. You will read of how the military is being deliberately transgendered and radicalized in a manner that will leave you totally stunned. Sailors are inducted into a cult of sexualized identitarian politics which commits them to modes of conduct that every American should find appalling. The harrowing details of this form of indoctrination, alone, are worth a copy of the book.

In an email exchange with one of the book’s main authors, Brent Ramsey, I asked how this malarkey and indoctrination were allowed to continue under the Trump administration. His response was very revealing. He wrote that all this began

long before Trump. It started in 2008 and really got rolling in 2011 under President Obama from a comprehensive DEI Executive Order he issued right after his inauguration that permeated the entire Executive Branch including DOD. And it was done quietly so as to not arouse a lot of attention. So much of it was kept secret that no one could figure out for the longest time what was going on.

What caused the breakthrough for us was in 2020 with the riots following George Floyd’s death and the release of a video promoting BLM by the Football coach at the Air Force Academy caught the attention of a bunch of us retired folks. That is when I got involved with STARRS[i] and other groups like them like Calvert Group. What got Calvert Group started in 2020 was the Naval Academy trying to throw a midshipman out of the academy for private Facebook posts he made in support of the LA Police Department during the riots in LA. This midshipman’s parents, both of them, were LA PD officers and their lives were jeopardized by those riots. For his statements in support of the police and against the violence of BLM, the Superintendent at Annapolis tried to throw him out of the Navy and make him pay back several hundreds of thousands in education costs that the Navy had provided him for 3 years. We found out about his plight, came to his aid, raised money for an attorney and he won his case and was allowed to stay at the academy. That young man just got his wings at Pensacola and is going to be flying F-18’s for the Navy….he finished first in his flight school class.

Once we realized what was going on at Annapolis to promote BLM [Black Lives Matter] and DEI and all the rest, we formed our group and have been fighting the rot ever since, a lot of us writing articles such as those you read in the book trying to publicize what was happening to the military.

When Trump came into office, he was opposed at every turn and had his hands full trying to be President with the deep state trying to sabotage his every effort. So, the DEI industry during his term, went underground and kept on pushing DEI, etc. It will be different this time, if he is elected. He now knows how embedded the deep state is and will be much more effective at rooting the rot out.“

Such are the details that you will find in this extremely well-written and acutely documented book. If one wants to see how a monstrously top-down imposition of norms, policies and legal obligations that are inimical to military life play themselves out in the lives of decent military folks, then every American ought to purchase a copy of this book.

We are not fully prepared, in my estimation, after processing the massive research and data collected in this page-turning book, for a unilateral defeat against a full-scale invasion of the United States—were such a horrific onslaught against our sovereignty to occur. It is not because we lack the technological capabilities to fight off an invader; rather, our cadets are being taught to hate the United States of America, to feel guilty for the privilege of being Americans, and for the benevolent role our military has played in delivering numerous states from tyranny and despotism. They have been demoralized in so evil a manner that the perpetrators truly deserve to burn in hell.

This is one of the most important books of the last decade. It is written by the greatest generation of men who have created the modern world. The book is not just a compilation of documented moral atrocities that are afflicting our men and women in the military. It is also a work of faith, hope and courage. The contributors to the book believe in the resilience and goodness of the American people. They have fought for their country, and served with honor, resilience, tenacity and grit. The book, therefore, is a paean hymn to an America that can return to its Constitutional foundations. The authors believe that it is we the people, with our commonsense logic and problem-solving spirit and capabilities, who will wrench the country from the fake elites who wish to create a Marxist dystopia and an anti-natalist society by making up and imposing a shoddy set of amoral ideologies on the American people. They know that Americans cannot be pushed around for too long. It is in the name of the best and noblest and most heroic virtues embodied in these men, that can also be emulated by extraordinary ordinary Americans, that the book is written. These are the Americans who, regardless of background, demand a return to a truly meritocratic society.

The authors end their book as they begin it—with an invitation to remember the words of our late President Ronald Reagan:

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.

The brave authors of this book, many of whom have shed their blood to protect our nation, are moral warriors to the end. And they state proudly and defiantly, "If America is to lose its freedom, our final thought is and will remain – NOT ON OUR WATCH.”

Jason D. Hill is professor of Philosophy at DePaul University