On the Front Lines of Biden’s Military Extremism
The Pentagon’s infamous “stand down” has only encouraged Biden’s extremists to stand up.
As the nation heads into Memorial Day weekend, a lot of our troops are thinking about the fallen. But some of them are mourning something else: the U.S. military they knew. In just four months, the culture of our fighting force is changing — and fast. Under Joe Biden, one of the last bastions of American patriotism is on a collision course with a radical Marxist agenda that isn’t just threatening our servicemembers — it’s threatening us.
In a matter of weeks, the military has been pumped full of propaganda — everything from critical race theory to transgender extremism. And the shift has taken its toll. After January 6, the riot that Biden is using to excuse this indoctrination, our men and women in uniform have been subjected to all kinds of politically-correct training. Ever since Donald Trump left office, the idea of actual warfighting seems to have taken a backseat to the Democrats’ real goal: destroying the country from the inside out.
The Pentagon’s infamous “stand down” has only encouraged Biden’s extremists to stand up — and preach wokeness throughout the ranks. It’s a culture shift that isn’t just unpopular — it’s unwelcome, servicemembers say. It seemed “forced,” one Navy lieutenant told the Military Times. Others, like anonymous airmen, said they don’t normally complain, but questioned the “non-mission training.” At the Washington Navy Yard, civilians called the discussion “rudderless.” “One of the older guys was sidetracked and kept saying stuff like, ‘What about the First Amendment?’ and, ‘I miss the days you could just talk to people,’” he wrote. And then there were all of the what-ifs. What if you want to go to a MAGA rally? Or talk about conservative politics on Facebook? Is that “extreme?”
Under this administration, it certainly seems so. Other soldiers wondered openly why there was so much attention on January 6 and not on the deadly protests around the country. Meanwhile, the liberal media seems intent on fanning the flames of divide, insisting that the military is a hotbed of racism and discrimination — something the people actually serving dispute. But, as Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) reminded everyone on “Washington Watch,” this whole Leftist push isn’t rooted in reality. “This is all about advancing the Marxist ideology. [It’s] about [controlling] the mindsets of Americans.” Look, he said, “if you can break the back of the entrepreneurial spirit, the small businesses,” education, the military, “the ability of the American people to rise up and achieve, then you can have the tyranny and control of government over the minds of man.” That’s what this commander-in-chief wants. And he needs to infiltrate our schools and our troops to do it.
The only reason this administration is so intent on teaching critical race theory, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) insists, is so it can rip apart our military at the seams. “Our military’s strength depends on the unity of our troops and the knowledge that America is a noble nation worth fighting for. Critical race theory teaches that race is a person’s most important characteristic, and that America is an evil, oppressive place.” Forcing commanders to preach that the country they’re serving is racist has already led — as the far-Left hoped it would — to more good men and women leaving the service.
FRC’s Lt. General Jerry Boykin (U.S. Army-Ret.) can’t go anywhere these days without servicemembers telling him how disgusted they are. “I had a guy call me from Kuwait last week and he said, ‘As soon as I get the last soldier out of here, I’m done. I’m not going to stay in this Army because of the social experiments that are taking place right now.’ I talked to a guy outside of Nashville, Tennessee. Ollie North and I were there, and we talked to him together, and he said, ‘My unit has asked me to start teaching this critical race theory. And I’m not going to do it. That means I’m going to get out of the Army.’” It’s happening in all of the services. These are “Gestapo tactics,” Boykin warned. The Pentagon is actually encouraging people to turn people in — to snitch on the men and women they serve with if they think they’re an extremist (or the administration’s version of “extremist,” which is really just your run-of-the-mill conservative).
And the sad thing about it is, Boykin went on, “all this is doing is driving a wedge between members of the military. And there’s nothing more important on the battlefield — not weapons, not the technology — [than] the cohesion and the morale of those men and women who are out there fighting. They make the difference. That’s how you win on the battlefield.”
But then, Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) insists, Biden isn’t interested in winning on the battlefield. He’s interested in raising an army of social justice warriors. And he — along with Rep. Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Cotton, and others — are doing everything they can to smoke out these dangerous trainings and policies and kick them out of the military. Cotton’s bill (the companion to Roy and Bishop’s in the House) would outright ban critical race theory from the ranks. Green’s legislation would aim to tear it out at the roots — in the service academies.
“They want to weaken our military,” Boykin insisted. And maybe some of you are thinking — that doesn’t make sense. “Well, it doesn’t make sense to you and me, but it does if you’re a Marxist… It makes sense if you want to reduce the readiness of our military so that there is no propensity, no desire to use our military again.” Marxists want a one-world government, he warned. And our troops are in their way.
Originally published here.
Biden Tries to Shanghai Voters on China
It’s been called the “largest liable case in the history of the world,” but Joe Biden doesn’t seem to care if we get to the bottom of it. Finding out who’s responsible for COVID might upset his cozy relationship with China — and surely no one on the Left wants to admit what conservatives have known all along: the real conspiracy isn’t the speculation that the killer came from a Wuhan lab, it’s that some Democrats, the World Health Organization (WHO), and the communist regime were so desperate to cover up what they say didn’t happen.
It’s the typical Biden two-face. On one hand, the administration shut down former Secretary Mike Pompeo’s State Department investigation into what or who caused the coronavirus pandemic. On the other, he’s holding a press conference, promising to follow the evidence where it leads. Why the sudden interest in the origins of COVID? Because new reports on not-so-new information are pointing — at least in part — to a leak from the Wuhan lab, not a random explosion from bat-infested markets. Now, suddenly, the Biden administration is asking the intelligence community to dig deeper, “to collect and analyze information that could bring us closer to a definitive conclusion.”
At the heart of this “new report” are three Chinese scientists — all who worked at the Wuhan lab, all who contracted an illness with symptoms like COVID. One, Li Wenliang, died a hero trying to warn his people that the killer was loose. Two others did their best to also sound the alarm — one going so far as to risk his life by giving the West the COVID genetic code, information that, Dr. Martin Makary says, American researchers used to create the Moderna vaccine two days later.
Naturally, the question on everyone’s minds is: did these men get the virus from the lab — and does that prove it escaped? To be honest, Makary says, we may never know. For starters, he writes in a compelling article about these three men, it would require “cooperation from the Chinese Communist Party,” among other things that a leader as weak as Biden — and a co-conspirator like WHO — cannot or will not demand. To be honest, Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said, “This is too little, too late.” And yet the Arkansas Republican, who blew the whistle before February of 2020, can’t help but laugh at the irony. He was demanding the U.S. investigate the lab only to be roundly mocked as a conspiracy theorist.
So if the information hasn’t changed (the Trump administration knew all of this in 2020), the WHO’s position hasn’t changed, and China’s posture hasn’t changed, what has? “The biggest change,” Cotton explained on “Washington Watch,” “is that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House and Joe Biden is. And early last year, when I was pointing out — not on the basis of some kind of secret intelligence or other information, but just plain old common sense — 'Guys, this virus didn’t emerge from some mountain village next to a cave full of bats. It emerged in a city larger than New York, right down the street from the labs where they research dangerous coronaviruses. How about we ask two questions about that?‘ … The media was going to do nothing if it… was going to help Donald Trump’s reelection.” Now, he supposes, with Biden in the White House, the blue media thinks it’s okay to start asking questions again.
Obviously, Cotton agrees, our intelligence community should keep trying to get to the bottom of this. But at the end of the day, the Chinese Community Party is the only one with answers — and Joe Biden should have been demanding them from day one. Instead, he’s been too busy coddling China to hold anyone accountable for a pandemic that could have been stopped before any Americans died. “If China had acted in a civilized fashion and told the world, told the WHO, told America and Japan and South Korea and Germany and other countries that could provide experts, perhaps we could have kept this a local outbreak. It wouldn’t have become the worst pandemic in a century.” But China Is malevolent, Cotton warns. They have complete disregard for their own people and the people around the world. “And they have to be held responsible for that. It’s time for the civilized world to lower the boom for what China has done to the world these last 18 months.”
Meanwhile, if grilling Anthony Fauci were an Olympic sport, almost every Senate Republican would medal. Earlier this week, the GOP leaders took turns pointing out his conflicting statements, his misguided advice, and his blind trust for the bad actors at WHO. The hot seat only got hotter when the topic turned to $600,000 in taxpayer dollars that NIH earmarked for the Wuhan lab for a supposed bat-to-human coronavirus transmission study. “You have no way of knowing whether they did or not, except you trust them. Is that right?” Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) asked. Fauci admitted that no, he had no way to guarantee they wouldn’t lie. He went on to defend the “integrity” of WHO, prompting Kennedy — one of the most colorful senators — to say, “If you turn President Xi upside down and shake, WHO would fall out of his pocket.”
For now, most of the senators suspect, the only reason Biden is looking at this is because the country is forcing him to. “We need to find out what happened, so it never happens again,” Senator Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) agreed. “As you know,” Cotton said, “China isn’t terribly popular with the American people. Imagine how China will be viewed,” Cotton said, “not just in the United States, but around the world, if it turns out that Chinese communist incompetence and deceitfulness was responsible for all the loss of lives, for all the illness, for all the destroyed businesses, for all the lost livelihoods…”
And the more information the American public has, the more pressure they’ll apply to political leaders — even a party like Joe Biden’s, who’s reluctant to take on China. But someone has to, and if Democrats won’t, then voters will just elect people who will.
Originally published here.
This is a publication of the Family Research Council. Mr. Perkins is president of FRC.
