America's Talking - Lawmakers to Hold Hearing on ‘Woke Ideologies’ Influencing the Military

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to America in Focus, powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Vice President of News and content at the Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. Joining me today, as he does each and every week is the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief Casey Harper. Casey, this week, Congress held a hearing on what Republicans say are woke policies within the U.S. military, policies that the GOP says endangers U.S. security by, among other things, significantly hindering, recruitment efforts. Tell us about this. Yeah, this is a very interesting story and has big implications. I think it's worth addressing first this word that has become so politicized, woke. And I think people might struggle to define it on one side of the political spectrum, the word woke engenders a kind of rage and frustration at the way that certain ideas are being pushed on people. On another side of the political spectrum, when someone hears woke, they kind of roll their eyes and say, here we go again. What even, you know, what even is that? And so, you know, it's definitely true that lawmakers are using this language of this woke ideology influencing the military.

Starting point is 00:01:07 But what they really mean by that is, is this. There's a growing trend of some of the more progressive and aggressive liberal ideologies on race and gender influencing military training, Air Force, you know, for example, Air Force Academy training. So military academy training, HR training within the military. and even the schools that educate the children of military service members, right? And so, you know, I'm sure whether our listeners have experienced it personally or they've just read about it and heard about it on the news, these ideas are maybe more, more so even than other parts of the country being pushed to the military level because of really the federal government's role and the federal government for a variety of reasons, partially President Biden, but even before him, has embraced the DEI critical race theory, you can call it woke agenda. And they've really mandated that it be implemented. Right, exactly.

Starting point is 00:02:06 They've mandated that be implemented across all parts of the government. And as a result, the military has been more quickly pushed into that camp. And so there's a lot of questions. I think good questions being raised by lawmakers and service members saying, wait a minute, does this actually help military readiness? Is this a good use of taxpayer funds? and does this hurt unit cohesion or does this bring division within the ranks of the military? Casey, the military, the Department of Defense, they really have one primary responsibility,

Starting point is 00:02:37 and that has to do with national security. Of course, there's the Russia-Ukraine war is almost at its second year mark. You've got the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel that prompted Israel to invade Gaza to go after Hamas. The U.S. is financially supporting Israel and Ukraine. in their efforts providing weapons and other things. At the same time, last year, last fiscal year, the U.S. military missed its recruiting goal by 41,000 individuals. I just don't get why these, quote unquote, to use the rights term, woke policies, are a priority right now when, let's face it, the world's not in a great place right now. And the U.S.'s role in national, of course, you also have

Starting point is 00:03:25 the border security crisis at the southern border with Mexico. I just don't understand why this is an issue right now. Yeah, I mean, these international and domestic issues certainly highlight and bring more scrutiny to what the military is succeeding at, if they're not succeeding at, securing the border, dealing with some of these conflicts, or, you know, for example, the U.S. just initiated airstrikes against the Houthis to protect, I believe, the Suez Canal. And so there's a lot of things going on. I think it's a good question to say,

Starting point is 00:03:55 Is this a good use of resources and focus and time? And you might say, well, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. And maybe that's true. But, you know, a big bureaucracy can only do so much. And several, you know, multi-theater wars is a lot to do. And so you mentioned the recruiting goal of 41,000 short. It's worth noting that that recruiting goal is 41,000 short only after the branches lowered their goals to be more realistic. So the problem is actually much greater than that.

Starting point is 00:04:24 because they've seen this decline in recruiting, so they made their goals less ambitious. And then even with those less ambitious goals, they still fell short. Now, it's probably a very complex problem. There's a lot of reasons why people do and do not join the military. But one of the key ones is that family members are not recommending that their family, you know, who join the military, they're not telling their family, hey, you should join the military to. The dad who was in the military is not telling his son, you should sign up nearly as often. And so the lawmakers at the, there was a congressional hearing this week on this very issue, and lawmakers, among other experts, have said that the politicization of the military is a big reason why people are not recruiting to the same degree, their own family to join it. Because, you know, the idea is that you can only sit through so many trainings on how all white people are racist and how white privilege is one of the biggest problems facing the country before you use.

Starting point is 00:05:23 say, you know, this isn't for me and this isn't for my family. This isn't my dad's military, basically. And so that's the concern. Is this affecting recruitment? Is it a distraction? There's definitely our taxpayer dollars being spent on this for consultants, for trainings. You know, there was a, you know, I covered last year a story about how Air Force at the Air Force Academy, the students were being taught at length about pronoun usage. You know, so I think, you know, These things are happening. This is not a one-off. This is not an isolated incident.

Starting point is 00:05:56 It's happening throughout the military, simultaneous to a drop-in recruitment and a seemingly disorder and chaos all around the world. There's also the potential, and it could happen any day, any week, any month now, of China invading Taiwan. That's another international concern. The millions of people that have flooded into the United States from Mexico, including known or, hundreds and hundreds of known or suspected terrorists. It just seems like the military needs to get its act together. We've seen that stockpiles of weapons, particularly because of the Ukraine War and all the

Starting point is 00:06:33 weapons that we've supplied Ukraine and their defense against Russia's invasion that has been depleted. The U.S. weapons supply has been depleted. It just seems like there's much more pressing issues right now when it comes to national security. And, you know, with, yeah, Congress holds a lot of. hearings, they don't seem to get anything done. So I just, I don't know what the answer is from here. I think, well, I want to highlight one problem. I think the, is this a distraction question is a really good one. There's another one that if you study military history or even just listen to

Starting point is 00:07:06 modern military experts and generals, morale and unit cohesion is a fundamental part of military readiness and military strength. You know, from the outside of the military, we might think about it, like a corporation. And if it could be, you know, a big corporation has to have some GI trainings, as long as the bottom line stays okay, they can probably do that. But from someone inside the military's perspective, especially in leadership, although the very top of leadership is pushing a lot of this down on everyone else. But from leadership's perspective, it is a crucial resource. Morale is a crucial resource. Unite cohesion is a crucial resource. And so if you have some kind of teaching that is alienating, you know, black and white service members from one

Starting point is 00:07:50 another or pushing out white service members or making them feel a certain way, then those, are they going to be less likely to lay to jump on a grenade, right? Is there going to be a less of a sense of brotherhood, which is brotherhood is not just a nice feature of the military. It actually makes the military stronger. Studies have shown this, you know, service members will report this and tell you this, that that sense of camaraderie, that sense of unity within the unit is not just a nice, warm feeling. It actually makes them fight better. It makes them more effective. It makes them communicate better. And it translates to real results on the battlefield. And so it's not a small thing to degrade the morale and the unity of the military over time. It has real world implications,

Starting point is 00:08:32 which are coming, as you said, at a time when we might need the success of the military more than we have in a long time. Casey, all very good points. Thank you, as usual, for your insight into this very important story. Listeners can keep up with our reporting on this topic at the centersquare.com, but we are out of time. For Casey Harper, I'm Dan McKeel. Please subscribe. Thank you for listening. Get creative with Skillshare. Explore thousands of hands-on creative classes with one inspiring membership. Watch, play, learn, discover. Follow the link in our show description to join Skillshare today and get one month free.

America's Talking - Lawmakers to Hold Hearing on ‘Woke Ideologies’ Influencing the Military

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.