1-14-25
Monologue:
Woke-Washing the Military
Triple Dipper:
1. Military Minded
2. Live Free or Die
3. Death of Wokeness
Guests
NONE
Resources
1. Military Minded
https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/01/13/biden-state-department-speech-foreign-policy/
https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-i-built-most-competent-foreign-policy-team-in-u-s-history
2. Live Free or Die
https://www.yahoo.com/news/gun-laws-rolling-multiple-states-103026178.html
https://www.nraila.org/articles/20250108/illinois-gun-seizure-mandate-passes-house-headed-to-governors-desk
3. Death of Wokeness
https://www.dailywire.com/news/wokeness-is-dying?topStoryPosition=3
https://apnews.com/article/mcdonalds-diversity-dei-goals-845d94cd46511341a43e98e057b0fa8e
Rightside Way Monologue
Today Pete Hegseth, President Donald Trumps nominee for Defense Secretary,
begins the official confirmation process with a hearing before the Senate Armed
Services Committee…..there’s a lot of talk about Hegseth’s qualifications….his
time as a media personality…..his military record…..but true to form the liberal
press has glommed onto something that fits their favorite narrative…..horror of
horrors Hegseth has announced his support for restoring the historic names of US
military bases….say it ain’t so! Glorification of Confederate Generals! It’s
racism!.....no its not…..take a breath Nancy…..first of all, any naming conventions
would likely require Congressional approval because the naming commission was
authorized by Congress to do certain things…..but, there is strong sentiment that
the nine bases that were renamed during Biden’s tenure as President were a
massive overreach, an erasing of history, and woke-washing of culture……but the
breathless liberal media smells a chance to get their racism mantra back in the
forefront and they are salivating at the chance……
In 1986, while a young cadet working toward my Commission as an Army Officer I
had my first foray to a place that became like a second home in some ways…..I
can still remember driving through the gates of Fort Benning, GA, for the first time
in August of ’86 to attend the US Army Airborne School and 3 weeks later
departing again wearing the silver wings of a paratrooper…..I was hooked on that
place and in many ways I still am……over the next three decades I came and went
from Fort Benning….staying at first in the troop barracks and scrubbing the floors
and latrines to a high shine to pass inspection, later to the quads as a young
Lieutenant where I had my own room and felt like a real person, up to the point
that I had a senior Officers billet and attended receptions at the beautiful
Antebellum house called Riverside where every Post Commander has lived for the
last 100+ years……At Fort Benning I have tramped the woods, run the streets,
jumped on the drop zones, sat in the classrooms, dined in the mess halls, and
marched on the parade grounds……I have walked among the monuments to past
paratroopers and Rangers and Infantrymen and marveled at what they must have
gone through……I was trained there to become a paratrooper, a jumpmaster, an
Infantry Officer, a Pathfinder, and eventually attended the Battalion Commanders
pre-command course there a few years before I retired…..while at Benning I was
sworn into the Order of Saint Maurice and later in life I had the absolute
unbelievable honor of going there again to pin paratrooper wings on my own son
and to watch him graduate from his own basic Officers course……to say that Fort
Benning has been a part of my life is an understatement……..and you know what?
In all the years of sweat and toil and learning and leading at Fort Benning Georgia
I never once felt like it was an oppressive place because it had the name
“Benning”…….I’m going to bet that there are a bunch of you in this audience who
have had Fort Benning in your life at some point and like me I’m going to bet that
it never once crossed your mind that the name Benning came from a Confederate
General……you know why? Because the Army is not racist and no one who ever
trained at Benning was oppressed by its name……..But the woke-washing of
America over the past few years foisted the belief that a part of what made the
US Army miss its recruiting goals and become less combat effective was that
bases like Benning, Bragg, Rucker, Stewart and Hood had oppressive
names…..General Jack Keane said that in all the years troops have trained at
Benning that no one was ever impacted by the name because no one was there to
focus on the name……no one even knew…..but the Department of Defense
naming commission spent millions of dollars to rename every street, post, base,
monument, building, parade field, and latrine that may in any way be connected
to the name of someone who served in the Confederacy 150 years ago…..
The history of Fort Benning alone is significant…..originally home to the major
schools of the Infantry it was branched into a manuever warfare center in 2011
when the Armor school was brought there……you cannot drive around Benning
and not be awed by its history…..from the mighty Airborne towers, the statues
and monuments and the streets named for famous battles…..great leaders like
Dwight Eisenhower, George C. Marshall, David Grange, William Westmoreland,
Colin Powell, HR McMaster, David Petraeus, Michael Flynn, and so many others
have all served or trained there……and I would be quick to guess that none of
them ever went through Benning feeling as though they had been oppressed
because of its name……I doubt that any man, of any color, served at Benning and
became less efficient as a leader of troops because of its name…..but the same
woke-washers that proclaimed climate change as one of our key national security
issues, and forced the end of over 8,000 military careers for a covid vaccine
mandate, determined it necessary to spend over $21 million to change
names……names changed to signify to generations to come that we had a
problem that we really didn’t have…..you see when cancel culture decides that we
have a solution in need of a problem they will turn to the specter of racism as one
of their pieces of low hanging fruit whether it really exists or not….the question
that we must ask though is where does it end?......do we need to take books off of
the shelves that discuss the history of the Confederacy…..do we need the National
Park Service to close the battlefield parks at Chancellorsville, Manassas, Richmond
and Kennesaw since those are parks on sites where the Confederacy won
battles…….is it time now for the State of Alabama to rename Lee County or to
revisit the existence of the Port of Mobile since the Battle of Mobile Bay took
place there, or even close down the State Capital Building in Montgomery since
Jefferson Davis once stood on its steps to be sworn in as the President of the
Confederacy……Should the State of Tennessee disavow the Battle of Lookout
Mountain or Missionary Ridge?
The part of history that the naming commission has overlooked is that the naming
of southern bases and Army posts using names of former Confederate Officers
was not to honor them so much as it was to extend an olive branch to the
populace in the wake of reconstruction when there were still many survivors of
the war between the states……. the War Department determined to show the
populace in those areas that it was a new day, that there was grace and
forgiveness, and a moving forward together…..it was well received and for over
100 years there has been no question and Benning has been a hero factory
producing legends of all races, creeds and colors who may have come into the
Army looking one way but they all left Benning the same color of green and
speaking the same language…..my father, a career Army Officer himself told me
once how proud he was that the Army was the first true melting pot of society
where any person could rise through the ranks……
Some of the new names are tied to actual legends that I respect….not the least of
which is Fort Benning being renamed in honor of Lt. General Hal Moore who was
memorialized for his heroic leadership in the Ia Drang Valley in Vietnam…..but
some of the names, like Fort Bragg being rebranded as Fort Liberty, just seem
lame…..they could have at least named Fort Bragg as Fort Gavin after the
legendary paratrooper General James Gavin who made 4 combat jumps with the
82 nd Airborne in World War II…..but whatever…..here’s an idea…..how about the
Congress authorize the naming of the bases to be vested in the states that host
them now…..with strong deference being given to the local communities where
those bases and posts are located…..and allow the local folks to have a true say in
it all…..not some nameless woke-washing politician from DC who doesn’t care
about your local feelings…..and if the people of Fayetteville NC want to keep the
name Fort Liberty, fine ….but if they want to bring back the name Fort Bragg, let
that be their choice……Fort Moore…..maybe you bring it back to Fort Benning, and
if they did the world would not end, and slavery would not be reinstituted, and
young men and women of all races would go there and become warriors and not
a one of them would care about the name…… but maybe I’m nostalgic, or old
fashioned or stuck in my ways…..but it will always be Fort Benning to me and in
my memories…..the home of the Airborne and the Infantry!
I look forward to the day that our US military is taken off the list of social
experimentation projects and returned to its rightful place as the greatest
warfighting entity in the history of the world……no matter what the bases are
named…..
And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way……