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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

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2025/01/13/bidens-nat-sec-adviser-america-is-much-safer-n2650457

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2025/01/10/army-already-halfway-hitting-its-recruiting-goal-year.html

https://1819news.com/news/item/alabama-members-of-congress-commemorate-fourth-anniversary-of-huntsvilles-selection-as-best-home-for-spacecom

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/pete-hegseth-heads-capitol-hill-fiery-hearing-his-record-plans-shake-up-pentagon

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/business/company-news/2025/01/09/pentagon-chief-austin-rejects-trump-criticism-that-us-military-is-woke/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/12/08/military-leaders-are-rattled-list-of-woke-officers-group-urges-hegseth-fire.html%3famp

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2025/01/13/hundreds-of-navy-seals-veterans-to-march-in-d-c-to-support-pete-hegseths-confirmation-as-defense-secretary/


2. Live Free or Die

https://redstate.com/wardclark/2025/01/13/concealed-carry-reciprocity-congressional-republicans-are-trying-again-n2184307

https://www.yahoo.com/news/gun-laws-rolling-multiple-states-103026178.html

https://www.wate.com/news/tennessee/gov-lee-signs-bill-preventing-local-government-from-enacting-red-flag-laws/amp/

https://www.michigan.gov/whitmer/news/press-releases/2023/05/22/whitmer-signs-extreme-risk-protection-order-legislation-to-keep-michigan-communities-safe

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

https://www.dailywire.com/news/class-act-notre-dame-coach-swats-away-espn-reporters-race-question-after-orange-bowl-win

https://www.npr.org/sections/shots-health-news/2024/07/03/nx-s1-4986385/trans-kids-health-bans-gender-affirming-care

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……

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Rightside Media was created by  Phil Williams, a former Alabama state senator, retired army Colonel, and practicing attorney.

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