(Originally Posted December 2013)
This UPDATE comes by way of MOONBATTERY, and is followed by the an excerpt from the larger piece:
By necessity if not design, political correctness corrodes standards of value. That’s why its first victim is excellence. Those who draw attention to the corrosion are punished as thought criminals.
Progressives are in the process of reducing the military to a social engineering laboratory. It provides an example:
Two Army Green Berets are fighting for their military careers after being associated with an anonymous email that accused their commanders of lowering standards to enable more soldiers — particularly female — to graduate from its prestigious Q-course.
The anonymous email, signed, “A concerned Green Beret,” accused the leaders of the school of “moral cowardice” for lowering the standards…
The author of the email has already been punished. Now the Army is rooting out people who seem likely to agree with it….
Here is more information via BREITBART:, one can understand some of the disciplin, IN THAT, it became widely public. Here is a bit from the email that could have been more constructive… maybe?
- “[The school] has devolved into a cesspool of toxic, exploitive, biased and self-serving senior officers who are bolstered by submissive, sycophantic, and just-as-culpable enlisted leaders,” the email said. “They have doggedly succeeded in two things; furthering their careers, and ensuring that Special Forces [are] more prolific but dangerously less capable than ever before.”
However TRUE it may be… someone’s macheezmo was butt hurt. Here is more on the other two Green Barretes:
Now, the two additional Green Beret instructors, Sergeant First Class Micah J. Robertson, 33, and Sergeant First Class Michael Squires, 31, say they are being punished by association.
Robertson said in an interview that after the email was sent out, commanders put together a list of about seven suspects, including them. He said he believes they were suspected because they had previously brought up concerns during town halls with leaders that were held to solicit their feedback.
Both have been instructors since 2016, before Sonntag took command in June 2017, and say they have witnessed the changes.
“Although Micah and I had nothing to do with it, it spoke true to what’s happening in the regiment. This guy Sonntag, who’s basically the one who’s trying to screw us over — he’s trying to make his career about putting a female through the course,” Squires said. He added that he did not oppose women in Special Forces, but opposed lowering the standards.
“Not only doing that, he’s changed it to where the guys who are coming through the Q-course are not even the same quality of guys we had back in the day. Guys who should have been kicked out for several different things … As instructors, they took our power away.”
Both Robertson and Squires were also served with Article 15s related to the email, as well as to an online app they started building in September 2017 named Kayu, aimed at helping travelers and veterans with similar interests connect.
The Article 15 accused both men of using their positions as instructors “for the purposes of personal gain” by “sourcing information from students that had no relevance to training,” or having their students sign up for the app. Robertson called that “hogwash.”
[….]
Former Green Beret and Ultimate Fighting Champion superstar Tim Kennedy said Army recruitment challenges hit the Green Beret force especially hard.
“[For] Special Forces specifically, we are gonna have the biggest deficit of eligible… population, to select from,” he said on The Joe Rogan Experience on May 17. “You have to have a certain level of intelligence, a certain level of physicality, just to be eligible for Special Forces to pick you… that pool is the smallest that has ever been in history.”
Sonntag himself acknowledged those challenges shortly after taking command. He said at a symposium in November 2017 that all three of the Army Special Operations regiments are facing serious challenges in “force structure changes, pipeline production, and recruiting.”
“We are currently not meeting our production numbers. The restructuring of the 85th [Civil Affairs] Brigade has created an imbalanced CA force structure. And our recruitment is down. If something doesn’t change soon, we will short the operational force drastically over the next five years,” he said.
Robertson said lowering standards in order to produce more Green Berets goes against a fundamental SOF truth that every Green Beret is taught….
I wanted to post some commentary on this issue, the first comes from a Marine posting some open thoughts on this “social engineering” grab by the Marines… joining the other branches in making it less safe on our front-lines in the name of Political-Correctness:
Didn’t see this coming Female Marines have received ample time (over a year) to prepare for this test which, oh by the way, still isn’t to the same standard that it is for males. Sure, they have to get the same bare minimum of 3 that males get. However, their max is 8 whereas mine is 20. So, on a maximum 300 point physical fitness test (PFT) where each of the 3 events (pull ups, crunches, 3 mile run) has the potential to give you 100 points, a female Marine only has to do 40% of the work I have to in order to get 100 points for her pull ups on her PFT. I call bogus. That enables her to be as competitive for promotion as me without having to do the work that I do. Not to mention that she can run her 3 miles in 21 minutes to receive 100 points for that while I have to run it in 18 minutes. If you’ve ever run a 5K, 3 minutes is an eternity between two runners.
Some of you will say “Well, that score is only part of what is looked at when considering promotion.” I will submit this to you. Every promotion board for E-6, E-7, and E-8/E-9 (this board is conducted jointly) in the Marine Corps has an after action review written for it. In every one of those after action reviews, the board members are asked “What is the first tie breaker between two Marines if there is one spot left in their MOS field to promote?” The answer is ALWAYS “Their PFT score.”
Now, some on this site will say that I am butt hurt because 3 females passed our infantry course. That is mentioned in the article. Not the case. When I know that 16 females began the course and only 3 passed, I’m not worried. Of the 16, 9 failed due to performance reasons. That leaves 7. Of those 7, 4 broke due to hip and knee problems. Those are the classic female breaking points that I’ve seen in most female injuries. Those occur very frequently at Parris Island as well. So, we have the 3 left. Now, for males, approximately 79% make it through infantry training. 10% of them are dropped for medical reasons. That leaves approximately 11% for performance/legal issues. For those of you who are Marines, it’s the classic, always spoken of, 10% that fail. Also of note, the females were required to carry each other during casualty evacuation, movement courses, etc. So, a female weighing 110lbs-140lbs is carrying around her equivalent weight while the males are slinging whichever casualty they see over their shoulder.
Again, I call bogus. I’m not a big fan of this social engineering crap. DADT was another issue. I wasn’t a supporter of that. It wasn’t performance based. A gay guy can fireman’s carry a casualty just as effectively (though the casualty may be uncomfortable) as a straight guy. But the vast majority of females cannot do the same. This is a performance thing for me. It is a logistical thing. It is a morale thing. Our military is the best in the world yet we want to mess with the very core of its competence. The members of it. I’m not a big fan.
Technicalities of Gender Differences in Injuries
The above graph comes from a 1998 journal article in The Royal Society of Medicine (you may enlarge the graph by clicking it). The below is from Runners Connect:
The risk of running injuries in women
From looking at the scientific literature, we can see that women indeed do, on the whole, get injured more often than men do. But the difference is not quite as drastic as popular wisdom might hold—a 2002 study of around two thousand patients at a Vancouver, Canada sports injury clinic found that women represented 54% of injuries, with men taking up the other 46%. But among some specific injuries, women are at significantly higher risk.
In particular, the following injuries are 50% more common in women than men:
- Patellofemoral pain syndrome (PFPS or “runner’s knee)
- Iliotibial band (IT band) syndrome
- Stress fractures
- Medial tibial stress syndrome (“shin splints”)
- Achilles tendonitis
- Plantar fasciitis
The LEFT loves to try and change, yes, even what nature has wrought!
Libertarian Republican opines on the topic as well:
…About 55 percent of female recruits tested at the end of boot camp were doing fewer than three pullups; only 1 percent of male recruits failed the test. Upper body strength critical for combat
Continuing:
The Marine Corps has been using it to test upper body strength for men for more than 40 years. And that upper body strength, they say, is necessary to serve in ground combat: to pull yourself out of a canal in Afghanistan, to climb over a mud wall, to carry an ammunition box.
Exit question – So, how many male Marines have to die in combat in order to satisfy the liberal PC affirmative action crazies before women in combat is repealed?
To which I respond, a maximum amount can never satisfy the Left, look at the MILLIONS killed by the progressive Left’s attack on the black African’s lives via the non-existent DDT scare!
As I do in these cases, I always like to post David Mamet’s depth on this topic. I say depth because as a lifelong liberal… he finally applied common sense to his views and you have the following:
There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)
The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government….
Another legislative act talked about in the shop after this conversation about polygamy took place, are politicians listening to environmental activists and legislating the regular light-bulb illegal. In January it will be officially against the law to sell most forms of the standard — incandescent — light-bulb (Breitbart). The idea is that if we use higher efficiency bulbs we will “save the planet” from those evil* fossil fuel emissions. (*I picture ‘blood’ dripping from the word as well as evil laughter off in the distance somewhere)
The problem? In every bulb that researchers tested they found that the protective coating around the light creating ‘phosphor’ was cracked, allowing dangerous ultraviolet rays to escape (RPT). You got it… through legislation, the power of government has made many people, in their own homes mind you, at a far greater risk for skin-cancer. A risk that this Irish-man knows all too well. What sounded good and altruistic, “saving the planet,” ironically has deadly consequences.
(RPT post on Polygamy)
We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.
But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….
….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….
….“Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immediately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….
…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government programs, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a program, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the proprietor a bad business decision.)*
Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority contracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.✣
* No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”
✣ As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will necessarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.
David Mamet, The Secret Knowledge: On the Dismantling of American Culture (New York, NY: Sentinel Publishing, 2011), 116-117, 122, 151, 154.
You see… the left loves to feel good. In doing so they ruin the quality of what they touch. From the lives of those who have contact with our first responders, to even composers looked at as the best in history:
Further poisoning musical judgment is the Left-wing value of diversity. In 2011, Anthony Tommasini, music critic of the New York Times, published his list of the ten greatest composers who ever lived. Absent from the list was Haydn, who Tommasini acknowledged was the father of the symphony, father of the string quartet, and father of the piano sonata. Indeed, one of the avant-garde’s most celebrated modern composers (and a justly celebrated conductor), Pierre Boulez, “thinks Haydn a greater composer than Mozart,” and one of the greatest pianists who ever lived, Glenn Gould, thought Haydn’s piano sonatas were superior to Mozart’s. So, why did the New York Times music critic omit Haydn? Because, he wrote, “If such a list is to be at all diverse and comprehensive, how could 4 of the 10 slots go to composers—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert—who worked in Vienna during, say, the 75 years from 1750 to 1825?” Diversity, not greatness, helped determine the New York Times list of the greatest ten composers. That is why Bartok, Debussy, and Stravinsky made the list but Haydn (and Handel) didn’t.
Dennis Prager, Still the Best Hope: Why the World Needs American Values to Triumph (New York, NY: Broadside Books, 2012), 52-53
Professor Sommers & the Tyranny of Niceness
“The ideal of liberty and freely speaking your mind is so quintessentially American.”
FIRE Board of Advisors member Christina Hoff Sommers is no stranger to speaking her mind. As the author of books such as The War Against Boys and One Nation Under Therapy, Sommers has taken firm stances on many hot button issues.
But in FIRE’s latest video, Sommers argues that today’s students are afraid to express their own potentially controversial viewpoints. She believes students are enveloped within a cultural phenomenon she calls “the tyranny of niceness.” So concerned with not offending their peers’ beliefs, students are hesitant to take a stand for what they believe in.
“What [students] are supposed to be doing is developing ideas and challenging them, learning how to debate,” says Sommers. “We have a generation of kids who can’t argue. They think that will create tension or there’s something wrong with it. Well, if you can’t argue, you can’t think.”
F.I.R.E. has a FaceBook (https://www.facebook.com/thefireorg), a YouTube account, as well as a Twitter account.
Education is the same… the dumbing down of children in the pursuit of “fairness” and “equality” is one of these examples that harms our children’s future. First a commentary about high-school, with a video as an example of the harm done to higher education by the PC crowd ruining education:
It has been no secret that we are having an educational crisis in the United States. Public schools are doing worse and worse, unable to compete with private schools, homeschooled children, and for that matter the rest of the world. Some suggest that this is on purpose. By dumbing down our children we are preparing the future generations for more easily accepting authoritarian control by leftist systems of governance.
We are raising young people in our public schools that are illiterate. We are cramming them with bad information from experimental teaching techniques, political correctness, and liberal philosophies so that they will be good, obedient citizens. Informed voters think for themselves, and seek freedom. A dumbed down population is always eager to depend on the government overlords. Mind-numbed followers don’t ask questions.
History is our students’ worst subject. They can’t even answer the simplest questions about history in regards to the Revolutionary War, World War II, or the Korean War. The fault partly lies in the fact that history textbooks are poorly written, and partly because they are not being taught the information in the first place. I remember when my nephew came to me upset because in his History Class they skipped the chapter about the U.S. Constitution. When he inquired why, the teacher explained to him that the class was limited in time and had to skip unnecessary lessons.
In addition to skipping over important parts of history, new history uses political correctness, and caters to pop culture and particular groups in an effort to appease the same groups the leftist political wing-nuts are also trying to appease. As a result, the generations of students that come out of our schools don’t know our past, and as the old dictum goes, he who forgets the past is doomed to repeat it.
Educational malpractice in the public schools is not only a problem presented by liberal democrats and Marxists that have infiltrated our educational system, but is also the fault of bone-headed, and unconstitutional, legislation like the “No Child Left Behind” Act. The law that was Bush 43’s baby, despite its good intentions, worsened our education system, took the emphasis away from knowing our history, and of course was unconstitutional just like the Education Department. The federal government has no authority over education in this country. That is a local issue, and for good reason.
The problem is, the local systems have been so influenced by federal dictate that they have also become a part of the madness that is dumbing down America. An example revealed itself recently in Florida schools where, because only 27% of the students were able to pass a fourth grade state written exam, the Florida Department of Education lowered the performance level standard. The decision was made by a four-three vote, reasoning that the kids did so poorly because the test was too hard.
Yes, I just defended that our schools belong in local hands, and here we are with a state board doing stupid things too. Understand, though, that is because of the federal, and hard left, influence.
- The Dumbing Down of America – Human Events
- Liberalism and the Dumbing Down of America – American Thinker
- Florida Lowers Passing Grade for State Writing Exam After Over 70 Percent of Fourth Graders Fail – Fox News
See also FIRE’s list of “10 Worst Colleges for Free Speech: 2013”
