Webster

The Constitution was made to guard the people against the dangers of good intentions." --American Statesman Daniel Webster (1782-1852)


Friday, July 4, 2025

Happy Birthday America!!!

 


                                                  Picture is off my front porch.


On this day back in 1776 the 13 Colonies decided to make a break of it and form their own country.  We have been fighting the Crown for a year at this point, but we still viewed ourselves as "loyal Subjects" and hoped that King George the III and his ministers would see reason and "lighten up", but too much blood has been spilt at this point and the founders figured "Why not go for broke, if we lose anyway, we will swing from the yardarm as traitors to the crown at this point", so they sent a "Declaration of Independence" announcing our Independence from the crown and made the fight "official.

In Congress, July 4, 1776

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.


Georgia

Button Gwinnett

Lyman Hall

George Walton

 

North Carolina

William Hooper

Joseph Hewes

John Penn

 

South Carolina

Edward Rutledge

Thomas Heyward, Jr.

Thomas Lynch, Jr.

Arthur Middleton

 

Massachusetts

John Hancock

Maryland

Samuel Chase

William Paca

Thomas Stone

Charles Carroll of Carrollton

 

Virginia

George Wythe

Richard Henry Lee

Thomas Jefferson

Benjamin Harrison

Thomas Nelson, Jr.

Francis Lightfoot Lee

Carter Braxton

 

Pennsylvania

Robert Morris

Benjamin Rush

Benjamin Franklin

John Morton

George Clymer

James Smith

George Taylor

James Wilson

George Ross

Delaware

Caesar Rodney

George Read

Thomas McKean

 

New York

William Floyd

Philip Livingston

Francis Lewis

Lewis Morris

 

New Jersey

Richard Stockton

John Witherspoon

Francis Hopkinson

John Hart

Abraham Clark

 

New Hampshire

Josiah Bartlett

William Whipple

 

Massachusetts

Samuel Adams

John Adams

Robert Treat Paine

Elbridge Gerry

 

Rhode Island

Stephen Hopkins

William Ellery

 

Connecticut

Roger Sherman

Samuel Huntington

William Williams

Oliver Wolcott

 

New Hampshire

Matthew Thornton

Wednesday, July 2, 2025

SGM of the Marines kinda stepped in it using a pic of Audie Murphy for a Uniform standards post.

 

Apparently the SGM  Major used a blurred Pic of the most famous soldier of all time to make a point about uniform standards and caused a bit of a tiff.  Im kinda shocked that he didn't know who "Audie Murphy" was.  I get the point about maintaining standards but really?  a bit of research would have quickly fixed this before posting it.  Even me being a Army guy knows who "Chesty Puller" is.  and the funny thing is that Audie tried to join the marines first, but he was too short so he went to the Army instead.


     I shamelessly snagged this off "Task and Purpose"

A run-of-the-mill Instagram post about uniform standards by the top enlisted Marine backfired when soldiers and Marines alike realized the uniform in question belonged to World War II's most decorated soldier.

Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz
Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz posted a photo on Instagram that took issue with the uniform of a blurred-out but still recognizable Audie Murphy. The internet did not approve. Photo via Instagram.

Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz was just doing what many senior enlisted Marines do: Looking out for uniform standards. Instead, he stepped into a hornet’s nest.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, Ruiz used an old picture to make a point about uniform standards, blurring out the face of a soldier wearing a medal-strewn World War II-era uniform

“Uniform standards have entered the group chat!” Ruiz wrote on two slides. “Exhibit A: This is what it looks like when we don’t have a standard. Make sure to check out MCO 1020.34H for all uniform guidance!”

However, the photo was of Audie Murphy, the single most decorated American soldier of World War II and one of the most decorated American service members of all time.

Medal of Honor recipient 2nd Lt. Audie Murphy. Army photo.

The image was quickly taken down after soldiers and Marines on the services’ respective Reddit boards had a field day as they united online in confusion and sarcasm to (lightly) roast the top-enlisted Marine.

Ruiz, who seems to be well-liked as a senior Marine who has kept his focus on issues of importance to junior Marines, whether they be serious or just plain funny, quickly deleted the post and appeared to issue a full apology on Instagram.

“Earlier today I posted a picture of a great American hero, Audie Murphy,” Ruiz wrote in an Instagram story. “In poor taste, I linked his uniform to today’s regulations. My sincere apologies, as I meant no disrespect. There is a history linked to that photo and why his decorations are where they are. It shouldn’t have happened and there are no excuses.”

Separately, a spokesperson for the Marine Corps told Task & Purpose the post was an “unforced error where the message being sent should have used a Marine as an example.” It said that there was no intent to “disparage a great American soldier.”

In light of all this, we felt it might be handy to create a simple and easy-to-follow primer for any other sergeants major or first sergeants out there who may want to harken back to history for examples of why the Corps is so hardcore on uniform regulations.

Next time, leave Audie Murphy out of it and just use a photo like this:

Sgt. Maj. of the Marine Corps Carlos Ruiz

Tuesday, July 1, 2025

"What are the Benefits of Gun Registrations"?

 

 I saw this question and decided to answer it honestly, I did it while I was on break at work, and here and there if you know what I mean.  I decided to give it a fair answer than rant and scream about it.   here is the answer I gave on the Quora forum:

     Initially it could be used to track the ownership of a firearm in the case of its use in a crime and if the owner can account for it. Basically, narrows down the subject pool. That being said, once the government goes from benevolent to tyrannical, once the government has that information, once they decide that a certain class of people cannot own any sort of firearms, they already know who they are. This happened to the German Jews in the 1930's when their rights as German citizens were stripped by edicts from the Nazi government, one of them being that they had to wear that “Star of David” on their clothing, and all jew owned businesses had to identify as such with signs. This of course led to “ Krystallnacht” where the brownshirts trashed Jewish owned businesses because they were blamed for the “Reichtag” fire which the Nazi's actually set but used to blame the Jews. The results were the destruction of the identified Jewish businesses. They also had their firearms seized earlier because the German government knew about them before the Nazi's took over and the Nazi's used the power of government to strip away the means of defense of their political opponents. You can't do the “Final solution to the Jewish problem “if they make it difficult on you. “ It can't happen today” is the phrase bandied about, but I will bring up a recent history event….Covid…remember during the height of the scare there were talks of stripping the rights of the “unvaxxed” putting them in camps, taking their kids away “ firing them, and banishing them from society, all in the name of “ the public good”, the same language used by the brownshirts against the Jews in Germany in the 1930's. Remember the hysteria? The fear? Certain groups tapped into that fear for their own purposes. We as a society are still recovering from it. Australia did put people that refused to vaxx into camps. As I recall in Victoria I believe, going by memory here. That is one of the fears is that if the government goes full tyrannical, and your guns are already seized they can do to you and yours with no repercussions. Sure, they can put you in a camp but if they get pain in the process, it slows them down.

I have used this quote before, the government is to serve the people, not the other way around, and right now there are a lot of people that believe that they by their schooling, family and beliefs have it in their hearts that they know what is best for “us” and if we just would get with the program under their tutelage utopia will arrive. Well real life doesn’t work like that, they believe that there should be 2 classes of people, the rich and the poor and the poor would be beholding to them for leadership, guidance, sustenance and so forth. Such people if they depend on you, will do what you say. Well, the middle class we tend to have our own wealth and tend as a group to be armed. so, they can’t run roughshod over us because we don’t depend on them.

It is a truism of history, registration always eventually to confiscation. And after confiscation, comes persecution, The Turks did it to the Armenians, Stalin did it to the Ukrainians, The Holomdor is real to them. Pol Pot did it to his fellow Cambodians, and there are more examples in history. The truth of it is that there comes no good if the government knows how among the citizens are armed. kinda keeps them honest. And if someone says “You can’t fight an F-15” or some other high tech weapon system, as I recall the Vietnamese did pretty good as did the Afghans.

Monday, June 30, 2025

Monday Music "Your Wildest Dreams" By the Moody Blues

 This song came came out while I was stationed in Fort Devens for A.I.T. Remember I associate songs to places and people and times. I didn't like the state or the location a whole lot. I did like the material though.  I was toward the end of my time at A.I.T. it was a 9 month course, (Yeah it sucked at times)  Ayer Massachusetts existed to separate the G.I from their dollar as fast as possible with as much pain to the G.I in the process.  No we were not appreciated.  I will relate a story, I had gotten orders to go to Germany and in my orders was authorization to ship P.O.V. (Basically I could ship my car to Germany and the Army would pay for it.) and I went to the Ford dealership *Ayer Ford* and I was looking at a Tempo GT 


  I always thought the Car was futuristic and cool looking. well anyway...They wanted me to get approval from my Commanding officer...*Say What?* My Credit was good ...for a 20 year old soldier anyway...before even running my paperwork through Ford Motor Credit.   I was pissed.  So I went to *Lunenburg Ford* 12 miles away and bought my Mustang, and they didn't care, as long as my credit was good....and no I didn't get the 28% APR, LOL and no I didn't marry the stripper either.


  Not My mustang, but one like it, Same color and interior.   Well anyway.  I was good friends with a girl, she had joined after her son had died, she was married and her Husband was a Vietnam War veteran.  This was something that she felt that she had to do.  We became really good friends in the course, she was my bestie. we were inseparable, and no we never did anything inappropriate.  She was married and I ain't Jodi. Yeah I still think of her when I hear this song and hope she found the peace she was looking for.  I lost touch with her when I went to Germany, and she went to her Duty Station, through the mist of time I can't remember what it was, I want to say it was either Fort Lee, Meade or Lewis.  






"Your Wildest Dreams" is a 1986 single by the progressive rock band The Moody Blues, and it was written by the band's lead guitarist Justin Hayward. The song was first released as a single, and was later released on the Moody Blues 1986 album The Other Side of Life. It was a top-10 hit in the United States, peaking at #9, which had not happened to a Moody Blues song since "Nights in White Satin" in 1972. The song also became an Adult Contemporary number-one hit, and also charted at number two on the Mainstream Rock chart.
The Moody Blues' previous album, The Present, was relatively unsuccessful, although it did contain a couple of moderately successful singles. This caused the Moody Blues to lose some of their popularity among younger audiences. The success of "Your Wildest Dreams" reintroduced the Moody Blues to this younger audience, and their popularity was boosted even higher than before as a result.
With the band moving towards a more electronic sound, the Moody Blues relied less upon band member Ray Thomas and his flute skills—"Your Wildest Dreams" was one of the first singles not to feature Thomas at all—though Thomas would continue to be a major asset to the Moody Blues' concerts, as he would continue to play flute on their earlier songs, in addition to being a back-up vocalist.
The lyrics of "Your Wildest Dreams" tell the story of a man who is remembering his first love, and wonders if she remembers him the way he remembers her. "Your Wildest Dreams" was followed up by a sequel in 1988. The sequel is titled "I Know You're Out There Somewhere", and it appears on the Moody Blues album Sur la Mer.
A music video was also produced for "Your Wildest Dreams", which received a Billboard Video of the Year award. The video was frequently featured on MTV. The model in the video is Janet Spencer-Turner.

Friday, June 27, 2025

"What is a War College"

 

I always thought a "War College" was a college that prepared the mid level officers that were fast tracked for command "how to command", by the theories of "Sylvanus Thayer" and and other notables of Navel history on how to fight and win and understand the future of naval warfare.  I want the same for the U.S Army.  I recall this is how the U.S. Army reformed itself after the doldrums days after Vietnam was the superb institutional educational system they had and used to to form "Air-land Battle" and how the U.S Military would disrupt the Soviet monolithic response to battle.

   I shamelessly clipped this from CDR Salamander.


 

What is a War College?

mission, distraction, & a resignation

 

There is, at last, a battle to claw back our war colleges and service academies from a few decades of an unchallenged march through these institutions by the academic left that has changed so many of our civilian institutions.

We’ve covered this topic often here, but today we’re going to look specifically at a story unfolding at our Naval War College that frames this well.

At its core, this pushback is based on different views of what our war colleges should be. Is there a need for war colleges to replicate the latest socio-political trends and fads found at civilian universities, or should war colleges focus their finite time and resources in areas that cannot be found in civilian universities that can help support the development of strategic thinking in our field grade and higher officers?

We can frame the argument, no pun intended here, on the right and left sides, by two articles that nicely mirror each other not just in title, but in substance.

First, a Substack I wrote a little more than two years ago, Our Navy Needs More of the War, Less of the College.

Our war colleges are not what you think they are.

With each passing year there is less focus on war, and more on college. At the Naval War College, just getting additional time, money, faculty, and leadership focus on the “naval” portion has become a challenge with all the other ancillary agendas trying to keep pace with the cool kids cross-town at Salve Regina University.

…these are all serious people and the argument could be made that they address serious issues, but is the Naval War College - and the finite money, people, and time that it has to serve the world’s second largest navy (still getting used to saying that) the correct venue?

Some assumedly well meaning people made decisions, purchased additional positions and departments, and headed certain directions that may have been more suitable at a different institution. I don’t know, Oberlin College? Maybe Bryn Mawr College … Brown University if you squint a bit … but again, I think it is very fair to ask if this area of study is really the highest and best use of the time, money, and faculty at the Naval. War. College.

The Naval War College, incidentally, of a nation whose military has not done a very good job of seeing threats, fighting threats, and winning wars in the last few decades - not to mention needs to think real hard about what it will mean to be the world’s second largest navy.

Winners have the luxury of vanity. Those on the struggle bus need to master the fundamentals and work harder.

The left side of the argument was written seven years ago, two years before my Substack, via the Army War College in an article titled, Too Much War, Not Enough College, by Jennifer Mittelstadt.

I encourage you to read her full argument, where she includes a link to a Naval War College PME professor, but here is the core of where many of the arguments lead to that brought us here: the self-focused needs of the instructors themselves; attempts to replicate the liberal arts graduate schools they are familiar with as opposed to understanding the mission of the war college they now find themselves in; and … of course.

1. Employ More Civilian Academics

Employing more full-time, permanent civilian academic instructors will foster connections between civilian society and the military that are essential to healthy democracy and to a well-regulated professional military. Employing more civilian professors brings more people like me – people who know the military only from research – into direct contact with military personnel. This contact allows us to understand the tasks military personnel undertake. A great deal of research documents the military-civilian gap, and many commentators from the military side have bemoaned this separation. Being a civilian at the War College has increased my sense of understanding and ownership of the military, which, after all, is a vital public institution – and one specifically subject to civilian control.

2. Ensure Broad Representation of Academic Fields

Civilians are likely to have broader and more critical views of the military. By “critical”, I do not mean necessarily leveling criticism, though that can be valuable, but taking a holistic, questioning, evidence-based stance toward the military and national security. Coming into classes with an outside perspective is invaluable in an institution that sociologists recognize as a “total institution,” one that, unlike most civilian employment, envelops nearly every aspect of life. Senior military leaders who have grown up in the total institution of the military could hardly fail to have a critical perspective on it; but their critical perspectives are those of insiders, and of personal experience. Outsiders who have different assumptions about the military are more likely to question received wisdom about military and national strategy, defense management, and even operations planning. And civilians—outsiders—can bring civilian institutional experience and evidence-based inquiry to bear on both management and instruction.

3. Reduce the Military Jargon

Civilian instructors provide opportunities for students to interact with the kinds of expert civilians with whom students will work when they assume their next assignments. Students leaving War College take on larger and more complex leadership roles that require cooperation with civilians, many of whom are highly educated and experienced in their respective fields. Military leaders need commensurate educations with civilian counterparts in other federal agencies, in Congress, and in the private sector. Knowing how to speak beyond military jargon, and how to understand their institution from the perspectives of leaders in international relations or systems management are vital to leading the military. Civilian instructors provide such experiences, and their presence in the classrooms will better situate military leaders for post-graduate leadership.

4. Emphasize Diversity and Inclusion

Civilian instructors offer a way to bring much-needed diversity to the War College. The heavy reliance on current and former officers as instructors at the War College produces an over-representation of white male instructors.

So, more “war” or more “college”? That’s the argument.

As a side note, Mittelstadt at the time she wrote that was the Harold K. Johnson Chair of Military History at the U.S. Army War College.

On her wiki page, her selected works are:

·         The Military and the Market: New Histories of War, Capitalism, and Empire, edited with Mark R. Wilson (Philadelphia: Penn Press, 2022)

·         The Rise of the Military Welfare State (Harvard University Press, 2015)

·         Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, co-authored and edited with Premilla Nadasen and Marisa Chappell (New York: Routledge, 2009)

·         From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform, 1945-1964 (University of North Carolina Press, 2005)

Huh.

Anyway.

As those with time in the military like to do, let’s look at the Naval War College’s mission statement:

The mission of the U.S. Naval War College is to educate tomorrow’s leaders, inform today’s decision-makers, and engage with allies and partners on all matters of naval power in order to preserve the peace, respond in crisis, and win decisively in war.

There needs to be an understanding by everyone at the start that our war colleges are not like civilian institutions, nor should they be. The United States and the West are planted thick with civilian institutions of higher learning that study a broad spectrum of topics involving the human condition and industry, yet have but a precious few war colleges.

Time is finite, and career windows to go to war college are narrow for the field grade officers who are the primary core of students there. Decisions have to be made and priorities have to be set.

Into this ongoing discussion come two individuals who are alumni of the Midrats Podcast, Tom Nichols and Pauline Shanks Kaurin. Tom is a former instructor at the Naval War College, and Pauline has resigned her position.

(NB: You can listen to Tom’s visit to Midrats in 2015 here. Pauline was our guest three times in 2018, 2020, and 2024.)

In a recent article in The Atlantic titled A Military-Ethics Professor Resigns in Protest, Tom informs the reader,

(Pauline Shanks Kaurin)’s leaving her position and the institution because orders from President Donald Trump and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, she said, have made staying both morally and practically untenable. Remaining on the faculty, she believes, would mean implicitly lending her approval to policies she cannot support. And she said that the kind of teaching and research the Navy once hired her to do will now be impossible.

In January, Trump issued an executive order, Restoring America’s Fighting Force, that prohibits the Department of Defense and the entire armed forces from “promoting, advancing, or otherwise inculcating the following un-American, divisive, discriminatory, radical, extremist, and irrational theories,” such as “gender ideology,” “race or sex stereotyping,”…

Let’s press the pause button here, because we have some definitions and references that matter and you need to keep in mind as it refers to instruction at a war college as you read the rest.

Tom puts “gender ideology” and “race or stereotyping” in quotes because they are in the Executive Order (EO) he references. Let’s go to the EO and pull the definitions from them.

The purpose of the EO was,

Section 1. Purpose. As Chief Executive and as Commander in Chief, I am committed to meritocracy and to the elimination of race-based and sex-based discrimination within the Armed Forces of the United States. No individual or group within our Armed Forces should be preferred or disadvantaged on the basis of sex, race, ethnicity, color, or creed.

For “gender ideology” it references section 2(f) of the EO of January 20, 2020. That EO defines it as;

(f) “Gender ideology” replaces the biological category of sex with an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity, permitting the false claim that males can identify as and thus become women and vice versa, and requiring all institutions of society to regard this false claim as true. Gender ideology includes the idea that there is a vast spectrum of genders that are disconnected from one’s sex. Gender ideology is internally inconsistent, in that it diminishes sex as an identifiable or useful category but nevertheless maintains that it is possible for a person to be born in the wrong sexed body.

For “race or stereotyping”, it references EO 13950, Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping. In Section 2(b);

(b) “Race or sex stereotyping” means ascribing character traits, values, moral and ethical codes, privileges, status, or beliefs to a race or sex, or to an individual because of his or her race or sex.

Now you understand the no-go zones defined in the “orders” that people have issues with.

Let’s get back to Tom’s article.

Many professors at military institutions began to see signs that they might soon be prohibited from researching and publishing in their fields of study.

Welcome to the military. If your area of study is not in line with the needs of the service, then perhaps your services are best invested elsewhere.

This is where Pauline started to perceive that she had a problem with her position as the James B. Stockdale Chair in Professional Military Ethics.

…one day, shortly after the executive order in January, she was walking through the main lobby, which proudly features display cases with books by the faculty, and she noticed that a volume on LGBTQ issues in the military had vanished. The disappearance of that book led Pauline to seek more clarity from the college’s administration about nonpartisanship, and especially about academic freedom.

…jumpy military bureaucrats started tossing books and backing out of conferences. Pauline became more concerned. Newport’s senior administrators began to send informal signals that included, as she put it, the warning that “academic freedom as many of us understood it was not a thing anymore.” Based on those messages, Pauline came to believe that her and other faculty members’ freedom to comment publicly on national issues and choose research topics without institutional interference was soon to be restricted.

It would be helpful to know what book that was, and again, this is not a small liberal arts graduate school. It administrators were trying to shape the course of instruction away from the core requirements of a war college towards something more in line with the critical studies department, then that is their fault.

“if we were thinking we had academic freedom in our scholarship and in the classroom, we were mistaken.” (Other faculty present at the meeting confirmed to me that they interpreted the message from the college’s leadership the same way; one of them later told me that the implication was that the Defense Department could now rule any subject out of bounds for classroom discussion or scholarly research at will.) Pauline said there were audible gasps in the room, and such visible anger that it seemed to her that even the administrators hosting the meeting were taken aback. “I’ve been in academia for 31 years,” she told me, and that gathering “was the most horrifying meeting I’ve ever been a part of.”

Pauline stated in March of 2021,

“I teach Critical Race Theory as part of what I do academically.”

Clearly that is a no-go in 2025.

The next quote is curious as NWC’s provost, Stephen Mariano, is largely responsible for the position NWC found itself in the winter of 2025. In talking to present faculty at NWC who know him personally, he is not “right wing” by any stretch of the imagination. Ahem.

In March, Pauline again sought clarity from college leaders. They were clearly anxious to appear compliant with the new political line. (“We don’t want to end up on Fox News,” she said one administrator told her.) She was told her work was valued, but she didn’t believe it. “Talk is cheap,” she said. “Actions matter.” She said she asked the provost point-blank: What if a faculty member has a book or an article coming out on some controversial topic? His answer, according to her: Hypothetically, they might consider pulling the work from publication. (Mariano denies saying this and told me that there is no change in college policy on faculty publication.)

Every government employee knows the bureaucratic importance of putting things on paper. Pauline’s current project is about the concept of honor, which necessarily involves questions regarding masculinity and gender—issues that could turn the DOD’s new McCarthyites toward her and her work.

Hold on a minute. Point of order. It is not “necessary” to involve questions of “masculinity and gender” into the concept of honor…unless you feel compelled to bring critical theory into every topic. This would align with critical theory that you finds its way into many of Pauline’s work.

Herbert Marcuse, a key figure in the Frankfurt School, argued in his 1964 work, One-Dimensional Man, that critical analysis should challenge the "totalitarian" nature of advanced industrial society, suggesting that no area of social life should be exempt from critical scrutiny. You can find similar writings from the founders of critical theory and current practitioners along the same lines.

Again, interesting area of study at Brown, perhaps, but down the road in Newport?

Tom’s use of “McCarthyite” seems a bit obtuse, but a poet must be allowed his license.

That is when Pauline reached a fork in the road.

Administrators, she said, told her that they hoped she wouldn’t resign, but that no one was going to put anything in writing. “The upshot,” according to her, was a message from the administration that boiled down to: We hope you can just suck it up and not need your integrity for your final year as the ethics chair.

After that, she told me, her choices were clear. “As they say in the military: Salute and execute—or resign.” Until then, she had “hoped maybe people would still come to their senses.” The promises of seven years ago were gone; the institution now apparently expected her and other faculty to self-censor in the classroom and preemptively bowdlerize their own research. “I don’t do DEI work,” she said, “but I do moral philosophy, and now I can’t do it. I’d have to take out discussions of race and gender and not do philosophy as I think it should be done.” In April, she submitted a formal letter of resignation.

She kept her resignation private until early May, when a professor at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, Graham Parsons—another scholar who teaches ethics in a military school, and a friend of Pauline’s—likewise decided to resign in protest and said that he would leave West Point after 13 years. Hegseth’s changes “prevent me from doing my job responsibly,” he wrote in The New York Times. “I am ashamed to be associated with the academy in its current form.” Hegseth responded on X, sounding more like a smug internet troll than a concerned superior: “You will not be missed Professor Parsons.” The episode changed Pauline’s mind. She felt she owed her friends and colleagues whatever public support and solidarity she could offer them.

Nor are she and Parsons alone. Tom McCarthy, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, in Annapolis, Maryland, recently resigned as chair of the history department rather than remove a paper from an upcoming symposium. And last month, a senior scholar at the Army War College, in Pennsylvania, Carrie Lee, also handed in her resignation, a decision she announced to her friends and followers on Bluesky.

Lee told me in an email that she’d been thinking of leaving after Trump was elected, because it was apparent to her that the Trump administration was “going to try and politicize the military and use military assets/personnel to suppress democratic rights,” and that academic freedom in military schools was soon to “become untenable.” Like Pauline, Lee felt like she was at a dead end: “To speak from within the institution itself will also do more harm than good. So to dissent, I have little choice but to leave,” she said in a farewell letter to her colleagues in April.

As a Tamarian might say, “HMCS Uganda off Okinawa.”

If you feel you must go, then go. At the end of the day, you have to be happy with the person looking back at you in the mirror.

I asked Pauline what she thinks might have happened if she had decided to stay and just tough it out from the inside. She “absolutely” thinks she’d have been fired at some point, and she didn’t want such a firing “to be part of the legacy of the Stockdale Chair.” But then I asked her if by resigning, she was giving people in the Trump administration, such as Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought—who once said that his goal was to make federal workers feel “trauma” to the point where they will quit their jobs—exactly what they want: Americans leaving federal service.

She didn’t care. “When you make a moral decision, there are always costs.” She dismissed what people like Vought want or think. “I’m not accountable to him. I’m accountable to the Lord, to my father, to my legacy, to my children, to my profession, to members of the military-ethics community. So I decided that I needed to resign. Not that it would change anyone’s mind, but to say: This is not okay. That is my message.”

I don’t think it was necessary for her to leave, and I believe that she was poorly served by an overly heated environment at NWC that I am sure (because people there have been telling me for years) became used to the steady drift to being a butched up liberal arts graduate school.

If you get a chance to see what we talked to Pauline about on the three Midrats episodes as linked above, you see the value of much of her area of expertise could have continues to bring to NWC. There are very few places in the world, especially in academia, where someone has free-range to write about anything one wants. Just ask any academic who has written against many of the critical theory related positions Pauline has defended.

However, if she has decided at this stage in her career she wishes to invest more time in socio-political gender/sex/sexuality issues, then perhaps this was the right call. That is just my opinion on the outside looking in, and I could be wrong. One way or the other, I wish her well wherever she finds herself in the next year.

(PS: I think it is a grave error for the DOD entities, either well meaning or through malicious compliance, to have gone through and deleted everything from articles (like Mittelstadt’s) to photographs that someone thinks might be offensive to this boogyman they have in their mind. They need to be there because they document the thinking of a time and place and are part of our history. They should all be put back up, or future people will have difficulty in understanding what the argument is about. Memory holing things helps no one. Let ideas stand or fall in the light of day.)


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