By Lt. Col. Chuck Duray, PhD, USA ret, USMA ’92

For many years, the U.S. military possessed technological advantages to destroy the enemy at a high rate through intelligence, communications, and precision fires, which then translated to air, land, sea, and space supremacy.

The lessons of the Russo-Ukraine War, with the intense use of full-person-view drones and precision long range fires, has been a reckoning for the fighting doctrines of both NATO and Russia.

No longer can career-oriented professionals and supporting defense contractors remain in designated safe zones far behind front lines, as command, control, logistics, and support facilities over hundreds and thousands of miles can themselves be attacked with accuracy.

More intense psychological and physical demands will force military professionals to re-acquire education of a deeper sense of purpose beyond Progressive behavioral models that formulize service to the state constructed on psychological norms, crew integrity, routine discipline, and pay/benefits.

As our form of governance is derived from Greek, Roman, and Judeo-Christian principles to guarantee an individual’s rights; likewise, military lethality is derived from the warrior ethos’ of Athens, Rome, and Jerusalem to defend those rights.

The focal symbol on the unit patch at the United States Military Academy at West Point is Pallas Athena.

Adopted in 1950 five years after World War II and the onset of the Korean War as executed under the Truman Doctrine of Containment against Marxism, the symbol was not intended to represent a focus on scholarship or how many cadets became Rhodes Scholars; rather, the focus was on warrior scholarship leading to the bright execution of warfare–the skilled trade of the officer corps.

Thus, graduates who understood the importance of lethality in their trade were prioritized over political ideology.

For example, Confederates such as General Robert E. Lee (Class of 1829) were certainly not celebrated but widely studied and respected as a potential foe.

Identity-based arguments founded in age, race, gender, and quota-based considerations were avoided like the plague, so that the military scholar was disciplined to clearly see how the enemy fought, and how deadly he could be. This is an essential feature to warrior scholarship.

Roman Victus, or a way of life that sustains the courage to face danger, loss, or fear, is clearly both an American public and military vulnerability.

The unusual, sustained suicide rates among the military and veteran population are red-light indicators of a weakness in martial spirit.

In spite of over thirty years of defense department suicide programs and offices that have deemphasized the traditional form of stigma for uncourageous action, the active military rate has maintained a rate higher than the American public, and for 2023, at a rate nine percent higher than 2022 (AUSN, 2024).

This is not entirely the fault of the military, as American culture increasingly encourages a decadent society over the traditional family that staked out its claim and conquered the frontier with faith and resolution for a brighter tomorrow.

Over one hundred years ago, former anarchist turned free marketeer, Elbert Hubbard, warned of “moral stupidity” and an “infirmity of the will” as threats to courage and the ability to lift in American society (Hubbard, 1899).

We can easily find ourselves quoting Schofield’s Definition of Discipline to negate harsh and tyrannical training; however, we must reconsider learning the hard-earned skills in hand-to-hand, knife, bayonet training, and marching-then-counter marching as foundational sets leading to advanced lethality under brutal training conditions.

This cannot be done without an emphasis on forgiveness from past mistakes upon undertaking the Oath to the Constitution, and a rigorous return to basic military training that culminates in a sense of personal redemption as occurred during the Cold War.

Of the Nine Worthies of the Old World once mandated in the study of lethal, military heroes—the 3 Great Pagans, the 3 Great Jews, and the 3 Great Christians—Judas Maccabeus would be the least recognized in the 21st Century Progressive public intellectual and military culture.

While U.S. society has grown spiritually lethargic in the study of Hector of Troy, Joshua of Jericho, and Godfrey de Boullion, whispers of their accomplishments can be recognized with some effort.

Yet, Judas Maccabeus is the military embodiment of resilience, or what has been academically researched and intellectually interpreted during this decade as “grit.”

The Maccabean Revolt against Greek influence in the 2nd Century, BC, was a rural, fundamentalist revolt against Greek tyranny to destroy the Jewish faith and replace it with a Hellenistic identity and culture.

This revolt grounded on for years with limited safe havens for the Maccabees, and involved a highly sophisticated Greek military ultimately defeated by pastoral, base Jewish people who outlasted and outfought their way to restoring their faith, symbolized in the miracle known as Hannukah.

Although hardly known to the academia of today, Maccabeus and the Maccabean Revolt were widely recognized only two generations ago, primarily due to the deep row between Protestants and Catholics.

Even today, Protestants recognize Maccabees I & II as only apocryphal, while Catholics revere these books as both deuterocanonical and part of the Bible.

The last element underscores the need for restoration of the American warrior.

Muscular Christianity influenced a citizen’s moral responsibility to defend the weak and oppressed by connecting America’s foundation of the Creator with combatant bodybuilding through competition, sportsmanship, and honor (U.S. National Archives, 2020).

This was symbolized in unit and branch mottos such as the Special Forces “de oppresso liber” (Latin to liberate and make a free man), as well as private Christian organizations such as the Young Men’s Christian Association, or YMCA (Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911).

Like the slurs used against men of different races from previous eras, Progressives today use slurs such as “misogyny”, “toxic masculinity”, and “non-birthing person” in military education in order to target Christian men—and the father and warrior roles they deem as culturally inferior—to achieve social change (Boyce, 2023; Starnes, 2024; USAFA, 2022; Willis, 2024).

Progressive macro-aggression on this chivalric theme denigrates what was once the central feature for military service, and now these attacks severely impact the recruitment and readiness of noble men.

All military services must recognize their attacks, apologize to the public at large without condition, and reverse course.

References

AUSN Staff. (November 27, 2024). DoD Releases Annual Report on Suicide in the Military: Calendar Year 2023. Association of the United States Navy. Retrieved on December 3, 2024, from https://www.ausn.org/post/dod-releases-annual-report-on-suicide-in-the-military-calendar-year-2023

Boyce, D. (April 6, 2023). Reports of sexual assault at U.S. military academies have significantly increased. National Public Radio. https://www.npr.org/2023/04/06/1168490365/reports-of-sexual-assault-at-u-s-military-academies-have-significantly-increased

Diversity & Inclusion: What It Is, Why We Care, & What We Can Do. (September 7, 2022). United States Air Force Academy. https://cmrlink.org/data/sites/85/CMRDocuments/DI 07 Sept 22 Training_copy.pdf

Hubbard, E. (1899). A message to Garcia. The Philistine.

Starnes, T. (2024, November 16). Air Force Academy refers to dads as ‘non-birthing parents’. Todd Starnes. Air Force Academy Refers to Dads as ‘Non-Birthing Parents’

United States National Archives and Records Administration. (2020, July 24). Declaration of Independence: A transcription. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

Willis, A. (n.d.). Sexual assaults affect males, too. United States Air Force Material Command. Retrieved on November 29, 2024, from https://www.afmc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3061262/sexual-assaults-affect-males-too/

Young Men’s Christian Association. (1911). In Encyclopedia Britannica Vol. 28 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Retrieved on December 4, 2024, from https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Young_Men%27s_Christian_Association

First published on Chuck Duray’s X Account