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The MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates – Your MacArthur Society – hopes you had an enjoyable Memorial Day week as we all reflected upon those who have given their all in our Country’s military conflicts to protect the rights and freedoms we Americans enjoy.

For those of you who might have a question about why the MacArthur Society exists, it is not like your local West Point Society that exists primarily for the purpose of socializing to maintain camaraderie among fellow graduates in geographic community. Camaraderie among our fellow grads is something the MacArthur Society certainly seeks to maintain and further, but our focus is on the principles of military leadership development that Sylvanus Thayer recognized and implemented at West Point more than 220 years ago.

As a non-partisan 501c3 educational organization, we welcome any and all West Point graduates from around the world to support us in pursuing our stated mission to preserve, defend, and advocate for West Point’s history, purpose, and principles of Duty, Honor, Country. Your particular political affiliations are of no concern to us, but your beliefs regarding how West Point’s history, purpose, and principles should be followed are.

Unfortunately, the principles of military leadership development Thayer recognized and embedded in the fabric of West Point seem to be eroding of late, and this is the reason the MacArthur Society exists today.

We will be regularly publishing a newsletter to inform those on our mailing list to support the mission of the Society. Consider donating or volunteering to be on a program committee, writing articles, getting more supporters to sign up, or soliciting financial aid. One such effort is the “Borman 2.0 Commission” that Jim Bowden ’72 addresses below in this current newsletter.

The last item I want to address is how much the efforts of our Society President, COL(R) Bill Prince ’70, are appreciated. Bill notified the Society’s Board of Directors (BoD) that he must take a temporary leave of absence to address some pressing personal matters, so he is stepping aside for a short time but he is not stepping down. He is looking forward to attending the West Point Diversity & Inclusion Leadership Conference as our Society President in October.

During the interim, as the MacArthur Society Vice President, I have been approved by the BoD to temporarily assume the duties of the President (President Pro Tem), and I gladly accept the responsibly until Bill’s return.

More information about the MacArthur Society will be forthcoming. Please be looking for it.

Sam Thiessen ‘73
President Pro Tem
MacArthur Society of West Point Graduates

MacArthur Society Project Update: “Joint Borman Commission 2.0”
By James Atticus Bowden ’72

Your MacArthur Society meets regularly with the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. We are an affiliated organization supporting the effort to pursue specific policy outcomes and goals a Presidential Administration may choose to implement.

The Heritage Foundation and MacArthur Society are non-partisan. Clearly, current Administration policy is much of the problem at West Point. Regardless, the MacArthur Society supports any Administration or bi-partisan legislative effort to restore, reform, and improve West Point to meet the needs of the Army and the Nation for the rest of this century.

The MacArthur Society doesn’t presume to know all the specifics or the depth and breadth of the issues at West Point. We can’t get the officials at West Point to do their legal duties to respond to our FOIA requests. We believe an intellectually honest, deep dive, investigation is needed for every aspect of West Point. We know much is being done rightly. We know the Corps of Cadets is not the problem. The Cadets are a remarkable group of motivated young Americans.

The MacArthur Society’s concern isn’t about the 85 to 95% of all things “USMA” which are going great. It’s the fact that a 5% issue, if it is a cancer, is deadly. Failures in the Honor System, race-based admissions, the Cultural Marxism of DEI and CRT evident in teaching and inculcated in the fabric of the Academy are deadly cancerous tumors.

The 1976 USMA Cheating Scandal was shockingly large, but still was a very small part of the Corps of Cadets. Yet, when Borman Commission investigated, it determined there were much larger problems – especially in the command culture.

Consequently, the MacArthur Society proposes, if there is a change in Presidential Administration in January 2025, that a new Borman-like Commission blue ribbon panel be appointed to determine what needs to be restored, reformed, improved, and retained for West Point to serve the needs of the Army.

Since there are like problems at USNA and USAFA, we’ve worked weekly with STARRS and the Calvert Task Group to propose a “Joint Borman Commission 2.0” to Project 2025. Project 2025 accepted our proposal and included it in their Office of the Secretary of Defense “pillars.”

This past week we drafted a Presidential Executive Order to order a Special Commission on the Service Academies should a president choose to do so. We are hopeful the administration will support the idea of a Special Commission on the Service Academies enthusiastically.

If a Presidential Executive Order to establish a Special Commission is signed on January 21, 2025, then 30 to 60 days later a professional staff of contractors and government employees will be funded and stand up. The Secretary of Defense will appoint the Blue Ribbon panel. And, the Special Commission gets busy to complete their work in 300 days.

Our working title is the “Duty, Honor, Country Commission.”

The MacArthur Society’s proposal provided to the Project 2025 includes a draft schedule to accomplish the tasks assigned in 300 days.

Several reviews by significantly-sized advisory councils of retired officers and subject matter experts are planned. We call this “Councils of Colonels and Generals”, but they’re not restricted to Colonels and Generals. These councils would include Old Grads of every stripe, retired non-Grad officers and enlisted soldiers, scholars, and distinguished interested persons.

STARRS and Calvert Task Group will put together the same groups with their Service perspectives. These would be all day or day and half exercises in death by PowerPoint followed by small group discussion. Much of it may be by Zoom. No compensation will be offered.

“As it is intuitively obvious to the casual observer” (Math Department’s “Green Death” Calculus books), everything above is contingent on all the dominoes falling in line.

You can help the Duty, Honor, Country Commission.

• Name persons of national stature for the Blue Ribbon panel.
• Name persons who can participate in the advisory councils.
• Volunteer to help write the preliminary “staff study” notebooks which could be given to the Presidential Transition team. We will provide direction for what needs to be researched and written.

You can help your MacArthur Society by getting more Grads and all other interested supporters to subscribe to our website and this newsletter to keep abreast of how our efforts proceed.

You can contact the MacArthur Society via our Contact Form.