The document “Amicus brief in opposition by USMA graduates” [ link ] from the previous post caught the eye of the estimable John T Reed.
Excerpt from his whole comment [link]:
It is also an effort where the soldiers and civilian employees of the Defense department including the soldiers and civilian employees of the U.S. Military Academy are using their positions to favor one of what the founders contemptuously called “factions” over the other main political party. U.S. Army soldiers used to scrupulously proclaim absolute ironclad neutrality to the comical extreme of not voting in presidential elections because they wanted to never have the slightest thought that the commander in chief was less worthy—even in the privacy of the voting booth.
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Now, in their amicus brief, 107 high academic graduates at West Point have declared themselves squarely in favor of the Democrat party identity quota position with regard to admissions to West Point and against the race-neutral Republican party position on that issue, in spite of their oaths to defend the Constitution conflicting with the Democrat party position.
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“I ___, do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.” (Title 5 U.S. Code 3331, an individual, except the President, elected or appointed to an office of honor or profit in the civil service or uniformed services)
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Shame on the 107 amici. It appears that knowing which side their political bread is buttered on trumps duty, honor and country and their oaths.
We agree. Here is the number of signatories by class year:
It is immediately apparent that the signatories are:
- NOT representative of The Long Gray Line as a whole; 80% of them are from classes 2017 and later.
- Per John’s comment, that many are Active Duty and are taking sides in a political case. Maybe great for getting that top-block OER rating in Today’s Army, but not great for the apolitical military!
- While we don’t endorse political activism by Active Duty military, we think it’s very telling that there is no similar Active Duty (AD) amicus in support of the SFFA complaint. How many recent-grad AD officers would be willing to put their names in support a brief for merit-based admissions against West Point’s racial preferences? To ask the question is to answer it.
- That they have never been outside of the Diversity regime. Their entire West Point experience has been subject to diversity training, indoctrination, and preferences. They have never considered the alternative possibilities and have no lens with which to do so.
On the last point, it’s important to reiterate that removing West Point’s discriminatory practices would not mean that “diversity [i.e., black cadets] would go away.” The anecdotes and benefits shared in the brief (getting mentorship on how to style black hair, or not having to look at pictures with white males on a wall, or relating to troops of a difference race, for example) would not change if the discrimination in admissions went away. The Corps comes from a diverse country and will always have a mixture of its interested citizens.
It does mean that USMA would stop trying to hit arbitrary, politically- and ideologically-motivated goals through unconstitutional, unfair, and wasteful methods. Ideally, it would raise the quality of the Corps of Cadets and West Point’s small contribution to the US Army Officer Corps.
Do you think that those numbers -2017 and after- represent the push for diversity and admission of diverse groups that are not based in merit, thus causing the increase?
We attribute it more to 1) increasingly activist officer corps, and/or a leadership environment that encourages certain activism including public pronouncements on politics as well as supporting programs and curricula at the Academy, and 2) larger populations of beneficiaries of such policies who have a stake in seeing them continued. The two are related and have certainly become more prominent in the last 10-15 years.
The histogram strongly suggests that woke was being taught at West Point during the years with more than a couple of percent. Generally American civil rights laws ritualistically recite words to the effect that this is not a racial quota. First semester cow year when I was there, we had to study a course called Constitutional law. The Fifth Amendment equal protection clause says USMA and the Army may not discriminate in favor of blacks or against Caucasians or Asians. The Constitution Article 1 §8 says Congress will provide for the common defense. That implies admitting and promoting the most meritorious candidates to military service; not to fill racial quotas with applicants of lesser merit in order to increase the number of Democrat target identity group voters who reward the Democrat party for favoring them in admissions and promotions.
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It appears USMA instructors are teaching cadets to behave unconstitutionally, de facto indicating that the above mentioned portions of the Constitution have been repealed and replaced by CRT, the 1619 Project, and the Catechism of the Woke. So USMA instructors apparently have been teaching cadets to ignore portions of the Constitution and the oath cadets take upon admission and upon graduation to protect and defend that Constitution.
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West Point grad SecDef Lloyd Austin’s first act in office was a stand down to root out white supremacists. He needs to order another stand down—for all in the Department Defense, including cades, to reflect on bans on racist quotas in the Constitution and other federal statutes and the core Constitutional promise of their oaths.