Read on Twitter
Thread – US Naval Academy Joins the Cancel Culture (To Their Everlasting Shame)
1. I graduated from USNA in 1974. Even during my four years there, the slip-sliding was in process, and like many graduates, I was oblivious to it and remained silent through it all – until now!
1. I graduated from USNA in 1974. Even during my four years there, the slip-sliding was in process, and like many graduates, I was oblivious to it and remained silent through it all – until now!
2. Synagogue on Saturday and Protestant and Catholic chapel services on Sunday were mandatory when I started Plebe Summer on 30 June 1970. We used to have to muster in formation and march to the Chapel for services.
3. John Paul Jones – asleep in his crypt beneath the Chapel – was probably smiling. But that all ended during my 4 years there, as secularists succeeded in pressuring the Academy to make church services “optional” for midshipman.
4. So much for the moral part of “morally, mentally and physically” – which has been the key element of USNA’s state mission for decades:
4A. “To develop Midshipmen morally, mentally and physically and to imbue them with the highest ideals of duty, honor and loyalty in order to graduate leaders who are dedicated ….”
4B. “… to a career of naval service and have potential for future development in mind and character to assume the highest responsibilities of command, citizenship and government.”
5. Morality is derived from religious tenets. Said another way, religious values shape a person’s morality. Reinforcement of religious values has been attacked incessantly by cultural Marxists & other assorted leftists in America for over 100 years. And USNA has not been immune.
6. Without reinforcement of values, the Devil and his disciples have free reign. One of the best cultural values provided by church (aside from salvation!) is the continual opportunity for personal reflection during services. It was a serious mistake to make services optional!
7. USNA was a male-only institution during my time there. Women were first admitted into the Class of 1980 (their plebe summer was in 1976). This was of-a-piece with the feminization of the military which has been ongoing for the past 40 years.
8. I have been against women serving in combat units from the beginning. Civilized societies don’t put women – the only human beings capable of bearing & nurturing children – in harm’s way. That’s a sign of barbarism & the coarsening of society that has also be in process for yrs
9. Standards – particularly physical standards – have been lowered over the years to enable women to complete qualifications for many billets. The moral costs of thrusting young men and women together in close quarters has been YUUUGE, too.
10. Tailhook accelerated the feminization of the military. My classmate, Bob Stumpf, was the Blue Angels squadron CO at the time. Even though he only attended to receive an award, he was singled out and his career destroyed (along with several hundred other naval aviators).
11. Then there were the various scandals over the years involving Navy football players and other midshipmen (dealing drugs, sexual harassment, etc.). The major transgressions during my era were usually honor code violations (trivial by comparison).
12. Lately, there has been some bowing to the desires of Navy athletes to forgo active naval service in order to all some to join professional sports teams before their service obligations have been completed. That’s bending the rules, too.
13. Then, there was the establishment of a “satanic temple” at USNA last year:
<quote>
<quote>
13A. The U.S. Naval Academy is providing a room on campus for midshipmen interested in The Satanic Temple to discuss the group. An internal email was sent Oct. 8 [2019] to all midshipmen to announce the start of "satanic services."
13B. [T]he academy's Command Religious Program facilitates the exercise of diverse beliefs.
<unquote>
Read the rest here: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/11/01/midshipmen-finally-get-a-satanic-temple-room/
<unquote>
Read the rest here: https://www.navytimes.com/news/your-navy/2019/11/01/midshipmen-finally-get-a-satanic-temple-room/
14. Fast forward to 2020. USNA is inches away from joining the cancel culture by removing statues on the Academy grounds and renaming buildings because the men named were “Confederates”:
<quote>
<quote>
14A. U.S. Rep. C.A. “Dutch” Ruppersberger, D-Maryland, is calling for the removal of two building names at the Naval Academy, citing links to the Confederacy.
14B. Ruppersberger, who was recently elected as chair of the Naval Academy’s Board of Visitors, is specifically referencing Buchanan House, which is home to the superintendent, and Maury Hall.
14C. Both buildings are named after naval officers who served in the Confederacy. Buchanan House is named for Franklin Buchanan, who was the first superintendent of the Naval Academy before he joined the Confederate Navy at the beginning of the Civil War.
14D. Maury Hall is named after Confederate fighter Matthew Fontaine Maury.
<unquote>
Read the rest here: https://www.capitalgazette.com/education/naval-academy/ac-cn-confederate-naval-academy-ruppersberger-20200611-qb52kcw27nhjtnklj6tliud6t4-story.html
<unquote>
Read the rest here: https://www.capitalgazette.com/education/naval-academy/ac-cn-confederate-naval-academy-ruppersberger-20200611-qb52kcw27nhjtnklj6tliud6t4-story.html
15. The CNO joined the national sensitivity movement with his own hand-wringing missive to the Fleet after George Floyd’s death. What did that tragedy have to do with the Navy? This was only the latest insertion of politics into the military. A bad omen for more changes at USNA!
16. How long will it be before Buchanan and Maury Halls are renamed? I don't see USNA beating back the cancel culture under the current CNO. Despite denials to the contrary, this is all about erasing American history and our shared cultural heritage and taking a knee to the mob.
17. One of my classmates and friends penned letter to another classmate asking for donations for a class project that conveys my own disgust with the continued degradation of USNA traditions and standards.
<quote>
<quote>
17A. A chain I’m deeply concerned about just now is the one that links us to our true history. Everyone knows about the maxim, attributed to many wise men, that: “Those who refuse to learn history are condemned to repeat it.”
17B. Winston Churchill observed to the effect, that any society, who does not revere its history, is doomed.
17C. I am also concerned about the general status of leadership at USNA and the Navy in general, judging admittedly from afar, the underlayment of issues appearing on the front pages in the last half decade or so.
17D. Objective truth does not seem to be as valued as is a myriad of questionable agendas. Leading, absent truth, cannot bring worthy achievements, much less victory in battle.
17E. Recently, USNA “leadership” has authorized a “satanic temple” and erasure of two great Navy heroes and scholars, Franklin Buchanan and Matthew Fontaine Maury!
17F. I think that in light (or rather, dark shadow) of the so-called “temple,” Buchanan and Maury would emphatically insist that their names be removed.
17G. I left the Academy thinking that a universal appreciation of truth was essential to leadership in the Navy. I bet you did, too. And that you still hold to that ideal.
17H. A simple, quick study of satanism vs. the true religions of Civilization reveals to the open minded that satanism is all about deceit. To place satanism on par with Judaism or Christianity, would be laughable but for its foreboding evil.
17I. Yielding to this deceit reflects fear of truth and a failure of leadership.
17J. A slightly more difficult search (because it’s deliberately obscured by politics) of the history of the period for which great men like Maury & Buchanan are being stricken from view and thereby stricken from the lessons of history reveals the 3 charges against them are false
17K. First: They were NOT guilty of treason. Secession was believed then, in the North and South, to be a State’s Right. This fact is irrefutable.
17L. In fact, the defeated CSA leaders were ultimately not tried for treason, because the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court, Lincoln Appointee Salmon Chase, advised the Johnson Cabinet, …
17M. “If you bring these (Confederate) leaders to trial, it will condemn the North... for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. ... Lincoln wanted Jefferson Davis to escape, and he was right."
17M1. "His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason.”
17N. Second: The charge that Maury and Buchanan and the Confederacy fought for “white supremacy” is as absurd as it is false. The sad truth is that no argument for racial equality was ever on the table in those days.
17O. Nor was the abolition of slavery the majority motivation for the North [contrary to popular belief]. It certainly wasn’t for Lincoln. He said so often.
17P. Third: Maury, Buchanan, Semmes, Lee, et al, “took up arms” in defense against the Union Army that invaded and the Navy that blockaded the seceded states.
17Q. Virginia and 3 other CSA states did not secede until AFTER and precisely because Lincoln announced that he would wage fratricidal war against the seceded States to compel them against their consent to be reconnected [to the Union].
17R. “Wrong history” yields wrong lessons and, thus, bad decisions and destructive policies. Does anyone really believe that racial justice will be served or racial healing achieved by misrepresenting our history?
17S. No, it only aggravates resentment, and thereby widens and deepens the divisions.
17T. I don’t know exactly what to do to get things turned around, but I’ve decided, as a start, to stop keeping my mouth shut, and to refuse to kneel, and to refuse to turn my cheek. If one of those cancel culture bastards slaps my cheek, I will break his jaw!
17U. At the local level, I’m working to get a good guy nominated to unseat a Pelosi clone. ( http://AndrewKnaggs.com ) I’m helping a group try to save the statues still standing in Richmond, as well as to restore those already taken down.
17V. I’m sick of being sick over this cultural eradication and the abject application of violent force to compel to act against our preferences.
17W. I can do these things, and I can also direct my money to where it will do the most good. And I will not be donating to USNA for anything until some serious changes are made to restore our school to its mission in all respects. That’s where my heart is.
<unquote>
<unquote>
18. I couldn’t have said it better. The cancel culture is in reality a “cancer culture” – and is a cancer on the body politic of the Republic. The riots are the culmination of years of actions by Marxists within and outside the country to destroy our shared history and culture.
19. Time for some radical surgery to cut out the cancer and treat the host with the equivalent of massive doses of radiation to kill off and prevent the cancer from returning.
20. That means citizens demanding that their mayors and law enforcement leadership uphold their oaths, for starters. And then voting the SOBs out of office, as they never should be been elected in the first place, as the rioting has shown them to be incompetent.
21. Squaring away USNA will require shutting off the alumni money spigot, as well as reshaping the USNA Alumni Association into a force for good that will demand a return to high standards and a cessation of politically-correct nonsense at the Academy.
22. I’d like to see USNAAA push for mandatory courses at USNA on conservative economics, the US Constitution, and ethics and morality for starters.
23. Meanwhile, it’s time for a whole hell of a lot of letter/email-writing and agitation! ///The end.
