America’s military used to unite us, but now its leaders are tearing us down, said Federalist Publisher Ben Domenech while hosting Fox News “Primetime” on Wednesday night.
“Nothing has been more unifying in American history than our flag and the men who defended it. Whether at the Veterans Day parade or atop Mount Suribachi, Americans’ respect for our men in arms and the symbol they defend was an extraordinary object of universal approval. It was extraordinary because this respect endured even as every other institution in American life shuttered and collapsed in the public eye,” he explained.
This unifying symbolism when “the Armed Forces of the United States grasped its purpose and its place” lasted for a two-decade period, Domenech said.
“America wasn’t built on a streak of easy wins and golden handouts. This country was won through suffering, through pain that preceded any triumph. And the men who won were those who knew, it’s a cliche but it’s true, that freedom isn’t free,” Domenech said. “In this moment, the armed forces represented something important: the core truth. And it was nearly the only civic institution to speak that truth. That truth about ourselves, that America requires sacrifice renewed with every generation, had the effect of making the military of the United States nearly the sole bearer of our national identity and civic virtue.”
It was when military leaders decided the armed forces were the front for American civic virtue that Domenech said things went downhill. The once-universal trust in the military decayed not just because it lost a war in Afghanistan but because “its leadership decided that [it is] the font of American civic virtue.”
“This is a shocking turn upending, without public debate and with even less public notice, the proper relationship between our republic and its military. That relationship predates the Constitution itself,” Domenech noted.
The military has now decided, Domenech said, that it makes policy.
“The men who run today’s military are no longer in the business of defending America. That would, of course, require winning a war some time. Instead, they are in the business of ruling it. They rule it hand-in-hand with the bureaucrats and ideologues who control the commanding heights and government and the economy alike. They are of the same class,” Domenech explained.
"The men who run today's military are no longer in the business of defending America. That would require winning a war sometime. Instead, they are in the business of ruling it. They rule it with the bureaucrats and ideologues…they are of the same class," –@bdomenech pic.twitter.com/ai5ZmhjKeB
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) October 6, 2021
Domenech said these military leaders embrace wokeness and are even “happy to be partisans of themselves, to join the elite who are grinding down the remnants of the American spirit.”
“Why do you think they spend so much time talking to the media and playing the Washington blame game? They care more about branding than winning,” he said.
Domenech said all hope, however, is not lost.
“We used to find greatness in our generals. For now, those days are over. But we can still find greatness somewhere else: in the young recruit, on the yellow footprints of Parris Island, in an airman who volunteers for deployment, and in those brave 19-year-olds thrust into history at the Abbey Gate,” Domenech said through tears. “These men and women without stars are not our rulers and do not seek to be. They are our brothers and our sons, our sisters and our daughters, our neighbors and our friends. The challenge for us now, as a people, is to reclaim the fullness of the armed forces, top to bottom, for its real purpose. Not as the font of American civics, but as its bearer. Not over the people, but of us, by us, and for us. Not led by men who profit, but by those who serve and win for the flag.”
"We used to find greatness in our generals. For now, those days are over but we can still find greatness somewhere else…in those brave 19-year-olds thrust in history at the Abbey Gate," –@bdomenech on Fox News Primetime pic.twitter.com/71SFJ5lknC
— The Federalist (@FDRLST) October 6, 2021
Watch Domenech’s full monologue here:
Source: The Federalist
