True Patriot Love - Why is Leadership So Weak and Broken？ - with Dr. Chase Spears

00:00:00.000 welcome everybody to the show today i get the honor of bringing a personal favorite buddy of

00:00:11.000 mine dr chase spears thank you for joining us brian i'm so excited to be here buddy it's really

00:00:16.840 cool to be on this side of it from you yeah i agree and uh same goes for me on this side of it

00:00:22.500 and uh you have the accent not me remember that that's right that that was i think the first thing

00:00:27.800 i said you when you came on my show so turnabout's fair play yeah yeah it was that was good um yes

00:00:33.100 um so basically i'll introduce you as a father a academic uh a veteran with a couple decades of

00:00:43.060 service in the u.s military um can you just flesh that out a little bit for the audience who may not

00:00:48.320 be familiar with you just so they have a context of where we're going with this yeah i'd be happy

00:00:53.000 to so i spent 20 years in the u.s army as a public affairs officer which uh basically the role of

00:00:59.240 that is to be the guys who are the conduit between the military and the press and theoretically we're

00:01:03.800 supposed to be the bridge to the public to keep the military in some ways accountable and to try

00:01:09.080 to keep us from being this this distant imaginary force if you will and that's actually what i came

00:01:15.320 in the military to do having studied journalism i thought i was going to do one four-year tour

00:01:20.520 and then move along and uh god has a wicked sense of humor and a practical joke gone way too far so

00:01:26.520 i ended up doing 20 years a lot of great years a lot of frustrating years and uh one thing that

00:01:32.200 you and i share in common brian is our frustration over over how both of our militaries handled the

00:01:37.560 whole covid situation and me as a spokesman 2020 was kind of the year that broke me

00:01:43.240 uh from wanting to continue a longer term career as my wife and i planned so we concluded

00:01:48.280 at 20 years and uh since then we've kind of moved out trying to continue fighting for the nation

00:01:54.600 but doing it in the rhetorical space uh doing like you're doing podcasting and writing trying

00:01:59.640 to make the arguments to the public for why western values matter and why we need to be much

00:02:04.680 more engaged now i'm married to my college sweetheart lori we've been married actually

00:02:09.000 almost 25 years which uh sometimes we we stop and we kind of count it up we're like how in the world

00:02:15.880 has it been that long parents of five amazing children uh as a matter of fact just a minute

00:02:20.760 ago i had to shoot my my little five-year-old out of the room because anytime the camera's on she 0.77

00:02:25.240 loves to be in here crawling up all over my shoulder waving at people and uh so we and

00:02:29.640 we currently reside in the kansas city area and uh so we're just we're blessed buddy and

00:02:35.640 we're trying to live lives that make a difference thanks so much man it's uh it's really cool to

00:02:41.240 year i think you have you have five kids if i'm not yeah yeah i don't know how that's possible

00:02:45.960 and you still somehow look like you're 26 years old i don't know how you pulled that off man

00:02:49.800 whatever is in the water in kansas but keep it up uh good good good genes and healthy breakfast man

00:02:55.400 yeah fair enough um you you are a really interesting guy i think you're probably one of

00:03:01.080 the best examples of like i said a father a leader um a well-read academic like you you just sort of

00:03:08.680 seem to bring it all to the table and i i loved hanging out with you i love your story uh we

00:03:13.640 connected like you said on a lot of things with over the the covid kind of insanity uh that we

00:03:18.840 talked about that i talked about on your podcast but i wanted to bring you in today because i

00:03:22.920 really wanted to sort of just dive right into it there's no need to sugarcoat this like what has

00:03:27.640 happened in the last i'll reframe that has something happened in the last 5 10 20 years

00:03:36.680 with regards to military leadership sort of sycophantic almost pathetic behavior or do you

00:03:44.040 think we just have more eyeballs on it now because of brave whistleblowers because of the internet

00:03:49.880 independent journalism is it is there is it happening more often now or do we just have

00:03:54.920 more eyes on it well i think the answer to that is yes on both accounts and and so i'm going to

00:04:02.120 kind of walk back a little bit historically in terms of at least how the u.s military structured

00:04:06.920 and i suppose that's probably not too different from how our canadian brethren are structured as

00:04:13.400 well so i imagine there were some probably some similarities and how things evolved with you guys

00:04:17.800 is how it evolved with us so in the american construct the idea was you raise a large army

00:04:23.880 when you need to go to war and then when the war is ever with you just about completely collapse

00:04:29.640 the thing you you take it apart and you just kind of keep the bare minimum small force needed to

00:04:35.000 keep the lights on if you will and according to u.s constitutional design that's the way it's

00:04:40.680 supposed to be because our ancestors who you know spent hundreds of years in europe they understood

00:04:45.640 very easily how quickly things can turn when you have a large standing force and there's not an

00:04:51.880 active enemy outside well they will find an enemy and oftentimes that enemy comes to be seen as the

00:04:57.400 public and and these forces will follow whatever the potentate or tribal leader or king tells them

00:05:05.000 to do soldiers at the end of the day no matter where when or how at the end of the day they end

00:05:11.400 up doing what he who signs their paycheck tells them to do and that's a historical reality and we

00:05:17.880 are no better human beings right now in 2026 than any of our ancestors were in that regard

00:05:25.640 and so in in the western context here we would build the armies up we would collapse and build

00:05:30.360 them up go to war collapse and go to war build them up collapse them and then we had the two 0.54

00:05:35.160 world wars and we did the same thing after world war one built the army up saved the world collapsed

00:05:41.160 it then we had the 20 years later we're in world war ii after that point in time the u.s military

00:05:47.720 decided fine we're going to retain this large standing force we're going to become the world's

00:05:53.800 global policemen the new world order nato etc etc etc and at that point in time part of the

00:06:01.000 changes that came was the military moved away from a culture where leaders were selected

00:06:09.160 at least in some part based on their proven ability to lead soldiers in combat now there

00:06:14.360 were political ways they were considered there were personalities there were favorites i'm not

00:06:19.000 denying any of that that that's all well known that's all well documented but in world war ii

00:06:25.320 you could start off as a very low-ranking officer and be a senior ranking officer in a matter of a

00:06:31.160 couple of years just based on what you demonstrate same thing in the u.s civil war ulysses grant

00:06:37.640 who ended up becoming lincoln's general who saved the war for him he started off as a lieutenant

00:06:44.280 right and and in four years he's commanding uh lincoln's forces and that would not happen today

00:06:49.880 and the reason is because after world war ii we changed the rules for how officers are grown up

00:06:56.600 and now there are all these these wickets you have to check and it's not nearly as much about

00:07:02.040 your proven prowess on the battlefield and your your proven capabilities and training nearly as

00:07:07.880 much as it is you have to hit this job at this time and then hit that job at that time and then

00:07:12.520 hit that joint job at that time and so we have become a very corporatized force on the u.s side

00:07:19.640 and i'm sure it's probably very similar north of the border as well and within that you see

00:07:26.840 officers who are largely indentured to the system that made them rather than a warrior ethos

00:07:34.520 Yeah, I think I agree with all of that. In Canada, because our structure and our volume

00:07:43.640 of troops and just sort of the entire entity that we comprise, we're so much smaller, but we

00:07:50.440 do suffer a lot of the same problems as yourself. If I remember correctly, I think the US Marine

00:07:55.480 Corps is about 170,000 strong the last time I checked. So 170,000 is your smallest element

00:08:02.360 of troops whereas if you combined the entire air force army and navy of the canadian military you're

00:08:08.200 getting in my estimation i think they lie about the numbers for one reason or another but i would

00:08:13.960 estimate it's somewhere around 50 to 60 000 strong maybe less than that wow so just yeah so just in

00:08:19.800 terms of context like we are quite small compared to you but i do think we suffer the same institutional

00:08:26.120 sort of failures and missteps that have sort of guided this for lack of a better term psyop over

00:08:32.840 the last 10 years of kind of where we've ended up uh just just on a personal level here a store

00:08:38.120 i'll share a quick story that i had from recently i had a due to kind of the traction that this

00:08:43.560 podcast is getting and some of the voices that i'm able to uh reach are reaching back to me

00:08:49.560 um i had a i had a confidential phone call from a very senior officer not long ago and she

00:08:55.640 basically informed me that the current cds of the canadian military so the chief of defense staff

00:09:03.960 was literally not qualified for the job as having failed her interview process so to become the

00:09:11.320 chief of defense staff the most senior officer in the canadian military essentially a politician who

00:09:15.560 works with the mnd and the prime minister etc etc supposed to be commanding the entire canadian

00:09:19.960 military you have to go through a vetting process so this lady went through the vetting process 1.00

00:09:25.240 and failed like did not pass go you know what i mean didn't collect 200 and still was installed

00:09:32.280 by then virtue signaling you know what i mean nightmare uh justin trudeau that led us for the

00:09:39.000 just over 10 years sort of thing um and this senior officer reached out to tell me like brian

00:09:44.360 the things that you are saying the things that you are seeing as a junior officer i have almost no

00:09:49.000 staff training you know what i mean as a guy that was more or less a line officer for my entire

00:09:52.520 career you you're you're not that far off like you you you're understanding sort of the game

00:09:58.360 that's being played here and the sort of corporatism that you just described of this

00:10:02.840 um just promoting your friends and family type thing installing people in these positions that

00:10:07.880 just end up being sycophantic virtue signaling liars um and it's it's kind of reassuring to

00:10:13.560 know that i was on the right path in what i was seeing um and the vibes that i was getting but

00:10:19.560 but it's also just it's also at the same time disturbing to know that I was on the right path

00:10:24.560 and that I kept thinking to myself there had to be more to this I'm missing something

00:10:29.360 what's going on and I'm asking people that are very much in the know that have decades and decades

00:10:35.460 more experience in the military that I have are saying no no no this is actually the case like

00:10:39.160 it's it's as bad as you think it is and if I can just add on to so just before our current CDS

00:10:45.200 Jenny Kerrigman that was installed before her was someone named Wayne Eyre.

00:10:49.280 So he was the CDS during the whole COVID mandate debacle that you and I chatted about.

00:10:53.840 And we went through a whole timeline there that's quite disturbing.

00:10:56.880 And this same senior officer, very senior officer from the military, confided in me that

00:11:02.560 she believes that this this man is probably the worst CDS, like almost certainly the worst CDS

00:11:08.480 that Canada's ever had and has left a horrific stain and sort of bruise on the military moving

00:11:14.720 forward um all that being said my little diatribe there do you think the u.s military has suffered

00:11:22.640 equally as bad of a stain in terms of the uh anti and the um post-covid policy the vaccination

00:11:30.880 you know what i mean just the sort of the the the woke um esg climate change mentality that seems

00:11:37.120 to sort of coat everything we do how much of that do you think still lingers in the u.s military

00:11:42.240 um given the climate of the last five to ten years well sadly the the ghosts still linger

00:11:49.600 the halls and and this is still very much felt across the force as a matter of fact just a few

00:11:54.720 minutes before i logged on here i was on x and i was seeing some traffic about the fact that at the

00:12:00.400 air force level the whole military says it's trying to bring back all the patriots who were

00:12:06.720 kicked out over the covid vaccine mandate and there were over 8 000 that we know were forcefully

00:12:12.640 removed and there were tens of thousands more who voluntarily said i'm not dealing with this now the

00:12:18.080 question is is it really voluntarily when you know if you push back you're going to be forced out and

00:12:23.600 so what does voluntarily really mean that's a whole nother discussion so suffice to say tens

00:12:28.800 of thousands were removed over a matter of conscience for something that we now know is

00:12:34.640 harmful and we knew then it was harmful but like we legitimately scientifically know now this thing

00:12:39.920 is harmful we have the receipts now yeah we have the receipts we have the receipts absolutely

00:12:44.720 and uh all the services basically the department of war which is what we're now calling the

00:12:49.280 department of defense down here in the us said we're going to bring these people back but they

00:12:54.480 farmed it out to the individual services and said you guys figure it out and the air force has been

00:12:59.440 the absolute worst and when i mean the absolute worst i mean absolutely the absolute worst and

00:13:06.880 and they're resistant to it and so how so and and why the air force like why are they worse than the

00:13:13.200 army or the navy or yeah great question and that's what i'm trying to figure out because like we have

00:13:18.880 a guy who's the undersecretary of the air force matt lohmire who i think is just about the highest

00:13:24.640 quality man you could put in a position like that but his service is the one that's absolutely

00:13:29.280 the worst at it i don't know i don't know why the air force is the worst i know the army so far has

00:13:36.240 really kind of taken the lead and by taking the lead i mean they have created a reintegration

00:13:41.440 task force that's led by colonel kevin boren an amazing amazing man who i have utmost trust and

00:13:47.840 confidence in but you look at his team there there's four maybe five people on his team

00:13:55.200 to solve this problem for the entire army brian a battalion has more people in their supply

00:14:01.760 section to hand out hand sanitizer wipes and and rifle cartridges five four to five people to

00:14:09.840 handle a situation for the army but that's that's like the service that is leading right now the

00:14:15.600 air force is is slow dragging reintegrations they're they're telling people if you want to

00:14:21.440 come back in part of that you have to include signing a piece of paper that says i voluntarily

00:14:29.600 left service in addition to that you're expected to take on a service duty obligation of so many

00:14:36.640 years the president said you're going to come back with full back pay well that's that's not

00:14:42.880 being honored by the services the military service branches are saying well yes but if you earned

00:14:50.480 anything at all while you were out we're going to subtract all that from it which is is just

00:14:57.040 really kind of kicking them in the gut again because yeah exactly and think about this are

00:15:01.840 they sorry man interrupt here are they making you provide uh in canada we call it a t4 but i think

00:15:07.120 you call it a w2 like your your income earnings over that period or something to justify how much

00:15:11.680 they're going to claw back i presume it's probably based on your tax returns so i'm guessing that's

00:15:17.520 probably the forms that you have to show yeah and think about this brian it if i if i were still in

00:15:24.400 i'm not now thank god but if you or i were still in any any guy who's stealing to subject themselves

00:15:30.320 to this they're in and they have a side hustle and you as a military member you're allowed to

00:15:35.600 have a side hustle now you have to get command approval and it's kind of a take it for granted

00:15:40.160 as long as your side hustle does not pull you away from your military duties you have a side hustle

00:15:45.200 I mean, there are soldiers who drive for Uber on the weekends and people who run snowplow businesses on the weekends and this and that.

00:15:51.440 And, you know, they're entrepreneurial minded and they're trying to set up something for the next chapter in life.

00:15:56.740 If you run a side hustle while you're on active duty and it's command approved, you don't have that pay deducted from your military pay.

00:16:04.880 It's understood you're going out and you're doing additional labor and you're earning the fruits of your reward.

00:16:10.800 But for those who got out over COVID, the military is penalizing them.

00:16:14.140 Oh, you found a way to earn a living for your family.

00:16:16.580 Well, we're going to take that back from you if you come in the military.

00:16:20.180 So this is making, so it's vindictive.

00:16:22.800 This is a maligned intent to punish someone for having had a spine.

00:16:30.320 The brilliant name of your show, Finding Your Spine, I somewhat resent you for having it

00:16:34.160 because I like it so much I wish I wanted for myself.

00:16:36.360 But that makes sense now.

00:16:40.580 So I'm slowly putting the pieces together in my mind here.

00:16:44.140 I want to kind of give another Canadian example for you to wrap your mind around here quickly.

00:16:48.460 So very recently, I'll give two actually.

00:16:51.140 So very recently, the all-knowing CDS here who failed her interview gave two suggestions on how to bolster the forces in Canada.

00:16:59.960 Because like I said, our numbers are not good.

00:17:03.100 One could argue there's not a ton of intention to apply, although we can get into that in a minute.

00:17:08.100 But two suggestions were put forward by the head of Canada's military.

00:17:11.260 we are going to take two weeks out of the year to train up all of the public's or i guess all

00:17:18.280 of the willing public service folks in canada to learn how to handle a rifle do a section attack

00:17:24.560 learn how to fly a drone learn how to do cyber work you know what i mean like all the things that

00:17:29.020 i can see the look on your face already of this two weeks okay two weeks yeah sure why not the

00:17:35.480 example that i gave when i was telling this story recently was that i have walked through the halls

00:17:39.920 of ottawa through many of these buildings that employ public servants um these are not the

00:17:45.360 poster children and and again preface this with a lot of these folks are very nice hard-working

00:17:51.680 folks you know i mean who are doing the right thing most of the time and they're pulling their

00:17:55.180 own weight but they're not necessarily you know what i mean the poster child of someone you want

00:17:59.320 to put into a combat situation let alone with two weeks of training so that was the first brilliant

00:18:05.060 suggestion to bolster our numbers and as recently as a few days ago now up here we've decided that

00:18:11.640 we are going to recruit trained trained military members from foreign countries oh so what could

00:18:18.460 get wrong so we are now bent on recruiting essentially mercenaries for hire in combat

00:18:26.760 they mentioned doctors nurses etc etc but when you dive into the actual details which i've done

00:18:32.080 they're also recruiting combat engineers they're recruiting pioneers like people we're talking

00:18:37.320 frontline combat roles for folks who are not canadian passport carrying citizens but people

00:18:45.660 hoping to achieve residential status and like the number of things that can go wrong here is almost

00:18:51.440 infinite but is this as crazy as it sounds coming from like someone with as much experience as you

00:18:58.520 have in the U S military. Like how does someone so deranged and delusional suggest such a thing?

00:19:04.220 And is there any hope that this goes well? It's nuts, Brian. It's absolute nuts. Who comes up 0.95

00:19:10.820 with this stuff? What, what is it? All right. So we had the state of the union address here in the

00:19:16.860 U S a couple of nights ago. And regardless of what, what your listeners do, or don't think of

00:19:21.120 our president, look at the, uh, look at the gentleman who was awarded the medal of honor.

00:19:26.680 and i'm ashamed to say his name is escaping my mind but there was this just heroic helicopter

00:19:31.640 pilot and you go on x he's everywhere like he's like the new poster child for what a man should

00:19:36.760 be he's he's the archetype that the west seems to have forgotten we could produce

00:19:41.560 uh just looks like an american hero uh the kind of man that the image should be everywhere to

00:19:48.520 aspire all of us to want to be like that you know heroic big strong amazing jawline right

00:19:53.720 Right. A guy who is in movable in combat and still flies a helicopter when he's been shot multiple times and gets the job done.

00:20:02.160 And then on the other hand, you had these two foreigners who are elected to Congress, you know, who are just jeering throughout the State of the Union.

00:20:10.960 And you put them next to each other. And there's this great meme of paper American, real American.

00:20:18.760 right what is it to be an american what is it to be a canadian if you're importing people

00:20:27.480 to put on your uniform who have no ancestral or historical tie to your land and they're

00:20:34.680 and you're bringing them in specifically to put them under arms on behalf of that nation

00:20:40.920 who where is their loyalty really to are they really coming over because they want to

00:20:47.000 defend the united states of america are they really coming ever because they want to defend

00:20:52.520 canada and the canadian way of life are they coming over because this is a paycheck and

00:20:57.720 their loyalty is actually to their ancestral homeland and there's nothing wrong with your

00:21:02.600 loyalty being to your ancestral homeland that's the way god designed us like the nationalism is a

00:21:07.880 good thing right but we get it twisted that this whole woke post-modern idea that infects the west

00:21:16.760 that we are all citizens of the world and anyone who comes in that we give a a stamp on a

00:21:22.440 naturalization paper now all of a sudden they're american or now all of a sudden they're canadian

00:21:27.480 now i do want to caveat there are a lot of people who come here from other nations

00:21:33.080 and they want to be canadian and they want to be american and and and they work hard and they they

00:21:40.280 they acknowledge our history and they respect our culture and they integrate into it it doesn't mean

00:21:47.000 they've turned their back on their heritage they still celebrate their heritage and they'll teach

00:21:51.000 their kids where they came from and that's right and good but they want to be a part of this new

00:21:55.240 civic politic but that's not what we're seeing across the west with this mass importation of

00:22:00.280 people who are coming over not because they want to identify as us not because as the bible might

00:22:07.400 say they want to be grafted onto our tree but because they want to take advantage of our

00:22:13.000 benefits but then if the balloon goes up where their loyalty is going to be if there's truly

00:22:18.280 a war that they can die in where's their loyalty truly going to be

00:22:22.280 and and i think for a a sizable portion of them it's not going to be to our nations

00:22:27.160 yeah that's a great response man and i agree with everything you just said again this is one of the

00:22:34.040 reasons i want to have you on you you have such a well-researched grounded take in reality and

00:22:38.600 experience um so in the same vein as that i wanted to sort of recall a podcast that i did a couple

00:22:46.040 months ago with one of the other hosts of the show paul micucci who was asking me uh well we were

00:22:51.160 going over a sort of an inquiry that was done into why the recruitment was so low for the canadian

00:22:57.080 military like why are so few people uh applying why are so people so few people getting through

00:23:02.200 which actually we learned was a bit of a misnomer because there was in the last few years there was

00:23:07.920 almost a record number of applications in the canadian military so it saw i believe over a

00:23:13.040 hundred thousand i might be a little bit off with that um in terms of applications so intent of

00:23:18.660 course not all those people are going to make it through not all those people should make it

00:23:21.700 through there's going to be folks that have certain deficits or fitness or whatever you know i mean

00:23:25.900 you're not reaching the threshold of whatever trade or scope that you think you're applying for,

00:23:30.700 and that's fine. But when you have six-figure number of people applying, and then you learn

00:23:36.320 because of this inquiry that tens of thousands of the applications just evaporated into the ether

00:23:42.560 because of administrative blunder or laziness or complacency or some type of combination of all

00:23:48.100 that, the problem is not in Canadians not wanting to join. The problem is putting these people 0.82

00:23:55.280 through the system efficiently in a way that's capturing them so that they can actually get to

00:24:00.320 the jobs that they're applying for. And the example that I gave of my own situation when

00:24:04.560 I applied back in 2000, originally 2011-12 timeframe, it took me well over a year. I think

00:24:11.220 it was almost 18 months to get through from my initial intention submission online to sitting

00:24:17.020 down with the recruiters and building a file and eventually getting hired and sworn in

00:24:20.580 an infantry regiment in Toronto, but 18 months, you know what I mean? And that was only because

00:24:25.340 I had the spine and patience and sort of audacity to continue following up almost to the point of

00:24:32.940 annoying people to make sure that I was getting hired. And twice in this process that I showed up

00:24:38.420 to the recruiting office to go through a follow-on test or a follow-on interview, two times I showed

00:24:44.180 up there and they didn't know where my file was. They were like, we've lost your file. We don't

00:24:49.280 what to tell you but you're gonna have to come back i mean so it's like the problem is not people

00:24:53.760 not canadians specifically not wanting to get there it's literally pushing them through the

00:24:58.640 system and making sure that they stick around and uh and and again you hit the nail on the head with

00:25:04.800 nobody that i worked with in the military ever cared where you were from or you know what i mean 0.88

00:25:08.800 what your background was or what color you were like this this is ridiculous like that that era 0.80

00:25:14.560 of soldiers in my opinion is is almost exclusively been removed there's is there problems you know 0.64

00:25:19.600 what i mean a couple people here and there yeah and they get rooted out and they're kicked out

00:25:22.640 and it's not an issue anymore but to paint this as like some type of you know i mean racist or

00:25:29.280 bigoted attitude towards bringing foreigners in i think is disingenuous and dishonest but

00:25:36.000 upon hearing all that stuff that i just told you that we did have this highly intent or sorry highly

00:25:43.200 driven group of people with this intent to join that we're now ignoring. Again, I sort of go back

00:25:48.840 to my original statement. Like, do you think that there is maligned intention here in doing this?

00:25:53.580 Like, are they trying to destroy the morale through what you could call sort of Hanlon's

00:25:57.940 razor incompetence versus malice? Or is this literally just so many people working in the

00:26:02.640 bloated bureaucracy for so long that we're now in this position where like almost literally quite

00:26:08.680 anybody including unqualified leaders of the military are putting forward

00:26:12.920 potential policies that make no sense well every institution has its own inertia and the department

00:26:19.720 of war is no exception as a matter of fact it's really kind of the poster child for what

00:26:24.200 institutional inertia means and what it does and so it it's the largest agency in the world the

00:26:30.520 u.s department of war it's has its fingers in more parts of the world than any other government or

00:26:37.000 agency bar none and so that's just a reality and the institution has always been resistant to

00:26:43.880 following the lead of elected officials it just has and and it's and it said has grown particularly

00:26:51.080 in the post-world war ii era this kind of 80 year span that we're in right now it is really almost

00:26:56.600 become like a a sovereign nation state almost with the exception of that it can't fund itself it has

00:27:04.360 rely on congress for its appropriations and congress continues to give the appropriations

00:27:09.240 because no one wants to be labeled as being unpatriotic when when the boys are showing up

00:27:14.360 with their you know chest full of uh i was their medals and um and so we we have that that's a big

00:27:20.920 part of the issue the military for instance it was resistant to uh to the change of don't ask

00:27:27.800 don't tell under president obama but president obama and i'm a huge critic of his i think it

00:27:33.480 was one of the worst presidents of our national history uh he understood how to cause institutional

00:27:40.680 change he understood the personnel is policy um say whatever you will about him and i've got a

00:27:45.480 lot of really impolite things to say about him but he he is an extraordinary a community organizer and

00:27:50.840 he's an extraordinary at changing how institutions function and he brought that to the department

00:27:55.240 then department of defense now department of war and so he overcame that by by forcing out

00:28:02.520 hundreds of top officials and then replacing them with top officials of his own choosing

00:28:07.480 who were absolutely with religious fanaticism committed to his cause and he had eight years

00:28:15.000 of that and then the trump administration first version came in assumed the military was all

00:28:21.480 patriotic and would immediately do a turnabout what they didn't understand was the obama

00:28:27.800 administration had so deeply entrenched literal anarchist and and communist revolutionaries into

00:28:33.960 these senior many many senior policy uh billets across the department and and so it just the

00:28:41.400 military basically gave him the middle finger during his first term biden came in and the

00:28:46.120 military kind of almost did a now we're back to what we want our normal to be and they accelerated

00:28:51.960 under biden and now trump is back in and i talk to people inside the pentagon with um i won't say

00:28:59.000 regularly but not unregularly and i i'm told constantly chase you just don't know how

00:29:05.000 surrounded we are and i say no i know exactly how surrounded you are i understand how institutions

00:29:09.880 work this is my bailiwick you guys came in thinking that because we are the political appointees

00:29:16.520 people will will suddenly turn around and you didn't bring in enough people with you and you're

00:29:20.680 kind of taking a a i don't want to say i want to be respectful because they're working hard

00:29:26.120 right and they're surrounded um but they i think they came in thinking that if we come in and we

00:29:32.040 sign memorandums things will change well well no personnel is policy memorandums mean nothing

00:29:36.760 without people willing to change it and so uh the pentagon right now is doing everything it can

00:29:43.080 at the kind of mid-career and senior mid senior executive level if you will to stymie the

00:29:50.980 administration because they believe once again all this just just a speed bump uh we will have

00:29:56.440 another election in now three years and we will get back to normal of getting to do what we want

00:30:02.160 and what they want means the continued progressive march through the institution to where the

00:30:06.620 military is is really uh just people who deploy to wherever they're told to deploy and and lose

00:30:13.440 all touch of what it means to actually defend the united states and so uh that that's a that's a

00:30:19.420 hard problem to solve how do you turn that around and i would argue i i'm stealing this from my

00:30:24.180 buddy kayla bird you you'd win that fight by not inviting good men to the fight but by inviting

00:30:32.840 ruthless men to the fight and the problem is we have a lot of really good men and senior

00:30:40.340 cabinet officials across the department of war right now we don't have ruthless men men who

00:30:46.560 are willing to be unpopular men who are willing to be stymied by the new york times men who are

00:30:50.960 willing to you're fired and you're fired and you're fired and you're fired and take scalps 0.93

00:30:55.600 we don't have anyone to do that yeah this is uh i'm not like i want to say that there's sort of

00:31:06.200 enough inertia in the folks that are starting to wake up that there is is it too late to correct

00:31:13.000 the ship is what i'm trying to say like do you think that we're headed towards this cliff

00:31:16.360 and the tracks are set and this train's going you know what i mean or is there time to hit the brakes

00:31:20.780 or pull that switch that switches to a new track before this just goes right off the cliff

00:31:25.600 Brian, I'm an eternal optimist, and some days I have to remind myself of that. It does not always come naturally. I think you always have to believe that it can be turned around. You have to. The alternative is to totally black pill and become a complete fatalist. And then if you're a complete fatalist, what do you have to hope for? What do you have to fight for?

00:31:53.700 we've seen throughout history this this is the wonderful thing about reading history

00:31:57.940 we've seen throughout history time and time and time again this republic just got completely

00:32:05.620 off the rails and it was following the the humanistic arc of so-called progress and it

00:32:11.940 ultimately ended up collapsing i mean every major empire of the world is that story then out of the

00:32:17.940 ruins what's built right the we the paganism and the the horrific brutality and sexual idolatry 0.86

00:32:27.380 of the roman empire 2000 years ago people would have never imagined that we would have a western

00:32:33.140 tradition in in which life was respected and women were no longer subjugated as property 0.96

00:32:39.060 right but that came out of that and so whether we are going to recover this nation or whether this

00:32:47.540 nation is going to continue on its current track and burn in the there's always hope in knowing

00:32:54.580 we are either going to turn this around or this thing's going to crash and burn and out of the

00:32:59.540 ruins we're going to rebuild and and that's that's what we have to keep in mind that we what we have

00:33:06.420 is proof the progressives they have a theory that has been disproven every single time we have

00:33:13.940 history on our side to show that it always comes back it might not come back in my lifetime

00:33:19.060 it might not come back in my children's lifetime but brian as a father i refuse

00:33:26.980 to lay on my deathbed and look at my kids and and say yeah you guys can figure it out it's your

00:33:35.620 problem now it's there there is no such thing as a biblical concept of retirement it's my fight

00:33:42.260 until the day i can't fight anymore and that's that's the perspective i argue that each of us

00:33:47.060 needs to maintain yeah i like i'm i'm i want to agree with you and i love the hope thing and

00:33:56.580 again you're you're a better man than i for demonstrating it in the way that you do and so

00:34:01.140 eloquently responding to that question the reason i don't necessarily share that sentiment at least

00:34:05.940 for Canada, which I can speak to and I know more about obviously, is that as recently as like within

00:34:12.100 the last year or two, despite the epic failures of these policy changes and these sort of

00:34:17.460 institutional reformatting that's clearly not working, the leadership has almost exclusively

00:34:24.260 doubled down to say, if you don't, again, like Wayne Ayer, I'm being told is the worst CDS of

00:34:30.500 all time potentially allegedly will say uh was publicly quoted as saying if you don't agree with

00:34:37.140 this sort of dei initiative inertia that we're trying to build here like you're a russian you're 0.68

00:34:41.620 a putin's puppet or i'm paraphrasing here but it was more or less like you are you are a russian

00:34:46.660 asset type behavior and it's just like wait a minute like what why do i have to be on board

00:34:51.300 with tampons in the men's bathroom you know what i mean otherwise i'm rooting for russia like this 0.96

00:34:56.260 is this sort of gaslighting propaganda nonsense that we just keep parroting up here leads me to

00:35:02.660 have less hope i would say significantly less hope than you're demonstrating for the us

00:35:08.100 i i know that there are a ton of issues that you've talked about at length i've listened to

00:35:12.100 many of your shows and there's a lot of whistleblowers down there that have a lot of for

00:35:16.340 lack of a better term balls to come forward and say some of the things that they've said and

00:35:19.860 you've given them a platform to do that and god bless you for doing that we don't have the same

00:35:24.020 whistleblower protections in Canada that the US has so there's a lot fewer people here like I said

00:35:28.820 that call me and tell me things in confidence and ask that I don't repeat their name or credentials

00:35:33.540 because they're terrified of what's going to happen to them their career their family these

00:35:37.540 people have pensions they it's it's just become a nightmare and for that reason I don't necessarily

00:35:42.500 agree with all the things that you're saying but I do have sort of a sliver of hope left that we

00:35:46.500 can correct this ship even if it is sort of barreling towards this iceberg or this train

00:35:50.580 is you know what i mean on these tracks that are laid um i want to shift gears here a little bit and

00:35:56.420 it it almost certainly looks like the us and certain allies are going to go to war with

00:36:02.580 iran do you have a take on this i do and this is a take that that probably sets me apart from

00:36:09.700 some people who agree with me on a lot of other things and so i'm going to i'm going to do some

00:36:14.420 prefacing and building up to it my default position traditionally is we should only go to war when it

00:36:21.540 is in our national security interest and when i say national security i don't mean this broad

00:36:28.260 vague term that you can fit anything within which is what the kind of post-world war ii progressives

00:36:34.260 have done that anything at all can be in some way nested or labeled under national security that's

00:36:40.340 not the case i mean there was no american national security purpose in going to iraq the way we did

00:36:45.700 afghanistan there was not a true national security purpose and the way that so-called forever war

00:36:51.540 was managed and the list goes on and on and on and on and an interesting historical side note

00:36:57.300 at least on the united states side we have not actually fought a war constitutionally since the

00:37:02.740 second world war that's that's the last time that we actually followed our own constitution and had 0.96

00:37:08.020 congress declare a state of war uh and the majority of military actions by by americans have been

00:37:15.700 just executive directed and and so we we have that's a whole nother issue so i say all that to

00:37:20.900 say i very much believe the military is supposed to defend the american homeland like you you put

00:37:26.660 the navy on ships with guns pointed outward and the rest of the force really should be here for

00:37:31.940 american defense and and that should not be a controversial take that's how it was for more

00:37:38.100 of our history than than it's not been that said iran is a scourge of the earth and the iranian 0.99

00:37:48.820 government not the iranian people but the current iranian government the ayatollah-led hardline

00:37:54.500 islamic government is the number one supporter of terrorism funder of terrorism carrier out of

00:38:01.300 terrorism in the world and it has been the entirety of our lifetimes i i stood on ramp 0.83

00:38:06.900 numerous times in afghanistan and watched stretchers with body bags on them wheel by

00:38:12.100 undercover darkness and get onto the flight to return home and nearly all of them in one way or

00:38:19.300 another have iranian fingerprints on them and the same can be said for what happened in iraq as well

00:38:24.740 all so because of that and because the iranian people have been willing to stand up and say we

00:38:33.140 want to we want to fight back like in iraq the iraqi people didn't want to fight back against

00:38:38.180 saddam they want to make noise about saddam but they didn't want to run their own country

00:38:42.260 in this case it's a very different context we we have iran the people of iran i mean they come from

00:38:47.460 a a proud person heritage i mean they're a very historically grounded and culturally grounded

00:38:54.260 people and enough of them are alive to remember well what life was like there before this islamic 1.00

00:39:01.700 terrorist organization took over their governance and so they're the ones who have started this

00:39:06.980 they're the ones who are standing up they're the ones who are finding they're the ones who

00:39:09.860 are being massacred in the streets and if we can take action short of putting boots on ground

00:39:16.580 that that tree is already swaying this is the analogy i use that they're already at

00:39:21.460 at the base swaying that thing if we can you know lasso her up to the top of it and help 1.00

00:39:26.580 pull it pull it on ever so they can finish the job i would say that would be a noble use of

00:39:32.100 military power because if you can defang this iranian ayatollah you can actually secure the

00:39:39.940 entirety of the world for the next generation and and so for that reason i do support there being 0.96

00:39:46.740 u.s military action to help topple that regime but again it has to be done carefully it has to be

00:39:52.100 done strategically we can't just be putting boots on ground and sending men and women into the

00:39:57.300 wood chipper again with no clear in-state mission this i don't want boots on ground uh i just want

00:40:02.900 to help get a lasso tied to that tree so they can finish pushing it over for us there's there's a

00:40:09.460 lot to unpack there. I kind of want to quickly give my much less informed opinion on this,

00:40:17.940 just of sort of what I know of the, definitely not as granular of a view that you have, but it

00:40:24.020 seems to me, and again, a lot of the things you're saying, all the things you're saying there are

00:40:28.260 sort of demonstrably true in a lot of ways, but it feels like from an outsider's perspective,

00:40:33.380 again, junior officer only career, this seems to be an intervention much more like when we went to

00:40:41.200 Iraq in 2003. It seems like we're sort of waging this war on this Islamic threat that, in my 1.00

00:40:48.600 opinion, doesn't necessarily seem to be anywhere near as bad as they're telling us that it is.

00:40:52.840 And that's not to say that they didn't kill a lot of people and that they don't train a lot

00:40:56.000 of terrorists and that there isn't, you know what I mean, all these regimes being funded through

00:40:59.060 these proxies that come through Iran and all those like those things are all true but it's not 1.00

00:41:03.820 mutually exclusive of also we are probably being gaslit into something that is a lot different than

00:41:08.740 what we're being told and that's the that's the feeling that I get as a Canadian as someone who

00:41:13.900 pays attention to sort of the global political influence of everything that's going on and

00:41:19.500 the whole Israeli side of this thing we could probably do another 12 podcasts on that alone

00:41:23.960 of like what is going on there with our greatest ally like who really knows but i i do appreciate

00:41:29.880 your input and um it's definitely well informed but i i don't necessarily agree with us doing this

00:41:36.040 and i think the reasons we're being told much like the reasons going into venezuela over drugs

00:41:40.440 is not what's actually happening um and i think that there's a lot of things that are going to

00:41:45.800 sort of come to light um hopefully not over the next many years but sooner than that that uh the

00:41:52.680 They were claiming that this is going to be a quick war, you know what I mean?

00:41:57.140 If you remember how we were lied into Iraq, it was supposed to be, I think, two weeks.

00:42:01.960 Was two weeks the quote that we were supposed to be in Iraq on the ground to win that war? 0.91

00:42:06.600 I don't remember the quote, but I remember I was a young, dumb college student, and I was all about it. 0.70

00:42:11.580 I'm like, yeah, they're shooting airplanes. Let's go in. We can never whelm them in a day. 0.89

00:42:14.860 And we did. I mean, the bad party fell apart. The military fell apart.

00:42:18.540 what what we failed to account for was what is going to fill that power vacuum because power

00:42:24.620 abhors a vacuum and something will fill it and the people of iraq were not interested in a

00:42:30.540 jeffersonian style democracy and we failed to account for what comes next yeah man it's like

00:42:37.820 most of this stuff is over my head and that's why i wanted to bring you in like you you give a very

00:42:41.660 nuanced very informed opinion um i i truly love your show i love what you're doing i think you're

00:42:47.740 an excellent example of a of what a man should aspire to be like such a good example member of

00:42:54.620 your community leader going to bath for folks that have had careers and lives destroyed over all the

00:43:00.060 horrific policy failures of the last many years um i kind of want to wrap it up here and let people

00:43:05.260 know where they can find you you know what i mean um your socials uh just kind of direct them to

00:43:10.780 everything you're doing if you don't mind i'd be happy to and thank you for the invitation to do

00:43:14.780 that um i'm at just about all the major social platforms linkedin x uh youtube at dr chase

00:43:22.460 spears so that's just at dr chase spears no i do not have an ego about having a title it was just

00:43:28.540 chase spears was taken on x and i want them all to be uniform and that was where i could get it

00:43:33.180 uniform it's kind of funny i get some people trolling me once on on x like so doctor and i'm

00:43:38.780 i'm like you call yourself that i'm like no i don't uh so anyways i distinctly remember you

00:43:45.660 making me refer to you as doctor the entire time we were together so i'm not sure that's true

00:43:49.500 oh yeah well i mean because you're you had to you had to pay the canadian tax

00:43:53.980 so i'm totally joking folks that definitely never happened i'm just i'm just uh grinding

00:43:59.660 his gears here a little bit oh man at dr chase spears on twitter um on x linkedin youtube and

00:44:06.300 sub stack i also have a website chase spears.com pretty simple place but it's where i i keep an

00:44:11.740 archive of all my writings on my thought work and so if anyone's interested in looking into

00:44:16.860 my musings they are all catalog it and organized by subject there and then one of the greatest

00:44:22.940 joys that i get to do right now is working with the herzog foundation on the finding your spine

00:44:28.860 podcast and it's just we're we're just about wrapping up our first year brian you have come

00:44:34.860 on and i was so proud that you were willing to fly up here and do that with me and we just had a

00:44:40.460 great time and i was so moved by your story and uh and that's what we do is on the findings your

00:44:45.980 spine podcast we have conversations with brave men and women who are willing to stand for what

00:44:52.380 was right what was morally true knowing it was going to cost them something not the johnny come

00:44:58.140 lately's when it's easy to stand but the people who stood when it cost you to do something about it

00:45:03.820 and they stood nevertheless knowing that this is not going to be fun this is not going to be easy

00:45:09.700 and they still stood up and we tell their stories to try to encourage other people who think like us

00:45:15.380 to start acting like it i mean we are not the fringe minority that mainstream media wants us

00:45:22.120 to believe we are heritage americans heritage canadians heritage members of the western

00:45:26.720 tradition who merely want to pass on what has been passed to us to be good stewards and so

00:45:33.080 i try to encourage people to do that through the finding your spine podcast and that's available on

00:45:38.980 every major listening platform and we are also on youtube so you just look up finding your spine

00:45:45.260 podcast i'm the only one with that name and if all else fails you can go to my website chase

00:45:49.640 spears.com and there's a link to it there thanks so much man again uh you're a gentleman and

00:45:55.580 literally a scholar folks check out the pods crazy crazy stories on there of not just military folks

00:46:00.900 but uh people in kind of all spheres of life who are just coming forward to tell the truth

00:46:05.860 and uh thank you very much for your service and i very much appreciate you not just as a contributor

00:46:09.860 but as a human being well brian i just i i'm so grateful we're connected it's wonderful to be

00:46:15.620 colleagues in arms with you and colleagues in thought and uh it's a joy to do this show i

00:46:19.780 I really appreciate you having me on.

00:46:21.880 Yes, sir.

00:46:22.360 Thank you again.

True Patriot Love - March 18, 2026

Why is Leadership So Weak and Broken？ - with Dr. Chase Spears

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