Valuetainment - July 14, 2021


Has The Military Gone WOKE？ - Space Force Commander Opens Up


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 5 minutes

Words per Minute

164.8918

Word Count

10,782

Sentence Count

562

Hate Speech Sentences

16


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 White and black airmen starting to be skeptical of one another based on what they were being trained to believe.
00:00:05.880 Asian American airmen tired of all of the black versus white rhetoric.
00:00:09.860 When I was in the Air Force, I was just in the Air Force.
00:00:12.500 Politics wasn't a big part of our day-to-day operation.
00:00:16.480 Do you think there's a problem with even allowing an idea that dangerous enter the minds of people?
00:00:24.180 We have to honor their rights to go and participate in politically charged, potentially violent and dangerous protests like Black Lives Matter protests.
00:00:32.440 There's a big difference between a sudden tipping point and just a gradual build up to, hey, where did you show up out of nowhere?
00:00:41.160 You're sitting here telling me I'm racist.
00:00:42.920 You see people losing their jobs if they disagree with a particular political stance or political ideology.
00:00:48.620 And insist that to disagree is to identify yourself as either racist or bigoted.
00:00:57.960 Look, just a few weeks ago, everybody was hearing this.
00:01:00.500 You probably saw this on TV, news, you know, different websites.
00:01:03.960 A Lieutenant Colonel, Matthew Lohmeyer, was fired based on a couple of comments he made on a conservative podcast.
00:01:12.260 And when I saw that, I was curious.
00:01:13.760 I wanted to do a little bit more research on him.
00:01:15.480 Then you find out here's a commander who left after being in the Air Force, I believe, for 14 years and decides to join Space Force.
00:01:22.740 And is starting to see what's going on.
00:01:24.740 Maybe a little bit of an adjustment that's taking place, the direction military is going in.
00:01:28.720 And he comments on it.
00:01:29.700 Now, this isn't just a soldier.
00:01:30.980 I was in the Army.
00:01:31.780 I was a 63 Bravo mechanic.
00:01:33.800 I worked on Hummers.
00:01:35.160 The man I'm interviewing today has 1,200 hours of flying a T-38 as an instructor pilot, followed by the F-15C.
00:01:43.160 This is not just anybody we're talking about that served the military.
00:01:46.780 This is somebody that went to the top, became a commander, made a couple of comments.
00:01:50.700 And by the way, when you hear him speak today, you will know this is not someone that is a divider.
00:01:56.000 This is not someone that's an opinionated that just kind of wants to give his opinion out there and, you know, by doing podcasts.
00:02:02.560 This is someone that's very level-headed.
00:02:04.800 This is someone that's coming from a very reasonable place that's concerned.
00:02:08.760 And his comments were led to him losing his job, which is unfortunate for him having lost his job.
00:02:14.080 Now, the thing you need to know is the fact that whatever comments he gives us is important for everybody to know.
00:02:17.920 These are his comments.
00:02:18.900 It's different than what the military stands for.
00:02:21.160 He stands for his comments that has to say, just as I do as well, with that being said, Lieutenant Colonel Lohmeyer, thank you so much for being a guest on Valley Tainment.
00:02:29.200 Thank you for having me.
00:02:30.220 I'm happy to be here with you.
00:02:31.780 So if you don't mind taking a, because for me, you know, you and I were talking about it before the interview.
00:02:37.820 When I was in the Army, I was just in the Army.
00:02:40.280 I was in a lot of meetings, but there was not a lot of politics involved.
00:02:44.040 You just went, you got your job done.
00:02:46.020 You know, maybe you debated sports.
00:02:48.000 Maybe you debated when there was an election time, but it wasn't as divisive as, you know, America's not a good country.
00:02:54.240 America's, you know, history is not maybe the best, and we've done some really bad things.
00:02:57.700 It was more about if it wasn't for America, if it wasn't for here's what we've done, here's what the 101st Airborne has done.
00:03:04.600 And it looks like some things have changed.
00:03:06.220 So do you mind, you know, going from your story first, if the audience doesn't know your background, who were you?
00:03:11.980 You were a champion, you know, you were on a championship team, basketball team.
00:03:15.360 Kind of walk us through that on what led to you being right before you getting fired.
00:03:19.720 Sure.
00:03:19.880 Thank you.
00:03:20.220 I suppose there's a lot to say.
00:03:22.720 I'll be as brief as I can with some of the personal background, but I'm grateful for the long-form interview.
00:03:30.260 In high school, I played basketball.
00:03:32.420 We won the state championship in Arizona.
00:03:35.620 And I was noticed my sophomore year of high school by the Air Force Academy.
00:03:41.120 Incidentally, I had the best games of my life when the Air Force Academy recruiting team was there watching.
00:03:46.060 And the worst games of my life was some of the other universities I was hoping to attend.
00:03:51.020 And so they they picked me up pretty early.
00:03:54.800 And I took interest in the Air Force Academy for the first time in my life.
00:04:00.220 Basically, my junior and senior year of high school, I never had any military ambition.
00:04:05.500 I didn't have my parent.
00:04:07.140 Neither of my parents had served in the military.
00:04:09.540 I'd only had one uncle who had served active duty Air Force and a grandfather who had served briefly during the time period of the Korean War.
00:04:19.640 But I was recruited to play basketball and decided to attend the Air Force Academy.
00:04:24.520 I only played basketball for one year.
00:04:26.800 And it was while I was there at the Air Force Academy that I decided to start taking the military obligation seriously and began to appreciate the importance of military service.
00:04:37.520 It wasn't before I went. It was only after I had gone.
00:04:41.240 Well, as you mentioned, after graduation from the Air Force Academy, I spent 14 years roughly in the Air Force.
00:04:49.380 About half of that time I was flying and the other half of that time I was working in space for Air Force Space Command.
00:04:55.540 And until the creation of the U.S. Space Force, the Air Force, the Department of the Air Force and the service, the Air Force, was the only service that was largely responsible for all of our space-based capabilities and space operations that we did in the world.
00:05:13.700 And so I made the transition into Air Force Space Command and gained expertise in space-based missile warning and also had the opportunity uniquely to travel the world for an entire year as the aide to camp for the four-star General John Raymond, who was in charge of Air Force Space Command, and see all of our space missions across the globe.
00:05:37.040 It was a very unique opportunity.
00:05:38.520 I bet.
00:05:39.520 And so I was also with him, interestingly, during important conversations that were taking place in D.C. and elsewhere about the stand-up and creation of a new independent Space Force, and looked forward to the opportunity to transition into that service, which I did just this past year.
00:06:00.700 And so I've served a little over 15 years now total on active duty, and only a little over a year of that, or under a year of that, has been in the new service, the Space Force.
00:06:11.460 But more specifically to your point, and to your question, you asked when it was or how long it has been that I've been seeing or recognizing this kind of thing that I'm writing about, speaking about in the services.
00:06:28.360 Like you, when I was in the Air Force, I was just in the Air Force.
00:06:33.420 Politics wasn't a big part of our day-to-day operation.
00:06:37.200 And I would argue that, largely speaking today, throughout the services, politics still is not a big part of what they do.
00:06:44.380 However, there's been a momentous shift during the past calendar year to begin offering not just annual trainings, but monthly and weekly and daily conversation in some basis, depending on where you work, about race-related issues.
00:07:01.660 They're politicizing discussions, not unifying discussions, they're divisive discussions, because a lot of the language of critical race theory is being invoked, something that the American people hadn't heard a lot about before the past calendar year, but are beginning to hear a lot about now.
00:07:18.040 And as I recognized those discussions in the form of what we call diversity and inclusion trainings, stand-down days, both locally and also Department of Defense wide, I recognized just how divisive these discussion points were going to become as our down days and trainings were starting to translate into white and black airmen, for example,
00:07:45.200 starting to be skeptical of one another based on what they were being trained to believe, Asian American airmen coming to me and explaining that they're tired of all of the black versus white rhetoric and that they're deciding to get out of the Air Force.
00:07:58.420 White airmen coming to me and saying they're deciding to separate from the Air Force or Space Force because they're tired of being accused of racism constantly.
00:08:07.180 So this is the time period, the last calendar year that I've recognized these things really starting to heat up.
00:08:13.400 And that's been true across broader society, but also in the services.
00:08:17.300 Is there a single event that caused that or was it a, because there's a big difference between a sudden tipping point and just a gradual, you know, build up to,
00:08:27.900 hey, where did you show up out of nowhere? You're sitting here telling me I'm racist. I don't have any problem with anybody. I just want to make sure you're performing.
00:08:34.900 How did this show? Was it overnight or was it gradual?
00:08:37.360 The reason that's difficult to answer properly, in my view, is because the answer is both.
00:08:45.440 It is both gradual and it is sudden.
00:08:48.320 Marxist, communist, subversive tactics require years, if not generations, to properly germinate,
00:08:59.760 for the soil to be properly prepared, for people's willingness to divorce themselves from what would be considered traditional values.
00:09:09.140 That kind of thing takes a long time.
00:09:10.760 There's a reason those who understand and are intent upon pushing that agenda target the education system,
00:09:19.200 specifically higher learning, but also now the public education system, our churches.
00:09:24.960 Those institutions are places where, from a very young age to our adult life, we continue to be educated and influenced.
00:09:38.580 And if you can plant subtle ideas over a long period of time, all it takes is certain tipping point or crisis events,
00:09:46.880 as you pointed out, to capitalize on in order to begin revolutionary changes within a society.
00:09:53.620 One such event, it's just a matter of fact, I know it's controversial, but it was George Floyd's death.
00:09:59.460 What I saw in broader society and, incidentally, in the military services this past calendar year,
00:10:06.420 was that that event was capitalized on by those who are activists for, whether they realize it or not, a Marxist agenda.
00:10:15.760 Black Lives Matter and Antifa, for example, have Marxist aims.
00:10:20.600 There are many compassionate people who participate in these various efforts because they're compassionate
00:10:26.860 and because they are interested in bettering the lives of humans.
00:10:30.320 But what they don't understand is that the inventors of or creators of the ideology and the agenda
00:10:38.900 have a particular aim in mind, and it's division, not unity.
00:10:42.280 It's revolution, not peaceful unification of society.
00:10:49.680 And there's a particular way in which they go about it, which we've seen in the past year.
00:10:53.620 It's getting people angry.
00:10:55.400 It's shouting slogans.
00:10:57.280 It's tribalism.
00:10:58.660 And when that begins to be injected into our most trusted institutions, like the United States military,
00:11:06.060 then what you see is the breakdown of good order and discipline as the kind of polarization
00:11:10.820 that typifies broader society now infests one of your purposefully nonpolitical organizations.
00:11:21.560 As you're aware, you serve in the army.
00:11:23.820 It's purposefully nonpolitical or apolitical and for good reason, because you can't have people
00:11:29.200 who are dodging bullets and returning bullets caught up in hatred towards one another because
00:11:35.520 of their tribal identity politics.
00:11:37.860 So let me ask a question.
00:11:39.340 And I'm going to, you know, it's technical, but I think you'll see where I'm going with this.
00:11:44.200 So who knows this is happening?
00:11:47.880 Who doesn't know this is happening?
00:11:50.540 Who knows this is happening that they support?
00:11:53.580 Who knows this is happening that they don't support?
00:11:56.420 Those are hard questions to answer, but I'm going to, I'm going to try my best and give
00:12:00.420 my personal view.
00:12:01.720 And I think it's difficult to give the answer accurately in a snapshot of time, because this
00:12:08.080 is a very dynamic, complex, societal manifestation.
00:12:13.440 And what I mean by that is to your first question, who knows that this is happening?
00:12:18.600 I would have told you a year ago that far fewer people know that it's happening than
00:12:23.960 are becoming aware that it's happening today on July 2nd of 2021.
00:12:31.120 Okay.
00:12:32.860 For example, what I had mentioned a few minutes ago is that very few people heard about critical
00:12:38.640 race theory or understood that it had a Marxist lineage of ideas just a year ago.
00:12:42.760 Today, there are groups of parents who had never been politically active, let's say, in
00:12:48.160 the past decade of their lives, who are becoming very involved in trying to understand some
00:12:52.660 of the talking points and tactics that are Marxist in nature that is infiltrating the school
00:12:58.060 system.
00:12:58.440 There are parents who are concerned, who are sending their children off to our service
00:13:05.580 academies, who are for the first time paying attention to what just a year previous they
00:13:11.120 might not have been aware had Marxist roots.
00:13:13.720 So I say that to say, I think that that's the answer to your first question, who knows
00:13:18.400 that this is happening?
00:13:19.200 I would say that there is a rapidly growing base of citizens in this country who are very
00:13:25.560 aware.
00:13:26.540 And I'll also mention that Western liberal democracies, generally speaking, are becoming
00:13:31.620 aware, if they haven't already been, that this is taking place.
00:13:34.520 I'm aware just personally, based on the fact that my book is now selling in at least a dozen
00:13:39.260 countries, primarily Western democratic nations, but also some Southeast Asian Pacific area nations
00:13:49.260 as well.
00:13:51.500 The second question, who doesn't know that this is happening?
00:13:54.440 Well, that's harder for me to answer because I think some of those that don't are going to
00:14:00.540 come to know in the next month or two.
00:14:01.980 And if they don't come to know in the next month or two or within the next year, they're
00:14:05.420 going to know probably well after it's far too late.
00:14:10.180 And they should have recognized it earlier because where this all leads to, if it's left
00:14:14.620 unchecked, is civil strife, continued polarization of society.
00:14:21.440 And unfortunately, 20th century history tells us it leads to violence.
00:14:26.040 And in fact, that's a part of the agenda.
00:14:28.240 A Marxist agenda is to cause violent revolution.
00:14:30.420 Now, the third and fourth questions that you've asked, I'm going to ask you to restate them
00:14:36.780 so I can perfectly understand it.
00:14:38.180 But who understands that this is happening and either maybe supports it and understands
00:14:44.480 the aims of the agenda?
00:14:46.040 I think that's a much smaller subset, if I've got the question right.
00:14:49.800 That's a much smaller subset of society.
00:14:53.060 But, you know, Douglas Murray points out in his book, The Madness of Crowds, that there was
00:14:59.040 a poll taken in 2016 of academics in our college and university campuses, for example.
00:15:08.300 Almost 20 percent, 2-0, 20 percent of them identify publicly as Marxist.
00:15:13.520 That's a shocking number.
00:15:14.820 And it wasn't that high 10 years ago.
00:15:17.560 That was as of 2016.
00:15:19.380 I think the number was 16 or 18 percent, but I can't remember for sure.
00:15:23.980 He has a chapter in his book on Marxism, in fact, and it's in that chapter that he mentions
00:15:28.120 that statistic.
00:15:30.080 But there are by far more people who don't appreciate the danger of the aims of the revolution
00:15:38.060 who participate nonetheless in the movement.
00:15:41.740 We've got good friends who disagree with us on these issues, which, in my view, aren't partisan
00:15:49.540 political issues.
00:15:50.360 I'm simply, as a service member, trying to defend my oath to the Constitution, defend
00:15:54.600 the Constitution and its ideals, and defend America's traditional values, let's say, that
00:16:01.080 I think personally are under attack.
00:16:03.440 But there are others who think that they're highly partisan.
00:16:06.540 There are also others that think I'm either bigoted or racist or some other ist or name that
00:16:12.840 they can come up with, because they think that if you're a compassionate human being, naturally
00:16:20.200 you would flock to these movements that strive for social justice that use words like freedom
00:16:26.380 and equity or equality, liberty.
00:16:30.920 And of course, we all care about those words, but they're defined very differently by different
00:16:34.560 groups of people and therefore lead to very different ends.
00:16:38.020 So that's my best effort at those four questions.
00:16:40.760 Those are hard ones, and I think people do fall into different categories, as you've
00:16:44.300 No, I think they do.
00:16:45.260 As you've insisted.
00:16:46.080 Yeah, I think they do, and I think you're right.
00:16:47.940 The group that knows, who support it is a very, very small group, but they're growing
00:16:52.700 so rapidly, and they know how to drive.
00:16:55.020 The biggest tool I believe Marxists have today that they didn't have before is this thing
00:17:01.020 called social media.
00:17:02.040 That's the biggest tool.
00:17:03.220 This has helped them out so much to drive their agenda, because they can simply go out there
00:17:07.620 and, you know, divide communities, divide many different people, get some people to question
00:17:12.240 things, you know, gaslighting.
00:17:14.140 Hey, do you really realize what your parents are doing to you?
00:17:16.800 Do you really realize what your community, it's not fair.
00:17:18.980 That's not how they should do it.
00:17:20.640 They're dividing, dividing, dividing.
00:17:21.880 But if you don't mind, you know, going back to the CRT, critical race theory, can you take
00:17:29.440 us back with the history of this with, you know, and I'm talking about how this came about,
00:17:35.000 Freud, Karl Marx, Frankfurt School, Antonio Gramsci, you know, if you can go back and break
00:17:40.600 down how this whole thing came about, that in order for us to be able to divide, we need
00:17:44.280 a revolution, and who came up with it, and what's the formula to make that happen?
00:17:49.180 Thank you.
00:17:49.500 There's two things I'm going to mention.
00:17:51.720 The first, I want to go back to your point about the tool of social media that we have
00:17:55.480 available to us.
00:17:58.000 You'll see in the news right now that the Chinese Communist Party has just celebrated its 100
00:18:05.380 year anniversary of its creation.
00:18:08.180 Now, for people that aren't familiar with the history of the Chinese Communist Party, I'll
00:18:11.800 say that, go back 100 years, that's 1921.
00:18:16.360 Okay, Mao Zedong and a bunch of communist or Marxist revolutionaries, this is just several
00:18:21.580 years after the Bolshevik Revolution succeeded.
00:18:24.840 It's just two years after Communist Party USA is established in the United States, and communist
00:18:29.480 parties are established across dozens and dozens of countries in the world in the year and two
00:18:34.080 following the Bolshevik Revolution.
00:18:35.680 1921, you have a communist party that's established in China, but they did not, notice, have social
00:18:45.000 media available to them in 1921.
00:18:47.440 And look at the time period involved in the revolutionary efforts that are slow growing, like a cancer
00:18:55.540 or a metastasization throughout rural China and getting a proletariat base to rise up in revolution
00:19:04.400 against the incumbent government.
00:19:06.100 It's 1949, 1949, nearly 30 years later before a communist revolution succeeds at pushing out
00:19:14.680 nationalists to the island of Taiwan with Chiang Kai-shek and other nationalists.
00:19:19.480 And Mao Zedong establishes the Chinese Communist Party as a single party rule within China.
00:19:25.660 It's almost 30 years.
00:19:27.000 Now, you don't need that kind of timeline in modern America or in any modern country that
00:19:33.140 has social media, to your point.
00:19:34.600 Because the revolution and the ideas of the revolution spread rapidly via soundbites to
00:19:42.760 young, vulnerable people who are interested in getting into the exciting, romantic cause
00:19:48.980 of revolution against the terrible oppressor.
00:19:52.620 Now, transitioning into the second part, the question that you've asked about critical race
00:19:57.300 theory.
00:19:57.560 Whereas earlier communist revolutions of the 20th century were more faithfully aligned,
00:20:08.420 I'll say, with the original narrative of the Communist Manifesto, which was penned by Marx and
00:20:14.400 Engels in 1848, specifically in an economically based class stratification or class grouping of
00:20:22.420 people, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, the idea that the bourgeoisie or the capitalist ruling
00:20:29.300 class was oppressive, and the proletariat worker class was the oppressed victim.
00:20:35.600 There are words like slaves used in the Communist Manifesto by Marx and Engels to really generate
00:20:42.140 a kind of visceral animosity for those who have wealth and who rule in that system or in whatever
00:20:50.780 country that narrative might take hold.
00:20:53.280 You pointed out Gramsci, the communist leader in Italy.
00:20:58.960 There are many other names I trace through in my book that some of, there are Marxists that come
00:21:05.240 over from Germany and flee the Third Reich in the 1930s to the United States, to Columbia University,
00:21:12.100 and there at the teacher's college there in the early 1930s, in the lead up to World War II, these Marxist
00:21:22.720 philosophers, I'll say, from the Frankfurt School, establish more firmly in the United States Marxist thought
00:21:33.560 during the decade of the 1930s, and the numbers of Communist Party USA during the 1930s, boom.
00:21:39.300 And before the decade is over, tens of thousands of new members have been added to the Communist
00:21:44.740 Party USA.
00:21:46.280 And one of the things that Gramsci noticed was that in Western society, Western peoples were
00:21:54.940 too wedded to their traditional value systems that were largely Judeo-Christian, okay, which
00:22:01.880 tended to appreciate the value, the inherent worth of the individual, and shy away from any kind
00:22:10.800 of revolutionary or replacement ideology that would instead emphasize the collective over
00:22:18.100 the individual, because there was a fear of individual liberties being taken or threatened.
00:22:24.040 And so one of the ways in which they determined, Gramsci and other communists, Marxist revolutionaries
00:22:32.860 determined to shape the narrative in the West, was that they needed a long-term plan that was
00:22:40.420 subversive, that would divorce Western, the civilization, the populations of Western societies, and
00:22:48.180 specifically America, from their traditional values, so that they would be more susceptible
00:22:54.020 to the ideal, the ideas and ideals of Marxism.
00:22:59.200 And so there was, there are books about this, but there are lines of effort or attack, and you'll
00:23:05.400 appreciate this as a military man, you know, lines of effort are needed to accomplish certain
00:23:12.240 ultimate aims. There are many lines of effort underway that have been outlined in many places,
00:23:18.660 and they're easy to find these days in books and online, and so I won't recapitulate them here, but
00:23:23.580 they targeted the education system, they targeted religious organizations, they targeted even elected
00:23:30.140 office within the United States, the Senate, the Congress, the presidency. Nothing was off the table for
00:23:37.060 Marxist revolutionaries. They wanted to run for office and get in and start to influence the system from
00:23:41.860 any place that they could. So when you, when you look back through the 19, specifically to the 1930s is
00:23:49.120 where I spent quite a bit of time in my book, and then there's a school of thought that's established
00:23:53.780 during that time period called critical theory, or the critical school of thought. It's essentially
00:23:58.380 the incessant criticism of all things Western civilization, but it manifests in different ways
00:24:03.700 throughout the decades. It morphs over time, for example, into the 1960s and 70s, into a school of
00:24:09.280 thought that's called critical legal theory, or there's a group called the critical legal scholars
00:24:15.360 that last for decades, and they're trying to demonstrate how our laws and norms that have
00:24:22.440 been established, now there's a transition to race, by the way, and away from economic stratification,
00:24:27.900 how whites, white Christians, for example, have established laws and norms that are detrimental
00:24:35.060 to people of color or any other minority groups that you can pick out of society. And that morphs
00:24:41.120 yet again, further still into its most political manifestation, which is critical race theory,
00:24:46.760 where they really start to capitalize on race dynamics and, and the evil history of slavery in this
00:24:52.340 country. And racist institutionally or systemically racist laws of the past, the evils of the past,
00:25:00.840 and they resurrect those, they pull them up out of the grave, in order to build suitably unfavorable
00:25:06.980 narratives of American history and the American people, to once again, reintroduce separation division
00:25:12.320 into society with the hopes of completely, I'll use their terms, dismantling, overthrowing, burning down
00:25:19.520 the incumbent government and the system, and ultimately establishing a one party system here too,
00:25:25.680 so that one political, one side of the political spectrum can be put down, shut down, canceled,
00:25:33.880 censured, and demonized, while another can work its way into becoming a kind of one party system like
00:25:40.080 you see in other communist revolutions or regimes. But I mean, the part of, you know, it's funny when
00:25:47.140 you're speaking, it took me to Iran. And I lived in Iran 10 years. And one of the reasons why the Shah,
00:25:54.460 you know, they eventually kicked them out the second time, there was a group the Shah feared the
00:25:59.540 most. And it was a group called Tudei. And Tudeis were communists who had escaped Lenin or Stalin,
00:26:07.120 you know, these could have been Armenians, this could have been, you know, Russians who came to
00:26:11.060 Iran because the Shah was trying to make it more westernized. And he had the battle against the
00:26:15.620 Hezbollahs and, you know, the extremists and Tudei. He feared Tudei so much that every Tudei,
00:26:22.920 just think about Tudei equals communists. Same thing. These are people that swore by the book,
00:26:26.620 Karl Marx, Communist Manifesto. My family, mother's side, they, the Communist Manifesto Bible
00:26:31.560 was first, then it was the Bible. It was like, to them, that was their Bible. I grew up with that.
00:26:37.160 And he kept, every time he found them, he kept arresting them. He found ways to eliminate them
00:26:43.540 because he knew long-term, these guys were trying to create a revolution in Iran
00:26:47.940 to divide the entire nation that was growing at a pace that was about to pass UK,
00:26:53.600 specifically with all the new contracts of oil he was going to renew in 1979. Obviously,
00:26:59.040 in the contract that was signed in 1954, for 25-year contract with France, Germany, Russia,
00:27:04.700 and I believe, US. And then that was his fear. So, where I'm going with this is,
00:27:13.220 you know, the whole idea where General Mark Milley, who, you know, General Mark Milley,
00:27:19.920 he came out and he opposed folks like yourself. And here's a man who says, look, what's wrong with
00:27:27.740 my kid? I've read Communist Manifesto and I've read, you know, I don't know what the other book he
00:27:32.080 talked about. I don't know what the other book would have been. It would have been Ayn Rand or
00:27:35.200 Atlas Shrugged, but he said another book. He says, I've read both books. He says, I want to learn
00:27:40.660 both books. What's wrong with learning both books? What's wrong with doing this? Do you think there's
00:27:45.520 a problem with even allowing an idea that dangerous enter the minds of people? Are you from the school
00:27:55.900 of thought of, if we're going to develop a strong immune system as individuals, sometimes herd immunity
00:28:02.340 means you have to face opposing ideas for you to get stronger? What are your thoughts on that?
00:28:07.820 That's an excellent question that you've asked. I think that it's important for us to learn history.
00:28:14.700 First off, I'll say that up front. The good, the bad, and the ugly. It's important not to shy away
00:28:20.460 from our ugly past as a country either. It's one thing to study and learn about Marxism, for example,
00:28:30.560 to study the Communist Manifesto, to study Lenin's writings, to study Mao's writings,
00:28:35.600 what Stalin was doing during his time in the Soviet Union. It's one thing to study ideology and these
00:28:44.500 things. It's an entirely different thing altogether to infuse our institutions with its tenets and its
00:28:52.060 vocabulary. Entirely different. It's important and healthy to have dialogue. It's unhealthy to impose
00:29:00.780 viewpoints, political viewpoints and ideology on people and insist that to disagree is to identify
00:29:08.940 yourself as either racist or bigoted. You start throwing labels around at people if they disagree
00:29:15.540 with your views, if they disagree with your understanding of history. That's where things begin.
00:29:21.260 You mentioned fear in Iran. There is a fear. There is a climate of fear that we've generated for
00:29:28.860 ourselves very rapidly in this country where we politicize the environment. You see people losing
00:29:36.460 their jobs if they disagree with their jobs if they disagree with a particular political stance or political
00:29:40.620 ideology. Well, I'll tell you what that translates into in an organization like our armed forces. And this is a
00:29:46.840 very important point. Our service members, in my view, shoulder an unfair burden of remaining
00:29:55.780 apolitical when political ideology comes face to face with them and they've been trained their entire lives to
00:30:03.420 know that they're supposed to remain apolitical because to disagree is to necessarily be viewed as
00:30:10.060 politically partisan. But to sit silent because of a climate of fear is to allow for you, your values,
00:30:18.460 your belief systems, your own viewpoint to be steamrolled by a different incompatible political ideology.
00:30:25.900 Now, I think that if an individual is interested in studying Marxism or critical race theory or Ibram
00:30:35.700 Kendi's book, how to be an anti-racist, you know, these various ideas that have been swirling around in
00:30:40.880 the media in the past few weeks and months, that is completely their prerogative. That's completely their
00:30:48.680 prerogative. They can study it. Now, if they're studying it to understand the enemy, that's great, especially as an
00:30:55.040 active duty service member who's sworn an oath to defend the Constitution. Study and learn about
00:31:01.200 the regimes and ideology that we've spent at least a half a century combating with blood and treasure.
00:31:06.880 We've sent millions of troops into combat in the last half century to combat Marxist communist regimes
00:31:13.920 and ideology. And now to criticize it as politically partisan? I mean, we're in a dangerous spot.
00:31:21.520 Now, if you want to go study Hitler's Mein Kampf, because you're interested in learning about the evils
00:31:28.880 that led to great atrocity, then go study it. But when we, so the point that I'm making is,
00:31:36.160 it's one thing to study history and there's danger in burying history. And there's a reason
00:31:40.880 that in Mao's cultural revolution in 1966, they had book burnings throughout the country. There's a reason that
00:31:47.520 when Marxist revolution gets underway, we topple statues and insist that certain viewpoints are
00:31:52.960 acceptable and others are not. In American society, we thrive on the study of history,
00:31:59.680 understanding the past, and then valuing and cherishing America's founding philosophy.
00:32:05.360 And when we get away from that and insist that it's, again, I'll make the point when we infuse our
00:32:12.080 institutions with the tenets, the vocabulary and the ideology of any particular ideology,
00:32:20.720 but specifically Marxist ideology, which is what I've been focused on, to the detriment of
00:32:26.720 American philosophy and founding ideology, the idea that the individual has inherent worth,
00:32:32.800 then we're starting to walk a road where you become exceptionally divided,
00:32:38.880 because there will always be freedom-loving, America-loving Americans who will never abandon
00:32:45.120 those beliefs, who will fight against those divisive ideologies which we've recognized in history have
00:32:52.560 been antithetical to our own. Do you think it's okay for us to have communistic professors,
00:33:00.640 like those who are openly, I'm a communist, I believe in communism. Do you think we ought to allow
00:33:06.480 folks to be professors who believe in communism? I've never been asked that question. I could give
00:33:13.120 you an answer that I might change the way I say it a week from now, but I'll say that I'm surprised
00:33:18.960 that we've got people hanging onto Marxism and communism as a viable ideology for governance of
00:33:25.920 humanity at this point, considering that it's produced tens of millions, if not over a hundred million
00:33:30.720 deaths in the last century, when it's been instantiated as a single party system in various
00:33:37.200 countries that has completely tyrannized populations of people. So that's the first thing I'll say is
00:33:45.520 that I'm surprised that in a country like America, that's somehow a viable alternative to the American
00:33:53.120 philosophy that has produced such equality and such wealth, such a standard of living, such a successful
00:34:00.080 multiracial country that's never been seen in the history of our planet. Now, it's for the very reason
00:34:06.160 that we appreciate diversity in this country and diversity of thought and opinion that I suppose
00:34:11.600 it's even possible that people would have such views, and I think they're entitled to those views.
00:34:16.800 But specifically when it manifests in the military, let's say, now when those beliefs begin to manifest as
00:34:24.720 advocacy for violent revolution, I identify in my book that there are active duty service members,
00:34:32.800 and there are not many, but there's plenty because we've got hundreds of thousands of service members
00:34:38.080 who are online on their social media accounts advocating for burning down cities in this country.
00:34:44.160 That is, first off, illegal, and I'm surprised that not a single senior leader in our defense
00:34:50.000 department has asked me any further questions about some of the specific examples that I've mentioned
00:34:55.120 in my book. Because if it was, let's say, in my view, if it was the other way around and I said,
00:35:01.120 hey, I'm aware of some white supremacist ideology that's floating around, or I'm aware of some white
00:35:06.640 nationalist extremists, I'd have them pounding down my door asking for some specifics, right? So there seems
00:35:13.760 to be a double standard, and that's the perception that many people have. It's one thing to believe
00:35:20.800 something. We're entitled to believe as we wish in this country. It's another thing to allow that to
00:35:27.200 manifest into revolutionary behavior that threatens the overthrow of our way of life and our government.
00:35:34.080 We're a sovereign country. We have to defend our way of life, and that's what I've signed up to do.
00:35:38.880 Marxist revolutionaries are intent upon the overthrow of our way of life and to put in place of it
00:35:45.840 something that is altogether different. Now, there's specific language in the oath that I take,
00:35:52.560 that all of our service members take, that we're to defend the Constitution of the United States
00:35:57.600 against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Now, what service members have to grapple with is what is
00:36:03.680 a domestic enemy. Now, you might have different opinions about what that is, but I would say
00:36:10.160 someone who's intent upon the overthrow of our way of life and our government, who hates the Constitution,
00:36:15.680 and who wants to demonize America and Americans based on their group identities, that's antithetical
00:36:21.600 to our values, and it's actually a threat to our continued, the preservation of individual liberties in
00:36:25.920 this country. And so, at very least, what I have to do, and what others have to do, is be courageous
00:36:31.600 in identifying what they perceive as threats so that we can tee up the conversation about how we're
00:36:36.240 going to handle those threats. Instead, there's a politically partisan push right now to define and
00:36:44.000 determine what the domestic enemy and the domestic threats is. That's been, in fact, recently identified.
00:36:51.600 You know, global warming is something we're focused on, or global climate change, and white supremacy.
00:36:58.480 And there have been two senior leaders, at least, that I'm aware of, the commander of U.S. Strategic
00:37:03.520 Command, a four-star, and the commander of U.S. Space Command, who are both asked by the Congress
00:37:08.160 if they're aware of any white supremacy in the services, if they've ever met any in their careers.
00:37:14.640 And they both answered negatively. They weren't aware of any of this problem in our services, and so it
00:37:19.600 surprises me that that's one of the most pressing domestic threats that we're trying to face right
00:37:25.280 now. I'm not saying it's not ever been an issue or isn't an issue in some pockets of society,
00:37:31.440 but to identify it as a threat to our trusted institution, the military, is something that
00:37:36.880 I don't personally see and completely disagree with, but it's not me to decide the policy.
00:37:41.120 Yeah. So, I mean, I'm sure you saw the professor that came out from Riverside City College,
00:37:46.720 Asatar Baer, an economics professor who is a self-identified communist, speaking highly of
00:37:55.360 Joseph Stalin. You know, he was a successful revolutionary, a great listener, just talking
00:38:01.440 to him, talking about him as if he's this, you know, righteous leader that we had. I asked that
00:38:05.520 question when I asked you, do you think communists, open communists should be able to be professors in
00:38:12.240 our system? If that question was asked, should a white supremacist be a professor in America today?
00:38:20.960 What do you think the answer would be within a split second?
00:38:24.080 Oh, absolutely not.
00:38:25.280 So, why should a communist be allowed to be a professor? I mean, I see both as extremes. My question
00:38:31.680 is more, why are we allowing extremists to be professors? I want to show you data here,
00:38:36.000 which you were kind of talking about, the membership of Communist Party. While you were
00:38:40.000 speaking, I just did the search. This is national membership by year from 22 to 1950, right? And you
00:38:48.320 see it increases a little bit right after war. Obviously, the date you gave Bolshevik was 1917,
00:38:55.680 US was 1919, and China was 1921. It's almost every two years, one of them came out with their Chinese,
00:39:02.800 with their Communist Party. So, the membership's going up, while the economy's bad. But the moment
00:39:09.840 the economy improves, membership goes down. The moment 1929 crash happens, look how the membership goes up.
00:39:17.520 Because it's all, you know, they need a massive crisis for them to push their agenda. The moment
00:39:23.760 the economy recovers, their memberships goes down. It's such a tough time for these guys today
00:39:29.600 to make their arguments because the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting richer.
00:39:34.880 So, it's, you know, the saying where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.
00:39:40.480 The only part that makes sense is the following. I was a kid that grew up in a family where my dad
00:39:44.800 was a 99 cents or cashier in Englewood. My dad never sat me down and explained to me what a 401k is.
00:39:50.640 My parents have never owned a 401k. My parents have never owned a stock, a mutual fund, an annuity,
00:39:55.040 an insurance policy, a life insurance policy, never owned a house. I've never lived in a house.
00:39:59.440 I've always lived in an apartment complex. Nobody told me, here's what rule of 72 is. Here's what
00:40:04.320 buy, you know, here's what buy and hold is. Here's what the dollar cost averaging is. Here's what a
00:40:09.840 Roth IRA is. I don't know any of that kind of stuff. My dad was a cashier at 99 cents store. He was making
00:40:15.040 1500 bucks a month is what he was making. So, that was never taught to me about how money worked.
00:40:21.520 And so, gradually, the rich got richer and the poor is getting richer. We're making more money.
00:40:27.760 Every, in every possible way, life is getting better, better. So, their argument isn't working.
00:40:34.640 So, in order for them to effectively impose their argument, they have to go back to what you were
00:40:41.040 talking about, Antonio Gramsci, which, you know, he talks about cultural hegemony, which I'm sure
00:40:46.640 you're familiar with cultural hegemony. By the way, I don't want to read the definition. Would you mind
00:40:51.440 taking a quick second here and telling everybody what cultural hegemony is? I'm sure you've spoken
00:40:56.080 about this in your book. I do write about it in the book. There's a short, if I'm not mistaken,
00:41:02.960 there's a short paper even that you can go read about this, Understanding Cultural Hegemony. But
00:41:08.560 we did touch upon it earlier. This idea, as you pointed out, look at the graph that you put up on
00:41:15.040 the screen there. Remember, there was Frankfurt School Marxists that came over into the United States
00:41:20.800 on the tail end of that crash at the beginning of the 1930s, and you see the Communist
00:41:25.520 Party USA numbers boom during that period. And it's the same time period that Gramsci and others
00:41:32.800 are pushing this idea that you have to divorce people in Western society from their traditional
00:41:38.960 values, their traditional culture, their traditional norms. And you need to replace it with a different
00:41:44.400 set of values, a different set of norms, and a different culture. And if you're able to do that
00:41:49.200 successfully, now, as you pointed out, the economic stratification argument, the idea that the
00:41:54.160 working class is going to continue getting poorer and need to rise up in revolution against their
00:41:59.120 captors, the capitalist ruling class, that was not a successful narrative to use to spur violent
00:42:07.760 revolution in a place like the United States. But that's when that same time period where the numbers
00:42:14.000 are booming there, and when we're talking about cultural hegemony, Antonio Gramsci and others that
00:42:18.160 are grabbing a hold of that idea that we should divorce people from their traditional values and
00:42:22.160 replace it with a separate ideology, during that same period is when you see the development of
00:42:27.680 both critical theory and it morph into critical legal theory. Let me read you something from my
00:42:32.160 book just briefly here that I've got because it gets right at, it's going to take me 10 seconds to
00:42:38.000 find it. So here it is. It actually took me three seconds to find it.
00:42:42.160 Good. You're a fighter pilot. I'm not surprised. I didn't even have it marked. Page 102 of my book.
00:42:47.520 So today, critical legal scholars at Harvard University help us make the link between critical
00:42:52.720 legal theory and the now popular and pervasive critical race theory. The Harvard Berkman Klein Center
00:43:00.880 has a page on their website about critical legal theory today, specifying what it is, and it's related to
00:43:08.960 what we're talking about. Critical legal theory scholars focused from the start, this is a direct quote
00:43:14.400 from their website, on the ways that law contributed to illegitimate social hierarchies,
00:43:22.000 pay very close attention to the language, producing domination of women by men,
00:43:28.000 non-whites by whites, and the poor by the wealthy. This is a classic oppressor versus oppressed narrative
00:43:35.920 that is showing up in our institutions of higher learning. They claim, this is again still a direct
00:43:43.440 quote from the Harvard Berkman Klein Center's website, they claim that apparently neutral language and
00:43:49.040 institutions, apparently neutral language and institutions operated through law mask relationships
00:43:57.360 of power. The emphasis on individualism within the law similarly hides patterns of power relationships,
00:44:06.240 while making it more difficult to summon up a sense of community and human interconnection. Now,
00:44:11.920 let me connect that quote from Harvard's website. Now, this is critical legal theory. This is a half
00:44:18.800 century old to the current, far more politicized critical race theory. Ibram Kendi's book, How to Be an
00:44:26.240 Anti-Racist, has come up a number of times in the media in the last few months, and specifically in the last week,
00:44:32.320 I've talked about it. In the introduction to his book, and this is going to be some quotes directly
00:44:39.120 from his book, Kendi mentions that colorblindness, Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream and ideal for Western
00:44:46.880 society and for American society specifically, colorblindness is racist passivity. These are not
00:44:52.480 my words, these are Kendi's words. Colorblindness is a mask to hide racism, and the Constitution of the
00:44:59.840 United States is a colorblind racist constitution for a white supremacist America. Those are ideological
00:45:07.760 talking points that are rooted in Marxism with the intent on dividing the American people.
00:45:12.960 Okay, so you can see how cultural, the idea of cultural hegemony, planting the seeds of division
00:45:20.000 over time in our institutions of higher learning, manifests today tactically and methodologically
00:45:25.760 in the writings of critical race scholars. And then he goes on to say, if you consider yourself
00:45:31.280 not racist, I don't care what your race is, I don't care what your political party is,
00:45:35.120 that is the language of neutrality, not racist. You are either racist and admit it, or you're racist
00:45:43.120 and you deny it, confirming your racism. If you claim to be not racist, you are quote, like the Trumps
00:45:49.040 and other white supremacists of the world. Now, what is problematic about this is not that somebody
00:45:55.840 believes it, because lots of people believe stupid things. What's problematic about it is that it's being
00:46:02.480 recommended to our service members as something that's going to help them navigate the complex
00:46:10.640 world that we find ourselves operating in. And it's a distraction from our main focus,
00:46:17.680 which is to prepare, to deter, and if necessary, to fight and win the wars that our nation calls upon us
00:46:22.960 to fight and win. And we've got serious enemies in the world who want to see our disillusion, like China.
00:46:27.520 China. And I can't help but imagine that if you are an active, I think there's 90 million people in
00:46:36.160 the Chinese Communist Party, which is like 6% of the 1.4 billion people in China. Only, it's like less
00:46:43.040 than 10% of their population is actively participating member in the Chinese Communist Party. If you're Xi Jinping,
00:46:50.640 if you're his advisors, if you're the leaders of the CCP, and the PLA, People's Liberation Army, military
00:46:59.440 forces, there's nothing that you'd like to see more than for American service members who provide a
00:47:07.200 certain traditional integrity to the United States and the Western world, let's say, and a defense of it,
00:47:14.400 who aren't political, to start getting wrapped up and divided over Marxist-rooted political ideology,
00:47:23.040 because they know very well where that leads. It leads to revolution. And so, if I were them,
00:47:28.800 and I'm not planting ideas, they already do this, I'd be actively engaged on social media platforms,
00:47:34.880 like you mentioned, with bots and other personalities dedicated to fomenting the revolution by planting
00:47:41.840 these sound ideologically-based snippets of trash that come from people's books like
00:47:48.640 Kendi's books. You get people to believe that, they'll start to hate other people based on their
00:47:52.080 group identities. You know, I will tell you, what you just said was very powerful, but earlier when
00:47:57.520 we were talking about the membership goes up when the economy's bad, you know, we have less welfare
00:48:06.720 today, less poverty. The only reason rich's network goes higher than poor's doesn't. Rich knows where
00:48:13.120 to invest their money, poor doesn't know where to invest their money. You know, when I was a guy who
00:48:17.600 didn't have money, I was putting my money in the bank. The rich looks at opportunities, investments,
00:48:21.200 had to learn how to do that by getting into the financial industry. But I want to read this from
00:48:26.320 Wikipedia. I just want to read it from Wikipedia so the audience can go look for it. Here's cultural
00:48:31.440 hegemony. When earlier we were talking about Antonio Gramsci, this is him, okay, Antonio Gramsci,
00:48:41.200 the Marxist intellectual developed a notion of hegemony and advocated the establishment of a working
00:48:47.440 class intelligentia. So, in Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is a domination of cultural diverse
00:48:54.400 society by the ruling class, which manipulates of the culture of the society, the beliefs,
00:48:59.520 manipulates. It manipulates the culture of society, the beliefs, the explanation, perceptions, values,
00:49:04.640 mores, so that the imposed ruling class worldwide becomes accepted cultural norm, the universally valid
00:49:11.600 dominant ideology which justifies the social, political, and economic status quo as natural and
00:49:16.640 inevitable, perpetual, and beneficial for every social class rather than a, as artificial social
00:49:23.520 construct that benefits only one ruling class. So, in other words, the way I take it is, look,
00:49:32.240 let's confuse the hell out of everybody. Let's confuse them. And if you look at in the last 18 months,
00:49:38.480 what was the biggest thing that the Marxist movement got that helped them drive that agenda
00:49:44.720 even more, maybe not 18 months, 15 months is COVID. Why? COVID shut us down. So, California, New York,
00:49:53.760 Illinois, Michigan, a lot of these states shut down. Texas, Florida, many of these places were open
00:50:01.760 while these other states were not. But this shutdown got us to accept sending people money,
00:50:07.920 paying people for their rent. The person who owns that real estate property that needs to collect rent
00:50:13.120 is not getting rent, not from the government, not from the individual. They got a little bit of the
00:50:17.520 PPP loan, but they're sitting there saying, I can't sustain this for too long. Oh, let's extend the
00:50:22.400 moratorium. But remember, what do you want me to do? Well, you got, you're rich, you can afford to dip
00:50:27.120 into your savings. But I just barely bought this duple, you know, this apartment, I don't have that much
00:50:32.560 money in the bank account. I want to run. It doesn't matter. You are rich. You're categorically
00:50:36.560 rich. You got to be able to pay for this. And gradually, people said, maybe this Marxist stuff
00:50:41.440 isn't that bad. Maybe this, we can send money to people, we can print money, we can send money to
00:50:46.560 people. In the last 15 months, I would have to say to you, they made so much progress in the last 15
00:50:54.080 months. The agenda has won so much because the divisiveness, the division, them being divided has
00:51:01.600 advanced them so much. Are you optimistic that, based on history, tough heroes rise up that are
00:51:12.320 not afraid to bully the bully? Or are you in a place where you feel we're at a tipping point,
00:51:19.200 where their agenda is, unfortunately, going to advance even more today than ever before,
00:51:25.120 simply because they have the tools today that they did not have 100 years ago when this movement began?
00:51:32.320 Okay, you've asked a terribly important question. So, if people have been partially listening up to
00:51:39.680 this point, I hope they'll listen very carefully. During the COVID crisis that we've been subject to and
00:51:50.080 also subjected ourselves to. Active duty service members, it was tough for us to get even our
00:52:00.160 service members to work sometimes if they were non-mission essential personnel, because we would,
00:52:05.520 like so many other businesses or organizations, cut down on the number of people that were
00:52:10.800 that were allowed to come to work. Instead of 100% manning, you went to 75%, then you went to 50%, and at one
00:52:16.320 point, you're down to 25% manning. And so, our service members are staying at home, trying to
00:52:22.160 telework, and it was different from base to base. This was not, you know, top-down driven policy,
00:52:26.880 but base to base. Because it was too dangerous to come to work, but there were waivers being granted
00:52:32.320 for people to go downtown in various cities and participate in Black Lives Matter rallies
00:52:37.040 that were smashing windows and lighting things on fire. Okay? Now, we have a right to go and
00:52:46.080 participate in rallies, protests, etc., just not in uniform. Okay? So, I'll make that clear.
00:52:53.200 We're saying that, in fact, it was the Office of Special Counsel that determined Black Lives Matter
00:53:01.360 last year. They determined that Black Lives Matter is not a politically partisan organization. It's not
00:53:05.600 involved in politics. It's not a political organization, which is false. It's completely
00:53:10.320 political. And its founders have said so since at least 2015 in interviews. They said,
00:53:15.520 we're Marxist. Democrat Party is not far left enough for us. We need to move to socialism. We
00:53:21.360 have a Marxist agenda. We're trained Marxist organizers, and we're trying to revolutionize
00:53:26.720 the system. Okay? That's all very clear language. So, it is very political. Now, to say that service
00:53:33.600 members cannot come to work because it's too dangerous because of COVID, but we have to honor
00:53:40.880 their rights to go and participate in protests, even highly politically charged and potentially
00:53:48.320 violent and dangerous protests like Black Lives Matter protests turned into during the last year, is a
00:53:53.920 very odd, to say, to put it lightly, double standard. But here's to your point. The question of where we stand
00:54:01.440 as a country, am I optimistic about potential outcomes and what courageous voices can do?
00:54:11.040 This is why it's the crux of the matter. It's why it's so important to me as an active duty service
00:54:16.400 member to speak up now early and often about what I'm seeing take place. For people that don't understand
00:54:22.960 history, I get that you might be at odds with me or disagree with my method, my approach, my tactic.
00:54:29.040 It's been embarrassing somewhat for the services for me to be talking publicly. I understand that
00:54:35.120 completely. But what is far worse is for people to not say anything if they recognize how dangerous a
00:54:42.400 path we're walking and to wait a year or two or three until it's far too late for us to reverse the
00:54:50.480 radical trend that's occurring in our society to a single
00:54:57.840 to a single party system? I'll say I'm not talking just I'm not talking Republicans versus Democrats at
00:55:03.040 all here. I'm talking about the establishment of a Marxist communist regime in this country. And you're
00:55:08.560 saying we're well on our path to doing that. That sounds like conspiracy theory to some people
00:55:14.240 a year ago. Some people are waking up now this year and in this month to the fact that that's entirely
00:55:19.760 possible. Our country is not in any way different or unique from any other country in human history
00:55:29.360 that is susceptible to revolutions if we abandon our traditional values and are willing to buy into
00:55:33.680 ideology. We are exactly the same because humans are the same. Human nature is the same.
00:55:38.800 We are at a perilous crossroads in American history at the moment. Otherwise, I would not have put my
00:55:47.040 potentially put my career on the line to speak openly about this. I'm trying to be courageous to
00:55:52.320 beget courage. And yet, if not enough people wake up and get courageous, it might not be enough
00:55:59.440 to stem the tide of radicalism that I'm seeing sweep across the country at the moment. Fortunately,
00:56:04.480 I'm grateful for grassroots movements, parents, retired military officers, even active duty service
00:56:11.520 members who are starting to speak up against this and starting to recognize this for just how
00:56:16.560 dangerous it really is. There's a group called STARS, Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism
00:56:21.440 in the Services. And they have a website, STARS with two R's, stars.us. They were just formed in the last
00:56:28.080 couple of months and they've got thousands of people that have signed up to join them trying to fight
00:56:33.120 critical race theory in the services, for example. There are movements and organizations like that
00:56:38.000 who are taking courage. And I'm hopeful that at least in the near term, we're going to be successful
00:56:45.120 at erecting barriers to the revolutionary cause and taking back some of our foundational values
00:56:52.480 and allowing the democratic process between parties in this country to play out on the civilian stage
00:56:59.120 among government officials, elected officials, and our civilian population on the one hand.
00:57:03.520 And on the other hand, allowing our services to return to being non-political, not politicized,
00:57:08.960 so our service members don't get divided over these political ideologies.
00:57:12.400 What's next for you? You sound like you got a potential big upside, but meaning if you ask for,
00:57:21.840 I don't know what your aspirations are, but what's next for you?
00:57:24.400 So I'm still active duty. I'm not in command. There's, I hear from reading in the media,
00:57:30.800 an investigation that's ongoing about me, but I've not been informed of that in writing or verbally
00:57:36.320 from my chain of command. And so, you know, I get legal counsel, I wait, and I sit and I wait,
00:57:42.480 and I see what the outcomes of this supposed investigation are going to be.
00:57:47.360 I've had the understanding and ambition that I would be a leader within our service, within the Space
00:57:58.720 Force for a very long time now. The service has said it's lost its trust and confidence in me as a
00:58:05.440 leader. So unless it wants to publicly say otherwise, that it's changed its mind, that I'm actually doing
00:58:11.280 something worthwhile and good, rather than just being a controversial figure. I don't know how
00:58:18.240 I could ever return to leading people in the services if the services have labeled me as controversial
00:58:23.680 and untrustworthy. That's a terrible position to be put in. And I very much have been grateful for
00:58:30.400 the opportunity to lead. Well, that's been taken. So I don't know is that is the short answer to your
00:58:35.760 question of what my future holds, whether it's in the service or out of the service. But I am very
00:58:42.080 interested in my oath to defend this, the country's constitution. Because it produces a society that
00:58:50.000 values individuals, it produces a society that enables people to thrive regardless of their beliefs,
00:58:55.680 their cultural background, their upbringing, and to pursue, to pursue excellence in society, to be
00:59:02.560 contributors, to help, to genuinely help contribute to the benefit and welfare of other human beings,
00:59:10.080 regardless of their race, their politics, their beliefs. That's the greatness of the American ideal.
00:59:15.760 Right now, that's under attack whether people want to believe that or not. And I think a great
00:59:19.280 many people are starting to believe that. Any political aspirations or no? I've always had
00:59:25.840 zero political aspirations. Really? Really. I've had zero political aspiration. There are a lot of
00:59:32.000 people that seems to have political aspirations for me at the moment, but I've never had political
00:59:37.280 aspirations. I wrote a book about political ideology, not interested in getting politically partisan.
00:59:46.480 I'm hopeful that our elected officials will be actively engaged in, first, helping remove the highly
00:59:56.880 politicized talking points and environment within our armed forces that have crept in in the past year,
01:00:02.720 especially. But I'm also hoping that citizens will get involved with their state, local governments,
01:00:11.440 on school boards and other things. I mean, this is my personal views. People need to get involved right
01:00:16.160 now and not wait another month. Otherwise, it might be too late. They need to get involved and be active and
01:00:21.360 dialogue that's respectful so that we can prevent the kind of divisive and potentially violent
01:00:27.040 revolution that some hope for in this country. And I've seen a lot of this in the news in the past.
01:00:32.400 They're getting a lot of press recently. There's a lot of people that are getting very involved and
01:00:37.360 courage begets courage. And I'm grateful for people getting involved right now. But political aspiration,
01:00:41.760 uh, I'll say not today. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's a, again, the way you speak is very, uh,
01:00:53.920 the way you put words together as you're explaining is so clear. It's crystal clear. Like you're just
01:00:58.720 speaking the truth and you're going through it. And I think in politics that could help you out. And you
01:01:03.200 don't seem like you're an emotional guy. And, uh, God knows, we already know what happens when, uh,
01:01:08.880 we get a little too emotional. It tends to only give fire more to the opposing side. Favorite, uh,
01:01:14.320 favorite, um, pilot in the movie, top gun, which one's your favorite? Just curious. Oh,
01:01:20.000 man. I didn't even like the movie. Get out of here. Seriously. I didn't like it. No,
01:01:24.320 I didn't. It was too cheesy, too corny. Wow. So you didn't like, you didn't like, uh,
01:01:30.080 Maverick writing the bike back to her place. You didn't like all that. No, that was,
01:01:35.280 no, that bugged me. Really? So what's your favorite fighter pilot movie? If you could say
01:01:40.400 one that you liked, you know, what would it be? This is going to disappoint a lot of fighter,
01:01:45.040 but there, there was a really good, it might be called fighter pilot, actually. It was like in
01:01:49.680 IMAX theaters, uh, where you got to get some real good inside the cockpit GoPro footage of what it's
01:01:57.040 actually like to fly in a fighter. That was kind of fun. Uh, I forget it's been years since I've seen it.
01:02:02.000 It might be called fighter pilot though. Interesting. Um, uh, and, uh, the, the Hollywood,
01:02:08.240 uh, fighter movies just have never, uh, been that exciting to me. That's sad, isn't it?
01:02:15.440 Listen, I mean, I mean, I played, I played, uh, high school and then for a short season,
01:02:19.840 college basketball. And yet you asked me my favorite basketball team. I'll also disappoint you. I don't
01:02:24.160 even pay attention anymore. Uh, so you, you, so you, you become a fighter pilot because you watched
01:02:29.360 a movie or was it family? No, no. So how did it happen? Oh, so here's see much more exciting than
01:02:35.280 a Hollywood movie. I was a biology, uh, student at the air force Academy and tending on going to med
01:02:42.160 school. Uh, and I went out to Edwards air force base where they have the test pilot school, uh,
01:02:48.480 out there. And I got a, an incentive flight in a T 38 and had the time of my life sitting in that
01:02:56.400 back seat, raging around in the desert out there. And it, and it, I changed my major. I pursued pilot
01:03:02.600 training and, uh, I loved, I loved it. It was tough work, but I loved, uh, I love flying.
01:03:08.320 Well, uh, brother, thank you for your service. Lieutenant Colonel, you know, for me, a man who changed my
01:03:14.800 life. I got a list of 10 men who changed my life in a positive way. One of them was
01:03:19.200 Lieutenant Colonel P Cox, whom till today I was in DC seven years ago. I saw a man walking by and it
01:03:27.180 was like a two or three star. I'm like, that looks like Lieutenant Colonel P Cox. I walked up to him.
01:03:31.540 It wasn't, I'm still looking for him till today, but you being a Lieutenant Colonel, I am sure you have
01:03:36.360 impacted many young men's lives and they probably look at you as a leader. You have the presence of a
01:03:41.920 leader. I thank you for your service. And some tells me you got a big upside. I don't know what
01:03:46.040 you're going to be doing, but I think you'll be doing something that's going to positively impact
01:03:49.180 this great country that my family escaped to come to. Thank you for your time. I appreciate your words
01:03:56.180 of encouragement. Uh, I appreciate, I started paying attention to your, uh, interviews and your,
01:04:01.980 uh, and valutainment actually after being invited to be on the show. And I've, I've enjoyed going and
01:04:06.880 looking at how you interview people and, uh, you're open-minded and balanced. And, uh, I really
01:04:11.460 appreciate the work that you're doing. So thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming on as a guest.
01:04:15.300 And by the way, folks, if you're watching this, we're going to put the link below to his book,
01:04:18.640 irresistible revolution, Marxism's goals of conquest and unmaking of the American military.
01:04:23.780 That link will be below. Go order his book. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.
01:04:27.600 What do you think about what he had to say? Do you agree with him? Do you not agree with him? Thumbs up.
01:04:31.120 You agree with him? Thumbs down. You don't agree with him. If you do or don't comment below,
01:04:34.340 I thought it was so interesting to see military. I mean, I understand media. I understand Hollywood.
01:04:40.800 I understand even universities, but military, military where a commander has to go through
01:04:47.360 walking on X shows the way he had to go through and he gets fired for it. I don't know. I want
01:04:51.020 to hear your comments. Comment below. And if you enjoyed this interview, there's two others. I
01:04:54.140 think you'll enjoy. One of them is, uh, with Paul Kanger, professor, author, uh, his specialty.
01:04:59.820 We talked about, it was a very, very interesting. Uh, he gave the history of Marxism, Karl Marx,
01:05:05.580 who he was, what he did. That's his specialty. And, uh, another interview I did with Michael Malice,
01:05:10.280 who has a complete different perspective of what direction he thinks America ought to
01:05:14.940 go to. He's a famous, you know, he's, you see him in a lot of interviews on YouTube. Uh,
01:05:19.660 click over there to watch his interview. Haven't said that. Have a great one, everybody. Take
01:05:22.760 care. Bye-bye.