What is the soul of an institution worth? Now I know that organizations don’t have souls any more than rocks, machines or animals. The eternal, living agent is limited to humans endowed with the Imago Dei, the image of God in which Adam and all descendants since were formed. God gave humanity the institutions of family, church, and state for our well-being and His glory. Yet He also put further acts of creation on the hearts of man. Our ancestors put that to work over millennia, creating cities, nations, and wonders of the world.
Through the work of generations, they raised institutions. These human-endowed organizations transcend individual actors and ages, becoming foundational to society… offering services we cannot imagine ordered life without. Hospitals, universities, and even more recently created railroads and airlines exist at scale far beyond the individual, yet require a mass of individuals to carry the mission forward. Many souls build and maintain institutions, which themselves remain soulless. Yet they have a character that reflects through the actions of those charged with stewardship in their time. As with the individual, such a character can be rich or bankrupt.
The military is such an institution, though one descended from the divinely created orders of state. The proper function of a nation’s armed force is an extension of the magistrate’s responsibility to protect order and terrorize evil. Yet under the guise of health protection, the U.S. military turned on God-fearing, constitutionally-minded public servants in the period since 2020. Military commanders reflected a mindset of de-Bathification, harshly stamping out concerns over what’s now admitted to have been an unlawful shot order. They shamed, harassed, coerced, cajoled, persecuted, threatened, and terrorized men and women who sacrificed for many years through this era defined by enthusiastic wars of choice.
The Trump administration ran on a platform that rightly included forcing the military to make amends for the sins of its COVID policies. An executive order was released one week after the inauguration. This was followed by written guidance from the defense secretary directing the military service branches to get on board with reinstating military members who were kicked out, or self-selected out, due to “the Department ’s unfair, overbroad, and unnecessary coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccine mandate.”
SEE ALSO: President Trump Orders Reinstatement of Troops Discharged Over COVID Vaccine Refusal
Yet the actions taken by Pentagon officials demonstrate a perception that the COVID Reprimandos are permanently leprous and should remain outside the city gate. Claims that those kicked out have been reinstated are false. Nine months into the Trump Administration, the most recent estimated number is three. The war department is not documenting reenlistment statistics, leaving it to veterans who watch this closely to figure out compliance with the president’s reinstatement order.
Those returning are having income earned as civilians deducted from their alleged ‘full back pay.’ No word on whether federal civilians currently furloughed will have side hustle income deducted when the current government shutdown ends. Many among those kicked out unlawfully are hard at work trying to rejoin the military that abandoned them, and are being stonewalled at every turn by a host of actors mastering the art of delay and malicious compliance. At some point must acknowledge that actions speak louder than words, and in this case, they prove the military institution’s character lacking.
From a pragmatic viewpoint, one can understand why Biden holdovers, political appointees whose lives were unaffected by now-expired military mandates, and generals who hedged their moral compass on illegal actions would prefer to forget that dark period of military history. Recruiting has surged, reversing the crisis spell from 2022 to 2024. Accession and training pipelines function with virtually no effort required by higher headquarters. New recruits enter service with a blank slate so far as the military institution is concerned. In contrast, those kicked out—or self-selected out over Covid tyranny—are viewed with a suspicious eye by the human machine that views loyal dissent as disloyalty. To do right by them now requires prejudiced mercenaries to admit their wrongs and choose to be part of making amends. But it is not through humility that they achieved rank and power. It’s naivety to expect such virtue from those whom C.S. Lewis well described as men without chests in our time.
Thus, we come to the question of where to go from here. Can the military institution’s character be rescued in our time? I, for one, remain a cynical optimist. In the quest to halt the slide toward tyranny, we have no choice but perseverance, no matter how great the opposition and seemingly small the odds. Our generations must depart from the boomer fatalism that sits on the sidelines, hand-wringing, while verbalizing laments about how bad things are—and doing nothing about it. Consider how far we have come in a year. So-called ‘pride’ month is on life support. Antifa is finally declared a terror group. Young men are going back to church. Leftists who fetishize premeditated homicide on social media are being fired. Who among us imagined such a moment in our lifetimes just a couple of years ago? As it turns out, the progressives don’t own history after all. The way of our time is still up for grabs.
Throughout American history, we have seen the U.S. military shatter the tyrant’s sword when will, resolve, and character met. From enabling the nation’s founding through the Revolutionary War, to liberating Europe in the last century, to laying the foundation for sending humans to the moon, when those running the military are determined, the seemingly impossible becomes realistic. Against such precedent, making amends over unlawful Covid policies is ‘too easy,’ as military parlance would observe.
Back to the starting point, an institution does not possess a soul. But it is marked by character, for better or worse, a reflection of the ethos demonstrated by its rulers. Our eyes, and the eyes of history, now watch and wait to see what the legacy those now running the Department of War will choose—continued moral failure, or recovery and restoration.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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