Mike Rose, STARRS Executive Vice President and General Counsel, as well as a 1969 graduate of the US Air Force Academy gave a 7-minute talk about Leftist ideologies in the military at the TakeCharge Minnesota Gala in Minnetonka, Minnesota, on Friday, Sept. 29, 2023.
The President of TakeCharge, Kendall Qualls, is on the STARRS Board of Advisors and introduces Mike.
Watch:
Transcript
Kendall Qualls
The last strategic partner (of TakeCharge) I want to bring up is Mike Rose who represents an organization near and dear to my heart and also for many of the veterans that happened to be in the room now. Michael Rose is the Executive Vice President and General Counsel for STARRS.
STARRS stands for Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services. It’s an organization of retired generals and other senior officers fighting back against critical race theory in the military and also in our service academies.
Mike traveled from South Carolina with his wife, Vivian, and he’s here to join us tonight. And Mike is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, New York University School of Law, as well as Harvard MBA.
So Mike is a no slacker. Please join us, Mike.
Mike Rose
Thank you very much, Kendall and TakeCharge for inviting my wife, Vivian and me to be with you tonight.
I represent STARRS, which means Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, which is a tax exempt nonprofit. We oppose leftist ideologies in the military that are divisive.
There are two sectors in our society where we least want indoctrination with Marxist ideology.
One is young, impressionable K-through-12 students, but second is our young people in the military.
The people who write a blank check with their lives as collateral to preserve our American values.
More than 95,000 people have died and trillions of dollars have been spent fighting against the same Marxist ideology in the Korean and Vietnam wars.
But now, because this ideology is so seductive and insidious, we’re putting out the welcome mat, turning on the lights, swinging the front door open for this Marxist ideology to permeate our institutions.
This is important because Clausewitz taught us 191 years ago in his book On War that the moral factors in war: unity, moral, spirit have three times more importance than the physical factors like bullets, guns and ships.
DEI is manifesting itself in the military in very dangerous ways. Leaders are spreading the epidemic of woke ideology through our military, fundamentally changing the purpose, character, traditions and requirements of this institution which protects our country.
They’re not just injecting politics, but something more dangerous: changing the culture, rotting the fabric of this military institution, undermining cohesiveness and unity, destroying pride and instilling guilt, parading an oppressor versus victim mentality, teaching young people to hate and disrespect the country.
They’re not going to stay in the military. They’re not going to join the military and they’re sure not going to risk their lives to fight in the military if they don’t love their country.
They disrespected and Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Lohmeier who was one of the very top Air Force leaders. He was an aide de camp Lieutenant Colonel to a four star general, the head of the Space Force.
He wrote this book entitled Irresistible Revolution: Marxism The Goal of Conquest and the Unmaking of the American Military.
He describes it as a squadron commander: He interviewed white members of the Air Force as they were getting out of the Air Force who explained they were getting out of the Air Force because they were tired of being called racists. And then he interviewed black members of the Air Forces who said, well, I joined the Air Force to serve my country, but I didn’t realize it was racist until I joined in and the Air Force taught me it was so racist.
That’s why I wrote his book.
This wokeism creates the opposite of esprit de corps. It’s designed to make everybody resent everybody else and does so magnificently.
These woke military leaders are forcing the culture to change by replacing colorblindness with color consciousness beyond dignity and respect, diluting merit with preferences based on identity groups like race and gender that our even high performers regard as divisive, demeaning and compromising of unit effectiveness.
Military members are losing or have lost trust and confidence in their military leadership, judgment and integrity.
Many have become so disillusioned that they’re getting out at the earliest available opportunity.
STARRS has helped key members of Congress like Senator Tom Cotton, for example, who assembled about a thousand examples of leftist wokeness ideology that’s actually occurred in the military.
I want to give you just one example: White Boy Two.
Now, follow this. A second year Air Force Academy cadet last January, on the first day of his economics class, was told by his white civilian female professor, everybody in the class stand up. She called out the names of the people of color, their last name that was on their nametag.
But when she got to this one first white student, she said, I’m going to call you White Boy 2. And you’re White Boy 1 because you’re taller and you’re White Boy 3. All you white boys look alike to me.
Can you imagine the mentality of a service academy to publicly demean somebody based on their skin color in that manner?
Now, I know this has happened. I’ve talked to the cadet and his father. His father, an academy graduate, retired neurosurgeon, found out about it, that they called the superintendent. The superintendent had a colonel come apologize to him. So there was no question this happened.
STARRS is fighting this in a military . We’re trying to go back to meritocracy, achievement and opportunity and be colorblind and base advancement on ability, not appearance. Unity, not division. Service, not self.
We must return to what has made us strong as a nation, a well-balanced diet of what made a republic great: our Constitution and the rule of law, not Marxist ideologies.
Thank you very much for what you are doing with K-12 students. But if you have time or money to spare, don’t forget about our military and what STARRS is trying to do to stem the tide of Marxist ideologies in the military.
Thank you.
Michael T. Rose is a 1969 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and serves as STARRS’ Executive Vice President and General Counsel. Mike has a Juris Doctor degree from the New York University School of Law, where he was an Editor of the Law Review, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. He has the highest professional rating of “AV” and is on the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers from Martindale-Hubbell. Mike was an associate attorney at a major law firm and has founded and been President of various entrepreneurial companies. Mike was the winner and plaintiff of a landmark US Supreme Court decision about the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He served four terms as a Republican State Senator in South Carolina, and has lectured at various universities, colleges, professional organizations, and television programs, including on CBS “60 Minutes.”
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