On December 27 STARRS Chairman Lt. Gen. Rod Bishop received–on behalf of STARRS–an award/donation from the Summit County Republican Women at an event at the Elks Club in Silverthorne, Colorado. Here is his speech at the event:
Thank you—SCRW for this award!!!
The support, encouragement and friendship of so many in this group are appreciated more than any of you will ever realize—it has been a lonely fight at times.
Whenever I get the opportunity, I like to share a little bit about our organization, why we were formed and what we have accomplished—the goal of which is– we are hoping the great support you all have shown will continue. But before I do I would like to introduce some special guests
After 22 moves–one of the reasons Mary and I retired to CO was to sponsor cadets. While this year Mary and I will be celebrating our 45 year anniversary Adam and Cam— are celebrating their 45 day anniversary tonight, Cam welcome—we are—so glad to welcome you into the family!
In a very real way, Adam is at the very genesis of STARRS—you see 7 years ago next month (Jan of 2018), Adam, a senior at the USAF Academy at the time, and three of his classmates were up in Breck at our cabin—I was flipping us all pancakes for breakfast, before going out to ski and out of the blue Adam says to me—“Gen B—the USAFA culture is changing underneath our feet” and one of his classmates immediately added—“and it is not for the better.”
I did not know what to make of those comments, or what to do about them—other than to say and think, “the pendulum will swing the other way.” But just 2 ½ years later, in the aftermath of George Floyd ‘s death, the USAFA football coaches put out a 3 minute video In which the coaches chanted 7 times in those three minutes “Black Lives Matter.”
The 3 star Superintendent at the time had worked for me as a colonel, so I reached out to him and asked him “Jay—have you been to the BLM website? They tell us there that they are against the western nuclear family, against the capitalist economic engine that sustains our nation, and are Marxists. Why in the world do we want the USAFA to be associated with a Marxist organization, with our coaches chanting their slogan?
(As one retired 4 star general told me “BLM has taken a page out of Saul Alinsky’s rules for radicals and bamboozled half of America.)
Before delving any further, I would like to make an important point here—I am an Elk—so I know “politics” is verboten in our halls—accordingly, I would ask all of you to take these thoughts in the vein they are intended—on my mother’s side, I am Massachusetts Kennedy. I have voted on both sides of the isle during my lifetime.
What I am sharing with you is the experience of someone who served our nation in uniform for 38 years. These thoughts come from that experience of having commanded 10 times and knowing, I think, a bit about what makes a military unit click and tik and be successful. I don’t care if you are a Republican, Democrat, supporter of Green Party or a Libertarian. What I do care about is that I would hope all of us here want a strong military—the best one our nation can provide.
I would also hope all of us want a military that is unified/cohesive and APOLITICAL. A military that is driven and motivated by expressions like “one team one fight,” a military that wants to raise the bar every day—as in “be all you can be.”
But…unfortunately, there has been an ideology sweeping our nation that has driven a knife into the heart of what I just said about unity and being apolitical, and yes–it has been supported by one particular political party—but it is NOT the political party that STARRS took issue with—it is the ideology that itself again has taken aim at the heart of military cohesiveness by the way it (despite the good intentions that some may have) has been enacted or implemented.
When you stand up against that ideology, some think you are naturally standing up against the party that is pushing that ideology and therefore you are taking a political stance—when in actuality those of us at STARRS since our origin—would tell you our message is a non-partisan message—our mission is educating ALL Americans, regardless of political affiliation, on the dangers of a cancer being inflicted upon our military. That has been our issue!
This cancer of which I am speaking, of course, is critical race theory—for those of you who don’t know or haven’t studied it—CRT is deeply rooted in Marxism. It originated from Marxists who has set up the “Marxist School”—named later changed to the “Frankfurt School”—in Frankfurt Germany. These professors fled Nazi Germany in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University in NY.
When one stops and thinks that we are a nation has lost nearly 100,000 American lives fighting against this same Marxist ideology in Korea and Vietnam alone, and spent trillions of our national treasure fighting it around the world, isn’t somewhat ironic that we would just open the front door and say “come on it”—but that is EXACTLY what we have done.
If more people understood this we would easily recognize that this is a pro-American stance–Standing up against this Marxist ideology is exactly in line with one of the principles or goals of why the Elks was founded Quote: “to quicken the spirit of American patriotism.”
These Frankfurt School professors realized the middle class in America was too well off economically for the original Marxist thought of dividing a society by economic classes to work—so they eventually came up with the concept of dividing people into identity groups by race/ethnic background as a way to make the revolution happen that would bring about the Marxist Utopia. As an instrument of division, CRT has worked well!
When a few years back, CRT started to draw some negative press, “they”, in typical Marxist fashion, changed the name and the narrative from CRT to DEI an anacronym for Diversity Equity and Inclusion. Three nice sounding words—who can argue with any of them?
But here I love what former NYT editor, a self described progressive liberal, Bari Weiss has to say about DEI.
“In theory these three words represent noble causes—But in actuality DEI is not about any of those words—rather it uses those words as camouflage.
Those words are now in fact metaphors for a powerful ideological movement—bent on recategorizing every American, not as an individual worthy of equal rights and dignity because of their individuality, but as an avatar of an identity group—a person’s behavior prejudged according to that group, setting all of us up in a kind of zero sum game.”
I would add that anyone leader, officer, senior NCO, worth his/her salt is FOR diversity—of thought mostly– and FOR being inclusive of the entire team. It is the “equity” part of DEI and how our DOD discriminates to achieve “equity” that creates resentment. It is anti-American. Many minorities tell us it is demeaning.
You see “Equity” is the government cooking the books to achieve equal outcomes—in other words, discriminating in accessions, promotions, command assignments , etc. Equity—the opposite of merit. Wouldn’t you have a military that stresses merit, equality and integrity, or MEI rather than DEI?
I guarantee you the Denver Broncos do not pick their starting team based on “equity”—and that is but a sport/ a game. When it comes to our military, –it is much more than a game–we are talking about a life and death issue– our national security—and Americans deserve to also field the best military team possible and color of skin should not play in that selection.
I wish I had more time to share with you more of the divisiveness we have witnessed—go to our website —you will be absolutely aghast at some of the 2000 stories that are recounted there —but here, very quickly, are just some examples;
#1–Cadet saying BCT was too easy—the standards were too low and adding “if I heard ‘we need leaders of diversity’ one more time I was going to throw up. His classmate adding—“I felt like I was continually being indoctrinated.”
#2–A midshipman being tossed out of the naval academy for tweeting in support of his parents who were both police officers during a BLM riot in LA in the summer of 2020 where their lives were in danger—while his fellow USNA classmates were tweeting ACAB and F the police in support of BLM. He was told it was Naval Academy policy to support BLM—(but not our police apparently.)
STARRS helped him get back in through a Federal Court lawsuit and that young man is now serving proudly in the Navy having completed pilot training, finishing first in his class last year.
#3–A USAFA cadet, the son of a friend of mine, being called “white boy 2” during the first day of econ class (as the instructor was learning the names of students) by the female professor. She went on to say “I am going to call you white boy in the back row, white boy #1 as you are taller and you over there, you will be white boy 3 as all you white boys look alike .”
I could go on—but hopefully you see the divisiveness the implementation of DEI has caused in our military
—So what has STARRS done about all of this?— With only one paid employee, we have educated the American populace, the administration, members of Congress, etc through over 200 media (TV, radio, podcast) appearances and well over 200 articles written by STARRS supporters appearing in media outlets across the nation and of course, multiple trips to the Hill. Crated a website that is first class and a weekly emailing that many of you in this room received.
While we certainly can’t take all the credit, we know we have played a large role in the narrative of people learning just how harmful DEI is—a narrative that has helped convince corporations like Walmart, Boeing, Coors, Tractor Supply Warehouse, Jack Daniels, Harley Davidson, Apple, Lowes and Ford, some 30 states and multiple universities to scrap or roll back their DEI programs.
The incoming administration has promised the military is “next up”, but the indoctrination is deep and some serving have bought into it, so there is much work still to be done.
Let me begin to close, by sharing just one other aspect of the STARRS mission with you—it was a mission brought to us by many of the younger members of our military society who liked how we were being a voice for them in standing up against DEI—as one female minority USAFA cadet put it in an email to me
“I see so many bright young Cadets here who know what is going on is wrong but at the same time are too scared to speak up. “ (Thank you for being our voice and) everything STARRS is doing for us cadets. I hope with everything going on that more people will begin to have the courage to step up and take a stand before the culture and climate of our military (and our nation for that matter) become any more divided. “ Pretty wise words for an 18 year old I thought!
Although this young minority cadet (she was a freshman at the time she wrote that note) was referring to DEI, she also wanted to exercise her right under the First Amendment to not take the covid vaccine. She wasn’t the only one—a large group of cadets and other military members reached out to us in Aug of 2021 when SECDEF Austin issued his mandate for similar help.
Since the leaders of STARRS are all in our 70s—old school shall we say–our initial response was “hey, you are in the military—roll up your sleeve or bend over and take the shot—the force needs to be protected.” But they kept pushing and persisting, so we listened and we learned.
–From the time the pandemic hit the US in Jan of 2020 until the mandate to take the vaccine shot in Aug of 2021, only 95 military members out of 2 million had passed away from the disease. A USAFA DG grad Doctor told us “everyone is missing the age gradient” factor of the disease. During that same 19 month time period, 585 military members died of suicide.
We learned:
–the government was not following the laws of the land regarding the use of EUA products—you see to prevent WW II Nazi-like experimentation on people, we in the USA passed laws on products that were licensed under Emergency Use Authorized status—#1 you have to be given informed consent (something that was impossible and no one really knew as the vaccine had but a fraction of the testing vaccines normally get) and #2 you have to be given the right to refuse—a provision of the law our DOD chose to ignore. Before STARRS and other organizations could bring all the lawsuits to bear (each Service had to be sued individually) to provide injunctions prohibiting all the different services from expelling their members, the military had expelled 8400 members from their ranks—at a time when recruiting was suffering a real crisis and retention (due in part to the divisions caused by DEI) was in the tank—especially in critical job fields .
–we also suspicioned, given the way the military was handling what they called “Religious Accommodation Requests” (a way of asking for an exception from taking the vaccine) that DOD was violating the Religious Freedom Restoration Act which “Prohibits any agency, department, or official of the United States or any State (the government) from substantially burdening a person’s exercise of religion.” And then by extension, the First Amendment to the Constitution. Today, now eight different federal courts agree with what STARRS was articulating. In the end, nearly 40,000 RARs were requested and only some 400 approved—mostly from what we understand, for people who were getting out anyway or retiring. Good bye First Amendment. Good bye 8400 patriotic Americans who wanted to serve their country.
–Then, like the rest of America, we learned that the vaccine didn’t really protect anyone from getting COVID and it didn’t keep it from being spread—and harmful side effects like blood clotting and myocarditis—especially among younger, military aged people, were becoming more well know. So we asked—why when we know all of these things, would we continue to mandate our military has to get this vaccine?
The answer came from a very good lawyer friend still serving in the AF—“Sir this is nothing but a Hitlerian Loyalty Oath” he told me. We thought it pretty “radial for our own government breaking the law and implementing Hitlerian loyalty oaths, so we added a second R for radicalism to STARRS.
To help right the wrongs, STARRS assisted 100s of cadets from all 5 Service Academies and other military members on filling out their RARs, assisted with and brought law suits to obtain injunctions and worked extensively with Congress—educating them on all the illegalities that were transpiring.
Proof of our success here came in Nov of 2022 when a lead Staffer from Senator Cotton’s staff who had told me in Jan of 2022, “I appreciate your passion general in trying to get Congress to overturn the covid vaccine mandate—but the issue has no legs on the Hill” called me and said “I don’t know how you guys did it, but the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act is going to give you what you want—Congress is going to lift the vaccine mandate. 10s of thousands of military careers were saved. But our work is not done—we are strongly advocating for appropriate remedies to offset the harm done by DOD malfeasance.
This is not something we did alone—we had plenty of others helping, and a lot of moral support from many in this room tonight. So I want to thank you for that and again sincerely thank you for your acknowledgement of all the work STARRS has done to try and keep our military strong, free from indoctrination and focused on what is its primary mission—readiness and to deter or win our nation’s wars by recognizing us with this award.
I started my 38 years with the military in the middle of the Vietnam war, flew extensively in DESSERT STORM and the war with Serbia over Kosovo among countless other contingencies —all important missions——but none more important than this mission I have been involved with for the last 4 years.
Officers in the military take an oath that says in part, I swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic—never in the 10 times I took the oath personally (you retake the oath every time you are promoted) or in the over 100 times I am sure I administered it to folks getting promoted, did I ever stop to consider that “domestic enemy.”
But now I have seen that enemy first hand, know how it insidiously it works and am hopeful, thanks in large degree to the support of people and groups like the Summit County Republican Women, that the vision of our founding fathers—that all men are created equal– will be rekindled; that America will remain internally vigilant, and America’s military will refocus on merit, equal opportunity for all and readiness need to deter first but fight and win our nation’s wars if called upon to do so.
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