Testimony from member of the Military Readiness and Merit Coalition, former Space Force Lt. Colonel Matthew Lohmeier (USAFA ’06). He had made flight and hotel reservations to travel from a Western state to attend the May 2024 DACODAI meeting in Arlington, VA until DACODAI canceled the public from attending in-person. Watch:
Transcript
General, thanks for the introduction and Frank for hosting this important forum. I thought I’d share just a couple of stories.
I spent over 15 years on active duty and loved my time in uniform. One of the reasons that our service members love serving in uniform is both the ideas and ideals that shaped our country, which they grow to love and believe in and are willing to put their neck on the line to support defend, which is our Constitution, but also because of the men and women they serve with in uniform.
There’s a unity that knits together the hearts of those that serve in uniform. It doesn’t matter their race or their economic background, or perhaps, whether their families had served in generations past or not, or whether they’re the first generation.
That unity, which has been the strength and enjoyment of the United States military, is being eroded rapidly because of diversity and inclusion initiatives.
I was glad to see, by the way, the number of participants currently joining the show which hasn’t been capped at 100 online. Participants like the Defense Department’s current morning meetings has been.
There was a group of us who were supposed to be attending in person, the Defense Advisory Committee on DEI meeting this morning in Washington, DC, that was turned off last minute.
They didn’t want in-person attendance, and I think, frankly, they are interested in censoring the views of those who don’t agree with them.
That’s the second time in one week where I’ve been uninvited to an event that I had previously been invited to because of what I consider to be viewpoint discrimination.
One was at the University of San Diego earlier this week where a group of bullies turned off an event. We’ve seen what’s happening at university campuses around the country, and the other was at the Defense Department.
I’m reflecting on and have often since January, something that was said to me in a congressional hearing earlier this year. In January, the House Oversight Committee had invited me to testify in one of its subcommittees about the influence of woke ideology on our military.
I showed up with a few others and testified on a panel. One of the things that I said in my opening statement in that hearing was that there’s a culture war underway, that it has Marxist roots and that it was destroying the fabric of the United States military.
There was disagreement with that view from certain members of the subcommittee, specifically, it was very partisan room. Of course, the Democrats in the room disagreed with that. But the minority member in the room who sat next to Chairman Grothman up there chairing the committee is Robert Garcia from California.
Robert Garcia told me that it was nonsense. He said it in the hearing, that there was not any such thing as a culture war underway.
The point I want to make about it was that at the very end of that 2 hours when the ranking member, Glenn Grothman, had an opportunity to make his closing remarks, and then the minority leader, Robert Garcia, made his closing remarks.
Rep. Garcia made it a point to inform me in front of the group assembled that I was fighting a vain cause and that we, meaning conservatives, had already lost the war.
So on the one hand, you’ve got members of Congress who assert that there is no culture war and that to assert there’s a Marxist culture war is just a talking point of the alt right, is what Rip Garcia said, which is totally false.
Then at the end to assert that the conservatives have already lost the war, as if he was proud to announce that they’re making great progress legislatively and otherwise in accordance with certain very specific ideological aims.
Censorship that we’re experiencing at the moment is, and I’m going to close with this point here and allow for perhaps a brief moment for a question before moving on to the other panelists.
But as I take years now to reflect on the danger of the censorship that is incident to, or I should say maybe coincident with the diversity and inclusion initiatives of the United States military,
I think it is a harbinger of the military’s failure, it’s a harbinger of societal failure when you’re censoring one point of view and unwilling to hear it and are trying to shut it down.
It’s particularly problematic because it impoverishes the intellect of a society by not allowing all of the material, substantive voices and knowledge to be brought to bear in the decision-making process.
We’ve seen for a couple of years now, several years, our Defense Department struggling and making foolish decisions because they’re only allowing for and entertaining a particular worldview and viewpoint which is rooted in Marxist ideology, whether they do so wittingly or not.
That’s, of course, open for debate for many of them. But for some of them, they’re true believers in a very particular political agenda.
I’m very concerned about it. I’m constantly trying to warn the American people and our service members who are, they’re now, of course, waking up to this, that this is the undoing of the United States military unless we reverse course rapidly.
That’s what people like this on this call and on this panel are trying to do in their various organizations, and of course, all in conjunction with STARRS as well.
We have to reverse course, which is a form of repentance.
We have to turn back to the ideas and ideals that shape this country.
And in the military, that specifically means valuing merit and merit based readiness.
Thanks, Frank. Over to you and General Bishop.
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