Woke West Point abandoning 'duty, honor, country' is shameful
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
"Duty, honor, country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be."
So said Gen. Douglas MacArthur in his famous May 1962 address to West Point cadets.
But those words are no longer hallowed.
West Point last week removed them from its mission statement, substituting a bland reference to "the Army Values."
The US Military Academy at West Point decided to drop the "Duty, Honor, Country" motto from its mission statement last week. AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File
West Point's superintendent, Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland, defended the change, suggesting in a damage-control letter addressed to "supporters" that it resulted from a year and a half of discussions held "across" the West Point community and in consultation with unidentified "external stakeholders."
He said the decision was supported by Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, whose last job was director of a center at the RAND Corp., a research and policy institute that professes to "strive to cultivate a community that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion as central to our culture."
Gilland also claimed the approval of Army Chief of Staff Gen. Randy George, who previously served as senior military assistant to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, whose department requested $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023 for "dedicated diversity and inclusion activities."
That would pay for a lot of implicit-bias workshops for men and women who should be trained to lead and kill, but the difference in language is neither subtle nor insignificant.
The words "duty, honor, country," enshrined at West Point since 1898, have precise meanings that have historically bound our officer corps to timeless imperatives vital to the nation's defense.
They presuppose our country is worth defending, honorably and as a matter of duty.
Proponents of woke ideology reject this notion.
For them, those very concepts — along with such basic values as merit, hard work, rational thought, respect for authority and even punctuality — are undesirable symptoms of a culture supposedly infused with "structural racism" and "white supremacy."
A country built on them is patently not one they would care to defend.
A March 2022 Quinnipiac poll found 52% of Democrats would leave the country rather than stand and fight against a military invasion of the United States.
"Army Values," in contrast, can mean anything politicians and their diversity, equity and inclusion commissars want them to mean.
Just ask former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, who testified in a 2021 congressional hearing only weeks before horrifically botching the US withdrawal from Afghanistan that he had devoted a significant amount of time to contemplating "white rage."
Milley also objected to doubts about West Point teaching critical race theory, a Marxist-influenced body of social analysis that reduces all conflict to race-based dichotomies of alleged oppressors and the supposedly oppressed.
CRT and DEI instruction at West Point has been confirmed by documents provided to Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), an academy graduate who released them alongside a formal inquiry in February 2021, and to Judicial Watch, which brought lawsuits against the Defense Department later that year to obtain hundreds of pages of documentation improperly withheld following Freedom of Information Act requests.
Featuring such lessons as "Modern Slavery in the USA" and "White Power," these materials show cadets are taught "whiteness" is a problem and they should address it in accordance with CRT principles.
In August, Gilland hosted West Point's biggest-ever DEI conference, at which he described diversity in terms of "how important and how critical it is not only to our U.S. Military Academy, to our military, but especially to our nation."
"This is our mission," concluded the man who a few months later would preside over the removal of "duty, honor, country" from West Point's mission.
Notably, the service academies were exempted from June's Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard outlawing the explicit use of race in higher-education admissions, an area in which our elite military schools are now comically more woke than the craziest liberal-arts colleges.
On that point, Biden administration Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued successfully but without evidence that "it is a critical national security imperative to attain diversity within the officer corps. And, at present, it's not possible to achieve that diversity without race-conscious admissions."
In September, plaintiff SFFA filed lawsuits to extend the prohibition to the service academies.
Litigation is pending, but last month the Supreme Court declined to grant an injunction barring consideration of race in admissions to the service academies' incoming classes.
"The unbelievers will say they are but words," MacArthur reflected on the "duty, honor, country" triptych.
Prophetically, he added, "Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule."
After swallowing gallons of DEI Kool-Aid, they have.
A new administration should restore those noble words to West Point's mission statement on Day 1, root out all traces of DEI and CRT and cashier the woke bureaucrats who dared remove them in their dastardly bid to elevate diversity, equity and inclusion over duty, honor and country.
Paul du Quenoy is president of the Palm Beach Freedom Institute.
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This is part of the cost of electing Joe Biden, the man who enabled all of this destruction of America and its values.
and you are recommending monolithic , inequality, and exclusion as west point principles ?
Exactly what is the inequality and exclusion at West Point?
you tell me
that is from the seeded article
So you can't provide anything. You just had to say so.
I have no idea what you're talking about and I don't care
Exactly what is the inequality and exclusion at West Point? - What is so hard to understand in that?
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Definitely not JUST Biden - the Dems/Libs have been and are doing a damn fine job of doing that.
I served proudly and faithfully for more than two decades and along with the many thousands of others that have served "Duty Honor Country" says it all and always will.
"The unbelievers will say they are but words," MacArthur reflected on the "duty, honor, country" triptych.
And those who say that these are but words, no nothing of service and dedication to something bigger than oneself.
The words "duty, honor, country," enshrined at West Point since 1898, have precise meanings that have historically bound our officer corps to timeless imperatives vital to the nation's defense.
I haven't posted anything in this seed that contradicts that
But it has been the motto and foundational belief of West Point and the United States Army for more than a century.
“Duty, Honor, Country” has been the motto of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since 1898. That motto isn’t changing, but a decision to take those words out of the school’s lesser-known mission statement is still generating outrage.
Officials at the 222-year-old military academy 60 miles north of New York City recently reworked the one-sentence mission statement, which is updated periodically, usually with little fanfare.
The school’s “Duty, Honor, Country,” motto first made its way into that mission statement in 1998.
Duty, Honor, Outrage: Change to West Point's mission statement sparks controversy (nbcnews.com)
And more than a motto it has been a creed among the men and women who stood side by side and defended this country for over a century. You do not need diversity, inclusion, politics or public relations in a fox hole or on the battlefield you need fellow soldiers that the put "Duty, Honor and Country" above all else and that always have your back.
People who have not served will never understand
The Superintendent of West Point it says the motto has not been changed , and in fact is used every day.
What in the world are you people complaining about?
And I would much rather have someone sharing my foxhole who believes and acts with honor and dignity as stated in "Duty, Honor, Country" - but definitely not many of today's military members.
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A good reenactment of Gen MacArthur's famous farewell speech at West Point. Some here couldn't sit through a long speech; thus I post the relevant segment. The speech began with MacArthur telling of the doorman saying, "Where are you off to today General?" MacArthur responds, "West Point. " The doorman says "Ah, Beautiful place. Have you ever been there?"
As is almost always the case with the far right interpretations of things, this is silly
"duty, honor, country," has been the motto of West Point since 1898, and it is still the motto. How long do you think this motto has been in the West Point mission statement? How does a mere 25 years grab you?
WEST POINT, N.Y. (AP) — “Duty, Honor, Country” has been the motto of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point since 1898. That motto isn’t changing, but a decision to take those words out of the school’s lesser-known mission statement is still generating outrage.
Officials at the 222-year-old military academy 60 miles (96 kilometers) north of New York City recently reworked the one-sentence mission statement, which is updated periodically, usually with little fanfare.
The school’s “Duty, Honor, Country,” motto first made its way into that mission statement in 1998.
The new version declares that the academy’s mission is “To build, educate, train, and inspire the Corps of Cadets to be commissioned leaders of character committed to the Army Values and ready for a lifetime of service to the Army and Nation.”
“As we have done nine times in the past century, we have updated our mission statement to now include the Army Values,” academy spokesperson Col. Terence Kelley said Thursday. Those values — spelled out in other documents — are loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity and personal courage, he said.
Still, some people saw the change in wording as nefarious.
“West Point is going woke. We’re watching the slow death of our country,” conservative radio host Jeff Kuhner complained in a post on the social media platform X .
Rachel Campos-Duffy, co-host of the Fox network’s “Fox & Friends Weekend,” wrote on the platform that West Point has gone “full globalist” and is “Purposely tanking recruitment of young Americans patriots to make room for the illegal mercenaries.”
West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said in a statement that “Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto.”
“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point,” he said. “These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”
Kelley said the motto is carved in granite over the entrance to buildings, adorns cadets’ uniforms and is used as a greeting by plebes, as West Point freshmen are called, to upper-class cadets.
The mission statement is less ubiquitous, he said, though plebes are required to memorize it and it appears in the cadet handbook “Bugle Notes.”
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West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said in a statement that “Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto.”
“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point,” he said. “These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”
Kelley said the motto is carved in granite over the entrance to buildings, adorns cadets’ uniforms and is used as a greeting by plebes, as West Point freshmen are called, to upper-class cadets.
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No, not a thought, but a frustration.
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I thought that I did earlier, but it didn't get posted. Much ado about nothing.
Here's some BS for ya John -
Far fewer members of Congress now have personal military experience than in the past. In the current Congress, 97 members have served in the military at some point in their lives – among the lowest numbers since at least World War II, according to Military Times. There are almost three times as many Republican veterans in the 118th Congress as Democratic veterans (72 vs. 25). Roughly similar shares of current representatives (18.4%) and senators (17%) have served in the military.
Since the second half of the 20th century, there has been a dramatic decrease in members of Congress with military experience. Between 1965 and 1975, at least 70% of lawmakers in each legislative chamber had military experience. The share of members with military experience peaked at 75% in 1967 for the House and at 81% in 1975 for the Senate.
While relatively few members of Congress today have military experience, an even smaller share of Americans do. In 2021, about 6% of U.S. adults were veterans, according to the U.S. Census Bureau – down from 18% in 1980, not long after the end of the military draft era.
Just shows to so, so, so many of us out here that serving in the military is now looked down upon. Pride in America has gone down hill also. Pride in BEING an American has gone down hill also.
Look at the antagonism on NT - the pride/distrust shows itself on a daily basis - especially in the "Political" theater - and there aren't many who actually buck up to support the Ol' "Red, White and Blue" and they can tell you all that is WRONG with the U.S.
Part of whose " Duty, Honor, Country" are we "afraid of" now?
That would seem to be the case. Blame trump.
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the seeded article is about the motto "duty honor country". West Point is NOT changing the motto. So what is all the right wing uproar about?
It is manufactured outrage.
No John - it's about "Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be."
Words typically not to be used in a Democrats/Libs vocabulary.
I responded to the seeded article by posting facts.
I don't know what you are responding to, but it's not my comments
the West Point motto has not been changed
"Blame Trump"?????? JFC John - anything to throw Trump's name into it, eh?
How 'bout Barry - how 'bout Billy - how 'bout your idol Joey? They've done a damn fine job of trashing the U.S.
Yeah, we know - they were Dems/Libs and can do no wrong.
All this false outrage about the false impression given that West Point is abandoning "Duty, Honor, Country" is FALSE!
That is the point. That is the only point. That is the TRUTH!
there seems to be some people who are confused about all this
Woke West Point Abandoning 'Duty, Honor, Country' Is Shameful
that is the headline of the seeded article.
it is not true.
West Point Superintendent Lt. Gen. Steve Gilland said in a statement that “Duty, Honor, Country is foundational to the United States Military Academy’s culture and will always remain our motto.”
“It defines who we are as an institution and as graduates of West Point,” he said. “These three hallowed words are the hallmark of the cadet experience and bind the Long Gray Line together across our great history.”
Yes it IS true.................context JR
Motto yes but he approves of it being taken from the mission statement.
There’s nothing wrong with diversity, but nothing in this article explains why anyone thought it was necessary to remove “duty, honor, country” from the mission statement. Even if Diversity is a new priority for the academy, I don’t see how removing those words accomplishes that.
The Superintendent's rational is at this link:
Actually, the letter doesn't do any explanation as to the "why" they are making this change - just that "we think" it would look better to have more words that don't mean shyte in their "new" motto.
Maybe the GO needed on more bullet for his performance support form.
I fail to see what the big deal is. Most of the people I have seen complaining about this online are far right.
It clearly is a big deal one way or the other. It’s either a big enough deal to change it, or it’s a big enough deal to complain about it.
I’m wondering why it was such a big deal that it needed to be changed - especially when we’re talking about three words that have been the core of West Point values for over a century.
They wrote a new "Mission Statement", nothing more...
They did not change their motto or remove the words engraved on walls or anything else. The mission statement they began with was fairly recent also. This really changes nothing...
There really doesn't seem to be any good reason for it. How do those three words go against DEI
You make it sound like a small thing. It’s not.
I have been in the position, a couple of times, of crafting a mission statement for an organization. Each time, a lot of thought, discussion, and debate went into it. Every word matters - including the words you leave out.
It seems to me that removing words from an existing mission statement means you have a problem with those words in that space. It may have been as innocuous as wanting them to be exclusive to the motto, but I’m not seeing that in the seed.
Yes, I remember all the big ass balloo about mission statements thirty years ago and was on committees that wrote and revised several for my business and even divisions within my business, and my Sunday School Class. Sorry, but nobody is or could or would want to take honor or virtue or excellence or truth or loyalty or brotherhood or any other admirable quality from any of our US military academies, or college fraternities for that matter. They all use basically the same words with the same meanings said ever so slightly differently! So, spare me the false righteous indignation...
Spare me the absurd exaggeration. I haven’t said anything that should lead you to perceive righteous indignation from me. I have no dog in this fight.
Perhaps you are just having a knee jerk reaction to people complaining about it. Maybe you just need to disagree with certain people or sources?
West Point didn't make a big deal out of it, their critics are, often to try and score political points
You are indignant West Point reworded a mundane cookie cutter thirty year old mission statement, but whatever...
How about some truth and honor?
I am not. I genuinely 100% do not care. There is no reason I would care. There is also no reason you should infer that I care. I even allowed that it could possibly have been done for a good reason. You’re just blindly arguing with someone because he doesn’t agree with you totally.
How about you show some yourself by taking me at my word?
There you go...