Regardless of whether Lt. Col. Matthew Lohmeier deserved to be relieved of his duty by the U.S. Space Force, he’s certainly a patriot for having stated the obvious that so many others are afraid to say out loud.
Lohmeier was stripped of his position on the Force last week after he appeared on a podcast to promote a self-published book and criticized the military as a growing hotbed of Marxism and left-wing ideology on race and diversity.
His book’s description on Amazon asks, “Is systemic racism a reality, or is much of our talk about race merely a rhetorical tool used to divide Americans?”
During the podcast interview, Lohmeier said of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin that he wanted to “make it clear to both him and every service member [that] this agenda, it will divide us. It will not unify us.”
Lohmeier’s biggest concern is the liberal obsession with “diversity and inclusion” that is seen at every level of American life, from university campuses to Hollywood to even formerly apolitical institutions such as the U.S. military.
The Space Force said in a statement that Lohmeier was relieved of duty “due to loss of trust and confidence in his ability to lead” and that an investigation had been initiated into whether his comments on the podcast “constituted prohibited partisan political activity.”
If Lohmeier had, in fact, lost the confidence of his superiors, that’s their call. But let’s not kid ourselves. Partisan political activity is found throughout the military, but it is only considered “political” or “controversial” if it’s not explicitly left-wing.
It doesn’t appear that Lohmeier said “partisan” anything about Republicans or Democrats. But his observation is that the hyping up of race, gender, and sexual identity exacerbates differences within the ranks and that the consequence is, by its very nature, political.
Last year, at one of those useless “diversity training” courses at the Redstone Arsenal Army post in Alabama, a flier distributed to attendees asserted, among other things, that the phrase “Make America Great Again” and calling the police on black people as examples of “covert white supremacy” that is “social [sic] acceptable.”
I can’t imagine what the implication of calling a president’s campaign slogan racist would be. (Partisan, maybe?) In the meantime, it is not pleasant to think of how things might turn out if service members decline to call the police on a suspected criminal because it might earn them a scarlet R.
It is a form of Marxism, though as I describe in my book Privileged Victims: How America’s Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People, it goes by another name — we call it “social justice.”
Social justice, the ideology that now governs the Democratic Party, teaches that grievance and oppression rooted in race, gender, and sexual identity must become the primary consideration in shaping politics and policy. The genius of it is that to criticize social justice is to become, automatically, a racist, sexist, and bigot, according to its advocates.
Do you want to be called any of those? I didn’t think so, so shut up and stop disagreeing.
Lohmeier, like many others, identified what’s really going on in the military. But unlike so many, he took the risk of saying it out loud.
