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To: Anonymous In this part of my response to your e-mail of 12/07/00, I will address the details of your spirited defense of the new 'ethics' program at the Academy. For those of you who wish a refresher on this debate, set off by GEN Charles C. Krulak, USMC (Ret.) in a speech before the Greater Washington Area Alumni Association in April 1999, please visit my Web Site at: and navigate to the Newspaper Articles link. You will find 13-or-so articles, authored by me and others, which appeared in the FORUM section of the Sunday Washington Times over the past year. In addition, at the Essays link you can find the current status of the debate.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with studying the works of the Enlightenment philosophers -- Rousseau, Bentham, Mill, Kant, Rawls etc. in the proper context -- IF you wish our future naval core combat leadership to lead ready-room discussions of 'morality.' What has given us pause, however, was the results of the new 'ethics' program based on Dr. Nancy Sherman's influence at the Academy. We were flabbergasted when we read in the January-February 1999 issue of Shipmate issue of Shipmate, a prize-winning 'ethics' essay written by a female Midshipman 3/C, entitled, "Preparing for the Future: Lessons Learned from Tailhook." The TOP FIVE ranking officers attended a banquet to honor this essayist. Ms. House used the writings of the 19th century philosophers Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stuart Mill to evaluate Tailhook '91. Ms. House's essay is a classic example of Critical Theory straight out of the teachings of the 'cultural Marxist' Frankfurt School. Consistent with the objective of Critical Theory, Ms. House presented a biased and purposefully negative criticism of everything 'male,' including high--level Flag-rank Navy leadership -- at the Tailhook '91 bacchanal while remaining completely silent regarding the equally appalling behavior of females, especially female naval officers, at the event. A quote from Ms. House's essay is revealing, not only for her world view but that of her professors who teach the new 'ethics' at the Academy. So, isn't this just great? The Academy lauds a Midshipman who has picked her morals from the Enlightenment philosophers -- Bentham, Mill, and Kant. And how did she pick up this New Age 'religion?' Right out of Ms. Sherman's new 'ethics' curriculum at the Academy.
Yes, this is a great concept. I have evidenced it within the past year or two when the chapel at the Academy was chock-full of young plebes and their families on Parents Day. Makes one proud of these young people. All VOLUNTARY! But don't you know that the Academy chaplains are prohibited from participating in Ms. Sherman's new 'ethics' program? I have that on the written word of a former Navy chaplain at the Academy -- he saw this in action. So, is this a great country or what? The New Age state religion, Secular Humanism, that followed in the wake of the Enlightenment philosophers is preached in a MANDATORY 'ethics' class, NE-203, at the Academy while any participation by Christian clergy is forbidden. Is this what you mean when you ask, "What a concept, huh?" But we have an even deeper reason for objecting to the way the Enlightenment philosophers are presented in the 'ethics' program at the Academy. In fact, I am amazed that you asked your question on this subject at the exact same time (must be ESPN or something) that I am writing a book review on the subject -- Balint Vazsonyi's seminal book, "America's 30 Years War: Who is Winning?" Let me quote from my review which will appear in the Jan/Feb 2001 issue of the Eternal Vigilance journal. It is clear that Vazsonyi believes that while we won the Cold War abroad, we are losing the culture war at home to the forces of 'cultural Marxism.' And this war has been going on ever since the counter-culture revolution of the mid-1960s. He states that, "The natural deduction [from our winning of the Cold War] is that 'Socialism -- The Idea' has lost. On the other hand, socialism...has won...all fundamental institutions of America -- as well as of Britain -- are threatened by forces from within and without." What has happened? How in the world could this state of affairs be coming about? Vazsonyi explains that, "Perhaps we have been staring at old photographs where socialism wears the uniforms of the Red Army, or the SS -- or the shiny leather jackets both Nazi and Soviet paramilitary units preferred. Perhaps we think socialism currently sports the straight blue garb of Mao, or battle fatigues with a khaki cap and a Havana stuck in its mouth. And we keep peering in the distance with binoculars." "But 'Socialism -- The Idea' did not come from Russia, China, or Cuba. And it did not start out to exterminate people, or to confiscate possessions. It began hundreds of years ago as philosophy in books, written mostly in French or German. It began by declaring human reason capable of comprehending, evaluating and arranging the affairs of the world. It continued by prescribing exactly how the affairs of the world ought to be run. Next, advocates of 'The Idea' took it upon themselves to decide who had come by their possessions in a 'good,' and who in an 'evil' way. From there, it was just one step to taking away people's possessions so the wise could then distribute them 'fairly.' In time, it was found that certain people best be eliminated altogether." Vazsonyi further reminds us that, "...those who have chosen the socialist road have always wanted to change the world and the behavior of people...In that sense, it is immaterial whether Russia was communist or not because Russia was never interested in changing anything -- it simply used 'The Idea' to conquer more territory. On the other hand French and German thinkers, from Jean Jacques Rousseau to the Frankfurt School, have had an obsession with changing everyone's behavior. Confiscating property, eliminating millions were means to that end. What if means come and go, but the agenda remains?" In America today, Vazsonyi observes, "We watch every day as the search for 'social justice replaces the rule of law, as group privilege replaces individual rights, as redistribution replaces guaranteed property, and as national identity is eliminated in favor of 'diversity.' Is that not the same agenda as before? Do we still declare victory?...And what if peering in the distance with binoculars has kept us from noticing that which surrounds us from every side?" Vazsonyi places the last quarter of the 1700s as a pivotal time in world history. It was during these years that Western civilization took one of two paths. The Franco-German way is characterized by the disastrous, socialist French Revolution of 1789. It was fomented by a previous century of philosophy on the foundation of Voltaire and Rousseau. These Enlightenment philosophers generated the intellectual basis for the Age of Reason and 'The Idea' of socialism as the means by which Man would devise a path for all Mankind based on 'Liberty, equality, and fraternity -- or death! The last part of the phrase, 'or death,' though seldom referenced in modern texts, reveals the dark totalitarian impulse of that disastrous, failed revolution (France, now in its Fifth Republic, has yet to come up with a structure that lasts). These philosophers and the French Revolution spawned a world view that grew more alluring, even hypnotic in its appeal to intellectuals and their followers, culminating in the world view of Karl Marx. The philosophical pathway led from Voltaire and Rousseau to Immanuel Kant (man can become a god) to Georg Hegel (the author of 'history' as inevitably leading to man's control over nature) and finally to Karl Marx (the father of dialectical materialism). This philosophy, socialism, led mankind to Hitler's Nazis (National Socialists) and Lenin/Stalin's Bolsheviks (Soviet socialism -- communism) as well as Mao's Peoples Liberation Movement and Castro's communist dictatorship. Socialists all. This Franco-German path led to the bloodiest century -- the 20th -- in the history of all mankind. A characteristic motto of Franco-German social thinking is 'Eliminate,' as in 'the ruling class must be eliminated,' capitalism must be eliminated,' and 'politically incorrect thinking must be eliminated.' Vazsonyi tells us that, "It is astonishing and frightening how little time it took [in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, two nations where Franco-German thinking predominated] to accomplish the task of eliminating the past. "Demolishing what centuries have built does not require even a single generation." This is precisely the case in America today. The 'power elites' of the Boomer generation have cut all future generations off from its history, its myths, its traditional heroes, and its proud heritage. Vazsonyi's description of the second pathway taken by Western civilization in the late-1700s is epitomized by the AmericanRevolution of 1776. He calls this path the Anglo-American way. It is opposed to the other way in its world view. The Anglo-American way ...regards human reason as bounded by limitations and in need of moral guidance as it attempts to provide for the future. Instead of forcing mankind to conform to theories of social justice, [it] is based on 'observation and experience, and lessons learned.' It takes into consideration human nature and what it is possible to achieve. It's also based on the rule of law and on personal responsibility." Vazsonyi further illuminates this view in a book review of another's book. Vazsonyi states that, "Many Americans do not realize how different this country is from all others. Most of those who do, still fail to appreciate that our legal foundations account for the difference. [These legal foundations are appropriately called] 'the Rights of Englishmen.' Alas, at the dawn of the 21st century, few of our countrymen remember them as the foundation upon which the American miracle...was built." Vazsonyi's approach to restoring our constitutional order is to understand our philosophical roots and their dependence on the practical philosophy of John Locke and the eminence of the legal doctrines of William Blackstone. He states that, "...Jeremy Bentham, a precocious youngster turned legal philosopher, himself an Englishman, has been primarily responsible for two centuries of assaults on the Rights of Englishmen. Bentham may have been the primary force inside the British legal establishment to combat William Blackstone's immortal tenets with regard to the law as a guarantor of liberty. Yet his influence might have remained severely limited, had not French and German thinkers discovered that the Rights of Englishmen produced a nation that constantly stood in the way of their military and intellectual expansion. How highly the French prized the anti-English nature of Bentham's stance was expressed by granting the young scholar French citizenship in 1791." "Socialism, taken by many for dead, and mistaken by most as an economic alternative to capitalism, has been the primary tool of French and German thinkers to combat the growing hegemony of the English-speaking world...Not until we realize that our economic success is a function of our legal system, and not until we understand that socialism in all its forms aims to eradicate that legal system, will we fully comprehend the agenda and the behavior of socialists from Pierre Proudhon to Karl Marx, from Lenin to Adolf Hitler, from Martin Heidegger to Hillary Rodham Clinton."
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