Fellow travelers at the Naval Academy

       Gen. Charles C. Krulak, the now retired former commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, recently spoke to the Greater Washington Chapter of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association.  During his inspirational talk, he revealed the wickedness of political correctness at the academy's new leadership and ethics program.

"They [the midshipmen] have noticed the increase in emphasis on their leadership and ethics instruction.  But both they…and I…question the form.  The atmosphere for moral and professional development is full of theoretical classes and seminars…mumbo jumbo about Freud, Kant, and utilitarianism…but short on straight talk, responsibility, accountability, and example.  More significantly, they are still somewhat demoralized…and very cynical."

       Gen. Krulak was given a standing ovation and was right on target.  But it is too simple to dismiss what is going on at the academy under the guise of "character development" in the Leadership and Ethics Department as "mumbo jumbo."  This program is a covert attempt to attack the institution at its very roots.

       While conducting research into the history, personalities and techniques of "sensitivity training," I have found convincing evidence that the U.S. Naval Academy has been indoctrinating a future generation of Naval officers in a political correctness, actually a cultural Marxism, that has a long dark history and portends a dangerous future.  And all of this is being conducted under the "cover" of a "leadership and ethics" program that has the blessing of high-ranking Navy Flag officers and other honorable and well-intentioned Naval officers, active duty and retired.

       I have found direct evidence of just such a program at the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis--the premier educational facility for our future Naval officers.

       The new leadership and ethics program is being billed as a "comprehensive, four-year, integrated character development program."  It includes a new required course in ethics and "Integrity Development Seminars."  Those seminars are held once a month to discuss ethical issues and are led by a trained facilitator.  For 90 minutes during the middle of the day, midshipmen are divided by company and class into 252 groups of about 15 peers.

       It sounds benign, but unfortunately it is right out of Kurt Lewin's methods of how to "brainwash" individuals in the peer pressure environment where a "trained" facilitator can work his or her "magic."  This type of "leadership" training is taken from the Tavistock Institute, Kurt Lewin's National Training Laboratory (NTL) at MIT, and the "change agent" movement at the University of Michigan in the early 1970s--which so destroyed our public schools.  And it is being implemented as "leadership" training at the U.S. Naval Academy!

       Several examples that reveal the hidden objectives of this new character development program are taken from essays in the January-February 1999 issue of Shipmate, the official journal of the Academy Alumni Association.

       Professor Aine Donovan makes her case for a "new" ethics training program by revealing that she is a "professional gadfly" who "persists in challenging assumptions and behaviors of future military leaders."  She states that her objective is to "transform the soul of a 20-year-old [at the academy]."  But the transforming of such "souls" is not to be conducted in the sense of a Christianity that defines the "soul."  An example of how "souls" are being transformed at the academy is the award of top honors for the Ethics and Moral Reasoning for Naval Officers course.  The award was won by a midshipman 3/C, an academic junior.  Her award-winning essay was published in the January-February 1999 issue of Shipmate and titled "Preparing for the Future: Lessons Learned from Tailhook."

       The 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, the midshipman represents 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.

       The midshipman uses the writings of the 19^th century philosophers Immanuel Kant, Jeremy Bentham, and John Stewart Mill to evaluate Tailhook '91.  Of course, Kant was the founder of the "dialectical movement" which led to Georg Wilhelm Hegel, whose philosophy led to Karl Marx, the father of "dialectical materialism" (the progenitor to Josef Stalin's communism).  Her choice of John Stewart Mill as the major yardstick for her ethics essay is especially revealing.  His philosophy was at the heart of the counterculture's emphasis on the hedonism of the 1960s on America's college campuses.  "If it makes you feel good, just do it!  That which makes the most people happy is good."  Of course, the women's liberation movement was based on this view.  The fact that the sexual liberation of women that followed resulted in disaster for millions of young women is lost on today's new "ethics" movement.

       Two quotes from the midshipman's essay are revealing, not only for her worldview but that of her professors who teach the new "ethics" at the academy.

       "To rational beings, it appears a simple matter of logic.  Considering myself a scientist and mathematician, I agree with the inequalities behind pleasure and pain as presented by Bentham, and the greater value placed on mental sensations that those physical, as argued by Mill.  However, despite disagreeing with Kant's absolute view of lying [Kant said lying was immoral], and despite the potential abuse of rationalization, it is his philosophy of the categorical imperative that seems most applicable in evaluating Tailhook.  It is this theory to which I subscribe, as I have found it gives me the greatest utility in evaluating my own actions and those I observe in my life."

       Oh yes!  Washington to Jefferson to Lincoln in good old traditional American civilization becomes "Kant to Hegel to Marx" at the Navy's premier officer educational institution.

       How can it be that America's youth, the cream of its crop of patriotic young men and women, most of whom were raised as Christians with concomitant morals, ethics, and a sense of right and wrong, are being indoctrinated in the New Age "cultural Marxism"?

       How can it be that our future military leaders are to have the moral values and ethics of Karl Marx's foot soldiers?

       Listen to the midshipman's testimony regarding her personal ethics and those of our future Navy leaders.  "Upon entering the Naval service, we must decide our own maxims--What we stand for personally, and what the Navy stands for morally."  Oh yes, right down the path of moral relativism that has destroyed our public schools--values clarification.

       Essentially she is saying, "I have my moral values, and you have yours.  One is as good as the other.  Who am I to judge another's morals?"  Right out of the teachings of "cultural Marxism."

       The midshipman is but a pawn in a very dangerous game being played by the counterculture revolutionaries of the Boomer generation.  In their midlife years, this elite has come to power in every American institution.  As in all other institutions, they are destroying the U.S. military.  It is another step in the long march through our American institutions.  It is nowhere more apparent than at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Gerald L. Atkinson
Commander U.S. Navy (Retired)