Claremont Provocations Monograph Series

Over the past decade, several American cities have been rocked by race riots. With each passing year, a new racial agenda emerges—from police defunding to education reform to reparations—inciting more and more division and radicalization along racial lines. What started all of this? The roots of this pathology run much deeper than the recent symptoms suggest.

The military is often perceived by well-meaning Americans as the last stronghold against the progressive march through America’s institutions. But this is no longer simply the case. Our Armed Forces were once the envy of the world, in large part because we selected based on merit, and instilled in our fighting men an unshakeable military ethos. Both the ethos and the selection, however, have been in steady decline as the Department of Defense succumbs to a dangerous ideology: selection and promotion based on racial and gender identity.

There is a crisis facing America’s men. They have fallen behind women in school, they are often overlooked in career opportunities, and they are scolded for their unique educational needs. No solutions have been found because our reigning civil rights regime prevents us from even acknowledging the problem or from coming to grips with it. Instead, our laws keep insisting on “gender neutral” remedies like improving test scores or graduation rates—ignoring the natural differences between the sexes.