What is STARRS?

How can one make sense of nonsense? Over the past three years America has seen an accelerating cascade of ideas and programs that overwhelm society and defy conventional wisdom—a person’s appearance is more important than one’s character, natural immunity to disease is protective except with infections caused by Covid-19, and telling the truth is an irrelevant concept.

In 2020 a few retired military officers and graduates of the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) were appalled after viewing a social media presentation of the academy’s football team’s coaching staff praising Black Lives Matter. The descent into politics by those representing a steadfastly non-political institution and lauding an organization founded and governed by Marxist principles were a call to arms.

In response Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services, Inc. (STARRS) was formed. From its humble beginnings the organization has expanded to over 3000 supporters and become one of the few military oriented organizations that vigorously challenged Critical Race Theory (CRT),wokeism, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs in the military.

STARRS was one the first and most active objectors to the Department of Defense mandatory Covid-19 vaccine policy, which ignored religious considerations, violated the Constitution and federal statute (according to several courts), institutionalized fundamental human rights abuses in defiance of the Nuremberg Code, and failed to offer members of the armed services proper informed consent.

Members of STARRS are active in the media, exposing the decline of military readiness due to DEI, which tears apart the fabric of military cohesion and dismisses merit as immaterial. The organization has cultivated contacts within the political establishment to educate them about the public’s loss of respect and trust in the military.

Why did STARRS, an all-volunteer, upstart, and a sparsely funded veterans group, take up the fight for members of the military, while major veterans organizations and media outlets were reluctant or failed to expose the deleterious effects of DEI on morale, recruiting, and mission readiness? To this day, these institutions have not taken a firm public stand against CRT and DEI.  Even USAA, a Fortune 500 insurance and banking corporation with deep ties to veterans and their families, joined the DEI chorus.

The leaders of these organizations failed to investigate the underpinnings of DEI, a Trojan Horse for CRT, whose roots spring from early 20th century Marxist philosophers, and is employed as an effective, unrelenting vehicle to undermine America’s institutions under the guise of euphemisms that purport to profess fairness and civil behavior.

Marcuse, Bell, and Delgado, all instrumental in laying the movement’s foundation, proclaimed in their extensive writings that the objective to transform America into a neo-Marxist country could occur only by subterfuge and enlisting support of academia and major corporations. The Utopia they envisioned is based on on a meritless society devoid of objective truth, where rigid segregation based on phenotype and sexual orientation, the elimination of human rights in favor of an all-powerful  state, the confiscation of personal property, and the abolition of free speech and the nuclear family are the goals.

Nor did the military service organizations vociferously defend the medical rights of members of the armed forces, especially the most vulnerable to the excesses of arbitrary power— the junior enlisted ranks who serve for patriotic reasons and have few financial resources or legal options to protect themselves.

The failure of leadership demonstrates that these organizations, entrusted by generations of service men and women, have become overtly political and no longer can be counted upon to be advocates of those to whom we owe so much. Unremitting support for ideological theories like CRT and DEI are incompatible with societies founded on human rights, the rule of law, and representative government.

The attributes of ability not appearance, unity not division, and service not self represent the culmination of centuries of military science. It will be organizations like STARRS that will never deviate from this ethos and will fill the void in leadership left by a generation immune to the lessons of history.