Civics

Progressive journalist Mehdi Hasan recently went viral for his “debate” with 20 so-called conservatives on the popular YouTube channel Jubilee. The program is formatted such that Hasan makes a claim, and then his opponents, seated in a circle around him, race each other to the chair opposite Hasan when they wish to refute a claim. When the claim, “Donald Trump is defying the US Constitution” came up, contestants lunged for the chair – not to deny the claim, but to dismiss the Constitution outright. Hasan, it seems, was ready to argue that Trump is defying the Constitution, but he was utterly unprepared to defend the document on its merits. We shouldn’t read too much into this gathering of the chronically online.

Our military is facing the worst recruiting crisis in the history of our fifty-year-old All-Volunteer Force (AVF). Contrary to what you may have read elsewhere, there is no single explanation for this urgent problem. Rather, this crisis is the product of a number of factors: a strong civilian labor market, the effects of COVID, a shrinking pool of American youth eligible to serve in the military, and — of greatest concern — a reduced interest in joining the military, fed by a lack of knowledge, a declining sense of service, false and negative messaging about the forces, and the activist politicization of the force. Today, there are about 1.3 million active-duty military members; they are its greatest asset.