Episode #233: Principles Over Expediency W/Dr. Chase Spears

0:12 Ace, how's it going? It's going really well, Dave. How are you doing today, Sir? Doing fantastic. OK, I got to tell you, every so often I have a guy on the podcast that that really makes me look bad, and you're going to be one of those guys. I just want to go through your bio here a little bit. You're a public and intellectual writer, a host of Finding your Your Spine podcast, which we'll talk about a little later. A combat veteran paratrooper, you served 20 years in the US Army Public Affairs office office before turning down a promotion. I'd like to really know the story behind that one. And now you're out here trying to, trying to help everybody else, man. So like when, when, when we stack up resumes. Yeah, I'm kind of a bum, bro.

1:01 You, you, you seem to have it really going on. That's, that's that's impressive. So well, let's start here. What is it you're doing now? And then we'll backtrack to to kind of how you got here. Thank goodness I'm, I'm going back. Do you remember years and years ago when Ross Perot was running for president and they had the vice presidential debate and I think it was Admiral Stockdale was running as his VP and they got to him and his, his response for the introduction was who am I? What am I doing here? And I, and I kind of feel that in this moment, who am I, what am I doing here? It's, it's an interesting thing.

1:42 I get that question a lot because we are. So we're so naturally prone to ask people, you know, what is it that you do? And it's really weird for me because I spent 20 years as a soldier and that's what I did. I was a public affairs leader in the US Army for 20 years. I had a job title. And what I'm doing now is I, I call myself kind of a kind of a, a Christian social warrior, if you will. And that's a really terrible way to say it. There are all sorts of ways of experimenting with, but, but I'm an independent communication practitioner by trade now. And when I left the Army two years ago, I very deliberately made the choice I wanted to strike out on my own. And there are few reasons for that. The first one is usually in the public affairs career field, which is where I came out of.

2:31 You're a strategic communicator. You have 20, you know, multiple years of experience helping to large organizations, small organizations, all organizations that are in some way tied to national security, to communicate, to bridge to the public, to influence, to persuade, to, to hold institutions accountable. Hopefully, if you did it well. And so usually PA OS go into corporate communication and and that's a good place for them to go. You make a lot of money, you get to use a skill set. But one of the primary reasons I left the Army was as a Christian man, I, I just felt very handcuffed for the last few years. And I'm sure you're probably not surprised to hear, I'm sure your listeners are probably not surprised to hear the last administration was a made the military a very hostile place to people of faith.

3:21 And the military still to this day has pockets of deep hostility towards people of Christian faith. And I didn't want to just trade one set of shackles for another. And so again, part of my reason for leaving the army when I did and turning down promotion, which was quite a financial sacrifice that my wife and I made to walk away, was I wanted to be freed to be able to fight for the nation. And, and I, I tell people the fight for freedom, it's not on a foreign battlefield right now. It's been on battlefields many times before. And, and soldiers have rightfully defended freedom using actual force of physical arms many times in history and they will many, many more times in history. But American freedom right now is not being defended with M sixteens on foreign battlefields. American freedom is being fought in the intellectual space, in the conversational space, in the policy space. And there was just no practical way for me to fight there and wear the uniform.

4:23 And it's not because I broke any laws to do so, but it's because the military culturally fights against that. And so that's what I do now. I, I put my time and talents into writing, arguing, advocating for constitutionality, arguing for Christian men and women to stand up and be counted, arguing for Christian men to be bold as as scripture calls us to be, and, and podcasting about that as well. So every, every venue that I can spread that message. And that's where I'm trying to fight at. Very good. And I agree with you. I look, I'm a guy who predominantly lived most of my life back West, right? I was born in Alaska, lived in in Idaho, lived in Colorado, did move to the Eastern Shore of Maryland for about two years.

5:09 And I did that basically because I discovered the founders, right? I mean, I kind of had a a moment it was over a football game. I won't bore the audience with the whole story, but I basically go back for a football game. Me and my buddy and I walk into Independence Hall and it's like the spirit hit me, right? Like, hey, pay attention. Something important happened here. It was about 2004, right? And since that moment, I, I just, it's, it's one of my passions. I mean, it's right up there with, with my religion. And I, I started looking at it real close. And what I discovered is, is that we were way off from where we were supposed to be. Like we had really went off off off course. And the only way we're going to get back on course, I think is to do kind of what you're talking about here, take a take a good reading of where we are and then go back to the beginning, so to speak, and then go forward on the correct course.

6:12 As far as you what, what, what drew you to the military was your family military? I mean, you spent 20 years there. That's not just a, a jaunt, right? I mean, that means that you've re upped five times essentially, right? Yeah, it was not at all what I expected. And I often tell people me being in the Army for 20 years is God's idea of a practical joke carried out way, way, way too far. Now, if you would have looked at me and my brother when we were younger, you would have swore my younger brother would have actually been the military member is still to this day, he kind of looks like a Marine. And I never thought I would join the military. I always admired the military, but it was always this very distant thing to me. Now, my dad had served during the Vietnam era. He'd done a a three-year stint and he talked about his time in the Army and he actually later in life regretted getting out and wished he would have done a full career. But, and so we like, we have had men in my family who have served, but we have not, at least in my direct lineage. I'm the first one to serve a full 20 year career and I'm the first officer in my line, according to my research, since the time of the Revolutionary War. And so it really is an unusual thing. But what drew me in is, is again, really the Lord directed my steps.

7:32 I was studying journalism at Lee University, which is a small school in southeast Tennessee. All I wanted to do was report and I had this dream of one day working into newsroom management and that's what I wanted to do because I believed that the press was a righteous thing to to spread truth and to and to hold people accountable who are misusing power for nefarious, ungodly purposes. I love, I still to this day love me some good investigative reporting and that's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, I graduated into just about the worst economy 1 can graduate into to try to go into that field. I graduated in 2001.

8:14 This is in the wake of the Telecom Act of 1996 signed into law by then President Clinton, which basically collapsed the job industry for going into journalism and going into radio and television production. It was so bad, I couldn't even get unpaid internships. And, and so I thought, OK, well, let me go up to Knoxville to University of Tennessee. I'll I'll do a master's in journalism. No one in my family had done a graduate degree. That was kind of a thing. I wanted to be the first. And so I went up there to University of Tennessee, moved to my wife at my very pregnant wife at that point in time up to Knoxville and enrolled in this program. And I, and I'm still finding out news organizations are not impressed with higher levels of credentialism.

8:59 They want people who have multiple years of experience in the industry, you know, 56810 years. Well, when you're 22, you don't have that. And so I thought, well, what's the next thing I'm interested in, passionate about? Well, I'm passionate about the law. I'm passionate about policy. That's something that my mother really instilled in me because I was homeschooled and she was very big into teaching me about America's heritage, America's founding values, America's history. And so I thought, OK, law. Well, the University of Tennessee has a great law school. I've got a foot in the door, is a graduate student. Law school is entirely different than the Graduate School of Communication and Arts. But it wouldn't hurt me. You know, it certainly doesn't hurt to already be in a world grad student there.

9:41 I'll probably be a leg up hanging into the law school. But law school is a whole nother ball of wax. It's a whole nother life direction. It's a whole nother level of commitment, especially financially. And so I decided before I jump in on this boat, let me go work part time in a firm while I finish up this journalism masters and see what it's like. Well, what I found very quickly was working in a plaintiff's law firm. I was, I did not like the culture at all. And and I respect those who work in it. I've got a lot of friends who are attorneys, but that particular firm kind of turned me off to it. But the Lord used that. And one day I'm in the Knox County Courthouse filing paperwork for one of our cases, and I'm writing up in the elevator with a Staff Sergeant Robert Lusk.

10:31 I'll never forget the man. He's there in his dress uniform. And this is 2003. President Bush's just had that famous speech on the deck of the aircraft carrier declaring victory in Iraq. Of course it was not victory then, as we will know, but at that point in time, I'm on the dump civilian. I'm like, you know, rah, rah, you guys have won. You kicked butt. How awesome. And what I didn't know was how hard the Army was up for people at that point in time because things are actually hitting up in Iraq and things are still full till in Afghanistan. So they were in a they were desperately needing to recruit. Robert Lusk was a recruiter. He was there to run criminal background checks on his latest batch of enlistees. And so he is a good recruiter does got my contact information and spent the next seven months, you know, regularly, we'll put that way, regularly contacting me. I joke around that it felt like it was borderline stalking before it was all said and done and we finally decided my wife and I, you know what, the journalism market still is not heating up.

11:38 I really, based on going working at this law firm, don't think that I want to jump straight into law school. The Army does have public affairs opportunities, which works closely with the media. So I would still be able to touch that mission and feel like I'm serving the information needs. And you know what, it'd probably be a good thing for me to have a military experience. It'd probably be good for me as a man. And so we made the decision. We thought we were going to do one, one single four year tour and that turned into 20 for a variety of reasons. So in your time as you enter, I'm getting so about 2004 is when you enter the the military.

12:20 Right at the end of September of of O3. OK. So you're we're only a couple years removed from 911, right? Yeah. The chances of seeing combat are pretty good, right? Like, and so as you have that discussion with your wife, is there any apprehension about that, right. It's one thing to go in, in peacetime, right? It's another thing to go in knowing full good and well that, hey, your number is going to get called. What did that cause? Any consternation at home with your wife? Anything like that? Surprisingly now my wife had actually grown up in an Air Force family, so military service was not something that she was in any way unfamiliar with.

13:06 Now with that said her, her dad had been in the Air Force, this was pre 911, so he had never done a combat deployment. And even if we'd been in a state of war, his job is not one that would have deployed. So he was really kind of in the corporate Air Force, but she, she liked the military. She had a lot of good memories of the military life. So at least on the Air Force side. And so bringing the idea of the military to her was welcome. And I'll never forget, I was really nervous about it when I, when I decided this is something I should seriously consider. I, I came home, we were renting a, a very small apartment up in a small town on the outside of Knoxville.

13:47 And I came to her about it and said, babe, I've, I've got something I need to talk to you about. And I was, I was really nervous about how to even bring it up because I had these visions of her not liking it or it being a stressful or a strange conversation. And so I'm trying to walk into it very delicately because I've never talked about joining the military. This, this is something I'm going to be broaching for the first time ever to her. And now if she were in the room, she would be laughing right now because whenever we're telling this story together, she she'll talk about being on her side of it. She'll say, yeah, Chase came in and he was really dark about this and he was really slowly backing into the conversation. I could tell something was off with him. And and that was about a potential for how he might be able to make a living.

14:31 And he was. So I could see he was so stressed about it that I almost, I was almost wondering like, he's not going to be talking to me about a drug dealer he met, is he? So of course that that was not the case. And so when I brought it up to her, it was almost relief because she was because not, number one, I was not, I was not trying to get into anything illegal. And two, she missed having a military ID. And I remember when we were college students, she still had her military ID. She was still a military dependent. And she loved that thing. And then when she married me, that was among the things that she got to give up.

15:11 And she's like, you kidding me? I get to have a military ID again. I'd be able to use the commissary again, and we'd be able to live on it. But yeah, Heck, yeah. Let's join. Yeah. You want to join the Army, Go for it. And I, I, you know, I, I've never asked her what her thoughts were about. Like you do realize we're in A2 front war right now. I mean, she was smart, she knew that, but I've never asked her that. I, I should ask her after we wrap this up. But but no, she was so supportive from the get go and, and that made it so, so much easier for me. And I, and I took that as one of several confirmations from the Lord that this is something that I should pursue because you know, Scripture tells us, you know, thy word is a light into my feet and a lamp into my path.

15:54 And that that verse strikes me many times for as much for what it doesn't say as what it does say. It doesn't say My word is a high beam to your front and then over the horizon view into your path. It's a light into your feet. You're going to get just enough light to to take the next step and. Exactly. Yep, absolutely. And so let me let oh, go ahead, Sorry. No, no, go ahead, go ahead. I've been talking enough. So you, you, you make this decision, OK, this is what we're going to do. I know there's A2 front World War happening right now, but this is where I feel called to do.

16:35 Your wife's on board. You go in and it's the Bush years. And look, politically speaking for myself, I think there's some problems with the Bushes. But nonetheless, it wasn't Obama or, or, or Biden, right? So as you go in, I, I want to kind of get a feel for what it was like as you went in, under, under the Bush years, right? It would have been just the tail end, I think of his, his last, his first term going into a second term. And then what, what were those Obama years like? What, what was, you know, the, the, the Trump years and then subsequently the Biden years? I, I'd like to get a feel for that 'cause I think we all have this idea that, that the military is apolitical, right? That it does not have an agenda.

17:28 However, from living in Maryland for a little while and having a buddy that still works inside the Beltway, that's not true, right? And, and certainly as you climb the ranks, if you want to be, you know, one of the chiefs of staff, more than likely you're going to have a political agenda yourself. And so I'd like to get a real, a real good flavor of, of what it is you experienced all the way through that and how things changed for you. Yeah, for sure. And, and this is a really, really deep thing and, and books have been written about this by men who are so, so way smarter than I am. Americans had this idea that the military is apolitical, and it is not, and very few things are, because you have to get back to what is what is the basis of politics?

18:15 What is the basis of political rule? And it is in order that we may live together. There are certain rules that we have to live by and those rules do necessarily limit certain conduct even in even in America. We, we have this idea of, you know, we're free. Well, we're, we're yes, we are, but it's an order to liberty. It's not an unlimited liberty. Unlimited liberty is chaos and that's that's why God gives government as a ministry to us as a, as it something to try to keep mankind and some level of control so we don't just go completely mad and kill each other in mass. And it's when that breakdown breaks down that we see that happening.

18:59 And so the military is another enforcement agent of government. The philosopher Karl von Klausowitz, who's a Prussian philosopher, lived in the 1800s and he wrote a wonderful masterpiece on this called On War. And he captured it so succinctly and yet so deeply that war is politics by other means. And, and it really is. And so when you have the military, which is the agency to carry out that politics by other means, well, the military follows policy. It creates its own policy. It restricts certain rights of its members far beyond what any civilian employer could. And on and on and on.

19:42 So it is naturally a political agency. So the question is not is the military political or apolitical? It is political like every institution is political. The question is to what political and is the military driving. And one of the things that made me comfortable to join in 2003 was I felt like the military was still an honor bound institution. I felt like it was focused on a ministry of defense to to Americans. And I really wanted my life to in some way be involved in ministry that's always been close to my heart. And, and I believed that even though it would be imperfect, as all institutions are, and there's a certain amount of perceived secularity within it, that it would still be a good place. And so when I joined to 2003, of course, I very quickly found out that there, there, there are all sorts of competing political factions within it.

20:38 And, and it is a cross section of America. There are conservatives in it and they're progressives in it and they're outright Marxist revolutionaries in it. But when I joined, there was an idea they in general, you kind of lay all that to the side because we all bleed red and, and we're supposed to come together. And there's this idea of being, being brethren in arms. It's not perfect. It's not a Hallmark Christmas card, easy. But in general, that was how the culture felt to me as a young enlistee. And I was very, I was good with that. And there was some hostility that I faced as a Christian, but it, it wasn't, it wasn't like what I found later.

21:19 And so then we had the Obama years, and Obama understood, as he said, that elections have consequences. And I'm sure you've heard the terms long marched through the institutions. You know, Gromski said it. And the idea is what progressive revolutionaries, modern day Bolsheviks cannot achieve through the legislative process they achieved by capturing institutions. And the military had been one of the last standing bastions. It had been kind of the Rock of Gibraltar. They had not fully penetrated it yet. There was enough of a constitutionally minded patriotism still at all levels of the rank from down from E 1 all the way up to four-star general that they couldn't successfully crack that nut. They, I mean, they had pockets of course, but they had, they Pentagon still generally try to drive in a way that was in some way resistant to the complete Church of progressive orthodoxy. Obama changed that.

22:26 Obama understood the long March of the institutions and, and whatever you will say about him and, and if I have many, many, many impolite and you'd probably think vulgar things to say about him. But one thing I'll give him tremendous credit for because he understood how to be a really effective activist. And he brought that to the military. And, and before we began to see that was with the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in 2010. And I'm sure you remember that. I do Yep, Yep. That was that was the piece of legislation that basically said if you were were were homosexual, the rule was is that the military wasn't going to ask and you weren't going to tell.

23:07 And then that way there was kind of an air of secrecy around it. There was and that and it's and that was actually a Clinton administration policy up until the years of Bill Clinton. It had been an outright prohibition on on homosexuality in the services because George Washington, who founded the Continental Army, he understood that if you're going to place arms in the hands of people on behalf of state, you need there to be a certain level of honor and, and homosexual behavior is not conducive to that level of honor. And that to this day should not be a controversial assessment. It's an assessment that I still hold right now. And and so he he brought in the don't ask, don't tell policy.

23:48 And then Obama just bulldozed that and said, no, we're going to make the military, you know, inclusive and progressive because everyone should just who loves America, should be able to fight for America. And, and, and that's the way that I just presented that framing. It was not about what enables the military to be more, you know, lethal, to be better, more efficient at its role. It's how it should recruit. It wasn't focused on that at all. It was focused on social change because the military throughout our post World War 2 history, with the exception of the Vietnam years, had been one of the most trusted institutions in the United States.

24:29 And so even to this day, politicians will use the military as a frame of reference when they're trying to push through certain progressive policies. And they'll force it on the military, kicking and screaming because the military can't say no. And then they'll point to the military and speeches and say, hey, hey, you and the rest of America, hey, you and red state America, why are you resistant to this idea? Our military that you love, our military that you trust, our military that you cheer for at praise and sporting events. They've embraced this. They found this to be good. And so the military is abused by that way. And progressives and Obama understood that. So the repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell is when I saw a seismic shift and the culture of the armed forces, because all the sudden you were being told if you're a Christian who held to a Christian sexual ethic that you could no longer openly espouse or believe that nor could your family members of official military functions, even functions where they were volunteering their time. And, and of course, the Obama administration said in that in those moments, hey, this has nothing to do about transgenderism.

25:39 We're not going to let people who claim different genders into the force. And of course, how do you know a politician is lying? Their lips are moving. And so we knew that I'd be coming. And of course, before the end of his term, it did. And again, this had nothing to do with how do we make the military better, more lethal. It was all about how do we force social activism into the forces in order to get America to go along with these other social changes. Obama opened the floodgates with with sexual deviancy and he also forced the integration of women into combat arms rules, which frankly, they are just physically not designed for. And they're, and the military did studies on this. This is not just Chase Spear saying that the military did studies on this, with this showed tremendous amounts of physical damage being done to women in these roles.

26:28 And the administration said we don't care. And they made it. They made it very clear to the generals who are on active duty, you have two choices. You will either fully embrace and adopt this or you will retire. And those who had a conscience, those who believed in truth, retired. And those who are left standing were the ones who just put their finger up in the air and said, what direction is the wind blowing? And, and totally threw aside any, any hints of allegiance to the Constitution. And, and so it was really during the Obama years. So I saw things change. And of course, that rapidly accelerated during the Biden administration. But I'll I'll pause there. Yeah, No, I I think you bring up a couple of really good things. First, the reason that I think we, or at least me, want to believe that the military is apolitical is because it if it's not, it can lead to trouble.

27:23 And let me explain. Historically, we remember the Praetorian Guard, right? And the Praetorian Guard for Rome towards the end of the empire phase of Rome, they were the ones selecting the, the, the Emperor, right? They're the ones calling the shots. That is an issue, right? And so the more political they can become, the more, the more susceptible you are to that sort of thing to Washington. You, you brought up Washington from the days of Washington the, the, they always had a chaplain in there. So my question is this, it's, it was important enough to Washington that he paid for it out of his own pocket, right? Congress wasn't doing anything.

28:08 The more things change, the more they stay the same. Nonetheless, Washington paid for it out of his own pocket. So as you have now have chaplains that are in the United States military, how are they supposed to navigate those waters where they've introduced the oh, the LGBTQ agenda in there, right? How are they supposed to do their job as chaplains under under this new new? Yeah, you're getting in. That question really hits. What is the actual policy in the law? And then what does the culture actually allow?

28:50 And the policy and law is very clear that chaplains, like every military member, are granted freedom of religion. And there was actually this law shouldn't have even been needed, but it was. It was passed into the law again, but during the Clinton years, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to push back against the unconstitutional attacks on religion in the public sphere and particularly among military members. And so the law is very clear on that. But what does the culture allow? And chaplains really got caught kind of in a crosshair because there are a lot of progressive, so-called denominations that are PCUSA who are fully on board with this stuff that are are just an ecclesial flag on the nation.

29:42 And so they're, they're accredited chaplains, you know, no, no problemo. But then you have what I would, what I would consider denominations that are rightly aligned theologically who actually serve God and they're chaplains. You have to maintain your accreditation as a chaplain through a denomination. That's a requirement in order to be a military chaplain because the chaplain is part of the professions. And so you have to have that accreditation from a from a recognized religious association in order to even be eligible to become a chaplain. And a lot of denominations rightly say you have to have a understanding, you have to adhere to a Christian sexual ethic in order to be ordained by us. And there are many, many stories of chaplains who were punished by the commanders because they held to a traditional Christian sexual ethic.

30:41 They said out loud in their preaching that there's a traditional sexual ethic. And they spelled out what that is something that until, you know, 18 minutes ago was actual military policy, but all of a sudden it's not military policy anymore. And there are many instances of chaplains being punished under that. Well, the alternative is for them to deny their conscience, lie and then also lose their their endorsement from their accrediting agencies and then they can't be chaplains. So it really is a heads I win tells you lose scenario that many of them were forced into. And so there was a hostility there. And there's also a growing hostility by progressives in the ranks to even having a chaplain core there. There is a a boisterous kind of conversation happening among the far left wing in the military about trying to get rid of it and replace it with just therapists, almost almost make it kind of like a Star Trek model, if you will. You just have counselors rather than than ministers. And so, you know, we we've seen there are a lot of great chaplains who have remained true to their faith. But something that I never lost sight of was seldom ever at a military function where a chaplain prayed. Seldom ever did I see one conclude a prayer in Jesus name. Far more often.

32:00 It was very, very generic. You know, in your name we pray. And many chaplains, not all, but many who I observed would begin prayers at ceremonies with something like this. As I pray according to my faith tradition, I welcome you to pray according to yours. So they there's a pressure for them to endorse a religious plurality, which is against, you know, what they should be believing. And so it's a tightrope that chaplains have to walk. We desperately need good chaplains. We've got a lot of good chaplains. We've got a lot of bad chaplains. I I could get into how a lot of them just rolled over on the whole COVID mandate and we're not supportive of requests for religious accommodation. But I do not envy chap.

32:45 I do not envy Christian chaplains in today's military. And and when I say Christian, I mean like true holding to the faith wants delivered to the Saints. I don't envy those by any means today. It's a hard road to walk. Interesting. So that was the Obama years. Do do things get better once once the Trump years kind of come into being? I mean, what? What happens after Obama? Well, I would like to say that the institution pivoted as rapidly under Trump administration one point O as it did under the Obama administration. But it didn't. And you referenced the Pretorian Guard earlier, and the Praetorian Guard still exists.

33:32 And the Pentagon is the largest agency in the world. The Department of War is the world's largest single standalone agency. It has a tremendous amount of inertia. And when you had eight years of the Obama administration pushing policy edicts and replacing all these senior uniformed and political, politically appointed officials with hardcore leftist, who then promoted their lieutenants according to their adherence to that orthodoxy, who likewise promoted their subordinates largely according to whether or not they aligned with that orthodoxy.

34:15 And a lot of people just would get out because they were like, I, I'm not going to carry this water. And so you had eight years of a really, really rapid transformation culturally of the force. And so when Trump got in the military, the Department of Defense then like just about every other cabinet agency took the same approach, which was this is a speed bump. This is an anomaly. We will go, you know, we'll drag our feet and change as little as we possibly can. And then we'll get him out of office and we'll go back to the normal way of doing business, which is to follow the progressive, left wing globalist ideals.

35:00 And so even during the Trump administration, it was, it was difficult to be an open Christian conservative in the force. And, and I want to put stuff on that. I'm not saying it was difficult to be a rowdy, Christian right wing activist in the force. I'm not saying it was difficult to be someone standing in the street with a bullhorn in the force. What I'm saying is it was difficult to be someone who just believed the basic truth. I would say basic truth out loud. It was difficult to be that person in the force. Not impossible, but difficult. The the brass in the military were all Obama holdovers.

35:40 The Trump administration one point O did not understand just how deeply entrenched that ideology was. They assumed that the military would pivot as it had pivoted under every president before. They didn't realize that Obama had really, thoroughly, deeply anchored the force in his worldview. And he did it very effectively. How did he do that? How did he do that? It started with he fired over 100 general officers and, and people may argue and say, Oh no, Tracy didn't fire 100 general officers like he had fired over 100 general officers. Whether it be a direct termination or whether it be a you are not, you are no longer getting promoted.

36:23 You are now invited to retire because when you well, a lot of people don't realize we have, you know, 123 and 4 star general officers. One and two star are your last permanent promotions. When you see guys who are Lieutenant generals and generals or vice Admirals and Admirals in the in the seaborne forces, those are what we call nominative positions, which means you are nominated by the president to hold a position that holds that rank. And then so you get if, if you're in the Army, your division commander, you're a two star. Your last promote permanent promotion was the two star. If you're liked enough, you'll get nominated to be a core commander. Well, core has to be commanded by a three star. So the day you take command of the core, you're promoted to three star.

37:09 But if they decide not to give you a four-star promotion, you have two options. Retires A3 star or or within a matter of months revert back to your two star because that's your last, your last promotion. And so that's another way that officers are are moved on out of the four, say we're not going to nominate you for that three or four-star position. What were you going to do? You're going to retire at that point in time because you have no future in it. And it's pretty much known that your that your career is a dead end. So they've got no place for you. So you move on. And so, and he raised up people based on their ideological preferences and that was done very quietly. It was done very in a very subdued ways. But every, every officer in the military and most people don't know this.

37:54 When you reach the rank of major O 4, so there are 10 officer ranks O1 through O 10. When you reach the rank of major O 4, those ranks are all Senate confirmed. I have a date of Senate confirmation on my promotion to major. The president has to personal has to appoint general officers and again, those go in and list to the Senate to be voted on. We are all chosen through a political body and that's that's part of Congress's oversight. But Congress is a political body, and so personnel is policy. That's the first, most foundational rule of understanding how to get organizations to change culturally.

38:37 You have to change the personnel because the rules, the rules don't matter if you have people who won't enforce the rules. The rules are whatever the people are willing to enforce. Personnel is policy. And so that's where Obama made tremendous strides was through the personnel and through key political appointments in the senior executive services core across the Department of War. He made sure that his administration got all of those seats filled with people who were aligned to the left and, and it just held because once those people are, are in, it's difficult to get them out of the way. And even today it's known inside the Pentagon that it is just filled with thousands and thousands of hardcore loved wing activists.

39:19 But they're reticent to get rid of a lot of them because the the question is, but who's going to do the work? You know, these people are experienced at the strategic level and it took years to groom them and to build them. And, and I understand that. But my response is I I find I just think there's hardly any job where it's better to have an enemy of the Constitution in it than to have it empty. Right, No, 100%. So things don't turn as quickly around during the Trump administration in in your estimation, because momentum had already taken over from the previous administration. So things stay as they were pretty much through the Obama years.

39:59 Is that a fair assessment? It is, it is. I mean, there were the president would say certain things, but it was known throughout the force that hey, this is still the way that we're doing business. And there was still like some of the hostility towards going back. And, and one other thing I'll add to that it's, it's much harder to conserve something than it is to revolutionize it. The energy is always on the side of the revolutionary, the, the people trying to conserve are always, always at the kind of weekend of that tug of war. And so that's why you see throughout history, it's you see so many cultures, so many, so many institutions drift left until they just eventually collapse. And so few of them actually be pulled back from the brink because the energy is always on the side of the revolutionary. Before we move on to the Biden years, because it sounds like you because you got out, you said just two years ago, is that correct?

40:58 So you would have been in there for at least part of the, the Biden administration. But before we move on there, I, I got to ask a question here and that was this. I think as dudes, we all game plan what collapse would look like, right? And the one thing I always hedged my bets on, and I have a feeling this may be about to be shattered, was the thought that, well, the military might be the last line of defense because they, unlike politicians, their whole goal is to support and defend the Constitution of the United States from both, from enemies both foreign and domestic. My question is, does does the military ensure that those guys who swear that oath understand what it is that document says? No, not at all.

41:53 And this is something that concerns me deeply as a veteran, as a citizen, as a father, as a husband. I, I've said this many, many times recently. I, I've said this to people who are in senior positions in the Pentagon and there's been no indication of action on it. If you don't know how to run, the military will teach you how to run. If you've never done a push up in your life, you'll be, you'll be expert at push ups by the time you come off the other side of the basic training pipeline. The military assumes that when you enlist, you have no idea how to do the jobs. You don't know how to be a network technician, you don't know how to drive a tank, you don't know how to build a bridge.

42:42 It teaches you how to do that. And it it does a very good job. I mean, it's really an impressive process from day one, a basic training to the far end of tech school, you know, where you've taken a citizen who has no familiarity at all with the military and turned out a military professional on the other end. It's it's really remarkable thing that they do. But if you don't know civics, if you don't know the history of the American founding, if you've never cracked the page of the Constitution and don't know the difference between the 1st Amendment and the 10th out of luck, figure it out on your own. There's no training on it.

43:24 Period. I say that with one exception. I, there is a law that was passed just in recent years that does require a small block of constitutional training for cadets coming through West Point. But it's, it's small, it's not much. I discovered it doing some research a couple of years ago. And that's a recent law. And I, but there's no, even that doesn't give you any kind of constitutional familiarity. It's, it's just kind of like a, a sidewalk within an ethics course. And that is problematic to me because when you swear to support and defend the Constitution, potentially to die for it, and you don't understand what it is, well, that's how you can have soldiers that will have sworn that oath on one hand and yet enthusiastically give money and attend BLM riots on the other, right?

44:20 Because they, they don't know the difference. Most, most 90% of people come through the government school system and that is deliberately set up to prevent them from having any constitutional understanding and any proper understanding of the context of American history. And so this is something that bothers me deeply because if you, if you don't know what it is you're fighting for, you're not a patriot citizen under arms anymore. You're a mercenary. You're a mercenary. And I have warned about this. I even wrote a piece for Red State last year. It's called the case for Constitutional Training in the Military.

45:02 And it's a guide. I mean, it's a, it's an op-ed, but it's a guide saying here's the problem and here's a way Department of War could fix it at no cost, $0.00 worth of cost to the institution. How they can begin addressing it right now. No action, none. And that's a problem. That's a big problem, and let me let me explain why. If you're not governed by law, you're governed by men. That's all there is to it, right? The, the real genius of the American system was this, the this idea that we will codify these things. We will make sure that everyone knows exactly what the government can't do to them, right? If you do not understand those things, you as quite frankly, a weapon of the government can do all sorts of things, right? And look, I'm not in favor of disobeying order for the sake of disobeying orders.

46:10 However, my worst fears that there comes a time where an unconstitutional order comes down, right, especially if it's boots on the ground in at home, that, that I feel like I would be a lot more secure knowing that those guys who are receiving those orders understand the breadth and scope of the oath that they have taken. Because without that, just as you were saying, you're no longer a a soldier citizen. You are, as you put it, a mercenary. And that is troublesome, right? That goes back to that Praetorian Guard thing again, which which is a little spooky and in my opinion, OK, thanks for answering that. So now moving on to the Biden years. Like, I didn't think it could get bad, you know, get any worse than the Obama years.

47:05 But I stand corrected. I think it was. I mean, look from the outside looking in, right? You have Afghanistan, the with that sloppy mess of a withdrawal. You have a whole bunch of other things. What What did you find in your time under the the Biden administration within the United States military? There needs to be a special place in hell for Joe Biden. That man did such harm to the military. So the one. He's not getting a Spears family Christmas card this year. No, no, no, no, Old Joe is not invited to the Spears house unless he gives his heart to Jesus.

47:47 And and I want to see clear proof of that. Now, if he did, there'd be forgiveness. But but until then, that man did such damage. Oh, he did such damage. So the one major policy change we saw during the first Trump administration was that he put a the brakes on the forced integration of transgenderism into the military. And that was one of the first things that Joe Biden did away with. And not only did he did he undo the ban, which the ban was merely what had banned the practice for over 2 centuries of American history in the military. He pushed it aggressively. And of course, the brass were all Obama holdovers. And so they got in line so, so quickly to to just force that upon us.

48:40 There was the and I don't and and that comes not just with allowing people into the force. What a lot of people on the outside don't understand too, or wishy washy or maybe agree with us theoretically, but they don't. They're too cowardly to actually get up off their ass and fight is they'll say, oh, OK, so it just means someone had gets to come in and they they just they're Tom, but you call him Jane. No, it's far more than that. I'll never forget. I had a, a buddy of mine who was forced against his will, kicking and screaming to be the equal opportunity advisor for our unit and the equal opportunity program in the military. Yeah, you, you know where I'm going with this. I mean, it's, it's just a, it's a, it's a programmized struggle session across the force.

49:26 And it was even even before the Biden and Obama years, but it got really bad during the Biden years. And so he had to go to this training. And he told me about Chase. There I was in the auditorium and I'm watching this 6 foot five man up on stage who is dressed like a woman, and I'm being told to believe this is a woman. And not only that, he was afraid to talk about that in places that people might hear him talking about it. Even even out on the town, there was such a fear, such a spiral of silence that if you are not completely wholeheartedly enthusiastic about this, you're a problem and you need to be dealt with.

50:08 You might be one of those radical extremists. And so let's come back to that word extremist. You remember Lloyd Austin was brought in as the Defense Secretary under Joe Biden, a man who was a known to be a, a just a, a pitiful officer. The fact they got four stars was was demonstration that the equal opportunity program does does look favorably upon people based on their skin tone. He was just known to be a really poor officer overall throughout his entire career. He he, he messed up and moved up one of those guys and, and there are a lot of people like that. And then he was nominated to be Secretary of Defense because Biden needed to throw diversity bone to the Congressional Black Caucus because he came in saying promising the most diverse cabinet in American history. And and most of his appointees were people of skin tones like us.

51:03 And so Lloyd Austin was kind of that figure for him. And Lloyd Austin came in on day one and said, we have an extremism problem in the military. And that really surprised me because I thought, this is the military that made you a four-star general. This is a military to which you rose to the Top Rank and had a combatant command. You didn't think it was full of extremists then, did you, Mr. Austin? But he came in day one and he echoed that because that's what Joe Biden said. Joe Biden, this is after J6, you know, the, the feds direction and Biden was out there and the left wingers were all saying, you know, anyone who's a conservative is an extremist. And because there were veterans at, at J6, the military's extremists, they, they, they didn't bother to say, well, based on your skin tone or your ethnicity or, or your, your gender, you're an extremist if you're there. But they really targeted veterans very specifically. And again, that goes back to the capture of the military. If you can make, make an institution look bad, then you can make the institution want to look good and you can make strike political deals with them. We'll do this and and we'll, we'll have your case and this, that was probably one of those deals. So Lloyd Austin comes in and says we have this extremism problem in the military.

52:24 Never mind that a a a rather well funded federal study was done into this during the first couple years of the Biden administration and and they found that incidents of so-called extremism were far less in the military than that among the general public. Go figure. Most you don't have that. You don't have that many thugs trying to join the military as there are out in the mainstream public. And so it got there was a spiral of silence. Like if you're if you're a basic constitutional mind, it was made very clear to this was never said out loud, all right, but it was very tacitly, passive aggressively made known to you. Shut up, be invisible.

53:07 If you have those beliefs, keep them to yourself. We don't want to hear them. Don't be caught talking about them. Don't be caught embracing them or you will pay. That was made very tacitly clear. And it was also during that time that we actually had incidents where there were certain trainings being given where you saw Christian organizations being put up on PowerPoint slides along with hardcore, like actual terrorist organizations. Now, you didn't you didn't see the Muslim Brotherhood put up there with them, right? It was always Christian organizations, pro-life organizations. And so the there was a fear that gripped conservatives that gripped Christians.

53:51 Sit down, shut up if you know what's good for you. And that doesn't even get into the vaccine issue. And I've got another issue on the transgender policy. I'll come to in a minute, but I'll pause there because I'll, I'll, I'll talk for another 10 minutes while I give you a chance to jump in if you had any anything on. That yeah, I mean, it's, it's, it's kind of, it's kind of spooky, right. And so my question for you is, is that like, look, I know despite what, what the brass is doing, there are still a lot of good men and women that, that are in the service, right? Consequently, there's got to be Bible studies going on, right? And so as, as maybe you frequent in some of those or you heard about it, what's, what's the overall tone there? I mean, for, for guys like yourself who were in there, I mean, was there anybody that you guys confided in? Did you dare confide in each other? I mean like what, what was the strategy going forward for you guys?

54:52 Well, it differed from base to base, unit to unit, command to command, locale to locale. And so I was at Fort Leavenworth during the last few years of my career during the Biden administration. And Fort Leavenworth is a very officer heavy base, and officers tend to be more left wing than enlisted members are. And so Fort Leavenworth was a particularly hostile place to people of faith, whereas places like Fort Bragg, I've heard were less hostile. So a lot of it came down to where were you? What service were you in? What commands did you have? There was a, a small lunch group led by one of the chaplains on base that I took part in where there about half dozen of us who'd get together once a week and we just talk and have lunch and try to encourage each other. So I found some solace there.

55:41 I, I, like I said, my, my closest partner in the unit was of like minds to me. And so we would have a lot of conversations and just kind of reminder each other that we're not the crazy ones. And there were a lot of good men and, and women in my unit who were not completely sold out to the temple of Bail. But you know, for example, our commander had a ABLM sign in his yard. And you know, we, we knew, we knew better than to let him know how we thought if, if we didn't want to, given his crosshairs and, and arguments could be made about whether we should or or shouldn't have. We weren't trying. Thing is, we're not trying to pick fights. We're just trying to serve. That's all we're trying to do.

56:22 We're not trying to be activists. We're just trying to serve. That's what we came in to do. We don't want to have a fight with anyone inside the force. We want to have, if we're going to have a fight, we want to have with the invader who's who's actually threatening our homeland. Whereas the progressives, they wanted to have that fight internally. They, they wanted to actually, you know, shift things and to change things. And so it was very much we're, we're just trying to be at peace here and we're just trying to, to preserve and to do our jobs to the best of our ability. But it was, it was difficult. I'll tell you, there was this one job. We'll come to the COVID thing in a minute because that's, it's a whole other thing.

57:02 But continuing on the theme of, of how, of how the transgender policy was not just about personnel, but it was about ideology. I, I got sucked up into one of the last jobs I had was the combined Arms center. It's now the combined Arms command, public affairs operations officer. And that was not a real job. It was a made-up job. It wasn't on the books. But the guy who, who was up there running that office at the time, he, he, he had just a civilian staff. Well, you can't for civilians to work overtime. You can't force them to go. Do you know the the silly stuff that no one wants to do after hours are on the weekend? The menial tasks. You can't abuse them.

57:43 And he wanted someone they could throw that stuff too. And so he forced me up there kicking and screaming against my will. I I I fought that with everything I could not to go up there see only job I've in my military career. I never I didn't have a moment to say in and and even my assignments manager tried to fight him on it and he lost. And so anyways, I go up there, I know it's going to be a difficult job, mainly because this is run by a three star general officer at the time, guy named Ted Martin, who was, you know, fully, fully, enthusiastically embraced all the woke orthodoxies that that I abhorred. And here I am supposed to be one of his communicators. All right, great.

58:23 That'll that'll be not fun. So I got there to the office. So I'll never forget at one point in time, I started getting e-mail traffic from it's the G3 basically that's the operations director. And then Army caught the G3 and it was and this, this e-mail traffic was coming to me because I'm the guy in the office who would handle policy and planning. And so this e-mail is all about transgender policy and what the command is doing to be in full accordance with transgender policy. And the reason I'm included on this e-mail is because it's a tacit expectation that I am going to help to shape the communication plans, to support this and to advocate for it and to gaslight the organization and public into what a great thing this is for readiness, blah, blah, blah.

59:17 Well, what do you do if you're a leader and you see something coming your way that you think it's going to be problematic? Do you sit there and wait to get hit like a train? Or do you go to your boss and say, hey, I see something coming down the Pike? I'd like us to talk about it before it's a problem so it can figure out how for it not to be a problem. I took option 2. That's how I'd been trained. That's how I'd been raised. You sound the alarm. Yeah, it's, I mean, I always wanted my subordinates, if they sensed a problem to come to me before it was a problem so we could solve it. I, I was very, very open about that. So I get to my boss and said, hey, Sir, I, I see the e-mail traffic and I can read the tea leaves. I've been around enough to know why I'm getting this e-mail traffic even though no one's giving me an order, no one's giving me a tasking like around the block or two.

1:00:03 I know, I know, I know this is Step 1 and I know what Step 3 is going to look like. So before we get there. Can I get on your calendar and let's just have a conversation at some point in the next few days about what you, how far you're going to go, willing to go to satisfy this, what you envision meaning to do, and where we will draw the line so that my rights of conscience are not violated? I thought that was a very reasonable request. Well, I was asking for a conversation to figure out how you get done, what you need to get done. And we protect my rights of conscience. That's all I'm asking for is a talk about that. He did not want to have that talk. He got, He got visibly angry at me for that, for even bringing it up and said, you're an officer.

1:00:48 You just do whatever you're told. I was like, well, Sir, that's, that's not how that works. I there, there's a conflict here and I'm just asking for a conversation before it becomes a before that conflict gets here so we can figure out how to adjust things. So it's not a conflict. I mean, because there's some people in the office who are not going to have any, any moral problem being an enthusiastic part of this, like this work can be redirected. There might even be some small, small peripheral thing that I can do to assist someone that's not going to violate my rights of conscience on possibly I was hoping even to maybe there's some small thing I can do to help someone else with something and and you get your job done and I'm protected. That's how one was the talk so we could think through it. And we never got to have that talk because he got mad at me and got very hostile and said, you know, you were, you'll do whatever you're told.

1:01:43 And I was like, well, it's not how it's going to work, Sir. We need to have this conversation. So the conversation just, well, it just was going nowhere. And I, I finally gave up on and walked out of his office because I could see I'm getting nowhere with him and he's not listening to me. And, and I'm not going to stand there and be told talk to like a fool. And so I had that was a week that was going into the weekend. I get a phone call from him. I've got a couple days off and I get a phone call from him. Hey, Monday, I need you to be in my office at 9:00. And I'm thinking, well, I'm always in the office at 9:00. That's my start, my duty day. So are you telling me to be in the office at 9:00? You know I'll be there. Well, I just need to make sure you'll be here because we need to have a conversation.

1:02:24 And I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, all right, there's a mission coming up maybe that he needs to send me on 'cause that wasn't unusual for officers on Fort Love more to get short notes tasking. Hey, we got this two week thing we need help with and so you get on, got to get on a plane on short notice. I thought it was something like that. And I said, well, hey, Sir, what? Just go ahead and give me a heads up on what the issue is. And I can't even start working it on it this weekend. And we can, you know, we can already have a running start when I get into the office on Monday. And he wouldn't tell me. He's like, well, you'll find out when you get here on Monday. And I'm thinking, all right, I'm not read in on any top secret systems. There's nothing he there's nothing classified I'm being pulled in on.

1:03:05 He can just tell me. And so I just kept pushing him. Sure, just give me a just give me a clue. I'm just, I'm trying to lean forward and help you. What is it you need me to start thinking about? I want to come when I'm show up Monday. I want to be ready to run and take on whatever this mission is. He's like, well, I need to counsel you for what you said about transgenderism. Now I counseling is a negative is a negative piece of paperwork. And I'd never received one of those as an officer. And I was just in disbelief. So I showed up Monday and he put in writing that I was in violation of Army's equal opportunity policy for for my statements of conscience about sexuality and not and my plan of action included. Now that I know that you're a Christian, I'm going to make you the lead on all things related to transgender policy and communication for the command because I know you're Christian. I'll, I'll tell you what, one of the reasons this this show has the name it it does is because I don't affiliate much with the LDS church anymore, right?

1:04:28 I'm kind of off doing my own thing and this was a big reason why. And I think that this point that you make here is so important for people to understand because this doesn't just affect the military, this effects education. It affects your your, your other government jobs that are non military. It affects big corporations. And that is this. There are people who who struggle with same sex attraction, who struggle with gender dysmorphia.

1:05:08 I pray for them. I, I hope they get the help that they need. But make no mistake about it, there is, there is a leadership to that movement. And what they tell you is they just want tolerance. But that's not what they request. What they request. And I think this is what you found. They want submission. Bow the knee. It's not just tolerate us, but endorse our way of life. And it's very important that we understand early what the end goal is.

1:05:51 The end goal isn't tolerance. The end goal is endorsement by your critics. And that will come in a multitude of ways, right? Yours is 1. The other is being cancelled. The other is, is being, you know, having the names thrown at you. All those things. You want to play the game, you want to win the game. The only way you win the game is you don't play it right. You just say this is the line. I am not going to sit here and tell you that your lifestyle is acceptable from a script scriptural point of view. It's not. And then hold to that and and and do that peacefully, but do that to vigorously and with some gusto because the whole plan is designed where if you give an inch, they got you for a mile and and you have to be firm there. So would you end up doing in that? Well, it was kind of interesting what happened it it fizzled out. And I want to tag on something you just said. It's not that they request that you bend to the knee. It's they demand that you bend to the knee. They demand it and he was demanding it in that moment. So as it so happened, I already had some leave vacation days that were already planned, that were already approved that I was going to be taking off for the next week and 1/2 or so. And then golly, it was just, it

1:07:21 was perfect timing. And what, what, what better time to just get away and to be away from someone who is displaying such openly hostility towards me. I mean, how do you, how do you work in that, right? Someone who says now, because I know you have conviction, I'm going to go out of my way to overrule you and to subdue you and to and to not and then to rub it in your face. And so I did go and speak to the chaplain and gave, gave him a heads up of what was going on. I said, I'm please do not go talk to my boss. I'm thinking through, I'm praying through how to handle this respectfully, responsibly, but you need to know, you need to know this is going on in your, in your headquarters, in your building.

1:08:10 And I was really disappointed because the Chapel elected me and was kind of like, well, what do you want me to do about it? And I thought, I'm not asking you to do anything, but that shouldn't be your, your question to me. Your, it should be. We've got a major problem here. And I need to make sure leadership is tracking what people's rights are. So the chaplain Corps was really caught flat footed on this. They had received no guidance on this at all. I said, well, Sir, like you need to reach out to the chaplains in because I promise you it's coming. If it's coming for me, it's coming for someone else too. I can, I can promise you that. So I, I took a few days off while I was gone. I spoke to a couple of attorneys who specialize in religious liberty and they were just, they, they reaffirmed that I'd done everything properly. They reaffirmed the law was and military regulation also was on my side and that if my boss intended to continue pushing this, that they would be happy to get involved and to represent me and to whatever level would be necessary. And so I took some great comfort in that. I have no idea what happened while I was gone. I have a theory and I'll and I'll tell you, here's what my theory is.

1:09:22 My theory is that while I was gone, my boss took that paperwork because he gave me not just one, but two counseling forms that day. And what and what and what he was trying to do was he was trying to build a packet. Because if you need to get to a point of taking an actual punitive action against someone, especially a field grade officer, a senior major, as I was at that point in time, you, you, you have to go to the commander with a packet on that individual demonstrating a pattern of, of disobedience and, and an officer like behavior in order to get the commander to do some, to issue a punitive kind of action on it.

1:10:02 So he was trying to build a packet. I suspect, and I'll never know because this officer is now deceased, but I suspect what happened was that as I was seeking legal counsel, he was probably also, I'm guessing something happened like this, that he probably went to the legal office on base with the paperwork in hand with an idea of he is going to go talk to lawyers about how they work together to get this problematic major. And I suspect the attorneys that he talked to said you might want to be careful because the law is on his side and and he can make this much more painful for you than you can make it for him as.

1:10:45 And I'll never know. That's my theory of what happened. Because I can tell you when I came back from my few days of leave, he never said another word about it. And he acted like we were friends and like nothing had ever happened. And, and so he, he had a significant change of heart and never spoke about that topic to me again. So I suspect something got to him. I, I did go to the chaplain afterward and I said, hey, I asked you not to say anything to him. Did you say anything to him? He said, Chase, I never brought it up. I said well, he's he's had a river. He is not talking about this to me at all. And he's acting like nothing ever happened, like we're friends now.

1:11:27 And he's like, well, it wasn't me so I'm guessing it was a lawyer. Gotcha. No, it makes sense. That's rough. So you mentioned COVID was bad in the military. What'd you see there? That was that was unforgivable, Dave, just yesterday and we're recording this in in February. Just yesterday an old friend of mine sent me a text and said, Hey, Chase, I'm, I'm, I'm probably going to be forced into the process of a medical evaluation board, which will force me to leave the army under a medical condition because I now have AI now have a condition related to the shot, right.

1:12:22 And he will carry that for the rest of his life. So COVID happens and one of the military specialties is over reacting to things. And boy, did they especially on Fort Leavenworth, did they ever react. And the, and the Department of Defense as a whole overreacted. It really did. I mean, they just, we, we talked earlier about how, how difficult it, how the institution has inertia. And so we're like a full year into Trump 2 point O and, and the Pentagon is still very, very wayward because it has such inertia, man, when it came to COVID, man, we went to telework overnight.

1:13:03 And I and I thought the, the military organization that telework would never, ever be possible. Man, they figured that out in a matter of days for the entire force. I mean, overnight, we weren't getting haircuts anymore. And you want to talk about a sacred cow haircuts and organized PT like every night, all that stuff went away. It didn't matter anymore. And so when the, when the military wants to pivot on something, oh, it can pivot. It can. And how it started out for me was I was actually in a class when, when this all, when it all went down that, hey, this is a serious thing or was perceived to be a serious thing. So I, I go back the class in just like a week or two long class, I've been out of the office and I should back up to my office and it's empty. There's like only, there's no one else on my floor, the entire floor of the building.

1:13:51 We're up on the 3rd floor. Now I'm walking around trying to figure out like where in the world is everybody is? Is there a big ceremony somewhere that I'm supposed to be at? Is there an organizational day someone didn't tell me about? And now I'm not where I'm supposed to be. So I'm kind of starting to get stressed. I'm, I pull up my emails. I don't see anything about, hey, we, we're at this thing that I, there's nothing. And I'm like, where in the world is everybody? And I finally found one other guy on the floor and, and I was like, Hey, where is everybody? What happened? What event am I not at that I'm supposed to be at? And he's like, oh, Sir, you're not supposed to be here. You're not supposed to be here. You're like, we're all, we're all home now, like COVID blah, blah. We're like, get out of here.

1:14:36 You're not supposed to be here. I'm, I'm leaving right now too. I'm like, oh, OK. So I called my boss and he's like, yeah, just go home and stand by. So I went home and stood by and, and it was weeks of being at home. And then they opened up on Fort Leavenworth. They opened up what we called the emergency operations center, which basically sat there all day like a it was like a movie. You know, where, where you, you see the, the, the big board room with the monitors over the front of the room and supposed to be this where battles are being tracked. There's a small, less sexy version of that on Fort Leavenworth. And, and we're there in the emergency operations center. And I got tasked to be one of the public affairs officers there. And it turned out to be a place I just wrote a lot of papers for school because I was starting my PhD then because there was really nothing to do.

1:15:23 And, and the commander would come in twice a day and get briefings on sort of the commissary has meet today, Sir, and such and such county is reporting this number of cases and blah, blah, blah. It was such a waste of time. And so Fort Lovelworth, let me tell you some of the silly things they did. A, a respiratory virus that spreads through air, right? That's why we're told we all had to wear these, these worthless masks. And what did they do? We're told everyone has to stand 6 feet apart, you know, social distancing. What, what did they do? They closed all down, all but one of the gates on base for COVID. So now we're all funneling through the same common gate, all the major buildings, they closed all but one entrance.

1:16:07 So now you're all funneling in and out of the exact same entrance. To get on base, you have to show your military ID card to get on base. So if you're on base, you already have a military ID card. Well, and during COVID, in order to get into, we call it, we call it a shop at it's basically this gas station. In order to get inside the gas station, in order to get inside the commissary, which is the grocery store, in order to get inside the PX, which is the department store on base, you would also have to show an ID because I guess if you carry an ID, you can't carry the respiratory virus. And, and it was just, it was silly, silly stuff like that just so officers could sit on VTCS with their bosses and say, we're doing something, Sir. We're doing something, ma'am.

1:16:55 And it was just all so performative and so artificial. Silliness aside, let's let's Fast forward to the shot mandate. So it was, it was 2021, the so-called miracle shots come out that miraculously we were told would have no side side effects at all. Which is like there's side effects to taking a Tylenol. Just just just amazing how for the first time in history there'd be something with no side effects. It was as innocent as water and we knew, we knew the military love shots. We knew for months this is going to be coming down the Pike. And and so I was praying about it. My wife and I were praying about it. I was seeking a lot of counsel about it. I'm not, I'm not at that point in time, I was not an anti vaxxer.

1:17:44 I'm I'm kind of kind of by practice one now, not necessarily philosophically, but I, you know, you get done bad enough, you get tired of being done bad and just kind of fault against all of it. And so they mandated it. And what I saw in the culture was cruel. It was cruel and unusual punishment for having raised your right hand to serve this nation and the armed forces of the United States. We all know the military has vaccination requirements. I never, I never resisted getting a flu shot. And hindsight, I probably should have, but I didn't. I, I, if they said I was supposed to have a shot, I, I was like, cool.

1:18:25 Like, I just trusted the institution needs me healthy so they're not going to poison me. I know naivete, right? I, I wasn't because I placed blind faith in the system, but I did place some level of trust that was, in hindsight, unearned and unwarranted. But if I missed a flu shot, Dave, it wasn't the end of the world. I know a lot of people who just didn't get their flu shots and they would get put on the tracker and they're kind of a naughty boy or girl on the tracker for the couple of months of flu season. And then guess what? Flu season goes away and now it kind of drops off being tracked and no one pays attention. Missing a flu shot did not end your career. For the entirety of my military career, missing a so-called vaccination did not end your career. It was just OK kind of smack on the head go get it. And if you didn't get it, commanders had better things to do than go through all the paperwork to bring pinot of action.

1:19:22 It was just it was just something you might kind of get a sideways glance about. COVID was different. COVID was different. Once that shot mandate came out, that thing was tracked above all else. It it, you know, failure PT test, which is a hallmark of the military being physically fit that that wasn't the top part anymore. It was do you have your COVID shot? Do you have your COVID shot? If you don't, why not? Do you have an exemption in Do you have a religious accommodation request in Do you have a medical request in which is probably not going to get approved anyways? Before it was mandated, I went to the hospital because I knew it was going to be mandated.

1:20:02 I could see this coming and I went and asked one of the nurses. I said, hey, I'm not usually averse to shots, but I. I have some concerns about something that is being developed so rapidly that it's not being run through control group testing and there's no longevity research on it. And so for the first time in my life, I have some concerns about a product that I think that I think in the matter of months, I'm going to be told I must, as a, as a soldier put into my body. And I'm just want to ask you, what is the process for people like me who have concerns? And my and the nurse was mad at me. It was like I was just a totally wasting her time. She's like, there will be no accommodations. You will get that shot when it's required. Everyone will get that shot when it's required. And it was cruel.

1:20:49 So we, my wife and I made the agonizing decision and I got it. We were at that point in time, I believed it to be in a moral order, but I didn't believe it to be an unlawful order. Now in hindsight, I know it was an unlawful order. The things I've learned since that I did not know then. But at that point in time, I was already kind of in A2 front war with the Army 11 with my boss over the whole sexuality thing. And he was just he was just difficult to work with on on so many other things. Just a case study didn't and failed leadership in every way. I was already kind of in a war with my career field as a public affairs officer because I wrote for publication and they did not like that.

1:21:35 And I got a lot of a lot of pressure about that. But it's something I wasn't going to give up. And we were just like, you know what, we're already in A2 front war with the Army. It's already not fun anymore. It's already extraordinarily stressful. I mean, literally, it was, it was the only, it was the first time in years that every day when I walked into the building, I could literally feel my gut turning because of the amount of stress for, for what that man would put me through on a daily basis. And so we decided I can't, we just mentally cannot take a three front war with the army. And so I, I got it. And I, that's a big, big motivator for why I work so hard to be in, in physical shape now is just, I'm doing everything I can to overcome whatever health setbacks I'll have for having taken that poison into my, into my body. But there were so many people.

1:22:28 I'm, I'm one of the lucky ones. To my knowledge, I don't have any, any lingering health effects from it to my knowledge. And I work really, really, really hard to, to stay very healthy and, and to make very good lifestyle choices to do everything I can. But I know a lot of people who have permanent conditions because of this. I know people who are suffering because of this. I know people who were kicked out of the military and cruel fashion for this in 2020. That was that was what killed my desire to continue serving because here I am a military spokesman. My job is to, is to tell the public how great the Army is. My job is to be the face and the voice and the writing and the, the apologist for the army and the commands that I'm in and to, you know, shout, shout about what a great institution it is. And to repeat all the talking points about how we, we take care of our people.

1:23:27 That, I mean, 2020 was the year under general convo where it was supposed to be the people first strategy. And I was, I was like, OK, well, that's kind of a gimmick. But at least if, if they at least give this 1/2 hearted try, it'll be a good thing. Well, they immediately ditched it to start persecuting people under COVID and all of a sudden every night people who had deployed to combat, who had missed years worth of time with with their spouses and children because of trainings and deployments, people who had given so much of themselves, all of a sudden it was they were totally worthless. If you don't get this one shot, you're worthless. You're unpatriotic.

1:24:13 Your, your integrity was questioned openly on Fort Leavenworth, where I was stationed, even before the shot was mandatory. I say again, before the shot was mandatory, if you didn't have it, you had to walk around with a mask on. But if you had this shot, you didn't have to wear a mask. They marked you. Fort Bragg. There were there were certain parts of the base that were open to the so-called vaccinated and closed to the so-called unvaccinated. There were some places that actually made you wear a band on your arm if you hadn't had this shot. What's that that that bring back any historical well? Eerily reminiscing to Germany in World War 2, you know.

1:24:57 Yeah, I did a training exercise out at Fort Riley, KS and this is after I got the shot. And so it didn't affect me personally, but I'll never forget it. The commanding general out there put out a a policy that if you were a visiting military member, and I was a visiting military member for that training exercise because I wasn't assigned there, that. But if you're a visiting official and you don't have the shot, you can't use any of the base facilities. You're restricted from the from whatever place you're sleeping at to whatever training location you go to. And you can't go anywhere else on the base. And I just thought that is the dirtiest, most low scum, low earth homunist thing an officer of the United States sworn to support and defend the Constitution could do. It was just.

1:25:50 And that was accepted. That was accepted. And I saw all the sudden were allegedly a force for freedom and we're not granting the most basic freedom to our our military members. It's one thing to say, hey, the policy came out and you, you have a choice to make. You either get the shot or your career is going to be curtailed and you can fight that legally. It's another thing to be personal about it, to be vindictive about it, to be cruel about it. And writ large, with a with just a handful of exceptions, that was how it was across the military. And I've had many, many people who are victims of it on my own show.

1:26:33 And the stories that they tell, I just may, I struggle not to slam my fist on the table sometimes. It's cruel and unusual punishment that the Department of Defense made it out to patriotic military members over a shot that now we know actually increased your likelihood of getting sick. My own. Carditis, blood clots, the whole, the whole, the whole spectrum, right. I look, I was working for I, I live in Missouri now, down in southwest Missouri. But when COVID was happening, I was living in Utah and I was actually working for Salt Lake County at the time.

1:27:17 And when COVID hit everybody, you know, it was like one of those things, everyone goes home. Except by state, state statute, the office had to remain open. So they were looking for volunteers. And there was like 3 people that volunteered. And because I was, had been there a certain amount of time, I already had, you know, leadership experience through other, other careers that I've had. They said, OK, you're, you're going to kind of head things up. And that forced me to have to go to meetings every week with the state health director. And we get all these numbers now I'm, I'm a, a land surveyor by profession.

1:27:59 And so data and numbers are big on what I do. So I thought, OK, I'm just going to, I'm just going to look at this, at these numbers here, right? I'm just going to take a good hard look at these numbers and I start crunching the data and I'm like, OK, so, and this is, this is a month in now, right? This is past the initial just for two weeks, right, that we were sold. I start looking at the numbers and I realize, gosh, the the average age of death on this is like 79, right? And you start doing the math, the average American male lives to be like 7274, right? And then you start looking at the comorbidities that are going along with it.

1:28:43 Even most old people are kicking this and moving on. Even most people with comorbidities are kicking this and moving on. And I remember I was sitting in a meeting with this woman and she says, is there any questions now? I was just dumb enough to think that oh, they, they really want to know my opinion here or questions on this. And so I just kind of tell them what I found, right? So why don't we, we, we kind of like do a soft lockdown, so to speak, right? If someone's immunocompromised, keep them at home. But if you're young and healthy, let's get you back in the office. And dude, the chilling effect that happened, that was the one and only time I've ever worked for government because of just what you're talking about.

1:29:28 When, when there's a decision that is made, you don't necessarily have a choice anymore, right? Especially if you're working. And it has to be doubly bad in the military, right? Because like, look, worst thing that's going to happen to me is I'm going to lose my job, whatever. I trust the private sector more anyway. But regardless that it's, it's not a bad, it's it's not horrible. It's not the end of the world for me. You're in the military. I mean, there's a plethora of things they can do to you while you're there. So is it during COVID chase that you finally get to the point to where you're like, I'm done, I'm retiring. What's what takes you out of there?

1:30:09 Because we, we got just about you're, you're at a hard 2 hour break and I'd like to get some solutions before we we move on here. So real quick, what is it that ultimately makes you decide you know what, I'm out? Or was it just a combination of everything that you've just talked about? It was the military's response to COVID. When I saw that all the sudden military members were being treated so terribly that they were having their their last vestiges of American citizenship taken away from them, their last vestiges of rites taken away from them, that that they were being told them and their family members, your service no longer matters. You are no longer an honorable person because of this.

1:30:52 Really, Because you questioned this rightfully, righteously. That was the moment I realized I can't be a spokesman for this agency any longer. And we, we as Christians do not have the luxury of all of us working for Christians. And the Lord calls us to abide where we are until he comes. And you look through Scripture, you know, men and women of God served in places under some pretty bad people. Daniel served in Nebuchadnezzar's court. I'm sure that was not sure. That was not the career path that he decided that he wanted to go on. It's where the Lord took him. But I, I just, I don't see in scripture anywhere that we are called to be the public apologist and communication strategist for Lucifer himself.

1:31:40 And so COVID was was it for me. We had planned a 30 year military career. I had done a fellowship at Georgetown. I'd been a select for the Army's command and General staff college resident course, which is also restricted to the top half of majors. I, I had good report cards. It was it was pretty certain that as long as I made maintain my momentum in spite of the number of senior P OS who didn't like me, I would probably still make Colonel. And so my wife and I were had committed to a 30 year career we liked. I liked soldiering it. It wasn't perfect. There were a lot of frustrating days or a lot of frustrating bosses, but there are a lot of great days and a lot of great bosses and, and there's some parts of military, a lot that are fun, like jumping out of airplanes.

1:32:24 And so we, we were convinced we're going to do a long term career. COVID killed it. I realized I, I, I can't go out and defend an institution that is telling me I'm a bad person because I questioned this, that is looking at my colleagues and treating them like filthy lepers because they question this, not because of misconduct, but because they question. Then add to that the whole thing with my boss and the transgenderism policy. And again, I, I thought, they're telling me in order to get ahead, I have to completely give up my rights of conscience. I have to completely give up who God called me to be. And so that 2020 was the breaking point for me.

1:33:05 And if I could have got out, then I, I probably would have. But we looked at it and we thought, OK, we're 17 years. I've worked really, really, really hard to get to this point. If we can hang on for if we can hang on for these three more, we will. And so we kind of hung on for dear life, But, but we'd given up. We'd given up on the idea of doing a longer term career. Now I kept that to myself for a long time because I didn't want to kind of get put off to the side of the total, you know, just handing out cows at the gym job. We didn't make it known that I was getting out until the year before when I could actually drop the paperwork. But we had decided internally as a family, 2020 has just killed it and we will get out in 2023, which isn't my, which isn't my 20 year mark so that we don't have to walk away from everything.

1:33:57 So in the military, you know, if you, if you work for 17 years at that point in time, there was, it wasn't like I'd been able to put in an IRA. You're like your military retirement or bust. And they've changed the system since then. But the system I was under, it was all or nothing. And so 2020 killed it. We hung on for three more years, but but we knew at that point in time we were going to begin preparing for a new adventure and and try to start laying in the groundwork for what I'm doing now. Fantastic. So let's talk about that, right? You, you, as I was looking through some of your, your stuff here a little bit, but one thing it looks like you're you're big on is, is constitutional training for military reform. How are you going about that?

1:34:46 Well, I'm arguing and I'm writing and I'm talking to my congressman about that. To anyone who will listen, this is a very simple thing to get done. Every branch of the military has required annual trainings that every military member, and I mean every single uniform member is required by regulation to to complete. And in the Army, we, we call the 350-1 task list and it's, you know, I could 20 ish, I forget the exact number, but we'll say it's 20 ish. Things like you have to have your annual physical fitness test. You, you have to, you're supposed to qualify on a weapon. You have to take the annual online anti terrorism brief training and so on and so on and so forth.

1:35:29 Like these are the, and these things are all tracked very closely. And if you fall out of compliance, you, you do get, it is brought up in command briefings and there's the chart and next to your name is a red dot, right? And no one wants to have that. And so you're very highly encouraged to self track that stuff so you don't fall out of compliance on it. There's no reason, and I mean, there is no reason at all why there is not a similar requirement added in that says you have to do an annual constitutional refresher and it and it doesn't have to be arduous. It doesn't have to be in depth, but it needs to be something. Now, in my ideal world, you'd have like Hillsdale College quality level people going around the military training it every year to make sure it's done, done right, done well.

1:36:17 And it's not just some online thing that people just check the, you know, check the video and then walk away and get coffee. But if the military wanted to want to save money, there are there are several online courses right now. Hillsdale offers them there. I, I when I wrote in my piece for the case for constitutional training in military, there are three or four different places. I even listed the ACLU and the ACLU and I don't have run much more than the sky is blue. Wow, I wouldn't have went there, but yeah, that's one way to go. All right, but even they have a even they have a constitutional training. Now I probably it's not the one I'd probably recommend, but you know, I didn't want someone to make the counter argument. Well, he's only showing conservative points of view now constitute the Constitution is necessarily conservative.

1:37:01 That's one of the topic. But that should be a required annual training. It should be a required training block, like a full day. And every basic training class, every commissioning officer class should get minimum, minimum of a solid week of American history and constitutional coursework, every single one of them. And, and again, that now that that needs to be closely guarded, closely supervised to make sure that you don't have radicals coming in, you know, you don't have, you know, and cared weirdos who would, you know, get along well at Harvard University showing up saying the Constitution's a living document. That means everyone has rights except Christians, right? We need, we need quality control on it. But there should be legitimate, truthful constitutional training required for every entering military member. And there should be a maintenance refresher required every year to remind people, this is what you signed your life on the dotted line for.

1:37:59 This is what you swore to. This is what it actually means and this is what your oath means that you're supposed to carry out. It can be done. It would not be difficult. It's not a lack of ability to do it. The military trains people on how to run nuclear reactors, for crying out loud. We, we can solve this problem. It's just a lack of willingness to do it. And I, I had a conversation. I will not name the person at the person's listening. You know who you are. Let's just say it is a very, very high placed member in the Pentagon who has the power to make this happen for a sizable section of the force.

1:38:41 And he and I talked about this and I was told, yeah, just let me get through Senate confirmation. And this is part of what I'm going to do. And the individual got through Senate confirmation and is in that role. And that's the last I've heard of that. It can be done. It's a lack of willingness to get after it. And there's no excuse. There's no excuse at all. We have to do this. Yeah, Chase, I'll, I'll level with you on on, on that. I'm not hopeful. And and that doesn't mean we shouldn't still try, right? I do think we should try, but I do think that that the government is by and large captured at this point, right?

1:39:24 I'm not going to sit here and try to pretend I know who it is or anything else or how it works, but it's pretty apparent at this point that we at least have a 2 tier justice system. We have we have some issues. This has been 100 year plan that has been in the making for quite some time. If we go back to the early Progressive Era, right, The reason they were called progressives and this ties in with Fabian socialism, the whole ball of wax. It was this idea that rather than have a bloody revolution that that Bolsheviks would have would have been OK with, we'll do this in increments. And it really starts, some say Woodrow Wilson. I think it actually starts with Teddy Roosevelt. I think you can see those leaning start even even there. And my my contention is, is that while Trump, I don't believe was a savior of the Republic, he did scare the establishment to death.

1:40:27 And what we're seeing now is an overreaction, right? Because they're so close and they can't let this go, right? They put in too much work that that, quite frankly, it has permeated every part of our our culture, right? Just as an example, again, I am a nerd when it comes to the founding period of America. A nerd. I eat that stuff up like my 30th wedding anniversary, My wife's like, where do we want to go? I'm like Philly baby, because I want to go look at Independence Hall yet again, right?

1:41:08 And so the idea is, is if you can progress past the founders, you can progress past those founding documents. But the only way you're going to do that is by not teaching accurate history or not teaching history at all. And part of that history is civics, right? That is the key. That is how the system works. And I don't think it's by accident that that has been left out by and large for the better part of 50 years now, right? If you talk to your dad, I'll bet you he remembers taking a civics course in high school, right? I could tell you all the way through my high school experience, civics wasn't taught.

1:41:49 And this culminated for me, really crystallized when we were living in Utah. And look, Utah isn't exactly known or hadn't been known up to that point as a bastion of liberal thinking, right? It was pretty conservative. I was sitting down to dinner one night and I remember, you know, I was just cutting into my steak. I was just bringing the fork up to my mouth. And the kids were talking about what they learned in school. And I had a, I think he was in the eighth grade at that time. And he goes, yeah, we, we learned that the founders were rich, white slave, slave owners. And I remember I just kind of looked at him and dropped my fork. Now I'm a guy that has Valley Forge, you know, the Prayer Valley Forge on my wall. I have the replicas of the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights hung in my in my house, right.

1:42:41 And I'm like, what? What the hell did you just say? Right. Like at my table and I had to go and talk to the teacher, right. And I said, have you looked at original sources? Have you looked at Madison's notes? Have you looked at any have you read common sense? Have you have you you done any of these things? Well, no, not even The Federalist Papers. No, we just read what what we're given. Right. And so I'm like, OK, let me see your curriculum. It's horrific, it's horrific. It's designed to move past it. And I know certainly for me, and, and maybe it's because I'm a little cynical, I tend to look at anybody who's probably over the age of 1820 at this point going, probably not changing much, right? It's that next generation coming up that I think that that I know I really aim for.

1:43:35 But you're, you're 100% correct. If we have a a military that is not tethered to the Constitution of the United States, we have deep, deep problems that I don't think have even fully manifest yet. Absolutely. If you don't know what you defend, you're a mercenary. Like the Army's. The Army's saying this like the motto for the US Army, it's it's on the top of the seal. This will defend. This will defend. My question is what is this? What does this represent? What is give me one second. Hey sweetie, you need to go.

1:44:20 Sorry my my 5 year old decided she would come pay me a visit. She got got the don't enter son on my door, but she wasn't she wasn't having it anyway. This will defend what is this is this bailing out Ukraine and and their arguments pro and con that is this bailing out the Taliban, right? What is this? And if you don't understand what this is and this it should be the United States of America, the American founding values. What are we? We are a nation. A nation is a people who share a culture and a religious heritage and a geographic location.

1:45:00 And we're to the point now where we're only seem to share that geographic location. And we've been told for years diversity is our strength. And we've opened our borders and we've invited the entire world in and we've told, we've told Americans that everyone is entitled to a nation, a place, a tongue, a culture, except you European descendants like you're, you're, you're the oppressors. And it's the culmination of Marxist theory that's a problem. If you don't know what this is and you have a military that is not just radically in tune with the Constitution, fully bought into American values, the original American values, not what progressives today say value should be, but the values of. But once this nation were founded, one nation under God, then you don't have a defense force, you have a mercenary force.

1:45:57 And that's one of the reasons our founders did not want a large standing army. There's a reason for that because they saw throughout history what happens when you have a large standing force, how quickly it becomes a danger to free peoples. And that's where we're that's what we're going towards right now, towards a military armed up to the nuclear level. And if you don't think for a moment that the White House changes hands in the next 4 years and goes to someone like Gavin Newsom or Kamala Harris, and that they gave an order to the military to start using the levers of war to prosecute their policy against Americans.

1:46:40 If you don't think that there are people in the military who wouldn't enthusiastically March to that drum beat, you're sadly mistaken. That's and that's why I argue so forcefully. We've got to clear this rot out. It's not a Republican versus Democrat argument. It's a preservation of the nation versus a loss of the nation argument. How? Do you do that? You need ruthless men. And I, I steal that quote from a good buddy of mine, Caleb Byrd. He's a, he's a Christian attorney and he's actually going to be on my podcast here soon. We've got a lot of really good men in the Department of War today at top levels.

1:47:24 I mean, I think a lot of Secretary heck, Seth, I think a lot of many of the people who are up there at senior levels, a couple of them are people who I've known pretty well. We don't have enough ruthless men. We need ruthless men, men who are who are willing to fire people and to be lampooned in the New York Times and to be castigated in the NBC and ABC evening report. Who are willing to have congressional so-called leaders call them all sorts of names and to count it all joy because this is what you do to preserve the Republic. But we, the current proper leadership up there is letting too much of the rot stay. I mean, my goodness, the the man who was just confirmed to be the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army, Everyone assures me he's a good guy.

1:48:14 But you know, I'm not. I'm not impressed by what people say by you. I'm impressed by what you do. And when he commanded the 82nd Airborne Division, he signed an enthusiastic LGBTQ plus letter that literally rewrote history and bragged about how homosexuality and transgenderism has been something that's been a force multiplier since the days of George Washington. The US Army signed his name to that. But I'm told, oh, but he's a good guy. He's a good guy. Maybe he is. Maybe he is. If he were, if he were as good a guys there tummy, is he 1, He would send that letter and two, he'd come out and repudiate it right now, right? But he won't do that. We need ruthless people who will, who are willing to go through and get rid of the communist sympathizers in the ranks. We don't have that right now, so. So let me and this is an interesting situation we find ourselves in, right?

1:49:10 Because when Trump was elected, it was done from the premise of drain the swamp and restore sanity, right? But none of those two things seem to have been done as of yet, right? No new foreign wars. It looks like we are minutes away from going to war with Iran. And so how do you vet them, right? How do you vet them? Because if you can't take them at their words, what else do you got? If you can't take them at their word, you have to take action that based on what they're doing in real time. I remember when I was company commander and I had an executive officer who who I found out was actively working against me. It was actively working to undermine my command with the organization and to undermine the orders that I was giving. And I, I'm a patient person.

1:50:02 I tried to teach, coach, mentor, see if maybe this person misunderstood, maybe if I hadn't explained things well enough to the individual. And I was not a hard commander to work for. I've I've worked under hard commander. So I was very deliberate. You know, I'm fair, not a pushover. My orders stay, but I'm not unapproachable, right? I, I, I believe that I'm here to steward the organization. And so I was very, very open about that. But it reached a point where it's clear to me this person is undermining me. This person is not on board with my vision for the organization. This person has to go. And I relieved that executive officer.

1:50:43 And yeah, I had to go hot to my boss to get the official approval to do that because that's the way it works in the military. But I did it. And I went months with that seat being open. And you know what? My unit worked better without someone who was fighting me in that seat period. Even if Memphis seat went empty. I mean, there Trump has gotten better about betting people the second time around. It's but by gum, you have to hold people's feet to the fire and say you were put in this job for a reason. Get after it or I'll find someone who will. Now I I acknowledge there's a there's a lot of fear, right? I mean, look, just just last night this video came out with Susan Rice, Obama's national security advisor, saying very clearly, hey, if you support Trump and you were doing any of his bidding, when we get control again, we're coming after you, right? It's the same thing we saw with Mark Kelly and the seditious 6 with the don't give up the boat thing. They they all went on, Well, not all of them, but several went on afterwards and and pushed this narrative towards the military that hey, if you do, if you obey orders under the Trump administration, we'll hold you personally accountable. Nuremberg style, when we get back in power, they're trying to sow that fear.

1:52:02 And I, and I get it, like law fair is a real thing. I've been in the room and talked with people who have been bankrupted by law fair. I get it. I don't want to be on the receiving end of it. Like it's a scary thing. But again, if they want to play that game, let's play that game right. That game can go both ways. We need we have too many good men. We don't have enough ruthless men who are willing to take scalps. The left does. We need to grow some ourselves. Yeah. Let me ask you two more questions. I'll let you go. I'm sorry we're a little over, but in these matters, I always find it's helpful to make it personal.

1:52:45 If you had a son that came to you today and said, Dad, I want to join the military, he's of age and it's a real possibility, what do you tell him? Well, we've actually walked through that. I have a son who's currently serving in the Kansas National Guard, and I never thought he'd want to join. He, I had, I had some wonderful years in the Army. It's hard to remember that a lot of times because the last few years were really, really hard. But I did have some really good years. But but you know, my, my kids, my sons were coming to age, seeing the hard years and that's what they remember the most. So what I remember the most, and he came to me and said, Dem starting to think about the Army.

1:53:29 And I had this talk to him. I said, here's the deal, son. He was 17 at the time. So he was going to require an age waiver. I said I will sign a waiver for you to join the National Guard if you want, because the National Guard, there's still a level of local control and National Guard. I've worked with a lot of National Guard units over the course of my career. I kind of deliberately steered myself to work with Guard soldiers whenever I could because they still kind of got this idea that they're American citizens. And they have. In general, my experience was they had a more humane culture because hey, when you demobilize and you all go home, you all still got to live together. Same community, you're shopping the same stores, you're going to same churches. And the guy who's the the commander on active duty might be the subordinate back home.

1:54:19 And they remember that. And so I said, if you want to go in the National Guard, I will support that. I will sign an age waiver for you to join the National Guard. If you want to join the active component or the reserve component, you'll have to wait until you're 18. And if you do that, I will love you. I will support you. I might even swear you in. But you will have to sign for yourself because I'm not. I am not going to accept that burden on myself for your life for either of the two federal components right now. And I still hold to that. A lot of good things have been done in the military. It is. It is not nearly as bad a place as it was when I left.

1:55:03 But there is still been no accountability. All the nefarious actors who persecuted for the last six years, they're almost all still in. And you can't convince me that they've all seen the light. A lot of them are just waiting it out. And the absent accountability, if the White House flipped tomorrow, the Pentagon would too. And so I I still caution young people about joining until we see the current leadership leadership be willing to take accountability. Gotcha, gotcha. And then last question is this. If my audience wanted to help and they're a smaller audience, right, somewhere between 10 and 15,000 is my best count. They're small, but they're active. What can they do to help?

1:55:55 I'd say there are a couple of things they can do. First off, get active with your lawmakers. I went to my congressman about the constitutional training issue and he listened to me. He heard me out. I got to talk with him for about 5 minutes, an event we were at together in the state capitol here in Topeka. And he handed me out to a staffer. And it's very clear to me, the staffer wanted me to do all the work. And it was like some young 20 something year old who had no clue of what I was talking about. And I didn't have time to do his job for him. And so that's something I'm going to continue approaching with lawmakers is I had the opportunity through my other spheres of influence, get engaged with lawmakers, raise hell with lawmakers like we need constitutional training in the military and we need you as congressman and women to reassert yourself in the constitutional oversight role of the military.

1:56:48 Stop with these silly performative circus games of bringing the brass up to wire brush them in front of C-SPAN cameras and then send them across the river and not do anything to hold them accountable through funding mechanisms. The, the military understands funding all does it understand funding. And if if funding were attached to things Congress says they need to do, they would do it right. But they don't because it's all performative. So get engaged with lawmakers separately. I'm, I'm trying to figure out how to get people the kind of conservative intellectual realm, how to get them engaged on this because one, we have an issue with general civilian ignorance about what's happening in the military today.

1:57:32 And two, the left wing actually puts their money where their mouth is on this. You look at organizations like Vote Vets, which is a far, far left fringe organization, but it's extraordinarily well funded. And and they they raise up that left wing veteran candidates to run for office to continue perpetuating this stuff. And these and these candidates abuse the uniform and they pretend they're patriots because they were the uniform. They're selected by by left wing packs to run because of that right. But they're fully on board with the revolutionary mindset. Meanwhile, conservatives I talked to, they just kind of wring their hands like, oh, whoa, what do we do against such formidable odds?

1:58:13 And my reply is we, we need people who are willing to put money where their mouth is. And to we, we need, we need a couple of really good, strong conservative think tanks that are focused on military issues, that are helping to write military policy, that are helping to shepherd things into the National Defense Authorization Act, that have the horsepower to do that. Who can spend time on the Hill lobbying this and getting conservative vets elected who will continue fighting for vets? Now the left wing gets it. They're they're fighting in every echelon And, and conservatives are just talking about it. So we, we need my plea to your listeners is get engaged with your lawmakers on this. Fight it, fight for it.

1:58:56 And if you have the financial means, I, I'm trying to get together with some people and see what we can do to try to get some sort of organization together. You know, if you want to reach out and talk to me about that, I, I, I welcome it. You can reach out to me through my website, chasespears.com. There's a contact form there. Or if or if you know other conservative packs, if you have influence and other conservative packs, take this to him. This is a 'cause we need, we need all hands on deck to get after. Because if you lose the military, you really do lose the nation. And I've seen it get danger close in my time where we've got a bit of a reprieve right now, but we need to never assume the reprieve is permanent. The reprieves are given to us to, to build. But I can promise you on the other side of our enemies are building and rearming as well.

1:59:43 We have to be ready for it. We have to be ready to be on the offensive and stop being on the defensive every time. A. 100% I'll, I'll, I'll say this and then we'll, we'll wrap up unless there's something else you wanted to say. My life's been a series of inflection points from accepting God, finding God, to my opinions and my beliefs on on the United States. One of those inflection points came back in O4 when I went to Philadelphia for a football game. The other one came very recently, back in September. Like I said, my wife and I celebrated our 30th anniversary and we went back east.

2:00:34 And for a couple years I've been feeling like, OK, I need to go back and I need to look. I need to see Independence Hall again. I didn't know why. I didn't understand. Now, we weren't supposed to take that trip until October, but because of some extenuating circumstances, we ended up moving up the trip to just a couple weeks after Charlie Kirk was shot. And look, that rattled me a little bit because of two things. One, I talk a lot, right? The next is because my daughter went to that school. I may edit this part out that that little part about where my daughter goes to school, but I was sitting in an impense hall and I was just sitting there and I was thinking what what, what is it you want me to see? What did I miss last time or last times? I used to go there quite a bit when we lived back east and it just came to me.

2:01:34 We hold these truths to be self-evident, and I think it's super important that we know what time we live in. But when you speak truth in a time where lies are what are favored, where where lies are what's are endorsed, insanity reigns. To speak truth as a revolutionary act. Right now I'm teaching a course on the Constitution because I feel strongly about this. If people are interested, they can find that information on the on, on my, my podcast website. But get involved somehow, whether you know, that's with Chase.

2:02:18 What Chase is doing here I think is a fantastic thing. I think it's so needed. The people who guard the country better know what it is they're guarding for because not every politician, let me rephrase that. So far I haven't found a politician that I believe is a truly sincere actor outside of maybe Massey that I can see so far. But nonetheless, I think, I think the days of sitting on the sideline are over. And if these rights were given to us by God, which I believe they were, they also entail responsibility. I do. Part of that responsibility is making sure those rights are at least as in good of condition as what you inherited them, if not better for your posterity.

2:03:00 If we fall asleep on this, I promise you the day will come, will you, where you will stand before God Almighty and you'll say, what did you do with those rights? And either to your relief and your joy, you can say I did everything I could, or you're going to have to say I kind of fell asleep. And the only thing that could be as bad as having your kids look at you and ask what it was like before. We have what we could have if we are not very careful in the near future.

2:03:41 And I'll just leave it there. Chase anything else you want to say in response, or or anything else you want to say in conclusion. Well, I appreciate your allusion to the parable of the talents there. That's something that I, that I argue frequently, and I'm glad you're tuned into it as well. I, I would leave with this. We have been blessed to be entrusted with this beautiful thing that is the United States of America. If you drew out, you know, the timeline of history is wide, as my office is, and you were trying to figure out where we we sit on that line and be about, you know, the end of this pin here. It's a very small window of goodness and graciousness into which God let us live for some purpose. And this was handed down to us by people who have suffered and died and fought and guarded the flame. And my challenge to everyone listening is let us not be the generation that the flame goes out. I wake up every day hoping that I will be able to lick my kids and my grandkids and if God willing, my great grandkids in the ice someday.

2:04:47 And so I tried. I didn't just sit on the couch. I didn't just moan, bring my hands, lament. I tried it's it's time for us to close the book of Nehemiah, to have Lamentations and open the Book of Nehemiah. I say again, it's time to close Lamentations, open Nehemiah. We have some walls to repair. Let's get after it. 100% that was good stuff. Hang out for just 5 minutes, all right? You got it. Bye everybody. Thanks again, Chase. My honor.