It seems every American I meet claims to be Irish. Not just in ancestry, but in spirit. Some insist their great-great-grandmother left Cork with nothing but a shawl and a dream; others claim a McSomething surname buried somewhere in the family tree as proof of kinship. The truth often dissolves under scrutiny, but that hardly matters. To be Irish, at least in the American imagination, is no longer about blood — it’s about belonging to a romantic idea. The Irish have become a cultural accessory, a kind of spiritual tattoo. There’s the misty nostalgia of peat fires, the sing-song accent, the tragic humor. Americans love the Irish story. The poor but poetic immigrants who climbed their way up from the docks to the White House, armed with little more than faith and blarney. They love it because it flatters them. It allows them to claim endurance without ever knowing hunger, defiance without ever facing empire. When they wear green on St. Patrick’s Day or sing “Danny Boy,” it’s less devotion to heritage than performance, less remembrance than roudy routine. (RELATED: America’s Dumbest Refugees Pick God’s Cruelest Joke) For most Americans, the island is less a place than a mood: a hazy dream of courage, sorrow, and rivers of Guinness. Taylor Swift’s ancestry was recently traced back to two young lovers from Derry who crossed the Atlantic in 1836. A dressmaker and a weaver, bound by love and poverty, setting sail for Philadelphia. It’s a beautiful story, and perhaps one that helps explain her instinct for melancholy — the way her songs blend romance and loss like rain on cobblestone. But it also shows how far removed Irishness has become from Ireland itself. For most Americans, the island is less a place than a mood: a hazy dream of courage, sorrow, and rivers of Guinness. (RELATED: House of Guinness: Netflix’s Biggest Show of the Year Is a Total Disgrace) And yet, I don’t say this with scorn. Who can blame them? The Irish have exported their soul better than anyone — music, faith, language, wit. Even the clichés travel well. Every tourist pub in Dublin sells the same story: that we are charming drunks with a haunted past and hearts of gold. It’s a caricature, yes, but one built on something real — our instinct to laugh through pain, to find inspiration in hardship. But we’ve also helped script the myth. We package our misery with melody, our melancholy with mirth, and sell it back to the world with a wink. We turned rebellion into romance. In our hunger to be loved, we became performers of our own pain. Americans mistake the act for authenticity, but only because we’ve spent decades perfecting it ourselves. Still, there’s a difference between heritage and habit. To call oneself Irish without any knowledge of the country, its language, or its struggles is like wearing a borrowed coat because it looks good in photos. Irishness is not a costume but a condition — a way of seeing the world through endurance, irony, and agony. It’s surviving colonization and famine, then building churches and railways across continents. It’s knowing loss so well that joy must be earned. It’s about tolerating 300 days of rain every single year,  and still finding warmth in a pint, a prayer, or a story. It’s resilience wrapped in resignation. The line between the genuinely Irish and the merely affectionate is fine, but it matters. When “Irish” becomes just another word for fun-loving or sentimental, it strips the people of their history. When we’re reduced to leprechauns, curses, and pints, we become props in someone else’s story. The Irish have always been storytellers — we should never settle for being someone else’s myth. America’s fascination with Ireland says as much about them as it does about us. It reflects a longing for roots, for something older, sturdier, and touched by struggle. In a nation built on reinvention, Irishness offers the illusion of permanence — a badge of endurance, a whisper of the ancient in a restless world. But true Irishness isn’t a brand or a moodboard. It’s a burden and a blessing, bound by faith, rebellion, and sorrow. It’s knowing that laughter and lament often share the same breath. So when an American says, “I’m Irish,” I smile, but I also wonder — do they mean their ancestors came from Ireland, or that they wish they had? Maybe both. Maybe that’s the charm. The Irish story is so tightly woven into America’s own that separating the strands feels almost cruel. Perhaps that’s the beauty of it — the fine line between myth and memory, between the Ireland that was and the one still imagined. Just don’t tell me you’re Irish because you’ve read Joyce and burn easily in the sun. We’ve earned our sunburn, our sadness, our songs, and our stubborn joy. Those who claim the label may bask in its glow for a night, but to bear it is another matter altogether. READ MORE from John Mac Ghlionn: Europe’s Urban Decline Exposed The Donut Symbolizes American Exceptionalism Is the Right Pining for Racial Purity?

When Elon Musk took over X (formerly Twitter), many conservatives felt like they’d been handed the keys to a long-locked room. After years of technocratic suppression and shadow bans, the self-proclaimed “digital town square” was finally open to free speech, and the right celebrated as though the digital gates to free speech had finally swung open. Musk’s stewardship genuinely expanded that space — but it also transformed the conservative movement itself. Once the right found its own platform, it began repeating the same online habits it used to mock. Because once the right found its own platform, it began repeating the same online habits it used to mock. This is not unique to conservatives. Both major parties are fracturing, and the fault line runs between generations as much as ideologies. Democrats are split between the establishment figures who built their following on cable news and the younger progressives who speak in TikTok clips and Instagram Reels. Republicans, meanwhile, now fight their generational battles on X — a faster, rougher, and far more public arena. (RELATED: America’s New Theology of Violence) The Libs of TikTok Moment The shift began during the Biden administration, when X user Libs of TikTok garnered engagement by reposting the more eccentric corners of progressive Internet culture. Chaya Raichik’s account became a rallying point for conservatives who felt they were simply holding a mirror up to the excesses of “woke” America. That word, “woke,” quickly became both a shorthand and a litmus test. (RELATED: The Group Chat Wasn’t an Anomaly — It Was a Mirror) The viral success of Libs of TikTok proved conservatives could use the left’s media tools to fight back in the cultural arena. Yet it also revealed the same dynamics the right once criticized the left for: an over-reliance on outrage, sound bites, and moral certainty. Just as young progressives police language and preach ideological purity online, young conservatives on X found fresh ground to begin doing the same — only with different buzzwords. (RELATED: Brain Rot and the Crisis of Digital Late Modernity) Terms like “RINO,” “globalist,” “DEI,” or “based” now function much like “woke,” “homophobic,” “racist,” or “problematic” do on the left. Each signals belonging to a tribe and purity of belief. The content changes, but the culture — the constant self-sorting, the suspicion of dissent, the language of loyalty and betrayal — remains strikingly familiar. Matt Walsh and the Purity Spiral Daily Wire host Matt Walsh has warned repeatedly that conservatives risk devouring their own. “The Right doesn’t stick together,” Walsh wrote on X on Oct. 14, sarcastically calling the post-Charlie Kirk assassination party infighting a “great plan.” He urged right-leaning commentators and influencers to converse with fellow conservatives about disagreements in private rather than putting them on blast on social media, referencing recent calls for on-the-fence commentators such as Megyn Kelly to condemn Israel-skeptical voices like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens. (RELATED: The Fall and Rise of American Culture) The Right doesn’t stick together. That’s our biggest problem by far. Conservatives are quick to denounce each other, jump on dogpiles, disavow, attack their allies. I said a few weeks ago that we all need to band together in the wake of Charlie’s death and the answer I got back… — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 15, 2025 If you’re a conservative and you have a problem with someone on the Right, you can reach out to them privately and express your concerns. Performatively attacking and denouncing your own people in public is a bitch move. — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) October 15, 2025 Lamenting how easily Republicans turn their ire inward, Walsh presented wisdom in his caution: a movement forever in civil war can’t build anything lasting. (RELATED: Operation Divide MAGA) There’s tension in that argument. Conservatism at its core best depends on skepticism and debate, even if that means being skeptical of the skeptics and debating others within the party. On that notion is the idea that truth appears through argument, not consensus. While Walsh warned against public spectacles of disunity, asserting that it weakens the party’s strategic advantage, many people did not take well to his words because they perceived him to be advocating for less free expression. To suppress all infighting in the name of unity risks dulling the intellectual edge that makes a movement self-correcting. To let every disagreement become a loyalty test, however, risks descending into chaos. It would be one thing if we were discussing the White House’s official communications; this conversation is about you, me, and what is socially acceptable to say. It applies to Republicans on X just as it does to Democrats on TikTok, or any other social platform. Somewhere between those extremes lies the balance we must rediscover robust internal debate without the reflexive urge to purge. There should be no “thought criminals” in either political party; in order to understand each other, we have to keep talking. “Dangerous” ideas won’t disappear until we let them be said, know where they’re coming from, and dispel the concept that collective efforts to silence them signify their truth. And truth can’t come to light if we allow forces to leverage social media’s megaphone to beat down the relentless outcry of ideas never heard. The Medium is the Message Marshall McLuhan’s famous insight, “the medium is the message,” feels tailor-made for Musk’s X. Musk restored free speech to the platform, and he also democratized the spotlight. Every activist, influencer, and keyboard philosopher now operates in a global gladiator pit where attention is the coin of the realm. On X, argument is performance, and performance becomes ideology. The algorithm doesn’t reward persuasion; it rewards engagement, like most social media platforms. Tech companies want to make the big bucks, and they do this by creating tools that teach that constant back-and-forth is the path to a successful career. Outrage, mockery, and calls for purity get clicks faster than thoughtful, creative content ever could. In this environment, patience and nuance weigh you down. That design shapes behavior — not just for users, but for entire political movements. The Generational Pendulum What we’re seeing, in both parties, is a pendulum swing. Young activists on the left once built movements on TikTok around “defunding” or “decolonizing.” Now, young conservatives on X rally around “anti-woke” crusades and “saving Western civilization.” How many times have you heard these phrases? They begin to lose their meaning the more they are repeated, but repetition reinforces their dominance. The rhetoric differs, but the digital psychology is the same: compressed language, moral urgency, and viral emotion. Musk didn’t create this dynamic, but his platform magnified it. In making X a free speech haven, he also revealed the deeper cultural divide. It is not simply between left and right, but between generations raised on different models of communication. Older conservatives may still think in essays and debates; younger ones in memes and clips. The result is often misunderstanding within the movement, not just outside it. The Way Forward The challenge now is not to retreat from X, but to mature within it, to use the platform’s reach without letting the algorithm dictate our tone or values. We are a reactive people, and maybe if we shift gears and prioritize understanding, we can stop talking past each other. Free speech matters only if we know how to listen, not just speak. Unity should not mean uniformity, and questioning should not mean heresy. Musk’s acquisition of X remains a step in the right direction for open dialogue, but it is up to us to learn how to communicate more effectively within the platform’s framework. If X becomes merely a mirror of the left’s old habits — purity tests, buzzwords, performative outrage — then the pendulum has swung, not forward, but in circles. READ MORE from Julianna Frieman: Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Exposes a Generation in Crisis Charlie Kirk’s Assassination Is a Turning Point for the USA If You See a Girl Bleeding Out on a Train, What Would You Do? Julianna Frieman is a writer based in North Carolina. She received her bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. She is pursuing her master’s degree in Communications (Digital Strategy) at the University of Florida. Her work has been published by the Daily Caller, The American Spectator, and The Federalist. Follow her on X at @juliannafrieman.

On an early fall morning, 133 years ago this month, thousands of kids at schools throughout America rose together and looked up to a crisp, new American flag in their classroom. They then began to recite in unison 23 words authored by an American few today honor or even remember. I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands — one nation indivisible — with liberty and justice for all. Yet, these few words constitute a far weightier statement about America — and Americans — than is generally acknowledged. Although the first version of America’s pledge was written in 1885 by Captain George Thatcher Balch, a Union Army officer in the Civil War, it was another American who penned the version (with a few additions later) we recite today. How the government carries out its obligation to achieve liberty and justice is often what creates problems in society. It is said that Francis Bellamy wrote the Pledge of Allegiance we know today in 1892 in only a few hours. But it was the result of several years of effort at one of America’s bestselling magazines, Youth’s Companion. In a marketing campaign, the Companion decided to offer U.S. flags to readers who marketed subscriptions. Coincident with the approaching 400th anniversary of Columbus’s landing in America, the magazine decided to offer “Old Glory” to all public schools across the U.S. and honor it with an oath. Bellamy, a onetime Baptist minister, was at the time a writer for the Companion. Historian Richard J. Ellis, in his work To the Flag: The Unlikely History of the Pledge of Allegiance, notes that Bellamy’s writings were typically loaded with marketing rhetoric and political espousals. But to his credit, Bellamy argued that pledging allegiance would ensure “that the distinctive principles of true Americanism will not perish as long as free, public education endures.” With the advent of World War II, many public schools instituted morning recitations. And a slight modification was made during the “Cold War” — President Eisenhower added “under God” in 1954 — essentially to distinguish the U.S. from atheistic Communism. (RELATED: Is the Right Pining for Racial Purity?) As of this writing, although recitation of the pledge by students in schools is no longer a federal mandate, almost all states mandate public schools to at least schedule time for the pledge — only Hawaii, Vermont, and Wyoming do not. Moreover, Congress begins each day with the pledge, as does the U.S. naturalization ceremony, where America’s new citizens take the oath. Not a bad history for a piece of writing of only 23 words that began as a PR stunt. (RELATED: Trump Is Right. The Federally-Funded Smithsonian Should Be Pro-American.) What is so compelling about Bellamy’s words is their affirmation of universal principles. They arrive late in the piece, but they pack a powerful philosophical punch. Two principles are given voice: liberty and justice, but it’s the ending to the pledge — “liberty and justice for all” — that transforms abstract concepts into concrete obligations which the state has a responsibility to affect for all Americans. When we recite the pledge we are exclaiming to the world this is who we are as Americans and what we stand for: we are both promising to be loyal to “the Republic for which it [the flag] stands” and our government is charged with the responsibility to provide us  “with liberty and justice for all,” in whatever form that obligation might take. Through the pledge, liberty and justice become tangible responsibilities which our government, bound by constitutional restraint through the Bill of Rights, is charged to honor and respect. Echoing British philosopher John Locke, the Declaration of Independence asserts that all have inalienable rights (liberty in particular), and that the government’s central purpose is to defend those rights. Classical liberalism, as articulated in the Declaration, holds that a divine providence “endowed” humanity with rights that are inalienable and therefore natural — not a function of human intervention. It holds further that there is a natural law which operates as an ethical principle from which natural rights are derived and through which humans recognize their liberty — their freedom. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin called them negative rights, as they are freedoms we have that cannot be taken from us by anyone, including a government. Yet, Berlin also spoke of positive rights, which are granted (legislated) by the government. These are of human derivation and operate to grant rights to Americans based on the government’s obligation to achieve liberty and justice for all. But for the government to affect freedom and justice for all Americans, achieving liberty (freedom) cannot be divorced from equality — “equal opportunity” for all. The greatest degree of equality possible must be sought, consistent with the least disruption of individual freedom. Otherwise, it is not “justice for all.” French philosopher Jean Jacque Rousseau called this — the “common good.” How the government carries out its obligation to achieve liberty and justice is often what creates problems in society —  liberty being protected while endeavoring to achieve equality by creating positive rights through legislation. The issue is not whether positive rights (e.g., Affirmative Action, Voting Rights, Hate Speech Laws, etc.) are “good or bad” — “right or wrong.” Rather, the issue rests on determining how positive rights are affected with as minimal a cost to individual freedom as possible, consistent with the government’s responsibility to achieve equality — “equal opportunity under the law.” Achieving a balance between these two is what provides the basis for “liberty and justice for all.” The controlling issue is the last few words of the pledge — “for all.” Through that phrase, in effect, what the pledge refers to is a fair and equitable distribution of resources, opportunities, and privileges in society. How one affects the latter for the benefit of all the people determines whether justice for all is served. And that only occurs when freedom through our natural rights is protected on a level commensurate with the equality legislated through positive rights from the government. The Bill of Rights in the Constitution is there, specifically, to proscribe the federal government from doing otherwise. America’s Pledge of Allegiance is a far weightier philosophical proposition than is likely recognized by those who recite it routinely. It addresses the very essence of who we are as a people, what we value, and — above all — what we are unwilling to surrender and what many have died to protect for all Americans: “liberty and justice for all.” READ MORE from F. Andrew Wolf Jr.: The New Archbishop of Canterbury — Mrs. Mullally Trump’s Economic Success Leaves Liberals Red-Faced Trump, Nobel, and the Globalism of Oslo

Boldly doing what needed to be done, President Trump took a literal wrecking crew to the cramped East Wing of the White House. And has set about enlarging and rebuilding it with the addition of a much-needed ballroom and more. (RELATED: Trump’s White House Makeover Rankles Washington) As a former White House staffer myself (Reagan era), it is more than easy to recall the problems with large, standard presidential events. The East Room of the White House (on the main State floor of the building and not to be confused with the East Wing, the latter home to, among other things, the offices of the First Lady’s staff) was more than frequently overflowing with guests for everything from formal events (for example a greeting for a foreign VIP) to presidential press conferences. The result was, first, sending the overflow to the main floor’s much smaller non-ballroom Green, Blue, and Red Room, plus the State Dining Room, along with the Grand Cross Hall of the White House, sharing the cramped latter space with the Marine Band. Then, when that was not enough, presidents were forced to entertain underneath a hastily constructed tent on the South Lawn. The reaction to Trump’s enlargement of the East Wing into a sizeable ballroom has been a considerable overreaction. Not to mention, with little attention paid to the fact that there have been repeated changes to the structure of the building over many, many decades. (RELATED: Trump the Builder Improves the White House) It was President Andrew Jackson, all the way back there in his two terms from 1829 to 1837, who added the covered, pointed North Portico that faces Pennsylvania Avenue. Over on the other side of the building is the now famous “West Wing” where the Oval Office — a president’s working quarters — is located. Well, back there at the beginning of the 20th century, 1902 to be exact, President Theodore Roosevelt — he, the head of a large family filled with rambunctious children — took steps to remove the decidedly unworkable combination of the president’s residential living space with his office space. Thus was a major construction project begun, knocking down a considerable greenhouse conservatory adjoined to the mansion and replacing it with the West Wing. A handful of years later, TR’s successor, William Howard Taft, added what America has come to know as the Oval Office in that West Wing. None of this could touch in scale the decision of President Harry Truman when it came to modernizing the interior of the entire White House. Truman’s daughter Margaret described the situation in her own memoirs by recounting a letter her father wrote to his mother at the time, that time being the late 1940s. Wrote the president: I’ve had the second floor where we lived examined — and it is about to fall down! The engineer said that the ceiling in the State Dining Room only stayed up from force of habit! I’m having it shored up and hoping to have a concrete and steel floor put in before I leave here. The roof fell in on Coolidge and they put a concrete and steel third floor on to take its place and suggested that the second floor be done the same way. But Old Cal wouldn’t do it. He wanted it to fall like the roof did I guess. Margaret goes on to describe a multitude of physical problems with the building, saying: Meanwhile, Dad appointed a committee of experts to examine the entire house from roof to foundations and tell him what needed to be done. Their report made hair-raising reading. The foundation was sinking into the swampy ground beneath it. There was no visible support for the ceiling in the Green Room but a few rusty nails.  In the summer of 1948 the old house just started to fall apart. One of the two pianos in my sitting room — a spinet — broke through the floor one day. Margaret added that her father had told his sister: The White House is still about to fall in. Margaret’s sitting room floor broke in two but didn’t fall through the family dining room ceiling. They propped it up and fixed it. Now my bathroom is about to fall into the red parlor. They won’t let me sleep in my bedroom or use the bath. I’m using Old Abe’s bed and it is very comfortable. With all of that, Truman gave the green light for a massive update of the historic building. The Truman family was moved out of the building and across the street to the Blair House, the home traditionally reserved for visiting heads of state. With that, the entire interior of the White House, from the furniture to the floors and ceilings of the rooms themselves, was removed. Next came the removal of the supporting wooden beams that were the skeleton of the interior — there since the building was first built. Bulldozers were brought in, and the entire inside of the building, with debris bulldozed up and out, was then reconstructed in the original shape of the interior wooden beams, but this time with those modern 1950s-era steel beams. Here’s a link to a photograph of what that massive work actually looked like. Renovation work on the White House in the early 1950s (Abbie Rowe/National Park Service, via Harry S. Truman Library/Wikimedia Commons) And of note, President Truman was an admirer of the view of the South Lawn and beyond that to the Washington Monument that could be seen from the private residential section on the second floor. The problem? There was no way to sit outside on that second floor and enjoy the view. Truman’s solution was to use the construction going on inside the building to add a balcony outside the second, private presidential quarters so that the president and his family could sit outside and enjoy the view. Thus was born what is now known to history and right down to today as “the Truman balcony.” The changes to the White House made by Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman were not the only changes a president has made to the building and grounds. In fact, the East Wing itself did not exist until FDR became president and had it added to handle the increased staff needed to work on World War II issues.  First Lady Jackie Kennedy had the Rose Garden redesigned from earlier designs created by previous first ladies Edith Roosevelt and Ellen Wilson.  The point is as simple as it is obvious. The president of any given moment needs more official entertainment space inside the White House to handle the crowds that this president or any future president needs to conduct his (or her!) official business. It is doubtless no accident that President Trump, the only president in history with a serious background in building buildings or improving them, is the president who has made a point of bequeathing an enlarged White House entertainment complex for future presidents.  For which, whether future presidents will admit it or not, they will have much to be grateful for. READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Trump the Builder Improves the White House The ‘No Kings’ Phonies If Mamdani Arrests Netanyahu, Should Feds Arrest Mamdani?

The tank is dead on the battlefield, missiles have made amphibious landings impossible, drones have changed the nature of war. All of this tripe has been bought by military professionals who ought to know better. I think much of this is due to a lack of serious study of military history, art, and science in our nation’s war and command and staff colleges. Mark Twain was correct when he said, “History may not repeat itself, but it rhymes.” There are patterns of conflict that hold true from generation to generation. I pick on Berger … because he acted on his conclusions prematurely in a disastrously rash manner. As an example, after the battle of Crecy during the Hundred Years’ War, the king and marshals of France concluded, after their drubbing at the hands of the English, that cavalry was dead and that infantry was the new king of the battlefield. Thirty years later, at the Battle of Poitiers, the French cavalry was ordered to dismount and attack on foot uphill against the English. The only difference was that it took longer for the dismounted knights to come within range of the English longbows. Again, they were decimated and their king captured. At Agincourt, in 1415, the French attacked mounted; the result was the same, the French cavalry was slaughtered again. The key to all this was technology. The English longbow could penetrate the armor of men and horses at a stand-off range that made frontal cavalry charges suicidal. In future conflicts, the French learned to negate the longbow by use of heavier armor, crude artillery, and forcing the English to attack by skillful French use of defensive tactics on well-chosen ground. It would not be until the 17th century that infantry took the position of prominence that it would maintain until the period between the American Civil War and World War I, when a combination of rifled weapons, the machine gun, and indirect artillery fire forced the development of the tank, and another revolution in military affairs followed. As World War I approached, many thought that the observation aircraft would make the entire battlefield transparent to one side or the other, just as some thought drones would dominate early in the Russo-Ukraine war. The advent of the fighter plane in the Great War and counter-drone technologies in Ukraine should have put to rest both those notions fairly quickly. Again, history rhymed. It took the French about a century to recognize that the pattern of conflict had changed technologically. It took only months for the Americans — north and south — to recognize the value of armored warships, and they did it simultaneously, resulting in the battle between the Monitor and the Merrimack at Hampton Roads. (RELATED: We’ll Need Innovation to Fight China, But Will We Have it?) Although technology changes, the patterns of conflict do not. There is good evidence that our ancestors discovered the flanking or envelopment movement at least 20,000 years ago while hunting bears and protecting themselves from sabertooth tigers. One or more individuals would distract the animal from the front while others attacked from a vulnerable flank with spears. They probably learned it from watching wolf packs hunt larger animals and eventually adopted the tactic in conflicts with other tribes. (RELATED: Drones: We Aren’t Ready for the Next War) Although the scale of battles and technology has changed, it is the same tactic used by U.S. forces in Schwarzkopf’s great envelopment during Operation Desert Storm. Technology causes the means to differ, but the basic nature of war remains immutable. The greats of military history were students of history; even the illiterate Genghis Khan studied by listening to captive Chinese historians. The great Swedish warrior-king Gustavus Adolphus studied the combined-arms tactics of Alexander the Great as he developed his own combined arms theory during the Thirty Years’ War. Alexander was also a genius of siege warfare. In one famous incident, he had his heavy engineers turn the island of Tyre into a peninsula in order to get at it. Tyre remains a peninsula to this day. Technology had changed, but the theory remained sound. Gustavus had artillery and firearms, whereas Alexander had archers and spears, but the concept remained valid. Gustavus made his artillery lighter so it could keep up with the rest of the army. This combined arms concept allowed him to outmaneuver and outshoot other European armies whose lumbering artillery trains could not keep up with the main body of their forces. The technology had changed, but Gustavus recognized the patterns. Of the modern strategists who made premature decisions about the future direction of warfare, the poster boy is David Berger, the former Marine Corps commandant. He misinterpreted all three of the assumptions listed in the first paragraph. Unfortunately, Berger was not just an armchair strategist; he had the power to implement his ideas, and he did so. (RELATED: The Feather Merchants: Senior Leaders Subverted the Marine Corps) In his 2019 reorganization of the Marine Corps, Berger did away with the Corps’ tanks, heavy engineers, much of its wheeled artillery, and aviation to buy missiles and radar sensors to implement a concept that he dubbed “Force Design.” He used early lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War to justify many of his conclusions. Since then, both sides have learned to put screens above their tanks to protect them from overhead drones. Anti-drone technology has led to a stalemate on the battlefield, both sides rely on heavy engineers for fortification, and anti-missile technology has negated much of the reliance that Berger put on claiming the obsolescence of amphibious shipping. (RELATED: The Marine Corps Has Gone Off the Rails) I pick on Berger, not because others did not draw wrong conclusions about the future of conflict, but because he acted on his conclusions prematurely in a disastrously rash manner. He actually drew those conclusions prior to the Ukraine conflict. He cherry-picked the events in the Russo-Ukraine war to validate those premature notions that he had already drawn, and consequently transformed the Marine Corps away from being a world-wide general purpose force-in-readiness to concentrate primarily on China. There is evidence that the Marine Corps is backing away from Force Design and trying to rebuild itself. However, many of the senior officers who served under Berger will find it hard to undo his mistakes. (RELATED: The Case Against the Marine Corps Commandant) Force Design may exist on paper for a few years, but hopefully, it will evolve into something resembling the combined arms force that Berger inherited in 2019. The best that former and current Marines can do is to help them make the transition back to sanity. READ MORE from Gary Anderson: The Counterattack on Bad Bunny Half-Time The US Navy Gets Fit Is the Internet the Antichrist? Gary Anderson retired as chief of staff of the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. He was a special advisor to the deputy secretary of defense and is the author of Beyond Mahan: A Proposal for a U.S. Naval Strategy in the Twenty-First Century.

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