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What the government is determined to fix is not the military's capabilities as a force, but its lack of social justice

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Years ago, American political philosopher Harvey Mansfield made a troubling observation that I cited in these pages five years ago. In case youve forgotten, events conspire to remind you that, and I quote a paraphrase not the original, it may be possible to impose perfect justice, but people may not be in a mood to live together when you are finished. For instance, in the Canadian military.

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The Armed Forces might seem an odd place to make the experiment. But nowadays, the government is imposing wokeism everywhere it can, with results that seems to be vindicating Mansfield painfully, as morale and preparedness plummet in tandem.

As my Post colleague Matt Gurney wrote on Saturday, the feds just put an extra $8 billion into defence. But we could skip right past the billions and authorize $8 trillion in new defence spending and not actually make much tangible progress because the systems that sustain the military are dysfunctional, if not outright broken, he wrote.

You might suppose that a mere $8 billion under current circumstances, for what Gurney rightly calls unspecified purposes, indicates that the Trudeau Liberals are not serious about fixing the military. But they are. Just not its capacity to break things and hurt people, despite Finance Minster Chrystia Freelands very uncertain 21st century.

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What they are determined to fix is the lack of social justice. And they really seem convinced that, if identity politics crushes all opposition, there will be such a flowering of true human fulfillment that lack of modern equipment, logistical support or actual soldiers will be of no importance in safeguarding our security.

Its not working, in any sense. The military isnt just incapable of fighting. It seems incapable of controlling sexual harassment, with one senior officer after another going up in flames. Arguably, the sort of leaders who are capable of securing advancement by promising to make an army a safe space are highly unlikely to have the character necessary to impose and enforce exacting standards of any sort, especially against the demands of their political masters to prioritize the wrong things in the wrong way.

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Its a problem throughout the federal bureaucracy. Everything is exquisitely politically correct yet, despite lavish remuneration and ridiculous job security, polls repeatedly find the mood and ethics to be dismal. The solution, naturally, is a further assault on patriarchal bigotry in the belief that perfect justice is just one seminar and three pronouns away. But what if its not?

Frankly, if the department of Prairies Economic Development Canada sank into demoralized paralysis, the world might not find out for decades. The economy might even benefit. But what if policing collapses?

Blacklocks just reported on testimony before the Commons human resources committee that RCMP applications have plummeted sharply. The testimony was given by the head of the Mounties union, who has a vested interest in the size of the force and used social justice language. But we should still give serious attention to his claims, including: Policing is no longer considered as an attractive career as it used to be. Police services across North America are seeing a decline in applicants.

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Why would such a thing happen? Despite a certain faddish enthusiasm for getting rid of the police a couple of years back, even most silly people realize that we need someone to enforce the rules. But who?

I think policing, like soldiering, used to attract mostly serious, stoic applicants willing to endure hardship to protect order against chaos. But if so, those professions are unlikely to appeal to social justice warriors. And if only SJWs need apply, youll wind up with an inadequate pool of unsuitable applicants trickling into institutions that spectacularly fail to deliver either on their ostensible mandate or on social justice, becoming instead dungeons whose occupants are in no mood to live together let alone do their jobs, under leaders unfit to inspire them to do either.

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Mansfields insight might be called conservative since it relies implicitly on human nature being both flawed and intractable. But if so, more people should be conservative, because the predictable impact of woke policies is to foster petty resentment that doesnt even help the supposed direct beneficiaries. As Terry ONeill wrote in B.C. Report nearly 30 years ago, Victimhood is the devil on your shoulder, whispering in your ear that youre damaged goods.

If in consequence you spend your days convinced people hate you and are tormenting you in petty ways with microaggressions, you will be a misery to others and a burden to yourself. And no organization that is primarily a non-violent version of a Chinese cultural revolutionary re-education session can possibly fulfill any constructive purpose. The Mounties wont combat fiscal or cybercrime, nor the military foreign enemies. Or be in any mood to get along with one another.

Not even if you give them $8 trillion.

National Post

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John Robson: Liberals are infecting our military and police forces with wokeism. We will all pay the price - National Post