The U.S. Armed Forces used to be the pride and joy of America but military leadership under the Biden administration has undone this great admiration, "Fox News Primetime" host Ben Domenech argues.

Domenech: While every other institution sank into a well-earned disrespect, from banks to corporations to Congress to academia to media and beyond, the Armed Forces stood tall in the eyes of Americans. In the age of institutional collapse, a republic of free people decided that its military was the best thing about it. Sounds good. But you know what comes after that. Our Founders knew. An Armed Forces cast in this role decided, along with its admirers, that it was the font of American civic virtue. 

That’s where things went horribly wrong — so wrong that our military has, in a few short years, undone nearly all the respect, esteem, and admiration that it accumulated across a half-century. Let’s be clear, this isn’t just because it lost a war in Afghanistan… It is mostly because our Armed Forces, especially its leadership, decided that as the font of American civic virtue, it ought to weigh in on American civics. This is a shocking turn — upending without public debate, and with even less public notice, the proper relationship between our republic and its military…

The modern military has decided it DOES make policy. It is no longer the instrument. It is the authority. From General Mark Milley ranting about the danger of "White rage" to the Navy abandoning its wartime competencies to pursue social-justice fads to Army recruiting endorsing alternative lifestyles and requiring women to register for the draft to the Air Force Academy superintendent doubling down on social-justice messaging even after a known racial-animus hoax to flag officers trading on unearned moral standing to pronounce on American history to senior officers actively thwarting lawful desires of civilian leadership. 

The men who run today’s military are no longer in the business of defending America. That would, of course, require winning a war sometime. Instead, they are in the business of ruling it.

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