According to Pew Research Center’s surveys and government data, 81 percent of U.S. senators holding office in 1975 had served in our country’s military. Today only 17 percent of our senators can claim that honor.

In 1967, approximately 75 percent of the members of the House of Representatives had worn the uniform. Today that number has fallen to 18 percent.

In my boyhood, many people I knew—uncles and fathers of friends, my own two uncles, and my dad—had fought in World War II. In my late teens, I met a score or more men, including a Medal of Honor winner, who’d fought in Korea or Vietnam. Even in the mid-1980s, 18 percent of Americans were veterans.

Today that number stands at about 6 percent.

Meanwhile, recruiters are having trouble filling the ranks of today’s armed forces. More than 70 percent of young people can’t make the cut because of obesity and other health problems, drug usage, a prison record, or aptitude. Of the number remaining eligible for service, fewer and fewer potential recruits seem interested. Some blame this turn-away by young people on a booming economy, a theory ill-fitted to our present economic problems. Others cite the military’s new woke training and politically correct culture as a turn-off, particularly for male prospects.

In an excerpt from The War on Warriors: Beyond the Betrayal of the Men and Women Who Keep Us Free, combat veteran and FOX & Friends Weekend co-host Pete Hegseth takes to task the damages done by this “woke” military and the gulf that exists between the general staff and the enlisted ranks:     

No matter how poor their performance, they get that promotion—and especially that sweetheart defense contractor job after retirement—but only if they parrot the social justice liturgies of the moment. GI “Joe” deals with half-baked social theories implemented at the unit level, knowing somewhere a general is getting promoted for doing the foolish bidding of an ignorant and/or ideological politician. Joe also knows that if he loses his rifle, he’ll be demoted immediately. But if a general loses a war—or billions of dollars of military equipment—nothing happens.

The 2021 debacle that was the American withdrawal from Afghanistan underscores Hegseth’s points. Partly as a consequence of that withdrawal and partly as a reaction to the cultural changes in the military, American confidence in its fighting forces has steeply declined in the last few years, leaving many, especially conservatives, wondering whether a military so focused on gender issues, race, and equity can still defend our country.

But there’s another reason, often overlooked, why falling enlistment rates and the military’s social agenda should be of concern to all Americans.

In 2019, I wrote an article titled “The Greatest—and Least Acknowledged—Educational System in the World.” That system is our American military. The Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines indiscriminately recruit young men and women from every class, race, region, and religion in the United States, and teach them discipline and skills that may well last a lifetime.

While the military has long been recognized as a vehicle for turning adolescents into adults, often overlooked is the practical training these young men and women receive while in the ranks. “Tooth-to-tail ratio” is the military expression sometimes used to describe the number of combatants versus the number of support troops. Usually that ratio is about 1:10, which means that the vast majority of service personnel don’t serve in combat, but instead are trained to perform in every capacity from driving heavy equipment to operating complex digital communications.

On leaving the service, these same young adults bring skills like time management, aircraft engine repair, and data analysis into the work force. One of my nephews, for instance, has received intensive training as an Army combat medic, which will lead, if he so wishes, into a job as a paramedic after he fulfills his terms of enlistment. The grandson of one of my in-laws is in the Marine Corps, where he is training to service and repair large-aircraft engines, another skill that will quickly win him a position in the civilian work force.

When our military is in turmoil, as it seems to be today, and when our young are reluctant to take part in the federal government’s radical social experiments, it’s true that we risk facing the dangers of wartime less prepared than we might have been. It’s also true that our country will suffer from the loss of patriotism and work skills veterans bring to civilian life. Here we need think only of the years following World War II. Because of their experiences and training, the 16 million Americans who returned home from that conflict became an enormous force in the creation of the nation’s booming economy.

Veterans Day is set aside to honor and thank all those who are serving or have served in our country’s military from tooth to tail. The great majority of those men and women deserve our appreciation not only for that service, but for their contributions to communities around the nation. This Veterans Day, and especially after last week’s stunning mandate for President-elect Donald Trump, let’s hope that our politicians and military brass will see the light, shake off the woke ideology plaguing our country and our armed forces, and return our military to the proven pathways of patriotism, duty, and sacrifice.