The return of merit to educational institutoinx

 Fox News:

Pete Hegseth directs military academies that all future admissions will be based solely on merit

The defense secretary said race, ethnicity or sex cannot be considered in applications

Hegseth is right.  Military officers should be selected based on merit.  When I was going through Marine Corps OCS and Basic School, it was a meritocracy.  You had to meet both the physical requirements and the mental requirements to succeed.  The guys who could not do the forced marches of up to 20 miles got cut from the officer program, and they spent the remainder of their service time as enlisted personnel pushing paper.  BTW, the officers who had attended the academies were first-rate in my opinion.  I served with officers who graduated from both West Point and Annapolis.

Since I got my undergraduate degree in communications, one of my first assignments was as Assistant Commander of the Third Marine Division Communication Center in Dong Ha.  The assignment was somewhat like working the copy desk at a media company.  I later became the executive officer of a rifle company on the DMZ in Vietnam.  I actually enjoyed working with the Marines in that company.  We spent a lot of time operating in Northern I Corps.  I managed to see Khe Sahn and the Laos border, as well had maneuvers along the beach going to the border with North Vietnam.  I was later wounded in a mortar attack.  That led to my journey back to the States.  I started out in a field hospital before being sent to the Bethesda, Maryland, Naval Hospital with stops along the way in Guam and Japan.  I spent about three months in the hospital there before they changed me to an "inpatient subsisting out status while they did the medical discharge paperwork.  I then went to the US School of Law, graduating in two years.