(Governor Glen Youngkin chose not to deliver these prepared remarks. Had he done so, I believe he would have begun to firm up the MAGA base ahead of the ill-fated 2023 legislative midterm elections.)
Superintendent Wins, members of the Board of Visitors, members of the faculty, administrative, and ROTC staffs, distinguished guests, cadets, parents, relatives, and friends – thank you for inviting me to speak to you today at this – the 184th – commencement of the Virginia Military Institute.
Some of you may be aware that Superintendent Wins and I have something in common – we both played Division 1 college basketball. Cedric, you played at a high level in this very building while I toiled away as a bench player at Rice. You probably got more points in 5 games than I had in my whole career, but if you ever want to lower these hoops someday and shoot around, I’d be happy to join you.
“He is best who is trained in the severest school,” the Greek philosopher Thucydides said. It’s therefore no surprise that some of the very best are produced right here in historic Lexington – in the idyllic Shenandoah Valley in the Spartan barracks on the bluffs above the Maury River. Virginia is home to some of the best colleges and universities in the country, but VMI stands out.
Founded in 1839 by John Thomas Lewis Preston, ably led for the first 50 years by Francis Henney Smith, and sustained by the most supportive alumni in the country, VMI has produced 7 Medal of Honor awardees, 13 Rhodes Scholars, and almost 300 flag officers. In one alumnus alone, George Catlett Marshall, you have “the Organizer of Victory” – the Army Chief of Staff during World War 2, a Secretary of State, a Secretary of Defense, and a winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace. And, of course, VMI has produced many other leaders in civilian and military life.
I’m told all the Rats must learn how to box – the boxing team is nationally competitive – having won a national championship last year and several individual titles at the national tournament here in March. VMI itself is like a boxer that punches high above its weight class – a flyweight with the power of a heavyweight. For almost two centuries, the Institute has had a reputation that precedes itself for producing graduates who have made positive impacts on Virginia, the United States, and the world.
To the class of 2023 – whose day this is – you join the ranks of generations of alumni successful in all fields of endeavor. Today is the culmination of 4 years of hard work, blood, sweat, and tears. You are a force to be reckoned with and your future is bright. I can feel your energy as I stand before you. You came to VMI because you wanted a challenge you could not find elsewhere – and perhaps more than a few of you got more than you bargained for, yet you persevered. You came from all walks of life wanting to test yourselves at what many consider the toughest military college in the country. You proved your mettle and look to the future confident you can see yourself through any difficulty. You came to strain in the hot August sun, walk your guard post in the middle of a cold January night, and meet the myriad new demands in the starkest of settings. During cadre week, you learned to perform under pressure and manage the precious resource of time as you adapted to an entirely new way of life of discipline and selflessness. You ran to the top of House Mountain. You internalized the Honor Code, memorized the names of the Honor Court and everything else in your Rat Bible. You realized your Brother Rats were your only friends in this new world and with whom you laughed and cried during your few private moments. You drilled endlessly on the parade ground. If it rained, you practiced rifle manual on the stoops. The Rat Line demanded your best and you gave it your all. Soon after Break Out, you had to leave VMI due to COVID restrictions and sadly missed the first spring of your cadetship, what many consider the most relaxing time of the four years. You overcame the academic challenge of third class year. Fast forward to Ring Figure. That’s one event that lives up to the hype! Ultimately, you made the grade in the intervening time, negotiated the pratfalls of demerits, penalty tours, and confinement; and here you are.
This ceremony marks the last time you are together as a class. The moment is bittersweet. You must move on without one another, but you have established friendships as Brother Rats that will last a lifetime. And, just as hundreds of female graduates this year returned for the 25th anniversary of women gracing the Institute, you will also return for your own reunions with much enthusiasm, pleasure, and nostalgia – once again enjoying one another’s company to relive the mostly humorous stories of your cadetships. You will find the years you spent here living in your memory your entire life. Decades will pass, and you will begin to look back at your time at VMI with with a deeper understanding of what it all meant – a new perspective on what a VMI education means and the integrity it has instilled. When you’re tested in the future and find yourself stronger than you anticipated, you’ll remember where you got it from.
When you arrive at any college campus, look for the largest building. That’s often where the most significant learning takes place. For VMI, that building is the gothic inspired barracks, the lively place where you’ve forged relationships with your Brother Rats and fellow cadets. VMI uses the analogy of the three legged stool – academics, athletics, and military – and ideally a cadet will excel at all three. It’s within this arduous, merit-based system that VMI succeeds by granting responsibilities and privileges among cadets in the conduct of the Rat Line, the Class system, and the Regimental system. This constitutes overcoming adversity and hands on leadership experience that mirrors the real world. A 24/7 military life style certainly is not your ordinary college experience, but the interpersonal skills you acquire prepare you for both the boardroom and the battlefield. The concept of the citizen-soldier presupposes a love of country. For Cincinnatus to leave his oxen and plough for military service, he had to be compelled by patriotism. And because VMI has always sought to instill a love of country, many of you will put your new-found leadership skills to the test in America’s military. I commend you for serving in our all volunteer force. I understand that for the first time there are commissions in the Coast Guard. What a great opportunity.
Presidents and governors who visit the Institute usually see fit to confer a pardon of sorts to certain members of the Corps of Cadets. By virtue of the power vested in me as the governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the Commander in Chief of the Corps of Cadets, I hereby grant AMNESTY to all cadets with penalty tours or confinement. Now if any of the underclassmen on confinement were thinking of transferring instead of returning in the same predicament, you no longer have that excuse.
My higher purpose today is to propose a return to normalcy here at the Institute. The past can be contextualized, but not canceled or concealed in a closet. Throughout history, change is a constant; and, until recently, you have been able to say “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” But the Institute was unjustifiably condemned by my predecessor, and I would like to right that wrong. Working with Superintendent Wins and the Board of Visitors, we will begin the restoration of VMI’s history, customs, and traditions – in their appropriate context, when necessary – while ensuring equality of opportunity.
Also today I’m announcing my decision to begin the process of eliminating DEI from all public colleges and universities in Virginia. One of my first official acts as governor was the issuance of Executive Order Number 1, which removed DEI from public school instruction in the K-12 grades. The natural move now is to do the same for Virginia’s public colleges and universities. Other states are fighting back successfully against the attempt to indoctrinate rather than educate American students from pre-school through graduate school. Other colleges have already done this on their own.
You are not alone – the entire country has been mired in this debate. The United States is the greatest country in history because it has done more to promote freedom, peace, and prosperity at home and around the world. Most Americans refuse to rob themselves of this heritage, yet criticizing the notion that America is fundamentally racist today is like touching a societal third rail that results in being cancelled, the figurative modern day assassination. We are given two false choices – either bend the knee or be canceled. The only viable alternative is to reestablish the ideal of Martin Luther King Jr’s colorblind society in which Americans are judged by the content of our character rather than the color of our skin.
A nation blessed with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and Divine Providence need not abide by a dogma designed to bring about our own demise. Our great Republic is yet perfectable, but not by fighting racism with racism. It’s time ‘We the People’ once again fought for our founding principles, rising to the high standard set by generations of our ancestors, righteously confident in our rich cultural traditions and national creed – E Pluribus Unum.
If everything is change, nothing is permanent, and you lose the essence of the thing you’re trying to save. The late historian David McCullough was fond of the expression “We cannot know where we are going until we know where we have been.” You cannot continue to complete your historic mission of producing citizen-soldiers and educating honorable men and women if you have the makings of an identity crisis mandated by virtue signallers. Not all change is for the better.
Turns out the Institute has been here before. In 1868 a new and for the most part hostile state legislature convened in Richmond, and a committee ordered Superintendent Smith to demonstrate why VMI “should not be obliterated.” His eloquent response placated those legislators who were made to understand that VMI graduates had the technical expertise to help revitalize and rebuild Virginia and her economy. So we can see the long knives have been out for VMI for quite some time, its critics considering the Institute part of a chivalrous bygone era, an anachronism. You might say what’s been happening around the country for decades and here since 2021 is Reconstruction 2.0. Throughout its history, VMI was inclined to hold fast to ideals and practices that proved successful for its mission. VMI retained what was obviously beneficial. To continue trying to erase history by removing monuments, desecrating graves, and canceling heroes is to continue down the Slippery Slope of the decline of Western civilization itself.
In spite of its extraordinary record and reputation, some members of the General Assembly still need convincing that VMI is good. This may speak to their own characters. In one declarative sentence I can remove all doubt about whether VMI needed to be reformed in the first place – a racist institution could not have produced Jonathan Daniels, who gave his life for the cause of freedom and civil rights. Daniels understood VMI was good. His sense of honor and courage were his own, but VMI honed his character. He clearly understood Socrates’ dictum Know Thyself. Our Republic requires virtuous people like Jonathan Daniels to sustain it.
The Spirit of VMI is palpable on post. It hangs in the atmosphere like the early morning August fog over the parade ground – the same parade ground where then Major Thomas J. Jackson relentlessly drilled his cadet charges in artillery and tolerated their pranks as they maneuvered the same 4 cannon – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. You cannot erase Jackson if you were to cut that hill down to the level of Wood’s Creek. His mark on history is as indelible as his character. When you make your own mark on history, you can be sure it’s one you will be proud of because you are VMI graduates.
VMI was forced to renounce the memory of the New Market cadets. The argument is you cannot honor those cadets because they fought for slavery. The reality is they found themselves in the tragic maelstrom that was the Civil War and fought for one another in pitched battle, for their hearths and homes against an invading army, and for their native states in what they viewed as the second American revolution. Their exemplary example cannot be relegated to history’s dustbin simply because they wore the uniform of the losing side. New Market remains the seminal moment in the history of VMI. After a mere 25 years in existence, the battle became VMI’s proof of concept and a perennial touchstone; integral to what the Institute’s mentally and physically grueling regimen seeks to imbue in its graduates to this present day. If Esprit de Corps can be ascribed to a military unit that forged a sterling reputation under fire, then the New Market cadets are inextricably intertwined as the embodiment of the The Spirit of VMI, which will never be extinguished.
The Civil War and those who fought in it should not be considered “off limits” in a country where free speech has always been protected. We must teach our children all of our history – the good and the bad. Those who have gone before you cannot be banished from their time and place. We want to treat all people equally and fairly, but we don’t want to lose this Institute, or our country, in the process.
I would like to read a portion of a letter written by Mrs Eliza Clinedinst Crim in 1909, describing her eye witness account – when she was 24 years old and known as Lydie – of the cadets at New Market.
“They told me about a poor little cadet lying down at the Lightfoot farm, badly wounded. I told them to bring him up to my home, where he would be more comfortable. He lay there all night, but in the morning after the battle, the now Sir Moses Ezekiel, of Rome, Italy, who was then a pretty, black, curly headed Jewish boy, brought him to my home in an ambulance and carried him in. My good old mother put him in her own bed, as it was the only bed we had downstairs. When we laid him down he looked up at me and said “Sister, what a good, soft bed.” Mother had an old-time feather bed, and it must have felt soft to him after lying on the hard ground. This sweet little cadet was from Amelia County, Virginia. His name was Thomas Garland Jefferson. He was about 16 years of age, was blue-eyed and had golden hair. I will never forget him and his sweet, boyish face. He was shot in the breast, and the bullet was cut out of his back. His sufferings were intense, but he bore up so well and never complained. Cadet Ezekiel nursed him very tenderly. His own mother could not have done more for him. Ah, those were noble youths. I feel proud today to think we have such a grand institution in old Virginia that can make such brave soldiers out of boys. When Cadet Jefferson fell, two of his comrades hastened to his aid. Indifferent to his own comfort, with outstretched hand he pointed to the front, saying “That is the place for you. You can do me no good.” He urged them to the front, saying words which should be immortal. The evening before he died he called Cadet Ezekiel to read for him. He read the 14th Chapter of St John: “Let not your heart be troubled. Ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you.” What a death bed scene – the little Jewish cadet reading the New Testament to his Christian comrade in his last hours. Could anything be more touching? I went to smooth his pillow, and he said, “Sister, what beautiful hands.” He called, “Duncan, come and light a candle; it is growing dark.” The blindness of death came over him. He died about midnight in Moses Ezekiel’s arms. He was buried in the old church yard. Those were noble boys and Virginia should be proud of them.”
As we consider how to proceed in the months ahead, we can find solace and direction in President Lincoln’s 2nd Inaugural Address. It was a prophesy of peace, reunification, and reconciliation, one that appealed to what he had earlier referred to as “the better angels of our nature.” “With malice toward none;” he said. “With charity for all; with firmness in the right to bind up our nation’s wounds …” His object was to “achieve a just and lasting peace among ourselves” and “let us judge not, lest we be judged.” Enlightened by those words, it is my hope that we may find peace, reunification, and reconciliation for ourselves in the present day. All the men and women on both sides of the Civil War would have wanted it that way because, despite their differences, they were all Americans. And we are all Americans.
I cite 18th and 19th century primary sources because they are applicable today. I’m tasked to deliver on a vision to make government work for the people, and I’m here to assure you the Institute will be heard from for centuries to come by adhering to the timeless truths of the past. Just as in 1776, I believe the spirit of liberty is alive and well today in Virginia. And that spirit will motivate us to conquer the challenges ahead. With courage and conviction, we can do it together.
I call upon all of you to continue to press up that hill of science and be ready in every time of deepest peril to vindicate Virginia’s and America’s honor and defend their rights. Thank you again. I wish you all the best in your future endeavors. May God bless you all.