Disqualified

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Speak your mind. And now, here's today's Truth Talk Live host. Why are 70% of young men in America between 18 and 22 not qualified for military service under current recruiting standards?

That's kind of a scary thing when you think about it, is the military is obviously being reduced in number. And so we've got our good friend and longtime addition to the Truth Network. Captain Jim Kenney used to do Inspire and then an expiring night app. That he's got, but he right had quite a distinguished military service with the Navy and was very much involved in recruiting at one point in time.

So Captain Jim, what's what's the deal with this? Well, the numbers are creeping have crept up since I was really, really active in recruiting in terms of the number of disqualified men and women, young men and women of military service age in America are disqualified. They serve basically in three different. There are three different disqualifying areas of concern. The first is their inability to score well enough on the defense at a vocational aptitude battery. In other words, every every recruit is given a chance to take a vocational aptitude test. See, where would they best fit and what kind of training would they be best suited for?

And what would they do? What would they be most happy doing in the service? And there are certain minimal scores that are applied depending upon your selected area of design. For example, in the Navy, an 18 year old kid wants to study nuclear power. He has to score very, very high on the vocational aptitude battery test in order to be qualified to enter into those kind of educational programs. And within the military, on the other hand, if you're going to chip paint on a ship for three years, and you know, go see the world, which is one of the Navy's, you know, advertising efforts to join the Navy and see the world.

You don't have to store nearly so high doesn't take quite the educational background and and educational acumen to learn how to keep a ship deck clean and surface and ship and painted and, you know, serve as a deckhand. On the other hand, if you're going down into the bowels of the ship, and it's a nuclear powered ship, you're going to have to demonstrate before you even start into the training. But the point of that discussion is at the lower end, people are disqualified from anything, because they have they haven't, they can't score well enough on the vocational aptitude battery to even be qualified for any kind of military training.

And that number is growing and growing. And currently, the military trying to reach its all volunteer force levels of requirement, have lowered that score several times over the last, over the Biden administration time, the last four or five years. And what you're doing is you're over, you're lowering the overall capacity of the military to keep up with the technical advances that are going on with all the new weapon systems and artificial intelligence and computers and satellites and space command, and all those kind of things that are coming online, while the people that are available to serve that number is getting smaller and smaller in terms of qualification. That's one disqualifying point. And the other disqualifying point is educational achievement. When a when a young man or woman who might be otherwise qualified, has dropped out of high school and does not have the minimum academic credential of a high school diploma, they are significantly handicapped.

I think I don't know what the numbers are for the service today. But those numbers, which the military wants to accept those people into training, are relatively small, because they have a history of dropping out, dropped out of high school, dropped out of some other things in life, usually, and our records show that if we offer them an opportunity to come in and serve, that they quit before they're certified, qualified, and able to help us in our active service. And a second major area is physical fitness. It's amazing the number of young people 18 to 22 that are not physically fit enough to serve. That are so prevalent in America today that are disqualifying young people from being able to serve on active duty. And the final thing is police involvement.

It's a moral question. A lot of our 16 and 17 year old kids have unacceptable police involvement, whether it's a DUI or in New York City. I had a command in New York City, and we lost a lot of kids because they did things like gate hopping together. They get on the subways and get caught and do that kind of thing. They're young, they're immature, but when they get police involvement, they're disqualified without certain waivers that might have to be applied.

So when you add all those things together, you have a broken fishing pond. If you want to think about the recruiting pool as a fishing pond, the fewer and fewer fish that you're going to take home and fry for dinner. So that's where you get to the fact that they're barely over 20%, maybe 25% of the total male, female population in the recruitable age, 18 to 22, 23, can qualify to serve today. To me, that's an indictment of some other things that are going on. I think that our public school system is so broken that a lot of these kids are getting artificial high school diplomas or maybe not even getting a diploma, certainly aren't being prepared to become young adults and to go to work in the real world to become participating citizens in this great nation.

And that includes being able to serve in the military, let alone go to work productively in their hometown or go to work in some specific field of endeavor that they want to try to make a career of. We've just broken them because of our public school system. We've got to go to a break, but we want to tell you that this is clearly a live show. And if you want to call in and comment on the subject matter, we would love to hear from you. 866-348-7884.

866-348-7884. Disqualified. What's going to go on with our military? Don't worry. We've got some great recommendations coming, not just the problem, but there are solutions. And they're coming. You're listening to the Truth Network and truthnetwork.com.

Disqualified today on Truth Talk Live. The military has gigantic manpower issues, as we've talked about in the first segment, that 70% of the young men in America between 18 and 22 cannot qualify for military service. And we have with us Captain Jim Kenney, who went through these three main ideas. We're going to see if we can simplify them so we can get to the problem. We'll hopefully get to the solution.

It's complicated, but I think I'm tracking. So essentially, there's three major areas that they're disqualified in. They're not physically qualified, and they're not morally qualified.

In other words, they have some kind of police involvement. And then mentally, it sounded to me, and I just wanted to see if you would agree with this statement, that a lot of people, since it's an all-volunteer force, I'm not going to join the military unless I can find a vocation that seems to fit what I want to do in the military. Like, if I'm not into chipping paint, and I do want to see the world, and what I really want to do is fly airplanes, like you did, or something along those lines, that takes higher scores. And when they don't qualify, they no longer are trying to recruit, not under the process or what? Well, yes and no.

Yes, you're right. Kids come to the military hoping to get training in some specific area of personal vocational interest, and they have to score certain levels on the entrance exams in order to be qualified for those schools. But the problem is worse than that because there is a cutoff, a very low score, in which you can't do anything in the middle. We won't take you in and take the risk of trying to train you up to be capable of doing something valuable in defense of American security because your test scores are so low. I would put this in the area of either academic credentialing will disqualify you. For example, dropping out of high school puts a tremendous burden on your ability to qualify to serve in the military so you don't have a high school diploma. And then your test scores at the front end of the recruiting process aren't administered to everybody who comes to seek a job in the military. Your test scores aren't sufficiently good enough to allow you to either serve at all or serve in some area of vocational training in which you think you would excel. So you've got the testing side of it and the academic credentialing side of it.

You've got the physical side of it. You know, John F. Kennedy's talked about all the chronic health issues that have attacked our kids and our culture, and it's very evident in the recruiting requirements for the military. And then third is the moral level of have you in your youthful foolishness. You have to cross-thread it with the legal system in a way that disqualifies you. And between those three, any one of which can be disqualifying, maybe 25% of our youth in the age group 18 to 22 can even qualify to serve without seeking out some significant waivers on the standards.

Let me back up and put an overarching title on this thing. America is currently facing an existential threat to our national security because the all-volunteer force is failing. It cannot recruit enough young men and women to meet the needs to defend the American security interests in the global situation.

Now they're disqualified for the three reasons we've been talking about. What's going to have to have, and I didn't get to mention one that fits in the moral element as well, and that is the disintegration of American families. You realize that less than 20% of our children, high school agent under, are being raised in what you and I would have considered traditional homes when we were teenagers.

Less than 20% of our kids live in homes with a standard father and mother and an intact family. Well, I've got to get the number out there because I know somebody's sitting there wanting to dial in and you don't have it, so 866-348-7884 is the number to call in and let us know what you think, 866-348-7884. So here's this gigantic problem, I think you've outlined it, but fortunately, right, we've just had a change of the guard, so to speak, and there's new hope that you've got in this whole area, right?

Right, Cam? Yes, well there are two or three things that this change in administration means, and it may mean some good news for the military because the administration that's transitioning out misdirected the military, the Department of Defense, so badly that whether I know your proper pronouns or not is more important than whether I know how to reassemble an M1 rifle. It's just the things that the current military out of this administration is moving the Department of Defense away from the basic skills needed to be a successful defense force towards one that's more socially adaptable, and of course, certainly that's not where the military fits in our stream of the cultural things that are happening around us.

And by the way, here's a startling fact, and I'm going to state this very bluntly, and if people want to call in and ask, I'm happy to defend it, liberals do not serve in the Department of Defense, they do not volunteer in any significant numbers to be a part of the all-volunteer force. So you've shrunk the fishing pond by that designation, you've shrunk the fishing pond by the moral implications that we face today, and that comes from broken families and it comes from immature kids. We've shrunk the pond because of our health concerns, we spend more time on video games than we spend exercising and eating properly, and we've shrunk the pool because of our academic failures in the public school system. So you put all that together, and it's an existential threat. We are already under recruiting, I think the number was more than, approaching 50,000 people last year in terms of meeting the needs of the recruiting goals for the all-volunteer force.

And getting worse, and that's after we've lowered all the standards well below what we would have accepted 15 years ago to serve. So it is an existential threat if we don't find a solution, and I think we can talk about a solution at some point, and there is one, well there's probably more than one. I'm promoting one because I think it's the easiest and most rapidly doable in terms of supporting the all-volunteer force.

Well let's go for it. Jim, from your standpoint, what can we do? Well the Department of Defense is going to have to accept the responsibility to build out and stock the fishpond. That means we're going to have to take unqualified people and put them through some intensive training to enable them to be able to be physically fit, to get away from all these childhood diseases that our current public health program has promoted within our culture. It means we have to, I hate to use the word parole, I think parole is a word that some people associate with hardened criminals.

But if we have young 16, 17, 18 year olds that have foolishly done things that got them cross-threaded with our legal system, if we had a program that could monitor them with adult supervision for some period of time, like putting someone out on the wall. Jim, I hate we got to go to another break, but great ideas coming up as you can see and of course we would love your questions or comments. 866-348-7884.

866-348-7884. We'll be right back. You're listening to the Truth Network and TruthNetwork.com. Welcome back to Truth Talk Live.

Today we're talking about disqualified. Why are 70% of our young men and women disqualified for military service before we even get going? And then we got all sorts of other factors, so we need some help. We need some help in creating a bigger fish pond, as Captain Jim Kenney was putting it, to be able to recruit some folks to fully have the manpower that the defense system needs. And we would love to know your thoughts. 866-348-7884. 866-348-7884. You know, I love this idea that you're talking about of a solution.

And, you know, to read out what you wrote here, it's beautiful. It says, expand existing delayed entry program with recruiting services to provide the necessary education, fitness, and adult supervision to enable interested applicants to overcome identified deficiencies and become eligible for enlistment. The program expansion, the delayed entry program academy would offer a 52 week of weekend programming dedicated to improving the physical, moral, and mental qualifications of the applicants.

I love that. And you even have a way that they would be compensated for that? And essentially, you know, it's sort of a pre-military military.

Well, that's exactly what it is. The Department of Defense cannot continue to lower standards in order to try to meet the necessary numbers because of the complexity of war today and war fighting today with all of the computerized weapon systems, with artificial intelligence, with space command, the quality of the serviceman and woman has to keep up with that. It can't be lagging behind further and further because we can't get the numbers on board, so we lower the standards. So what we have to do is we have to reach into this pond and find some of these kids that are currently disqualified by one or even more of the standards that are required and give them a targeted second chance. And what I mean by that is we can increase their academic standards. And the idea behind a delayed entry education program, a deep program academy, is that we'll take kids and sign them up, but delay their entry into active duty until they can reach certain standards of behavior, certain standards of fitness, certain standards of academic prowess.

And we assume the responsibility because the public school system is broken, public health system is broken, and the homes they're coming from are broken. Let me tell you that this can be one of the greatest socially and culturally valuable programs we could institute in the face of where America is today in a broken culture and in the divisions that divide us so much. Grab these young people at an age when they're still impressionable, we can rescue them, and give them a second chance at turning into prosperous, successful citizens participating in the American dream. Right, because when you think about it, I mean, that's really brilliant because as these young people would be recruited into this program, especially those that had some problem with the police or they didn't get a high school diploma or they're physically incapable of doing it, as they get through that program and then to, you know, spend four, eight years, whatever, in the military with the complex systems that they would be using and the programming that they're using or whatever, they would come out with all sorts of skills, right?

To enter the technological world of the future and have some discipline to go with it, essentially. There's another interesting aspect to what we're talking about, which I haven't mentioned, and that is that the new administration is absolutely committed to full employment. And the truth is that recruiting for the military becomes more difficult when the basic economy is at full employment because there are other options for these kids that are militarily desirable that we would like to recruit in the military. But there are other options for them in a full employment environment. This program will be recruiting kids in a demographic that most of the American businesses and educational institutions are not reaching into. These are kids that have been thrown away, if you will, by the culture at a very young age, 16, 17, 18 years old, they're already marked as having significant handicaps towards achieving the American dream. And we can reach into that group of people and we can, with dedication and the right curriculum, we can elevate their potential and give them a second opportunity and, in the process, build a bigger fishing pond for the all-volunteer force. Right, because, you know, it's really a cool thing that it not only defends the country, but it upgrades in so many different ways, both educationally, physically, and morally.

All those things are getting you going. We've got Conrad is in Virginia. He's got a comment for us. Conrad, you're on Truth Talk Live.

Good evening. Yes, sir, and thank you for having my input here. You know, we don't need another government program from a woke government that's just going to pile on more social engineering programs. That's one of the problems. Bring back the draft. That's all I got to say.

Bye-bye. Well, that's an interesting comment, and that is an option. That's a second option. Force people to serve without having any desire to do so, or ill-equipped. The draft does not increase their ability to handle complex weapons systems, to deal with AI, to transition from a relatively lax culture into the discipline required to serve in the military. And come under authority and understand the proper application of authority.

God established a hierarchy of authority, and we've ignored it, and we've got an awful lot of people, young people in that age group that is desirable for entry into military service have no idea what it means to be under authority. So, yes, the draft will get you numbers. I'm not sure it will solve some of the other problems that we're talking about. Yeah, you know, I love the fact that people are calling in with other opinions, and we would love yours.

866-348-7884, 866-344-TRUTH. Let me say something to his other concern, if I could. If the new administration doesn't take on the issues he was talking about, the wokeness within the military, we don't need training people in learning proper pronouns. We don't need training in sensitivity training and worrying about trigger words and all this tender stuff that our culture has to run and find a safe place because somebody said something that triggered them because they didn't agree with that person's particular point of view of life. Democracy requires a rapid, vigorous exchange of ideas. Not everybody's in agreement on everything, but we have raised a culture of views that rather than deal with someone who has a different opinion, I want to find a safe space, and I want to issue you a list of trigger words.

You're not to use these words in my presence. Well, obviously, I was just thinking about what our caller Conrad talked about, that he's concerned that we just institute another government program. However, one of the major, from my understanding, the basics of government is to protect its people. If government's for something, it's not an overall program.

It's just simply like, I'm kind of counting on you guys. The military is supposed to be able to protect the country, and if you don't have the people, then obviously you've got to train the people to be able to take the people into the current process. Or you extend the training program once people are recruited, however that works. Obviously, all that's got to be incorporated, and so how are you thinking that's going to—in other words, you have your connections with the military, but how does this get in place? In other words, what can we do? What can we vote?

How can we pray? What's the next step on this plan, Jim? Well, what I'm trying to do right now is just raise public awareness. This issue that is literally a threat to our future freedoms is getting very little discussion. I may have heard it mentioned two or three times in the entire presidential campaign.

This idea that the all-volunteer force is failing and is going to—is currently—if China wants Taiwan, they can have it based on the current military readiness, posture of the American defense force. And nobody's talking about it, so we're trying to raise the awareness of the threat and then begin to discuss solutions. My daddy used to tell me anybody can find a problem and complain about it. The wise people are the ones who find a problem and look for a fix. So that's what we're trying to do here.

Not only is this a significant problem, but we need reasonably quick solutions in order to overcome our current situation. Well, we'll be right back. We've got Mike is in Dayton, and we need you. 866-34-TRUTH. We'll be right back. Disqualified today on Truth Talk Live.

Apparently nearly 70 percent or maybe more than 70 percent of American youth are not qualified for military service, and what are we going to do about that? We've been hearing from Captain Jim Kenney. We've got a couple more people to chime in. We've got Chuck is in Dayton, Ohio. Chuck, you're on Truth Talk Live.

What thank you, my friend? Well, I think Israel, South Korea, and a lot of other countries that are under a lot of threat constantly, they use draft and militia quite a bit. I think we need to, and then our leadership, too. I mean, I've seen some pictures of some of the people that are admirals and generals in our current government that would instill anything but patriotism and courage and just downright, I don't know.

I don't have the words for it. I think you know what I'm talking about. So what say you, Jim? I'll say this, and this may be controversial to some, but for those of us who served significant time in uniform, our current secretary of defense should have been court-martialed when he went AWOL for seven days and didn't even tell the president of the United States where he was. Those are the kind of people that are leading the Biden military department of defense, and everybody who has commented on that is absolutely right.

Those things are killing us. There's no leadership. The withdrawal from Afghanistan proved that no one is held accountable. It used to be in the military that we understood accountability, but now it doesn't appear as if that is a continuing virtue in the organization. And part of that is because you can't let somebody go because there's nobody to backfill because we don't have enough people to fill the ranks in the all volunteer force.

So it's a death cycle, a death spiral. And I agree with the comments that other countries have a more patriotic base to build from than we do in America today. We have torn down statues of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln and built statues to George Floyd, which says a whole lot about the values of the current culture in America. We've got to reteach. We've got to retrain.

We've got to rescue these kids that are in the viable age group for military service, rescue them and give them a second chance by training them, fixing the deficiencies that the current public school system and the current home environments have created in that pool of people for whom the future of America's liberty depends. Right. Well, thank you, Chuck. I appreciate you calling in.

We're going to go to Mike is in Dayton, Ohio, as well. Mike, what thank you. I was in the Marine Corps. My grandfather was in in the Army in World War Two. My dad was in the Army. My brother was in the Marine Corps. My sister was in Marine Corps. I have a nephew and who's that who went through dank on it. My brain stopped. That's all right.

Went through. What do you think, Mike? Well, I think, OK, real quickly, I have a little experience on this. And I think it starts with the with the homestead, for sure. And then the school as well. School is teaching, you know, not patriotism. When I went to school, we had we said the Pledge of Allegiance and we prayed before before class started. Now, now they don't do any of that.

There's no really in Ohio. They don't say the Pledge of Allegiance. No, they say that on the on a radio station, which is the country radio station. I don't listen to that anymore. But anyway, they but they do say it on that station every morning. But it's just, you know, the patriotism in schools that we're proud of our country.

I guess I just I feel ignorant. Like, Jim, is that true that kids in school don't say the Pledge of Allegiance anymore? They don't say the Pledge of Allegiance. Certainly prayer was.

In fact, if you go back, I'm going to try to remember the years accurately. Well, I know about the prayer. Sixty eight and seventy two each one of those years, the federal courts took the Bible out of classroom, took the prayer out of classroom and said abortions are legal. And we destroyed the moral foundation and structure. The scripture says that parents are to teach this to their children and the children to the children's children, and that it is the family that transmits these values to our to our car. Thank you. You come from a family that has the kind of values that all of us used to recognize as being an appropriate part of the development of our youth.

That doesn't exist anymore. Your family has a unique history. Congratulations on that. We have we are left with such a deficit.

We have got to find a way to rescue these people and bring back the exact kind of family values that your caller was talking about. Hang on. I got I got to get some verification on this, since I have Nick right here, one of our younger folks. And so, Nick, I am very curious, you know, you came up in the newer schools, obviously, than I did. Did you guys not say the Pledge of Allegiance in school? We said the Pledge of Allegiance in school, like elementary and middle elementary and middle school. But once I got to high school, I realized a lot of people, they had a they they on their own, they stopped saying the middle school. They they would stand up in respect, but they would not say the Pledge of Allegiance. So so there was like right within the school, there were protesters.

I wouldn't say like, well, it's just another example of the failure of our public schools to maintain a sort of of a common culture, common history, common understanding of our core values. So hang on, Jim. Hang on, Jim.

So while I still got Nick, I'm just curious, you know, I'm just trying to understand. So when you went to college. Yeah. What was it like there? College was different college. You know, everyone has everyone has different schedules and everyone has different values and beliefs.

And there are. And I went to college where I went to a college where there are different religions. So not everyone, you know, there are people from different countries in my class. So of course, they're not going to like say the Pledge of Allegiance because sometimes they don't even know it. And so in college, I don't remember ever one time saying the Pledge of Allegiance like back in college, even at sporting events. Now we know that athletes don't even have to stand at attention for the pledge or for the national anthem at sporting events. So that's that's. And Mike, you brought out this point.

I hadn't even really considered that. You know, and again, because I guess my kids, you know, they went to Calvary Baptist Day School, that kind of thing. And they were saying the Pledge of Allegiance at every turn of the, you know, whatever. But and certainly they also pledge allegiance to the Christian flag. I mean, that was part of what happened for my children.

So I didn't have any understanding that like, wow. And so from somebody like your point of view, Mike, where you your family has served in the military and all those things. And obviously, Jim, yours as well, a lot of those people died to protect those rights.

What is that? What does that feel like when people aren't there anymore? It feels it feels like they're they're living our country down, you know, and living our way of life down, living, living our ability to worship God down. You know, you know, taking our individual rights away to, you know, the freedom of assembly to worship God. You know, when when when you're when we have threats from other countries, that's exactly what they want to do. They want to shut us down. So we are not we're not fellowshipping God anymore. They want to control us from start sun up to sundown.

And they don't want us to have our freedom. And I and I've been overseas. And so probably as the gym.

But it's it's a different culture. Jim has been overseas over the because Jim flew those really high altitude planes that went over the whole world. Didn't you, Jim? And so, well, I was in reconnaissance work.

Yes. And so from your standpoint, Jim, to get to that, because we only got a couple of minutes and I do want to get to the actual like, man, we you have done a great job, captain, today of from my standpoint of explaining to us something I had no idea. I bet you there's much people out there had no idea. And like you said, you provided a solution, but more you provided information that gives us everybody something to think about. But I want to give you the last minute or so to finish your thoughts. Well, let me sum up a couple of things from from the program. One of the callers had said that we didn't need a new program.

The delayed entry program exists in all four military services right now is underutilized. It needs to be repurposed and refunded and built back into the robust tool that it could be. Secondly, he is right. We don't need any more work.

We don't need any more. You know, I grew up and you grew up believing in equality. Equality meant everybody should have a fair start in life.

And then given God, given talents, given effort, given opportunity, we end up in different places. But we get to start equally. Today's culture is preaching equity. Equity has nothing to do with where you started. They're trying to engineer equal outcomes where you can't engineer equal outcomes. You can only give people equal opportunities. So we've lost that core essence of freedom and of God given rights in this pursuit of DEI rather than the old fashioned patriotism that used to motivate us. Now, to talk more specifically about the delayed entry education program academy, it would take a year to get us into a situation where it's truly workable.

But it does a couple of other things we didn't even talk about. One is, if you have all these young people under contract… Jim, we've got about 20 seconds. You're going to have to roll here. Go, go, go. If there was a national emergency, this would be a pool of people that are already connected to the military service and could be called up in emergencies. Another program powered by the Truth Network.