‘Equity’ advocates have long insisted on a connection between the U.S. military’s efficacy and its diversity. The rest of the country is unconvinced.

In his introductory remarks ahead of secretary of defense nominee Pete Hegseth’s confirmation hearings on Tuesday, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member Jack Reed issued a doozy of a shibboleth. “Our military is more diverse than it has ever been, but, more importantly, it is more lethal than it has ever been,” he observed. “This is not a coincidence.”

The elusive connection between the U.S. military’s efficacy as a fighting force and the degree to which it reflects the demography of the nation it serves have been coupled in the minds of “equity” advocates for some time. The rest of the country is unconvinced.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last fall, political science professor Kevin Wallsten and Trump-era Pentagon official Owen West provide survey data that indicate that the broader public hasn’t bought what Reed is selling.

Fifty-seven percent of respondents to the YouGov survey they commissioned “say that diversity is ‘not essential’ for military success, and 94% oppose race and sex preferences in military promotions,” they wrote. “Only 14% of veterans want the military to pay more attention to DEI.” Indeed, they found that the “military’s DEI and other social policies” are the foremost reasons for a steep decline among military families — the most reliable recruitment pipeline — who would advise younger family members to serve their country. That ranks above the prospect of psychological trauma, physical injury, and even death.

Meeting America’s recruitment targets won’t be achieved only by sloughing off the social experimentation to which progressives have committed the services. Revising counterproductive medical standards, updating the outmoded Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery (ASVAB) test, and raising the pay for junior enlisted personnel to compete with the private sector would also help. But throwing out the DEI paradigm in favor of a culture of merit, excellence, and reward certainly wouldn’t hurt.