It has long been a feature of the American political scene that Republicans – self-styled defenders of tradition and protectors of the Way Things Should Be Done – often act as the rear guard of the revolutionary process, assuring that changes rammed through by the radical left become institutionalized.  Thus, we had the Eisenhower Republicans acting to formalize the New Deal, Richard Nixon completing the demolition of American governmental finances begun by Lyndon B. Johnson, and George Bush taking the first steps at rolling back the Reagan revolution by agreeing with Congress that taxation can be fun.

Enter Robert Gates.

Gates has had a lengthy and, at first glance, impressive career in public service.  He ran the CIA during the wind-down of the Cold War.  He returned to Washington under George W. Bush as secretary of defense and continued that role under Obama.  In between, he served on the boards of a number of corporations and public service organizations.

All well and good, until we look beneath the surface.  There we find clear evidence of the modern Republican disease of compromise with the hard left.

As secretary of defense, Gates compiled the worst record since the execrable Robert McNamara.  He played a critical role in the left’s campaign to convert the military into a petri dish for various sociopolitical campaigns.  He oversaw the placement of female officers aboard submarines, an asinine move taken solely to appease feminists.  He was silent in the face of military efforts to mainstream radical Islamist officers of the like of Nidal Hasan.

Gates also presided over the downsizing of the military, for no other reason than that Obama would have more wealth to “spread around.”  Numerous programs were curtailed, canceled, or stretched out.  The most notorious of these was the cancelation of the F-22 Raptor, the most advance fighter aircraft in the world, for reasons that appear more specious every day.

But the most telling of Gates’s efforts was the demolition of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” a successful program governing the treatment of gays in the U.S. military.  Under legislative and legal pressure, Gates dismantled the program in record time, giving in to all demands of the gay rights forces.  There is little evidence that he made any effort to protect the interests of serving American troops.

(A number of sources have stated that Gates became very friendly with Hillary Clinton while at DoD.  This may mean nothing.  But given the record, the sole rational response is pure suspicion.  We can be forgiven for asking “Why did he do that?” whenever a friend of Hillary does so much as walk through a door.)

This last strain of Gates’s behavior came into focus in his Atlanta, Georgia speech to the Boy Scouts of America, whom he serves as president.  The speech is yet another example of Gates acting as a destructive force within the organizations he serves, in which Gates called for the unregulated admission of openly gay scoutmasters.  According to Gates:

We cannot ignore growing internal challenges to our current membership policy from some councils… Nor can we ignore the social, political and juridical changes taking place in our country -- changes taking place at a pace over this past year no one anticipated.

Gates added that “I truly fear that any other alternative will be the end of us as a national movement.”

His solution amounts to complete capitulation.

Make no mistake – the gays want entry into the Scouts in order to demolish them from the within, much as they have demolished the Mainline Protestant churches and badly damaged the American Catholic Church.  This has nothing to do with civil rights, equality, or anything else.  It’s an all-out attack on the hated straight world, and Gates is the stalking horse.

Despite his disclaimer, Gates has effectively destroyed the Boy Scouts as a national organization with this speech – a long-term goal of the American left in and of itself.  As occurred with the Catholic priesthood, gays will begin driving straight men out of scoutmaster ranks.  Within a few years, the majority of scoutmasters will be homosexual.  No psychologically healthy parents will place their sons in the overnight care of such individuals.  The lawsuits will fly like hail.  The Scouts will break up into a number of competing regional and local organizations.  An invaluable institution for the socialization of male teenagers will be one with history.

It’s too late to do anything about Gates, but this must be taken as yet another lesson concerning GOP elitists who are nothing more than mirror images of their left-wing counterparts.