OPINION:
The State Department, which is nominally responsible for creating, curating and advocating for the policies of the United States that involve other nations, has about 80,000 employees.
Approximately 14,000 of those are foreign service officers, who are charged with representing the U.S. in various countries around the globe and, when necessary, defending American interests against all comers.
That last part seems important, and it is. We do not pay foreign service officers to have excellent manners or wear the right clothes or have attended the most elite schools, although many foreign service officers have built their careers on such things.
Simply put, we pay them to diligently advocate for the interests of the United States — all the states and their citizens.
Consequently, it is easy to understand why there was some concern upon the discovery that Federal Election Commission filings indicate that more than 90% (94% to be exact) of political contributions by State Department employees in the most recent presidential election went to Vice President Kamala Harris.
This, of course, confirmed what has long been suspected, namely, that the foreign service has become a haven for unreconstructed leftists and ideological globalists. They are the ones very likely to be hostile to the sorts of things (patriotism, pride in one’s country, military strength, a competent government no larger than absolutely required and a healthy nationalism) that many Americans value the most.
Nor has the foreign service’s response to the challenge posed to its hegemony by an outfit called the Ben Franklin Fellowship alleviated anyone’s concerns.
The Ben Franklin Fellowship is an insurgent effort to reform the foreign service from within. Its founders, Phil Linderman, Simon Hankinson and Matt Boyce, were career foreign service officers who decided that they had seen enough.
Inspired by the success of the Federalist Society in reforming what had been a legal community ideologically lost at sea, these three intrepid adventurers officially started the fellowship in February 2024.
At the moment, the effort has 95 fellows identified on the website and, somewhat ominously, more than 300 additional members not ready to risk their careers by making their membership known.
That is a shame, in large measure because the fellowship engages in pretty much middle-of-the-road activities. It provides mentoring to newly minted foreign service officers and encourages young conservatives, previously systematically excluded from recruitment, to enter the career.
It cooperates with department leadership to advance the leadership’s agenda and help it identify the difference between neutrally competent foreign service officers and those with their own agendas. It sponsors banger foreign policy seminars with titles such as “Putting America First in Foreign Policy” and “China’s War on Faith.”
The fellowship is united and animated by common principles that emphasize and promote an honest realism with respect to foreign policy and meritocracy in the State Department and, most important, the nation’s interest above all else.
Their principles start with the quaint notion that “U.S. international engagement should recognize the primacy of American sovereignty and the obligation to defend national borders.” They go on: “The central purpose of U.S. diplomacy is to serve the national interest”; “The United States must always maintain strong national defense capabilities to deter acts of foreign aggression and terrorism against our country”; and “the Department of State serves the President, who directs foreign policy.”
There is more, but you get the idea, and you can probably understand why the bipartisan foreign policy blob and its media henchman are not fans of the Ben Franklin crew.
If you come at the world from the right side of the political spectrum, you can tell when you are making progress because the typical dogs on the other side — The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, The Guardian — start to bark. They have all been barking at team Ben Franklin.
Moreover, the American Foreign Service Association — the current ruling bureaucratic crew who no doubt make up some, if not all, of the 94% that gave their campaign cash to Ms. Harris — has started to harrumph.
It is, like all other efforts of elites to hang on to their privilege, sad, predictable and destined to fail.
I am very pleased and quite proud to be a fellow. The simple and unalterable reality is that this effort has been the only attempt in living memory to restore some semblance of balance to the foreign service. As such, it is very welcome and long overdue.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times. He attended a Quaker school that was founded by Benjamin Franklin.
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