News regarding that other Lexington Institution
The Virginia House of Delegates passed legislation this week that asks ask a question the state should have asked decades ago. That is, should taxpayers continue funding an institution that spent generations celebrating treason in defense of slavery?
A story that we've all been living only regarding VMI, and this one has teeth. I've known many Keydets over the years, and they were fine people without a hintof racism, but.the institution's.reverence to the lost cause bullshit is as bad as what we face. Of course, all the usual suspects are outraged that the state should examine public expenditures here.
And really, I'm not here to bury VMI, but to praise those I've known that went there just to be clear.
Virginia finally questions whether it should keep funding Confederate nostalgia
The Virginia House of Delegates passed legislation this week that asks ask a question the state should have asked decades ago. That is, should taxpayers continue funding an institution that spent generations celebrating treason in defense of slavery? We know my answer to the question as a.native. whose roots predate the American Revolution.
The final version of House Bill 1377 got watered down—because of course it did (have to face those MAGA voters, for now at least)—but the 71-24 vote still matters. It states that even the Virginia Military Institute, with all its marble-columned gravitas and influential alumni, has to answer for teaching generations of cadets that the Confederacy was something other than what it was: a failed rebellion to preserve human bondage.
Again, I implore you equal time to the Revolution, and yes, George Washington had his problems, but he was much better than Lee could hope to be (as his own history indicates that he was trying to join that legacy.)
So what happened exactly?
HB 1377 creates a task force to examine whether VMI actually fulfills its stated mission as a state-supported institution. Originally, the bill would have questioned whether VMI deserves state funding at all. Bipartisan amendments stripped that language out because threatening an institution's budget is apparently too confrontational, even when that institution spent decades actively promoting historical lies.
Of course, our alma mater follows it's own money free from those constraints.
VMI Superintendent Lt. Gen. David Furness now says the school supports the amended bill and welcomes the review. Which is what you say when the alternative was having your entire funding model questioned.The task force will evaluate whether VMI trains military leaders effectively, whether its academics measure up to other state universities.(I'd argue it does despite.the bullshit), and whether it's actually responded to a 2021 state investigation.
That investigation found VMI maintained what it carefully termed "an outdated, idealized reverence for the Civil War and the Confederacy." Translation: VMI was still actively celebrating the people who tried to destroy the United States so they could keep enslaving human beings.
Two other bills are still moving through the legislature. HB 1374 would dissolve VMI's independent Board of Visitors and transfer governance to Virginia State University, a historically Black institution. The symbolism is not subtle. HB 22 would end VMI's special exemption from sexual assault reporting protections—because apparently VMI thought it needed its own separate rules for handling sexual violence, which tells you something.
And the elephant (natch) in the room is the "lost cause"
This will be remedial for most of us, but still.(one day I may have a wider readership, knock wood and. look heavenwards):
If you're not familiar with the Lost Cause mythology, here's what you need to know: It's the lie that the Confederacy was fighting for "states' rights" and "Southern heritage" rather than for the explicit right to own human beings.(funny how those arguments disappear those days, just ask Minnesota).
It's historical revisionism at its.worst—transformed losing generals from traitors who killed U.S. soldiers into noble heroes defending their homeland and doing god's will. It sanitizes slavery, erases the experiences of enslaved people, and turns a war to preserve human bondage into a tragic but honorable defense of principle.It's also, not coincidentally, complete horseshit.
For us, it's Lee. For them, Jackson (full disclosure, that dude is in my family tree.)
VMI has been a particularly committed guardian of these lies. The school holds annual ceremonies honoring cadets who fought and died for the Confederacy—not as cautionary tales about what happens when educated people choose treason, but as heroes to emulate. For generations, VMI celebrated Stonewall Jackson, a Confederate general who taught at the school before taking up arms against the United States. The institute wove Confederate mythology so deeply into its identity that Black students and women walking onto campus had to navigate an environment that literally celebrated their subjugation.
They still hold up the battle of New Market as an American Thermopylae, costing those cadets that died as the 300.
Jeremiah Woods, a Black former cadet who left VMI after experiencing racial targeting, testified that cadets learned extensively about Confederate troops while "enslaved people who supported VMI are erased." That's the Lost Cause in practice: center the stories of enslavers, disappear the enslaved, and call it heritage.
Heritage not hate. Nevermind that.that heritage should erasedfrom our daily lives.
Why now?
Well, non-racists are in power. (TL;DR.version)
VMI gets 27.5% of its $120 million budget from Virginia taxpayers. That's over $30 million in public money flowing annually to an institution that, until very recently, was actively promoting a historical fantasy designed to make white supremacy respectable.
The thing is, VMI.can stand on its own damn merits.if it were to chose to do so. George Marshall, not Thomas Jackson.
Delegate Dan Helmer, who sponsored the bill, framed it plainly: taxpayer money should advance Virginia's interests, not subsidize VMI's efforts to "move past their Lost Cause ideology." The phrasing—"moving past"—is doing heavy lifting there. It implies VMI hasn't quite arrived at actually being past it yet. See above.
To give VMI some additional credit: changes have happened. Under its first Black superintendent, retired Maj. Gen. Cedric Wins, the school began addressing Confederate monuments and traditions. The current superintendent says VMI has adopted 34 of 38 recommendations from the 2021 investigation and is working on the rest.
But what of course happened to Wins? VMI's Board of Visitors chose not to renew Wins' contract in 2025. The first Black superintendent who actually started addressing VMI's Confederate problem got shown the door. Which raises the obvious question of whether VMI's commitment to reform will outlast the people pushing for it. Rich white alumni sounds like a familiar tune.
Using institutional importance as shield
The Pentagon has expressed "significant concern" about the legislation, arguing that VMI has been a vital source of commissioned officers for generations. North Carolina has offered to relocate the entire institution if Virginia withdraws support, framing it as a rescue mission for military readiness rather than what it actually is: an invitation for VMI to escape accountability by moving to a state that won't ask hard questions.
But who runs the pentagon right now. A slavish bootlicker who will do anything the social racist posting ass in charge wants.
These responses reveal how institutions weaponize their own importance. Yes, VMI produces military officers. Yes, it has influential alumni including the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. And yes, those facts matter. But what of the generations of discrimination against people of color and now, women.
But they don't exempt VMI from having to explain why a state-funded institution in 2026 spent decades celebrating people who took up arms against the United States to preserve slavery. Value isn't a get-out-of-scrutiny-free card. Being important doesn't mean you get to keep teaching lies with public money.
Where this should go
The task force will deliver its findings by November 2026. If it's actually serious—and that's a big if—it needs to ask questions that go beyond whether VMI removed the most obvious Confederate statues.
- Does VMI teach accurate history about the Civil War, Reconstruction, and slavery's long aftermath? Or does it still soft-pedal the Confederacy's actual purpose?
- Does it prepare future military leaders to serve a diverse democracy? Or does it train them in an environment where Confederate nostalgia is baked into the institutional culture?
- Does it create conditions where students of all backgrounds can thrive? Or does it maintain traditions that make some students feel like outsiders at their own state institution?
Virginia taxpayers deserve these answers. So do the students who attend VMI. So does the military that commissions its graduates. And so does the historical record that the "lost cause" has been distorting for over a century.
While amended statute is weaker than it should be, it still means something: Virginia is saying that even venerable institutions have to reckon with their history honestly. That taxpayer support comes with expectations. That Confederate nostalgia, however deeply embedded in tradition, isn't beyond scrutiny.
Other tax-funded institutions have.done a lot more and tried a lot harder: William and Mary (full.disclosure also an.alumnus there).and the University of Virginia spring to mind, despite how far you think they have or should have gone.
This is fight worth having—not just regarding VMI, but regarding every institution still clinging to Confederate mythology in a state that has changed more than they have, or want to admit. I think that latter bit will resonate a bit with all of us.
Non in cautus futuri
