The remarks Pete Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, gave at Quantico this week have to be the most shameful, grotesquely racist, homophobic, and misogynistic remarks ever given by somebody in that position. Towards the end, things took a very troubling, an even more troubling turn, I should say, because all of it is troubling.
All of it demonstrates how hellbent Hegseth is on bringing the United States military to its knees and dismantling what had been a diverse, strong, and nimble force that understood that diversity is strength. Diversity of races, religions, belief systems, genders, and sexual orientations, and a force that learned from its past mistakes.
Hegseth wants to put an end to all that. He wants to gut all of that, just as he wants to end the fact that religion has no place in the Department of Defense.
Question: Is the United States a Christian country? The answer is in there, right in there, in Amendment One of the Constitution of the United States of America. No, the United States of America is not a Christian country. There shall be no establishment of a religion. It is not a country that allows religion into its government and into public spaces.
Why? That is a way to protect all religions and all religious people, and it is meant to protect those of us who don’t subscribe to a religion. Donald and his co-conspirators have cynically used the religiosity of many Americans to do away with all of that. They want the separation between church and state to go away.
Hegseth is one of the fiercest proponents of that mission. This is what he had to say about the kinds of institutions of higher learning from which he wants our future officers to come:
We need students of Western civilization and the pillars of our republic, leaders who understand the faith of Jerusalem, the philosophy of Athens, the power of Rome, and the freedom of Philadelphia, circa 1776. To meet this critical need, we’re partnering with a new crop of premier higher ed institutions, including Louisiana State University, LSU, Liberty University, Tuskegee University, Mississippi State University, and Hillsdale College.
Wow, premier institutions of higher learning? No.
Now, I don’t know everything about all of those places, but I do know that Liberty University was founded by Jerry Falwell, an extremist right wing pseudo Christian, and Hillsdale College is a very right wing Christian liberal arts college that has a substantial presence in right wing politics and public policy.
This is what happens when you reject institutions of higher learning that actually believe in educating their students as opposed to propagandizing them or proselytizing to them. But because this is Pete Hegseth, things got worse from there.
His so called “State of the Force” speech was alarmingly intertwined with his own apocalyptic religious beliefs. This is very dangerous stuff.
Hegseth: Today at my direction, I’m establishing the Office of Religious Affairs. Starting today and for secretaries of war after me, the Office of Religious Affairs will report straight to the top. No staff filters, no bureaucratic dilution, a direct line to the secretary. The experts, our chaplains, will finally have an advocate at the highest levels. Policy and resources will serve the mission, not smother the mission.
As Psalm 33:12 extols us, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord. Each of you swore an oath to the Constitution ending with, so help me God. When I raised my right hand in this job and made the same solemn pledge, we sealed a shared covenant up to and including the price of the lives of our best Americans, our absolute best. Each of us committed to the nation with the sentiment of the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah.
Lord, here I am, send me. Send me to fight the Redcoats. Send me to fight the communists. Send me to fight the Islamists. Send me.
Yes, please send him.
By the way, Hitler had one of those religious bureaus too. The Redcoats, the communists, the Islamists? I would bet real money that the so called chaplains who are going to be the experts are all Christian.
Now, it wouldn’t make it much less awful if there were diversity among those chaplains because religion has no place here at all. But by looking at everything through a strictly Christian prism and a very specifically extremist Christian position, Hegseth is making it clear that he wants a holy war.
Indeed, that is what Iran may be for him, a holy war, because he didn’t say Islamic extremists. He didn’t say theocratic dictatorships in Muslim countries. He just said Islamists.
As stupid as he is, he knows what he’s doing, and he knows who he’s pandering to, and he knows how dangerous all of it is. He is just a pathetic, empty, insecure little man who can’t even get his lines right. And you know how many, many times he practiced those remarks in the mirror.
But sadly, tragically, he is the head of this Department of Defense. He’s the civilian leader of the military, second only to the commander in chief, who may not be as religiously fanatical but is just as incompetent and dangerous.
These are extremely dark times, and we can only hope that there’s some accountability for Hegseth before things go too far here. But one of the problems we are facing as a nation right now is this very real fact that it is so much easier to destroy than it is to create.
Pete Hegseth is one of the most destructive people in our government today.
Thank you for the article, Mary. No religion should be in our government. Religion is a personal choice. As I have said many times, Hegseth should be impeached.
He’s a disgrace!!!