Timothy Snyder:

[Trump nominee for Secretary of Defense, Pete] Hegseth does not need to know early American history, though, since he disavows the American republic.  He is a Christian Reconstructionist who believes that God’s law should prevail.  The Constitution has to be understood, Hegseth claims, as subordinate to a broader unwritten Covenant with God, the meaning of which is of course known to him personally.  He thus opposes the constitutional structure of the United States as it figures in the actual text. 

Hegseth denies the rectitude of the First Amendment, which separates church and state: “without God, America is not America.”  He says explicitly that “the diminished role of Christ’s Kingdom in America’s founding” is to blame for the malaise that followed.  Switching his metaphysics for a moment, he claims that the separation of church and state opened “the gates of Mordor.”  Constitutional patriotism is not a good thing, since it can “untether us from the timeless truth, from the Bible.”  Of course, as is always the case, God’s law turns out to mean what Hegseth and his friends say that it means.

The enemy within, broadly defined as “the Left,” is presented as already having a plan to annihilate everyone else.  This is, of course, what fascists always say: it is legitimate to destroy the other side, because however invisibly and conspiratorially and secretly, it is planning to kill you first.  Thus for Hegseth, the Left has the goal of “erasing America’s soul, culture, and institutions. We are the ones standing in their way—and have been targeted for annihilation.”  Hegseth does not dwell, for some reason, on the actual countries that actually want the American system to break.

Only the “enemy within” captures his imagination. Hegseth enjoins his readers to “remember the plan the Left has for you—utter annihilation.”  And again: “In more ways than you can imagine, leftists have surrounded traditional American patriots on all sides, ready to close in for the kill: killing our founders, killing our flag, and killing capitalism. The only option for survival in a near ambush is to charge; to close with, and destroy, the enemy.”

Trump’s nominee for the position of secretary of defense seems to believe that we need a cleansing civil war.  He instructs us that “we are not only fighting a battle against foreign enemies.”  “Sometimes,” he writes, “the fight must begin with a struggle against domestic enemies. Those who would violate the Covenant that binds us as a community of faith and that grants us blessing.” 

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Deus Vult — God wills it.

Tattoo on Pete Hegseth’s strong right arm. A man of unquestioning faith, only God knows how much Hegseth knows about His eternal, awesome, incomprehensible, all-merciful, terrifying will. Deus vult, baby.