Pete Hegeseth is terrifying.
He's written a few books. One is called "American Crusade". I'm not going to read it, but here are snips from the New York Times review:
Pete Hegseth and His ‘Battle Cry’ for a New Christian Crusade
As he embraced a combative brand of Christianity in recent years, he wrote that people who enjoy the benefits of Western civilization should “thank a Crusader.” On his arm, he has a tattoo with the words “Deus Vult,” which he has described as a “battle cry” of the Crusades. “Voting is a weapon, but it’s not enough,” he wrote in a book, “American Crusade,” published in May 2020. “We don’t want to fight, but, like our fellow Christians one thousand years ago, we must.”
Mr. Hegseth’s interest in the Crusades — campaigns that featured so many atrocities that many Christian leaders today view them as a shameful stain on the religion’s history — is linked both to his Christian beliefs and worldview. In his books, he says that if the United States cannot mount a successful defense against Islamist and leftist ideology, the nation will be destroyed and “human freedom will be finished.” The Crusades are a frequent touchstone in contemporary American debates about Christian power, said Matthew Gabriele, a professor of medieval studies at Virginia Tech. When Barack Obama, then the president, referred to the period in a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in 2015 as a time when people “committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ,” some conservatives took his remarks as an affront.
In his writings, Mr. Wilson has argued that slavery “produced in the South a genuine affection between the races,” that homosexuality should be a crime and that the 19th amendment guaranteeing women the right to vote was a mistake. He has written that women should not ordinarily hold political office because “the Bible does say that when feminine leadership is common, it should be reckoned not as a blessing but as a curse.” The governing documents of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches include a statement that women should not “be mustered for combat.” (Mr. Hegseth has also said that he does not believe women should serve in combat roles.) The church reserves leadership positions for men and asserts that men are the heads of their households, views shared by many theologically conservative churches.
Mr. Wilson is among the Christian leaders who in recent years have reframed the Crusades, which included mass killings of Jews and Muslims, in a positive light. In the interview, he described the campaigns as imperfect, even horrifying at times, but also as “a long overdue reaction to Muslim aggression.” Mr. Hegseth has written that while the Crusades were filled with injustice and unspeakable tragedy, the alternative would have been “horrific,” because it is Western civilization that has nurtured the values of “freedom” and “equal justice.” His writings warn of the growing presence of the Muslim faith in the West, and urge Americans to work on issues such as education, media and law to protect Christian values.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/hegseth-church-crusades.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Crusade
Hegseth explicitly rejects democracy in his book, equating it to a leftist demand; "For leftists, calls for ‘democracy’ represent a complete rejection of our system.
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Of the man now in charge of the US military. 