Althouse: "At the heart of Mr. Hegseth’s vision is an insistence that waging war is fundamentally different from other vocations in society because it is deadly and is meant to be."

October 7, 2025

"At the heart of Mr. Hegseth’s vision is an insistence that waging war is fundamentally different from other vocations in society because it is deadly and is meant to be."

"'This is life or death,' he said. 'As we all know, this is you versus an enemy hellbent on killing you.'... [T]he government’s duties to citizens who find themselves in harm’s way, fighting for their country, are not like its duties to citizens in other circumstances.... In a life-or-death occupational setting, there is no room for preferential treatment like affirmative action. No soldier should ever be led or covered by someone who has been promoted for reasons other than military effectiveness. That criterion is not bigoted. It arises from a reasonable philosophy of the limited mission of the military...."

Writes Christopher Caldwell, in "That Hegseth Speech Was Actually Pretty Good" (NYT).

66 comments:

doctrev said...: The NYT is far too late to the party, to the extent I valued their opinion at all. Apparently America's generals are far too stupid to realize when their jobs are on the line. Perfection.; 10/7/25, 8:28 AM
Quaestor said...: The USN used to have a recruiting slogan: The Navy -- It's not just a job, it's an adventure.

All the LARPERs who riot in the streets of Portland ought to understand what an adventure is. They've spent their lives playing D&D and/or Warcraft.; 10/7/25, 8:30 AM
Shackleton said...: I’ve worked for a couple of Army vets over the years (both combat vets that retired at the rank of Colonel). With both, I noticed that if something was out of whack or particularly difficult, they would remind the office that “hey, we’re not being shot at here…” or “no one will die if this goes wrong…we’ll figure it out.” They had been there, done that and knew the difference.

Sounds like Hegseth is trying to remind military folks about the other side of that coin.; 10/7/25, 8:33 AM
Birches said...: I'm shocked the NYT staff room allowed Christopher Caldwell to be published there. He's probably worse than Josh Hawley in their minds. *The Age of Entitlement* is revolutionary in its interpretation of what the Civil Rights Act of 1964 did to our Constitution.; 10/7/25, 8:37 AM
jim5301 said...: Meritocracy - no doubt that explains why Pete got the top position.; 10/7/25, 8:38 AM
Quaestor said...: When a soldier, Marine, or sailor goes adventuring, he gets to kill monsters, but only the monsters the Dungeon Master (i.e., the gubmint) designates. If he fails to obey that rule, he risks being realigned, from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil, for instance, from paladin to orc in one roll of the four-sided die.; 10/7/25, 8:38 AM
rhhardin said...: Lots of things are life or death not in the military. At the bottom end of that slippery slope that starts with safety-critical jobs, black youths are shooting everybody handy in status wars in the streets because it's free.; 10/7/25, 8:38 AM
rehajm said...: I thought the only error was the aesthetics and they didn’t go full Patton. If because of humanity we must insist on armies then the message was perfect…; 10/7/25, 8:39 AM
rhhardin said...: The military problem started with Tailhook, when it was decided that males to too toxic.; 10/7/25, 8:40 AM
Beasts of England said...: ’No soldier should ever be led or covered by someone who has been promoted for reasons other than military effectiveness.’

One would hope so.; 10/7/25, 8:40 AM
Larry J said...: While some of the Antifa rioters show signs of training and skills, most seem nothing more than Cosplay Commandos. Meet their violence with violence, arrest as many as you can, and squeeze them for information.; 10/7/25, 8:41 AM
Peachy said...: The Vile Lying liar left - lied about Hegseth.
Even Peggy Noonan. Screw her.; 10/7/25, 8:51 AM
Wince said...: From an excellent opinion piece on standards... and Peggy Noonan? "Hush Queen."

It was a back-to-basics speech, and exactly what officers needed to hear from Hegseth and President Trump. “Most of [the speech] was stuff we say over a beer at the O Club,” said a retired Marine general.

Which made the speech unacceptable to Peggy Noonan, an opinion columnist for the Wall Street Journal. From her perch on the Upper East Side, the old songbird of a bygone political era splattered on Hegseth’s head, declaring that military leadership has little to do with standards for fitness or combat readiness. She whined that Hegseth was a “drama queen” who watched “‘Platoon’ too much as a child.” Her column was full of bile and class prejudice. Most of her words could have been written by Paul Krugman or Graydon Carter, pundits from the political Left who despise Trump and his cabinet as much for their politics as who they represent: real America.

Out in real America, people live with the consequences of reckless choices and ill-conceived plans hatched in places like California, New York, and Washington, DC. People see the decline in standards for the military but also in other segments of American society. In standards for education. In standards for customer service. In standards for public behavior. In standards for family life. In standards for religious leadership. Wherever progressives have found a standard, they have worked tirelessly to lower it – or negate it entirely.

Because a standard is, after all, a reflection of a collective value. We create standards to ensure that the values of our culture are upheld: indeed, so that a shared culture itself can be maintained. Yes; standards exclude some people from certain benefits and opportunities. But certain exclusions are necessary, if only to maintain the integrity and functions of our institutions. The political Left hates standards for all of these reasons. But more than anything, they despise standards because they imply the existence of a norm, and justify judgments based on the norm.

For President Trump, that norm is merit. In his own remarks to the generals and admirals, Trump said the purpose of the American military is “not to protect anyone’s feelings, it’s to protect our republic […] to protect our country,” and that’s why the Trump administration is “bringing back a focus on fitness, ability, character, and strength.” This is the latest chapter in Trump’s ongoing effort to restore trust in our government by reconstructing the character and integrity of its institutions.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/10/06/hush_queen_1139326.html; 10/7/25, 8:52 AM
Jamie said...: Meritocracy - no doubt that explains why Pete got the top position

[shrug] Well, I understand Robert E. Lee was Lincoln's first choice to command the Union Army thanks to his formidable strategic merit, but he went Confederate out of family concerns, more or less.

You have to be good at what you do, and you have to share the mission. And also - if a significant part of the mission in this case was bolstering sagging recruiting numbers with actually qualified recruits, which current general would you pick? They're the ones who created the problem.; 10/7/25, 8:52 AM
hanuman_prodigious_leaper said...: there is military thinking - care for men vs cannon fodder thinking - deplorable throwaway trash; 10/7/25, 8:53 AM
sphilben said...: Former 16 years Air Force and Air Force Reserve (E-7) here... I loved his speech. Anyone who isn't full-bore on board with what he said can just leave. I almost wish I was young enough to sign back up.; 10/7/25, 8:55 AM
Howard said...: Considering that everyone is a member of the militia, you fat fucks who cosplay with firearms should impose the SecWar's standards on yourselves. Then maybe you wouldn't get the vapours every time someone challenged your idiotic opinions.; 10/7/25, 8:57 AM
planetgeo said...: To be fair, we should give our leftist team in our commentariat an opportunity to educate us on the mission-critical functions Biden's military leaders were developing with their drag shows.; 10/7/25, 9:00 AM
RideSpaceMountain said...: He's not wrong.; 10/7/25, 9:00 AM
narciso said...: noonan is a very silly woman, started at cbs under rather,

Sherman one of the most brutal war fighters said 'war in hell'
Eisenhower lamented the necessary but savage costs of war,; 10/7/25, 9:05 AM
planetgeo said...: Speaking of Peggy Noonan, she's the type of opinion writer who doesn't just sing in the shower but instead recites her own columns out loud, word for word, as she shampoos her hair.; 10/7/25, 9:06 AM
Joe Bar said...: It is difficult to explain what coming back from deployment to a war zone feels like. It took about a year to come to terms with the change in earnestness and finality involved in day to day life. And I had only been over there for a year.; 10/7/25, 9:07 AM
narciso said...: it is said that Strangelove was a dark take on General Lemay,
who they thought was paranoid, but his opposite number in the Stavka, thought one could win a nuclear war,; 10/7/25, 9:07 AM
Joe Bar said...: There were a lot of good ideas and truth in Hegseth's speech. The best part was the weeding out of the BS training requirements that take up so much of the military's time.; 10/7/25, 9:08 AM
narciso said...: we have often ventured into war, not understanding the resolve of the enemy, looking since 2001, one might say we are in an hudna, a cold pause with many Salafi elements, but we saw how quickly the flame surges in Manchester, for instance,; 10/7/25, 9:13 AM
Howard said...: My favorite part of the whole affair is that the perfumed princes and princesses were summoned to stand before the man and read the riot act. The strength of the American military is a strong, smart and relatively autonomous enlisted corps. The Flag officers are there mostly as highly paid bureaucrats to serve the troops beans, bullets and gasoline.; 10/7/25, 9:13 AM
William said...: I read some of the comments. They don't just disagree. They're hostile.......It's instructive to consider the example of Charles DeGaulle. DeGaulle was a WWI hero who went to church on Sunday. For such reasons, the French left considered him a Fascist.. Before WWII, DeGaulle wanted to equip two professionally manned tank battalions. The French left nixed that proposal. They thought that DeGaulle would use those battalions to seize power. There you have it: the left thought that it was fascistic to equip an effective defense with an effective leader against Hitler.; 10/7/25, 9:15 AM
narciso said...: orwell 'some things are so ridiculous, only intellectuals can believe them'; 10/7/25, 9:17 AM
Breezy said...: Street gangs are the JV teams of military service. They have a lot of the same protectionist interests but unfortunately attack each other instead of uniting to attack one external enemy. In a magical world, they’d all enlist and reap the rewards of service to something greater than their neighborhoods.; 10/7/25, 9:17 AM
William said...: I don't disagree with Hegseth regarding combat fitness. It would be well, however, to remember that for many forms of present day combat, physical fitness is irrelevant. You don't want to weed out the Turings.; 10/7/25, 9:19 AM
Mike (MJB Wolf) said...: Who allowed this common sense into the NYT! Did Bari sneak back in?; 10/7/25, 9:22 AM
brylun said...: Vietnam Veteran and also served in East Africa. I loved Hegseth's speech and his presentation. You want your best guys for the toughest missions.; 10/7/25, 9:29 AM
gilbar said...: this is Just OUTRAGEOUS!
the purpose of the dept of defense is NOT to win wars
the purpose of the dept of defense is NOT to wage wars

the purpose of the dept of defense is to:
make defense contractors rich (and thus the politicians they own)
also, its purpose is to Promote Social Change; by providing sex reassignment surgeries and treatments

don't believe me? ask Igna; 10/7/25, 9:34 AM
narciso said...: you know of devdochina, hazing is the nicest way of describing the Russian basic training routine, I'm sure the PLA and the Revolutionary Guard have analogs,; 10/7/25, 9:39 AM
n.n said...: War should be [in]sane and rare. That said, all's fair in lust and abortion, too.; 10/7/25, 9:43 AM
Howard said...: The appropriate level of hazing is both an art and a science. You civilians should rewatch the first half of Full Metal Jacket. It's a process of breaking you down and then building you back up. It ends up instilling with you a nearly limitless capacity for mental and physical stress while maintaining an even strain. It's been 45 years and the lessons that I learned and the training effectiveness has not waned one iota.; 10/7/25, 9:44 AM
Kakistocracy said...: The America First movement was tired of seeing American troops deployed in foreign countries. We want them deployed in America First.; 10/7/25, 9:46 AM
TosaGuy said...: “ I don't disagree with Hegseth regarding combat fitness. It would be well, however, to remember that for many forms of present day combat, physical fitness is irrelevant. You don't want to weed out the Turings.”

I’ve spent a long time in the military. The physical fitness standard is not that difficult to pass for someone who is disciplined enough to work out three days a week and not park themselves at a McDonalds.

It only takes a minimal amount of self-discipline and that is Hegseth’s point.; 10/7/25, 9:46 AM
n.n said...: Hazing? For the girls. And the boys, too? As it was in the Greek days of Democratic progress. Turn around. Through the back... black hole... whore h/t NAACP at the intersection of racism and sexism, here it comes.; 10/7/25, 9:47 AM
TosaGuy said...: Why do I think that the non-serving left while willfully abandon all working out and make themselves fat to spite Pet Hegseth?; 10/7/25, 9:50 AM
TosaGuy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/7/25, 9:50 AM
narciso said...: they may require suspensor belts like the Baron,; 10/7/25, 9:59 AM
JAORE said...: Fitness was important to tell the upper layers. But, the treasonous acts of top military brass (Vindeman, I'll call my Chinese counterpart, DEI and more) was the real shot across the bow. The next shot will strike home.; 10/7/25, 10:02 AM
n.n said...: War or Planned Personhood? There is a not so nuanced difference. The former is with cause and constrained with collateral damage, and the latter is for human rites and progressive with collateral damage albeit hidden or rare.; 10/7/25, 10:02 AM
Temujin said...: The US military should have nothing to do with 'social justice' (whatever that is). This should seem self-evident, but we live in an era where we are mostly safe and getting soft sitting at home, eating and watching TV. There is a massive disconnect between the reality of what our military is there to do for us, and does daily, and those whose thoughts are obtained from consensus on media.

Consensus should have little to do with either scientific research or the operation of our military. These have to be very black and white. Either they work or they do not.; 10/7/25, 10:05 AM
Quaestor said...: "You don't want to weed out the Turings."

Did Alan Turing hold a military rank? You don't want to compare apples to oranges.; 10/7/25, 10:08 AM
Deep State Reformer said...: I didn't watch the Hegseth speech myself, but those that did, and whose opinion I value, were mostly positive about it. Sadly, once again though the Blue Left's media noise machine ignores the whole thing and says the theme was "no more fatsos in the ranks, period", because of course they do . Fuck the NYT and the rest of their noise makers and smoke screeners.; 10/7/25, 10:15 AM
john mosby said...: Okay, I will get both sides angry at me now. Please read to the end. Remember I am saying this as a biracial veteran who hangs out with a lot of gays.

The military can’t be pure meritocracy, because it depends on intangibles at least as much as it depends on metrics. I’m talking about things like unit cohesion and esprit de corps.

Back under Truman, the professional military pushed back against integration of blacks, mainly because they believed white soldiers could not adapt. And even if the white soldiers obeyed orders, that would be it - they would not internalize the idea of integration. And that would eventually show up in suboptimal battlefield results.

Did that prediction happen? Maybe, maybe not. We restored the status quo ante in Korea and we won all the tactical battles in Vietnam. But there was a transaction cost in terms of race incidents, white soldiers avoiding service, etc. Did that transaction cost add to the political considerations that made us lose the VN war? We will probably never know.

Ok, so move on to women, gays, and trans. There’s jobs biological women can do as well as men. There certainly are jobs biological men can do as well as men, even if they’re gay or think they’re women. But is that meritocracy worth the social turbulence of mixing cis and trans, gay and straight, men and women?

Or what if there is no social turbulence? What if the average 19yo has no problem at all with gays and trans and mixing sexes? Is that worth upsetting the older generations in and out of the military? Is the unit cohesion gain worth some loss of measurable merit? Do you have to make compromises, for example since the couch potato mil-age cohort is weak, bringing in gays and trans who can pass a combat fitness test with their Y chromosomes, even though their cishet buddies will never turn their backs on them?

I don’t have answers - only questions. CC, JSM; 10/7/25, 10:20 AM
Hey Skipper said...: jim5301 said...
Meritocracy - no doubt that explains why Pete got the top position.

Lloyd Austin; 10/7/25, 10:21 AM
john mosby said...: Quaestor: “ Did Alan Turing hold a military rank? You don't want to compare apples to oranges.”

I see what you did there. CC, JSM; 10/7/25, 10:23 AM
narciso said...: Austin, really was a General Blimp, of course he didn't really hold the rains, that was that crazy political officer, Bishop Hooker, sic, who tried to purge the forces,; 10/7/25, 10:25 AM
Bruce Hayden said...: “ We want them deployed in America First.”

Then you are in favor of National Guard troops being deployed to protect federal employees and federal property?; 10/7/25, 10:48 AM
Kakistocracy said...: Where are all those far right groups now that are against government overreach and tyranny?

Too busy licking the sole of the boot that's treading on them.; 10/7/25, 10:53 AM
narciso said...: https://x.com/Project_Veritas/status/1975576176622973321 civility,; 10/7/25, 10:57 AM
Lem Vibe Bandit said...: The US hasn’t had to fight a war for its survival. Commensurate with that fact, it’s warrior ethos is not as strong as it would be.; 10/7/25, 11:02 AM
Christopher B said...: john mosby, I think you bring up a good point. My estimation is the Left has a hard-on for the way the military was top-down integrated (more or less, I've seen some commentary indicating there were informal integrations of necessity during WWII prior to Truman's order) and sees it both as an harbinger of later civilian social integration and as an example they can use when claiming forceable integration in other circumstances has no ill effects. It fits nicely with their 'moral equivalent of war' stance.; 10/7/25, 11:08 AM
narciso said...: well we have been fortunate, on that mark,; 10/7/25, 11:09 AM
Rusty said...: Howard. Why the hardon for gun owners? All the militia has to do is to delay any miscreants until the regulars get there. You don't have to be in very good shape for that. You do have to have the desire though.
Well, Damn it. Somebody has to read the maps for the enlisted men, Howard.
As for hazing. My private military school made FMJ look tame. There they could actually hit you, and did.; 10/7/25, 12:02 PM
Achilles said...: Kakistocracy said...
Where are all those far right groups now that are against government overreach and tyranny?

Too busy licking the sole of the boot that's treading on them.

We are Waiting for videos of the marines to start beating the shit out of soros paid jackboots attacking ICE agents in Chicago and Portland.

The national guard is being too nice to the violent rioters in the racist Democrat insurrection and illegal immigrant invasion.; 10/7/25, 1:08 PM
William50 said...: For those who have never been in combat, you win a battle by having the best trained, supported, and meanest MFers there are. You can't win with a bunch of DEI pussies. Anyone who has been in combat will agree.; 10/7/25, 1:19 PM
Christopher B said...: Lem Vibe Bandit said...
The US hasn’t had to fight a war for its survival. Commensurate with that fact, it’s warrior ethos is not as strong as it would be.

Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, William Tecumseh Sherman, Ulysses Grant, James Longstreet, and Robert E Lee (among others) would probably dispute that claim.; 10/7/25, 2:01 PM
mikee said...: The US Navy officer corps was integrated via promotion of exceptional Black Chief Petty Officers first, before new Black recruits were allowed into training as officers. This showed the existing Naval officer corps that the merit of the new Black officers was beyond question. Merit works as a basis for integration of new groups into old boy's clubs.; 10/7/25, 3:35 PM
Howard said...: Rusty, it's not gun ownership I oppose, it's worthless non hacking pukes with no respect for tools and lack muzzle discipline at the range. A fat fuck body poisons the brain and fills men with estrogen.; 10/7/25, 4:39 PM
Kakistocracy said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 10/7/25, 5:18 PM
Kakistocracy said...: There's a reason that the military have adopted a culture with a strong honor code. You need to implicitly trust your fellow soldier when he says he's got your back in a firefight.

I find the extraordinary hubris — and the lack of imagination and intellectual curiosity of a man who has made a living of shouting his mouth off without ever enduring the consequences of his ideas -- in front of the US military's finest (who have worked their way up by being accountable for their actions).

This was the day that performative dishonorable liars and draft dodgers chose to lecture the honorable on what it is to be a soldier. Tragic.

I’m sure the generals and admirals in attendance were all duly impressed.; 10/7/25, 9:14 PM
Rusty said...: Howard. On any range I've been on those people don't last very long. In our club the biggest violators have been cops. They aren't in our club anymore. But the fact that they're on the street should give anyone pause.; 10/8/25, 2:09 PM