In October of 2007, a small but consequential meeting was taking place. The parish of a small Episcopal church met with the bishop after his yearly visit. They were discussing doctrine. A parishioner stood up and asked, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the only way to Heaven?”

It is the fundamental belief in Christianity. Jesus Christ is the Son of God was sent to Earth as a sacrifice for man so that we may be redeemed for our sins. It is the very least and the very most when it comes to Christianity.

And the Episcopal Bishop answered, “Who are we to say He is the only way?”

They had their answer. The decision was made and the Episcopal Church of South Haven was shattered. While the Episcopalians had the money, the power, and the deed to the building, that group of orthodox parishoners, soon to be known as Anglicans, had nothing. Leftist media (and Wikipedia) declared that the 2008 Episcopal schism was about “something something gays in the clergy,” ignoring the deeper doctrinal struggles that caused those devoted to the Word of God to walk away from a denomination that no longer held the Bible as sacred.

To this day, the Episcopal church claims their clergy swears loyalty to “Doctrine, Discipline and Worship.”

The Anglican Church of North America, however, claims their three pillars to be “The Bible, the Creeds and Tradition.”

You may wonder what this introduction about a small community on Lake Michigan has to do with, if the article is titled correctly, a review of Pete Hegseth’s book, The War on Warriors. Well, it’s 2025 and if you haven’t learned you have to read the life story to get to the recipe by now, I don’t know what to tell you.

In America, like Christianity, good things come in threes. The Nina, the Pinta, the Santa Maria. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The tri-state area…

Triangles are awesome. We even put them on our money.

In The War on Warriors, Donald Trump’s pick for Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth discusses how the military allowed wokeness to creep into its ranks. This wokeness has led to lower recruitment numbers, lower morale, and an inability to achieve the one objective of the American military: winning.

While Hegseth mentions the requisite “Duty, Honor and Country,” a phrase from General Douglas MacArthur’s Farewell Speech, Hegseth describes a different military. In Hegseth’s military, it seems as though their pillars are “The Constitution, Merit and Tradition.” A three-legged stool has a solid base, after all.

It took some time for me to form my concept of the three pillars of the military. Honor, brotherhood and sacrifice are all central tenets of the military that would fall under the pillar of tradition. Respect, integrity, and accountability would fall under merit. Our men in uniform don’t swear an oath to the country, they swear on the Constitution.

And, like a small band of soon-to-be-dubbed Anglicans in 2007, Hegseth has discovered that the culture war has eroded the pillars of the military just like it has eroded the pillars of a denomination. The culprit in regards to these two institutions is the same: wokeness. Cultural Marxism (dismissed as a right-wing conspiracy theory on Wikipedia) refers to the march of political correctness through the institutions, made famous by Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci was translated into English in the late 1960s and Frankfurt School’s Herbert Marcuse became popular among college students. Military education institutions were not immune to this rot. The goal of cultural Marxism is to overturn the existing social system and therefore overthrow the United States.

Combine that with people like John Kerry throwing medals over fences and maybe you can see how tradition and merit have been undermined for decades.

The most obvious casualty in the war on the military is merit. Diversity, equity and inclusion have taken a sledgehammer to merit. Soldiers don’t know if their commanders are in their rank because they earned their position or because they are filling some quota. Standards have been lowered in an attempt to put women on the battlefield. Hegseth outlines studies that show women in combat are a bad idea, and, yet, the military persists in putting women into the field.

While Donald Trump signs executive orders day after day, attempting to remove the cultural Marxist rot from the Executive Branch of the federal government, it’s obvious that it’s not enough.

Hegseth reminds us that the military exists for one purpose which is to win wars. He asserts, “[The Leftists] believe the purpose of the military is to enact domestic policy and chalk up wins over their culture war opponents, not defend the nation and Constitution.” (p. 198)

We are in a culture war. A cold civil war of ideology. The Left has tainted every aspect of Americanism with cultural Marxism and the military is just another patriotic organization they need to destroy. Hegseth’s epilogue is a letter to his sons in which he writes,

“Is America worth fighting for?

“Is America worth dying for?”

I made my choice a long time ago to fight like Hell. Where do you stand?

The War on Warriors clocks it at 226 pages. That’s only 8 hours on audiobook. And, it’s an easy read. You could knock it out in a weekend if you aren’t distracted by the NFL playoffs. Hegseth isn’t just a Fox News host. He knows what he’s talking about. He’s a veteran. He’s been deployed. He knows what it means to fight a war as a soldier in America’s woke Army.

Hegseth isn’t quite as restrained as he was in Battle for the American Mind. There are definitely some eff-bombs about some individuals who I’m not so happy received pardons from Joe Biden. Hegseth clearly wants someone held accountable for the disaster that was the Afghanistan exit, and I can’t say I disagree.

If you want to see our military push back on the culture war, push back on cultural Marxism, and become the world’s best fighting force again, this book will show you why President Trump chose him as his nominee for Secretary of Defense. Trump’s executive order removing DEI is just the beginning.

Pete Hegseth is necessary. Welcome to the cabinet, Secretary Hegseth. Let's f**king go.

9/10 because my rating system is arbitrary and I don’t know what I would give a 10.

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Kate works in production at LwC. She is an author. When she isn’t writing...who are we kidding? She’s always writing. You can find her here on X.