In the Arena

by Pete Hegseth

  Are you striving valiantly?

  Is your face marred by dust and sweat and blood?

  Are you spending yourself in a worthy cause?

  Are you daring greatly?

  Are you in the arena?

  If you’re in the arena, you’ll know. If you think you might be, you probably aren’t—which makes seizing this day, this moment, the most important thing you can do for the country we both love.

  • • •

  Much of what has transpired in my own life, including the arguments made in this book, would likely never have happened without four simple words I’ll share in closing. In the summer of 1999, a stoic Vietnam War veteran, a man whose name I cannot recall, looked me in the eye and said, “Pete, whatever you do, don’t miss your war.” I was nineteen years old, and the stark statement ricocheted around my brain like a stray bullet. I knew nothing of the military—let alone war. I was not from a military family, and couldn’t tell you the difference between the Army and the Marine Corps. While I was captivated by our lunch conversation, it was not what I expected to hear from the war buddy of a family friend. Most veterans speak of reluctant service, shades of gray, haunting memories, and impossible choices. Many don’t speak of war at all. But his unique statement was intentional, serious, and anything but cold or flippant. He said it with certainty that I had yet to hear in my short life, except from a pulpit. (And they didn’t teach that in church.) To my virgin ears, he sounded cavalier. Was he a warmonger? Or was he just crazy? America was not at war, so I immediately dismissed it—but I never forgot it.

  Years later, not until I got back from Iraq in 2006 and then out the ass end of the political wringer in 2008, did I finally understand his point—and agree with it. For that veteran, his statement was not just about Vietnam, it was not about the rightness or wrongness of that war, and it certainly was not about a naked thirst for war. Through those four words—don’t miss your war—he spoke of honor. Of duty. Of courage. Of God and country. Of the arena. Like an evangelical preacher of America’s civil religion—and like Teddy Roosevelt—he had been to the arena, and was urging me.

  I am urging you. This book urges you. America urges you.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  First and foremost, thank you to Samantha. She supported me in this project, even when the finish line seemed so distant. Our boys—Gunner, Boone, and Rex—motivate our shared love of country. Speaking of those three boys: this book is for you guys. I love you so much.

  Thank you to my father, Brian, and mother, Penny, who love and support me through thick and thin. More than any two people, they built the foundation on which I—and my brothers, Nate and Phil—stand. They love Jesus and our country, and live it each day—serving as a steady source of support, wisdom, and encouragement. I also thank my brothers, two patriots in the arena in their own right.

  Two other people were central and indispensable to this project. The first is Nat Hoopes, my college roommate and best of friends. I’m quite certain he’s edited—excuse me, rewritten—most everything I’ve ever written. We wrote the Daily Princetonian 9/11-response op-ed together, he edited my Iraq after-action report, and he made my 2006 Wall Street Journal op-ed fit to print. He’s been the “content editor” of my life and was with me at each step of this project—for which I am grateful.

  The second person is David Bellavia, a true hero of the Iraq War—and a friend for life. He was, and is, a fellow Vets for Freedom devotee and is the author of the bestselling war memoir House to House (as well as the future, hypothetical bestseller, The Politics of Valor). He has encouraged me to write this book for many years, and it never would have happened without him. I would go to war with David, in any capacity and at any time. Unending thanks to everyone involved with Vets for Freedom as well—especially its other founders, Wade Zirkle, Knox Nunnally, and Mark Seavey. We fought the good fight, and made a difference.

  Thank you to Jim Hornfischer, my literary agent, for believing in this project and making it happen. Thank you to Mitchell Ivers, Natasha Simons, and everyone at Threshold Editions and Simon & Schuster for believing in me and this book. And thank you to Matthew Baum, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, for working through this book’s initial proposal during my graduate work. While the final version looks nothing like my original proposal, it was sharpened by your challenge.

  Each step of my life has made this possible as well. Thank you to the community of Forest Lake, Minnesota—most especially my lifelong friend and spit brother, Jimmy Knutson. Thank you to my church community of Eagle Brook Church and pastor Bob Merritt, a man who charts the course each Sunday and has supported me through bright and dark days. Likewise to all the members of my brief, spirited, and ultimately failed 2012 Senate campaign—we’ll get ’em next time! Thank you, Nate Swanson, for taking time to review multiple chapters.

  Thank you to the Princeton basketball program, especially Coach John Thompson Jr., for teaching me to persevere . . . and reinforcing that I wasn’t meant to be a basketball player! Thank you to Princeton ROTC, especially LTC Matthew McCarville and MAJ Randall Newton, for patiently forging an Army officer. Thank you to my fellow staff and trustees of the Princeton Tory, for having the courage of your convictions—amazing Princetonians and patriots all. Thank you to my other Princeton roommates and incredible friends: Kyle Wente, Ryan Feeney, Andy Kane, and Brian O’Toole (who smoked me in my first debate, freshman year). And thank you to Professor Robby George and former professor Patrick Deneen for being lone voices of conservative reason during my time at Old Nassau.

  Thank you to my former colleagues at Concerned Veterans for America—fellow patriots dedicated to mobilizing veterans to fight for a free and prosperous America. It was an honor to work with you all, each and every day. A special shout-out to Joe Gecan, my Partner-in-Scrappiness from the beginning, Marine Dan (Caldwell) for feedback on multiple chapters, and Kate Pomeroy for encouraging this project from the beginning. I also benefited greatly from the insight and encouragement of my good friend and bestselling author Sean Parnell. Same to my dear friend Karen Vaughn.

  A huge thank-you to the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol, a personal friend and mentor who has supported me—and so many of America’s youngest warfighters—in active and earnest ways for over a decade. Bill, you are truly one of the good guys. Likewise to the amazing staff at National Review for affording me so many opportunities over the years—including twice sending me to Iraq to report on the surge in 2008. Thank you to all the great conservatives at the Manhattan Institute, who do yeoman’s work on the island of Manhattan. And thank you to the guys at Power Line Blog in Minnesota who regularly reprinted my missives from the battlefield, including my first deployment in Guantanamo Bay in 2004—giving me a start and platform.

  Thank you to my colleagues at Fox News Channel—especially my dear friends at FOX & Friends; specifically, the one, the only, and the amazing Jennifer Cunningham (#belief); our fearless leader, Lauren Petterson; and mega-patriot Gavin Hadden. And, of course, Brian Tully and Sean Groman too! Likewise, thank you to so many other great shows on Fox News (Outnumbered, especially) and Fox Business. From top executives to hosts to producers and bookers, I’m grateful to work with such smart, hardworking, and talented people.

  Finally, thank you—most personally and passionately—to everyone I’ve ever worn the uniform with. You are the best “men in the arena” I have ever known. To start, this includes the faithful interpreters and allies—Muslims all—who supported and fought with us, especially my great friend Ali, “John Kerry,” “Steve-O,” Mr. Assad, Bakr, Omar, and Little Omar (RIP) in Iraq, and Esmatullah and Abdul in Afghanistan. To the “Peacemakers” platoon and Charlie Company from the New Jersey Army National Guard in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the year we endured together, especially CPT Jurandir Ajaujo, SFC Robert Merz, SPC Kenneth Froehner, and the late—KIA in Afghanistan—SPC Jorge Oliveira. To the “Little Bastards” platoon, Charlie Company, and all “Iron Rakkasans” in Iraq and the combat missi
on we forged together, especially MAJ Steven Delvaux, CPT Chris Brawley, CPT Pete Carey, CPT Dan Hart, 1SG Eric Geressy, 1LT Mike Horne, SFC Ismael Godoy, SPC Jason George, PFC Kris Sapp, and our leader, COL Michael Steele. To our hodgepodge training unit in Afghanistan and the problem set we tackled, most especially MAJ Michael Murray and MAJ Chip Rankin. A grateful nation, and this soldier, will especially and always remember the warfighters who never made it back from the battlefield—365 days a year.

  The legacy of those soldiers, the country they served, the love and forgiveness of Jesus Christ, and the blessings of a wonderful family are the heart and soul of this book. I pray each is honored through this humble submission.

  THE SPEECH

  You’ve read my interpretation of Teddy Roosevelt’s historic speech, through the portions cited throughout this book. Now I encourage you to engage with Roosevelt’s entire speech—drawing your own conclusions about its implications for America today. Trigger warning: it might compel you to heed his words, and enter the arena.

  TEDDY ROOSEVELT

  The Sorbonne, Paris, France

  April 23, 1910

  Strange and impressive associations rise in the mind of a man from the New World who speaks before this august body in this ancient institution of learning. Before his eyes pass the shadows of mighty kings and war-like nobles, of great masters of law and theology; through the shining dust of the dead centuries he sees crowded figures that tell of the power and learning and splendor of times gone by; and he sees also the innumerable host of humble students to whom clerkship meant emancipation, to whom it was well-nigh the only outlet from the dark thralldom of the Middle Ages.

  This was the most famous university of mediaeval Europe at a time when no one dreamed that there was a New World to discover. Its services to the cause of human knowledge already stretched far back into the remote past at a time when my forefathers, three centuries ago, were among the sparse bands of traders, ploughmen, wood-choppers, and fisherfolk who, in hard struggle with the iron unfriendliness of the Indian-haunted land, were laying the foundations of what has now become the giant republic of the West. To conquer a continent, to tame the shaggy roughness of wild nature, means grim warfare; and the generations engaged in it cannot keep, still less add to, the stores of garnered wisdom which were once theirs, and which are still in the hands of their brethren who dwell in the old land. To conquer the wilderness means to wrest victory from the same hostile forces with which mankind struggled on the immemorial infancy of our race. The primeval conditions must be met by the primeval qualities which are incompatible with the retention of much that has been painfully acquired by humanity as through the ages it has striven upward toward civilization. In conditions so primitive there can be but a primitive culture. At first only the rudest school can be established, for no others would meet the needs of the hard-driven, sinewy folk who thrust forward the frontier in the teeth of savage men and savage nature; and many years elapse before any of these schools can develop into seats of higher learning and broader culture.

  The pioneer days pass; the stump-dotted clearings expand into vast stretches of fertile farm land; the stockaded clusters of log cabins change into towns; the hunters of game, the fellers of trees, the rude frontier traders and tillers of the soil, the men who wander all their lives long through the wilderness as the heralds and harbingers of an oncoming civilization, themselves vanish before the civilization for which they have prepared the way. The children of their successors and supplanters, and then their children and their children and children’s children, change and develop with extraordinary rapidity. The conditions accentuate vices and virtues, energy and ruthlessness, all the good qualities and all the defects of an intense individualism, self-reliant, self-centered, far more conscious of its rights than of its duties, and blind to its own shortcomings. To the hard materialism of the frontier days succeeds the hard materialism of an industrialism even more intense and absorbing than that of the older nations; although these themselves have likewise already entered on the age of a complex and predominantly industrial civilization.

  As the country grows, its people, who have won success in so many lines, turn back to try to recover the possessions of the mind and the spirit, which perforce their fathers threw aside in order better to wage the first rough battles for the continent their children inherit. The leaders of thought and of action grope their way forward to a new life, realizing, sometimes dimly, sometimes clear-sightedly, that the life of material gain, whether for a nation or an individual, is of value only as a foundation, only as there is added to it the uplift that comes from devotion to loftier ideals. The new life thus sought can in part be developed afresh from what is roundabout in the New World; but it can developed in full only by freely drawing upon the treasure-houses of the Old World, upon the treasures stored in the ancient abodes of wisdom and learning, such as this is where I speak to-day. It is a mistake for any nation to merely copy another; but it is even a greater mistake, it is a proof of weakness in any nation, not to be anxious to learn from one another and willing and able to adapt that learning to the new national conditions and make it fruitful and productive therein. It is for us of the New World to sit at the feet of Gamaliel of the Old; then, if we have the right stuff in us, we can show that Paul in his turn can become a teacher as well as a scholar.

  Today I shall speak to you on the subject of individual citizenship, the one subject of vital importance to you, my hearers, and to me and my countrymen, because you and we are great citizens of great democratic republics. A democratic republic such as ours—an effort to realize in its full sense government by, of, and for the people—represents the most gigantic of all possible social experiments, the one fraught with great responsibilities alike for good and evil. The success of republics like yours and like ours means the glory, and our failure of despair, of mankind; and for you and for us the question of the quality of the individual citizen is supreme. Under other forms of government, under the rule of one man or very few men, the quality of the leaders is all-important. If, under such governments, the quality of the rulers is high enough, then the nations for generations lead a brilliant career, and add substantially to the sum of world achievement, no matter how low the quality of average citizen; because the average citizen is an almost negligible quantity in working out the final results of that type of national greatness.

  But with you and us the case is different. With you here, and with us in my own home, in the long run, success or failure will be conditioned upon the way in which the average man, the average women, does his or her duty, first in the ordinary, every-day affairs of life, and next in those great occasional crises which call for heroic virtues. The average citizen must be a good citizen if our republics are to succeed. The stream will not permanently rise higher than the main source; and the main source of national power and national greatness is found in the average citizenship of the nation. Therefore it behooves us to do our best to see that the standard of the average citizen is kept high; and the average cannot be kept high unless the standard of the leaders is very much higher.

  It is well if a large proportion of the leaders in any republic, in any democracy, are, as a matter of course, drawn from the classes represented in this audience to-day; but only provided that those classes possess the gifts of sympathy with plain people and of devotion to great ideals. You and those like you have received special advantages; you have all of you had the opportunity for mental training; many of you have had leisure; most of you have had a chance for enjoyment of life far greater than comes to the majority of your fellows. To you and your kind much has been given, and from you much should be expected. Yet there are certain failings against which it is especially incumbent that both men of trained and cultivated intellect, and men of inherited wealth and position should especially guard themselves, because to these failings they are especially liable; and if yielded to, their—your—chances of useful service are at an end.

  Let the man of learni
ng, the man of lettered leisure, beware of that queer and cheap temptation to pose to himself and to others as a cynic, as the man who has outgrown emotions and beliefs, the man to whom good and evil are as one. The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. There are many men who feel a kind of twisted pride in cynicism; there are many who confine themselves to criticism of the way others do what they themselves dare not even attempt. There is no more unhealthy being, no man less worthy of respect, than he who either really holds, or feigns to hold, an attitude of sneering disbelief toward all that is great and lofty, whether in achievement or in that noble effort which, even if it fails, comes to second achievement. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not as the possessor would fain to think, of superiority but of weakness. They mark the men unfit to bear their part painfully in the stern strife of living, who seek, in the affection of contempt for the achievements of others, to hide from others and from themselves their own weakness. The role is easy; there is none easier, save only the role of the man who sneers alike at both criticism and performance.