this post was submitted on 20 Mar 2026
75 points (97.5% liked)

New York Times gift articles

1611 readers
23 users here now

Share your New York Times gift articles links here.

Rules:

Info:

Tip:

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
baltakatei@sopuli.xyz
75
Hegseth Invokes Divine Purpose to Justify Military Might (www.nytimes.com)
submitted 1 week ago by nymnympseudonym@piefed.social to c/nyt_gift_articles@sopuli.xyz
23 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

He spoke of “overwhelming force” and the U.S. military’s unmatched ability to rain “death and destruction from above” on its “apocalyptic” Iranian foes.

Then, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, standing in the Pentagon, issued a call to the American people for a specific kind of wartime prayer. He asked them to pray for victory in battle and the safety of their troops.

“Every day, on bended knee, with your family, in your schools, in your churches,” he said, “in the name of Jesus Christ.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] teft@piefed.social 13 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Only a fucking moron would think the crusades ushered in westernism. The crusades were generally considered to be a failure because, guess what, the crusaders lost. They didn’t establish european control in jerusalem. They were kicked out and beaten back numerous times.

[–] can_you_change_your_username@fedia.io 7 points 1 week ago

In a round about way they sorta did modernize western culture but not in a way that Hegseth would like. Before the crusades the most influential philosopher in the Roman Empire was St Augustine of Hippo and, basically, what he had done is to merge Platonic philosophy into Catholic theology. So the western world was underpinning it's reasoning on Plato. The Muslim populations, and especially the Moors in northern Africa, had preserved and in many ways embraced Aristotelian philosophy. Aristotelian philosophy is just plain better. Aristotle made far less assumptions and assertions and he focused on gaining information from the natural world in a much greater way. As a result the Muslim peoples that the west crusaded against were culturally and scientifically more advanced. They treated their prisoners better and could treat wounds that the crusaders believed were fatal. As a result crusaders returned from their crusades with stories of what they had experienced and writings from Muslim scholars and snipits of writings from Aristotle and his students.

Thomas Aquinas gathered those writings and stories and begin something of a revolution of thinking in the western world. His major contribution was merging Aristotelian philosophy into Catholic theology. As his influence grew and more Catholic thinkers adopted Aristotelian concepts it culminating in Martin Luther a couple hundred years later. So, they didn't exactly usher in westernism but they were crucial to the western Renaissance and to the development of western liberalism. The real lesson is that the more western society has moved away from conservative ideas and especially conservative religion and the more western civilization has embraced science and diverse and secular thought the freer, fairer, and more prosperous it has become. Embracing the crusades is pushing us back toward the dark ages, the most important accomplishment of the crusades was pushing the Roman Empire, or at least a significant portion of it's population, into a philosophical position where they realized that the crusades weren't justified to begin with.

[–] TheJesusaurus@piefed.ca 2 points 1 week ago

The Crusades were mostly rulers going "what the fuck do I do with all these knights and unlabded nobles we've created"