When Secretary of War Pete Hegseth strode onto the Newport News shipyard floor last week and stood before a newly built Virginia-class submarine, he did more than deliver a speech — he sounded a rallying cry for a nation that has forgotten how to win. Kicking off the Arsenal of Freedom tour, Hegseth made plain what conservatives have insisted for years: national security begins long before the first shot is fired, in the factories and shipyards where real Americans build the tools of victory.
Hegseth’s message was unapologetically patriotic, a direct salute to the men and women whose workmanship keeps our sailors, airmen, and soldiers alive. These are not remote bureaucrats drafting memos; they are the backbone of our Defense Industrial Base, turning steel and welds into deterrence and safety. It’s past time Washington treated them like frontline troops rather than afterthought line items in some woke budget exercise.
The Secretary put flesh on conservative policy by promising speed, investment, and an end to bureaucratic drag that has for decades slowed delivery of critical systems to our warfighters. That pledge isn’t empty rhetoric — it’s a necessary corrective to the complacency that allowed competitors to close the gap while our supply chains and factories rusted. If this administration backs its words with contracts, streamlined procurement, and real money for plants and people, America’s military advantage will grow again.
Make no mistake: the shipbuilders at Newport News are patriots, and HII’s hosting of the visit was a reminder that private industry and government can partner without ceding our security to the lowest bidder. The surge in recruits and the pride on every worker’s face showed what happens when leadership honors competence over buzzwords. Conservatives should applaud a strategy that prizes production, skilled labor, and American-made strength over virtue signaling.
The Arsenal of Freedom tour is also a necessary rebuke to the bipartisan folly that once convinced voters history had ended and the industrial age could be outsourced. That fantasy cost jobs, capability, and strategic depth; restoring it will cost effort and resolve but will pay dividends in deterrence. Our rivals watch, and they respect strength; they only test weakness.
This moment calls for more than speeches — it calls for concrete policy: faster approvals, incentive packages for domestic sourcing, and muscular support for the trades that produce our ships, planes, and munitions. Congress and the American people must get behind this revival, cut the red tape that strangles production, and stop the cultural campaign that elevates ideology over competence. The men and women in hard hats deserve nothing less than a government that treats their work as the national priority it is.
Patriots know what’s at stake. A revived industrial base is not just economics, it’s the price of freedom for our children and grandchildren. Hegseth’s tour is a start — now conservatives and all Americans who still believe in peace through strength must push to turn words into a durable American advantage. Support the workers, back the policies, and never forget that liberty is built by hands that know how to build.
