In 1861, Robert Lewis Dabney — Stonewall Jackson's chief of staff and the Confederacy's most influential theologian — built a framework that sanctified overwhelming violence as divine order. That theology didn't die at Appomattox. It transmitted through Lost Cause Christianity, through decades of churches teaching that racial hierarchy was God's design, through the border churches Jenn Budd identified preaching that immigration agents are heroes enforcing God's will, through the CREC denomination whose pastor says "this is the first time we've had connections with as many people in national government as we do now."

The pipeline is 200 years old. And it now terminates at a Pentagon podium.