Anyone interested in understanding the ongoing feud between Rick Perry and Mitt Romney—indeed, between the belligerent Texan governor and any of his many political adversaries, Democrat and Republican—would do well to look past the presidential debates of the previous week, and look instead to a book that was written by Perry several years back. No, not Fed Up, Perry’s 2010 manifesto, which Romney has been busily (and successfully) mining for discrediting material. It’s his previous book, the heartfelt tribute to the Boy Scouts that he took time away from his gubernatorial duties to publish in 2008, that provides the real key to understanding Perry’s Manichean temperament.

Where Fed Up was a feat of opportunism, an attempt to pander to the newly-founded Tea Party, his earlier book was both a true labor of love (he received no advance and donated all proceeds to the Scouts’ legal defense fund) and a stirring call to protect the integrity of the nation’s traditions. For the Perry of On My Honor: Why the American Values of the Boy Scouts Are Worth Fighting For “culture war” is no mere euphemism: He not only thinks of military siege as an apt metaphor for the state of American culture—he’d like to enlist Boy Scouts as his preferred ground troops.

In that way, On My Honor’s odd mix of autobiography and polemic underscores what truly animates Perry—and, needless to say, it isn’t tax policy. His real political passion is the protection of traditional American institutions against elitist attacks. It’s no accident that even though Perry’s campaign is supposed to be founded on his economic record as governor of Texas, he’s been having trouble staying on message.

In making his book-length indictment, Perry paints with a startlingly wide brush. “Student campus unrest, rejection of authority, the ‘self-esteem’ movement, moral relativism, and the demands of secularists all gradually fused into a series of attacks on American institutions,” he writes in the book. We learn that he disdains “secular humanism,” the “self-esteem movement,” and youth sports leagues that don't keep score. For good measure, he compares homosexuality to alcoholism, and supports corporal punishment of children.

Ultimately, for Perry, the Boy Scouts are the litmus test in adjudicating sides in this culture war. (Perry, it bears mentioning, is a proud Eagle Scout; he’s known to still wear his Eagle pin on the lapel of his suits.) As Perry tells it, the Scouts are at the center of two of the main fronts in the culture war: religion and homosexuality. The group has long barred participation by atheists or “avowed homosexuals.”