The War Against Men

Our serious thinkers often characterize the current phase of the clash of civilizations in terms of a struggle between the autocratic east and the democratic west. Strong men rule autocracies. The people prevail in democracies.

And yet, this craving for democracy feels like a subliminal effort to sustain the Democratic Party. People in my neighborhood are drooling over the prospect of worldwide liberal democracy, but who could fail to notice that the phrase itself is telling people that  the future belongs to liberal democrats.

Besides, if you want to descend to the most trivial level, if we decide everything by taking votes-- a prospect that our founding fathers rejected-- women are always going to outnumber men.

And yet, as I have occasionally suggested, the current cultural clash involves a struggle between manliness and femininity. The constant criticism of strong men and other autocrats ought to have alerted us to the gender side of the debate.

America is currently involved in what Pete Hegseth calls a war against warriors. He means that the current leadership of the Pentagon cares more about diversity and inclusion than it about fighting and winning wars.

After all, Bret Stephens has argued that we have lost the ability to win wars. That means, it has all become theatre. Note that our efforts to shut down Houthi terrorism in Yemen have come up short. And let’s not forget the boondoggle of the port we were going to build in Southern Gaza. As for Afghanistan….

Douglas Murray enlightens us in his Sunday essay in The Free Press. He emphasizes the culture war against manliness:

One of the strangest things that has happened in my lifetime is the emergence of the man as a pathetic figure, or a figure of fun. 

For the last fifteen years or so, you could see it in every walk of life—nowhere more so than in advertising. 

There are two things you can always predict with 100 percent certainty if a family, any family, is featured in an advertisement. 

The first is that the family will be biracial. The second is that the man (especially if he is white) will be portrayed as an incompetent or a loser. If the problem is wrestling with the remote control, the children and wife will patiently have to show poor old dad how to work the darn thing. It is a small but significant example of a wider trend, because this is a time in which male role models have been stripped away from the culture. 

We may have the culture of the “strong woman,” which I referred to in my Mother’s Day column. But “strong man” is a phrase now used to denote fear and even loathing. 

Dare we say, these advertisements and a multitude of television shows tend to show women in charge, women doing the job, women overcoming male resistance to their authority. Women are strong and empowered. If you dispute it, you will be severely punished.

In Australia, one leftist state government has created a ministry that is dedicated to changing male behavior-- that is to make men more like women. This suggests that therapy has not fully succeeded. As you might guess, this effort is likely to produce some rather resentful males. Treating men like ersatz girls is not going to make them very congenial, cordial or sensitive. It will make them nasty and hostile:

Just last month, officials in the Australian state of Victoria announced the creation of a new position in the government: secretary for Men’s Behavior Change.

“This is the first position of its kind in Australia and will focus largely on the influence the internet and social media have on boys’ and men’s attitudes towards women and building respectful relationships,” the newly appointed secretary, Tim Richardson, a Labor Party member of parliament, tweeted.

Of course, once these men change their behavior, women will almost assuredly turn away from them. Why would a woman want a man who is reconfigured into an ersatz woman?

And also, do you really believe that our competitors in the clash of civilizations will take us seriously as opponents? The more we get in touch with our feminine sides, the more we will appear to be weak and ineffective. This will be seen as an invitation to exploit and attack. 

Why else did the Russian regime, led by that alpha male, Vladimir Putin, get together with his ally Chinese president Xi Jinping and  attack Ukraine, a country whose leader got his start on Dancing with the Stars. Do you think that Putin is going to cower in the corner when faced with the ire of the French president, a man who effectively married his mother.

Western political leaders are horrified at the thought that they are being exposed as weak and feckless, even effeminate. 

One does well not to confuse manliness with machismo. The latter is a caricature; the former is the real thing. Manly men build things. They build industries and nations. Macho men assert their claim to manliness by destroying what other men have built. Macho men commit terrorist acts, very often against men, in order to assert that they are not effeminate. 

Real men do not posture. If they are fighting wars, they play by the rules, such as they are. Cowards and weaklings massacre and mutilate women and children. They forfeit their rights and deserve whatever they receive as a response.

Moreover, unreal men, macho cowards always blame someone else for their failures and derelictions. Such is the truth about Hamas and the Palestinian movement. As one sage thinker said, with the Palestinians, it’s always someone else’s fault.

In the meantime, real men build. Murray conclude, quoting Camille Paglia:

Which is this: many who moan about inequality of the sexes base their analyses on absurdly high-status professions—Hollywood actors, Fortune 500 CEOs, etc.—while conveniently ignoring the silent heroes across America and every other land. These are the men, Paglia says, who get up early and do the jobs most women would never consider doing: building roads, laying bricks, pouring concrete, tarring roofs, hanging electric wires, welding steel beams, cutting and clearing trees. They do these things because they are skilled at doing them and because they provide for their families and loved ones. They are not just admirable but noble.

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