Unleashing American Masculinity
Sen. Hawley's call to empower men triggers the man-hating Left.
On October 31, 2021, Republican Senator Josh Hawley delivered a keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida, in which he put forth an impassioned defense of traditional masculinity.
“American men are and can be an unrivaled force for good in the world—if we can strengthen them, if we can empower them, if we can unleash them to be who they are made to be,” Hawley said. “Then they shall, in the words of Scripture, ‘build up the ancient ruins; they shall raise up the former desolations; they shall repair the ruined cities, [and] the devastations of many generations.’”
Lamenting that too many men have withdrawn into the “enclave of idleness, and pornography, and video games,” Hawley declared that “the crisis of American men is a crisis for the American republic.” Reclaiming the traditional roles and responsibilities of manhood in our gender-confused times, in our emasculated culture, he argued, would go a long way toward reclaiming American greatness.
I happen to agree, having written many times over the years about how critical a re-envisioning of chivalric masculinity is to the survival and flourishing of Western civilization. But predictably, Hawley’s speech triggered a full-scale offensive of mockery, eye-rolling, and anger from leftist politicians, pundits, and celebrities who consider themselves pundits, because there are few things the Left hates more than traditional masculinity.
Rolling Stone magazine, for example, wrote, “Josh Hawley’s bizarre obsession with masculinity is the most pathetic front yet in the GOP’s culture war.” Fact check: the GOP is not the party waging a culture war; it is only belatedly responding to a culture war that the Left has been waging for a half-century. By the way, Rolling Stone is the magazine, you may remember, that put a come-hither glamour shot of Boston Marathon terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on its cover. That’s the sort of masculinity role model Rolling Stone admires.
The View co-hostess Ana Navarro, whose so-called commentary never rises above the level of sneering, scorned Hawley’s speech: “That masculinity needs defending and #joshhawley is its self-appointed defender, is laugh-out-loud funny.” Fact check: not once in his speech did Hawley appoint himself the defender of masculinity or hold himself up as its standard bearer.
Jennifer Rubin, the in-house faux conservative at the Washington Post, slammed “disgusting” Hawley for “[p]ropagating misogyny.” Fact check: what’s truly disgusting is Rubin equating masculinity with misogyny.
Former Rep. Joe Walsh, another faux conservative, tweeted inexplicably that Hawley’s speech is “going to lead to more violence. It’s going to lead to more people getting hurt.” Fact check: it is a weak, conflicted, threatened masculinity that leads to violence. The kind of masculinity Hawley is championing protects the innocent from the violence of bullies.
Then there were the many juvenile ad hominem attacks like this one from The Daily Beast: “Josh Hawley Knows Nothing About What Makes a Real Man, or a Good One.” Or this one, from former California Rep. Katie Hill, who resigned after she admitted to having an inappropriate relationship with a female campaign staffer: “Lol like anyone thinks Josh Hawley is masculine.”
Morgan J. Freeman – not the mellifluous-voiced actor but a producer of such TV “entertainment” as Teen Mom and Sixteen and Pregnant – seemed especially unhinged by Hawley’s comments. “If I were God, I’d strike this toxic masculinity fuck-head from the face of the Earth…. NOW!” he erupted on Twitter.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a discredited smear organization whose primary agenda is the demonization of the Left’s political opponents, published a 5000-word, fear-mongering fantasy called “Male Supremacy Is at the Core of the Hard Right’s Agenda.” (The article referred more than 30 times to a shadowy, evil entity called “the hard right” without every defining it, but apparently the term includes everyone who is not Progressive). Dismissing legitimate concerns about our crisis of masculinity into a call for a “male supremacy” straight out of a Handmaid’s Tale fever dream, the article cites Hawley’s speech, describing him as a “hard right figure” addressing an “audience of hard-right influencers” just in case you missed the point that talk about masculinity is hard right code language for patriarchal oppression.
These are just some of the samples that are clear indications that Hawley touched a nerve, because as the saying goes, you draw the most flak when you’re directly over the target. The Progressives who spent a half century pushing women to emulate the most stereotypical “toxic” male behavior, who cheer on biological males crushing the competition in women’s sports, who have elevated men-playing-little-girls to the level of the sacred in our culture, but who condemn any hint of aggression and competition in males, were furious that Hawley was issuing a call for boys and young men to throw off the chains of their despondency and their porn and gaming obsessions to rise up and become the responsible, productive, everyday heroes and builders and leaders and godly warriors they were meant to be.
This hardly seems objectionable, so why was the Left so triggered? Because central to the Left’s neo-Marxist agenda is what Karl Marx himself called “the abolition of the family.” Essential to that aim is the elimination of any distinction between men and women in their roles as husbands and wives and fathers and mothers. This is accomplished through the sexual “liberation” of women (launched with the Sexual Revolution) and the deconstruction of masculinity – especially the latter, because for totalitarian state control to succeed, men must be emasculated and cut off from their purpose as providers and protectors.
For fifty years the Left has called for the empowerment of girls and women, but the notion that boys and men should be no less empowered strikes the Left as ludicrous, even though women today lead in every metric of educational and career success while men are falling dramatically. Today it is demonstrable fact that it is American boys and men who are in crisis, not women; but this reality is always greeted with derision by the Left, because their ideology depends on the false narrative that men have a monopoly on power and privilege, while women are the perpetual victims of an oppressive patriarchy.
A week after his National Conservatism Conference address, Hawley told Axios that he hoped to make masculinity a signature political issue. Clearly he is serious about that, because now he has published a new book on the theme, Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs, from conservative publisher Regnery.
In Manhood, Hawley asserts – correctly, I believe – that “no menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood, the collapse of masculine strength.” He then goes on to describe the manhood he envisions as one that embraces traditional roles and is biblically defined. “The Bible story is an epic that speaks directly to the purpose of men...” he writes. “The Bible’s mission for men is an invitation to matter. And it is, at its core, an invitation to character.” [Emphasis added] “Man's sacred mission,” Hawley adds, “is to cultivate the world, order it, and bring forth its potential: make it a temple.”
More: “To be a man as the Bible defines it is to acquire the character of a husband and a father, a warrior and a builder, a priest and a king. These are the roles of the Adam mission. This is the character that defines manhood.” In a very personal narrative peppered with stories about the men who shaped his own life – among them his grandfather, father, and son – and stories of biblical figures such as Adam, Abraham, and David, Hawley devotes a chapter to each of those roles: husband, father, warrior, builder, priest and king, and points the way for a lost generation of young men to reclaim their purpose and destiny – to matter.
One of the ways in which Hawley’s vision of manhood is important and true is his emphasis on humility and service to others, both of which stand in stark contrast to most of today’s gurus of masculinity, who are becoming legion. Their focus is on masculinity as mastery of traditional tasks and roles in the world or at playing the game of sexual politics, both of which are centered on being good at being a man. But there is a world of difference between good at being a man, and being a good man. Not that the two are incompatible – far from it. Ideally, the two should be integrated and synergistic. But being a good man – i.e., moral masculinity – is the elan vital, the vital force that powers strong families, strong communities, strong nations, a strong civilization. Hawley recognizes this.
The Left may heap ridicule on Senator Hawley for daring to make this topic a central political issue, but millions upon millions of boys and young men in America today – and the mothers, daughters, and sisters who love and need them – know in their hearts that our culture is failing, collapsing, and that we need to be having this conversation. Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs is an important voice toward that end. “These are troubled times,” Hawley writes. “But trouble may lead to renewal. If the Bible is right, the mission of Adam beckons, and the possibility of something better – for men, for America – awaits us.”
The Left doesn't just hate men - it hates people, ESPECIALLY the working class.