Saturday, April 28, 2007

Fear And The Alpha Male

A friend recently forwarded an interesting article by Peggy Noonan from last Friday.

We are not giving the children of our country a stable platform. We are instead giving them a soul-shaking sense that life is unsafe, incoherent, full of random dread. And we are doing this, I think, for three reasons.

One is politics--our political views, our cultural views, so need to be expressed and are, God knows, so much more important than the peace of a child. Another is money--there’s money in the sickness that is sold to us. Everyone who works at a TV network knew ratings would go up when the Cho tapes broke.

But another reason is that, for all our protestations about how sensitive we are, how interested in justice, how interested in the children, we are not. We are interested in politics. We are interested in money. We are interested in ourselves.

I’m thinking that one of the greatest causes for this symptom of increased fear is being missed, though.  I believe this has more to do with the feminization of our culture than most Americans would be willing to admit.

Masculine men and strong fathers have been demonized and minimized for so many years now, they simply aren’t around anymore to be able to give their children any security.  That’s one of the great things that masculine men do.  They don’t take away all the scary things in life, but they give children the ability to deal with those things properly and not be so scared by them.

The real man pulls the bogeyman out of the closet, in plain view of the children, and beats him into the ground.  The bad guy is decimated, the real man sparing the children none of the intensity or ugliness of the battle.  The children need to see that masculine man take care of evil with no holds barred, to watch evil be ground in to dust in the midst of sweat and blood.  Because then the kids understand that they have an advocate that will fight for them and do whatever it takes to make their world safe.  And that then teaches those kids, in turn, to be fighters and advocates for their children, fighting those ugly and painful battles for them in their defense.

But where do we think society is going to go if we minimize the masculine and promote the feminine?  There is a place for both these things, but too much of either one has its pitfalls.  And right now, we are at a point where we have abdicated our right to self defense to others and don’t know what to do when faced with an armed lunatic.

This country need to get its backbone back.  The men need to stop putting up with the feminized attacks on them and their role in the family and society.  All our kids need strong fathers back in their lives.  They need strong men all around them who can teach them how to defend themselves in life, on all levels.  They need masculine men who teach them the value of being prepared to deal with ugly situations and crazy and evil people, and even preparing those kids to kill these evil people in defense of self and family if necessary.

Bring back the alpha males, bring back the wild man, bring back the true masculinity as C.S. Lewis wrote about and I guarantee that our kids won’t be nearly so afraid anymore.  And then the bad guys might just be a little more nervous.  And our world could use that right now.