In recent article published by Newsweek, Republican senator Josh Hawley, explores “the masculine virtues America needs”. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
All is not well with men in America. And that spells trouble for the American republic.
It has been a perennial question of political philosophy, since the first republics were formed, whether a free nation could survive without soundness of character in its people. The old-fashioned word for that is “virtue,” meaning not just moral uprightness but the personal fortitude and vision such uprightness produces—strength, in other words. Machiavelli called it virtù. Practically everywhere one looks in America now, male virtù is crumbling, and the consequences for the country are grave.
Crime is on the rise, overwhelmingly committed by men. Disinterest in work is becoming commonplace. And in perhaps the starkest example of male weakness, fatherlessness abounds. The percentage of children living with only their mother—no father present—has doubled since 1968. Today, the majority of children born to women under 30 are born into fatherless homes—a new, ignominious milestone in American history. The epidemic of absent fathers is a social solvent, dissolving the future. Boys raised in fatherless homes face increased odds that they will use drugs, commit crimes, perform poorly in school, live in poverty—and then become absent fathers themselves.
Much has been said in recent years of the divisions in American society, the dangers to our democracy, and our growing polarization. Surely it is no coincidence that these ills have proliferated while American men have struggled. As the anthropologist David Gilmore once wrote, “Manhood is the social barrier that societies must erect against entropy, human enemies, the forces of nature, time, and all the human weaknesses” that threaten social life. No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood, the collapse of masculine strength.
To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
