More than that, we must seek a revival of strong and healthy manhood in America. And we must make it our aim as conservatives to see that it does not succeed. For while the Left’s assault on manhood has been sharp and prolonged, it has not yet succeeded. And because this attack on men is already far advanced.īut even as I describe the danger, there is cause for hope. “Birthing people” is the term of choice, as if women don’t exist.Īnd leftwing advocates across the country are trying to destroy women’s sports, as if women and men are somehow interchangeable.Īll that too is part of the deconstructionist agenda.īut I want to focus tonight on the deconstruction of men, not because men are more important, but because I believe the attack on men has been the tip of the spear of the Left’s broader attack on America. Many of my Democrat colleagues in the Senate won’t even say the word “mother” any more, for heaven’s sake. American women have shaped our culture every bit as much as men, and their virtues are every bit as necessary to the success of our republic.Īnd indeed, the Left is carrying out its own assault on womanhood, and on the very idea of gender. Now this is not to say that American women aren’t central to this story, far from it. It’s hard to accept that the pathologies gripping so many American men are good for American society. It’s hard to believe that our liberty is now more secure. It’s hard to argue that our democracy is in better shape now than it was thirty or forty years ago. Maybe all you need to be a good citizen after all is to be a good consumer.īut it doesn’t look that way. Or maybe the only necessary virtues are the modern liberal ones of tolerance, and compliance, and I suppose, consumption. Now maybe they were wrong and today’s Left is right. Observers from the ancient Romans to our forefathers identified the manly virtues as indispensable for political liberty. It’s a crisis for the republic.īecause the problem with the Left’s assault on the masculine virtues is that those self-same qualities, the very ones the Left now vilify as dangerous and toxic, have long been regarded as vital to self-government. Many men in this country are in crisis, and their ranks are swelling.Īnd that’s not just a crisis for men. They are engaging in more substance abuse. They are suffering more anxiety and depression. American men are working less, getting married in fewer numbers they’re fathering fewer children. This is an effort the Left has been at for years now. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues-things like courage, and independence, and assertiveness-as a danger to society. The Left want to define traditional masculinity as toxic. This work of deconstruction is what unites today’s Left and binds together all their various preoccupations, from critical race theory to their economic socialism to their bizarre war on women’s sports.īut what I want you to notice, what I want to call out tonight, is this fact: that the deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men. That’s the Leftist project, and that’s their grand ambition: to deconstruct America. It’s a nation that needs to be taught how unjust it truly is and after that, rebuilt from top to bottom. It’s a dystopia, if only Americans would get woke enough to see it. They believe that America is a systemically racist, structurally oppressive, hopelessly patriarchal kind of place. Their voices predominate in the news media, in Hollywood, arguably sports, and of course, at our universities. They have the White House, the House of Representatives, the Senate. As we speak, the Left controls the commanding heights of American society. I want to talk with you about the Left’s attempt to give us a world beyond men. I want to talk with you tonight about another aspect of that ambition. It’s part of the Left’s effort to fundamentally remake America. I spoke two years ago of the Left’s ambition to create a world beyond belonging-a world where community and shared culture-our culture-count for little. So when Yoram invited me to speak again this year, I thought: What’s to lose? After that speech, the Left called me a racist, a fascist, and a Nazi. I had the honor to be at your inaugural conference two years ago. He addressed the future of the American man and highlighted the need to strengthen and empower American men so that they can serve as an “unrivaled force for good in the world.” Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) delivered a keynote address at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Fla.
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