Whatever Happened to Young Republican? He seemed like such a nice boy.

 I'd make you read all of Colossians 3, but I'll pull excepts:


1. If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God...

8...But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.


 I have a friend who likes to point out that there are two ditches on each side of the road, and we are often want to get out of one ditch only to cross right over the straight and narrow road into the opposite ditch.


So it has been with the attempt to reclaim masculinity. We had--as a society--become ashamed of the notion that a man was the head of his family. We had bought in wholesale to the truism that men and women were effectively the same, and that the only real difference was socialization and upbringing. That the male impulse to competition, striving, and deal with emotions with a stiff upper lip were toxic traits forced on us by societal convention and obsolete necessity. "Manliness" was an archaism that was holding back the forward march of history.


The pendulum swung the other way. Larger numbers of people again began to accept that there were actually things that were good, different, and complimentary about being a man. You saw things like "The Art of Manliness" become mainstream. Books, websites, magazines about how to be a better man proliferated. A major push back against the trend to be ashamed of masculinity.


But at some point we started to weave crazily to the other ditch. We decided that we should celebrate all of the things that were characteriscally male. Soon we found ourselves praising their vices. We started defending "locker room talk" which is just another way of saying 'filthy communication.' We excused philandering, so long as the man was masterly while he was doing it. We held mercy, civility, and dignity in contempt as 'womanish.'


And so we have people defending these young republicans.


Boys will be boys. They thought it was private. Clearly it was all jokes. You would not want people to read your private messages.


No, but my private messages would not read like that.


Why do we find ourselves in a place where we see people defending young men, who should be growing leaders, making filthy jokes, using crude and brutal language, and debasing themselves in some kind of ridiculous infantile edginess competition?


Because you took all your lessons on masculinity from the Pagans.


Brett McKay has done great work, but he is always and forever looking to the Spartans, Commanche, and Vikings of history for the truth of what it is to be a man. And when you look at those examples you will find discipline, you will find great courage, you will find a love of their own. You also find a brutality toward the widow, the orphan, and the sojourner. You find a crassness about the value of life. You find no mercy.


They are no men. They might as well be beasts, because God is above all a God of mercy. He created us in his image and likeness, and longs to see us restored to the same. Another time I'll tell you the story of what he did to accomplish this. It is a real banger.


The problem with these young replublicans is the problem posed by the "post religious right." It turns out that being masterly without mercy is the quality of the spartans, the commanche, and the nazis. The love of ones own, and the recognition of authority and hierarchy as natural can actually be a force for evil apart from mercy, and a love of what is truly good.


These young men lack the law, which God gave so that we would not give ourselves over to the old man. Do not excuse them. Do not defend them. Do not pretend it is normal. Call them to repentance.


Reject the post religious right. It is possible to be a polite young man and a strong young man. We--the church--need to be bold to demand that our sons behave more like George Washington than Alexander Hamilton. More like Charlie Kirk than Andrew Tate.


We need christian men; these boorish crypto-pagans are no men at all.

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