The Baby Boomer-led Sexual Revolution of the 1960s and '70s has had a deeply permeating, catastrophically debilitating impact on nearly all aspects of modern Western culture. Evidence of the societal detritus is everywhere, from the ever-escalating divorce rate, to the proliferation of condom-wearing instruction classes for preteens, to the ubiquity of ridiculously tawdry pop songs like the Black Eyed Peas’ “My Humps” or Lady Gaga’s “Disco Stick” on the radio.

Even cultural conservatives, intent on sloughing off the egregious sleaze and slime that followed in the wake of the hippie era, are more often than not subsumed in its wretched and malodorous ejaculate ooze. A case-in-point of such ironic ideological influence can be discerned in the rhetoric of numerous well-meaning religious groups who have chosen to fixate on pornography, and to expose the supposedly devastating effects that porn-viewage allegedly has on the male psyche.

Indeed, to judge from these groups’ shrilly alarmist and hectoring tone, the very act of scrutinizing a sexy centerfold in Playboy, or thrilling to titular Debbie’s unique adventures in Dallas, is akin to taking a hit from a crystal meth pipe, or worse. Drugs only kill the body, after all; smut murders the soul. Eerily echoing the claims of various scoldy Dworkin-style feminists, neo-Fundamentalist seminar leaders insist that sexually-explicit material turns decent men into misogynistic beasts, causing them to view women as nothing more than objectified prey, fit for no activity more exalted than—ahem—stuffing and mounting.

For example, Catholic author Steve Wood of www.familylifecenter.net ominously warns of the “trigger effect” that results when guys become inveterate smuthounds. In short, they begin to feel that their lives should be one non-stop orgy: women exist only to satisfy their animal lusts. This mindset, in turn, proves to be “ruinous” to marriages—in some cases before they even begin! Wood goes so far as to recommend that young women find out early on if a potential mate has a porn addiction, in order to prevent future heartbreak. And ladies unfortunate enough to be saddled with smut-smitten husbands already have painful months and years of therapy ahead.

Jack Donovan joins Richard to discuss the decline of manhood, the denigration of heroes, and what can be done about it.

Sebastian Junger discusses for whom warriors will die, and for whom they won't. 

This essay, invoking knightly virtue, the Fall of the Roman Empire and the tale of Parzival from Tom Hoffman at The American Thinker should be of interest to readers of Virtus.

When Masculine Virtues Go Out of Fashion

The culture war begun in the sixties has, in large part, been won by the left. Nowhere is this clearer than in the feminization of men. The virtues of manhood which had been extolled and celebrated throughout the middle ages right up to the 1950s have been completely expunged from academia and pop culture. The baby boom generation was the last to be taught the values of rugged individualism, risk-taking, courage, bravery, loyalty, and reverence for tradition. John Wayne epitomized the rugged individual who was committed to fighting "the bad guy," but he was only one of a whole host of competing figures cut out of the same cloth. What happened?

Read the rest at The American Thinker.

 

Meanwhile, the left debates whether or not it should "explode" masculinity.Just in case you thought for a moment that Hoffman took it over-the-top.

Washington City Paper - Sexist Comments of the Week: Exploding Masculinity Edition

Also, Carrie Lukas notes that feminism is no longer about equality (golf clap) at National Review Online.

Under Discussion: Geoffroi de Charny's Book of Chivalry

A Western Hagakure

The Hagakure is a collection of commentaries on the Way of the Samurai by Yamamoto Tsunetomo, recorded between 1709 and 1716. Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a samurai during a period of peace who was not permitted to commit seppuku following the death of his retainer, Nabeshima Mitsushige. He retired to the mountains and lived as a hermit, frustrated by what he saw as a collapse of Traditional samurai culture into decadence and weakness. The Hagakure is often contradictory and curmudgeonly, and it is characterized by dark humor and what Yukio Mishima, who wrote his own commentary on the book, referred to as a "manly nihilism." Whereas Musashi's Book of Five Rings focuses more on swordsmanship and strategy, the Hagakure is more directly about a Way of living and dying.

Yamamoto Tsunetomo was a trained samurai, but he never saw combat. Geoffroi de Charny did.

Charny died heroically in battle, still clutching the oriflamme, a sacred banner charged to him in 1355 by Jean II, King of France. The bearer of the oriflamme was to be "the most worthy and adept warrior," a knight "noble in intention and deed, unwavering, virtuous, loyal, adept, and chivalrous." Charny had proved himself thus again and again in battle. When Jean II feared that French knights were becoming decadent, weak and cowardly, he formed the Order of the Star, a group of virtuous knights meant to reform French knighthood. Charny was an exemplary member, and it is likely that he produced The Book of Chivalry at Jean II's request.

The Book of Chivalry is not a manual on tactics or technique, it is a treatise on how to live -- and die -- like a knight. It describes "The Way of the Knight." And, importantly, it was written --likely dictated aloud to a scribe as the Hagakure was -- by an actual knight. Charny was not a monk or a poet or a politician or a novelist or a Victorian or a modern historian. He was a battle tested knight held in high regard as an exemplar of chivalry by his king and his peers. Chivalry was his Way.

Under discussion: Honor: A History by James Bowman (Encounter Books, 2007)

What happened to honor in the West? And without honor -- or at least an honest understanding of it -- are we capable of facing the challenges of the 21^st Century?

In Honor: A History, Bowman places these questions in a political context, as a clash between the old honor culture of the Islamic world and the anti-honor culture of the modern West. In this sense, his question is similar to the one Mark Steyn asks in America Alone. If Islam has all the attributes of what Osama Bin Laden famously called "a strong horse," will the pampered and polite social democracies of the West be able to survive its galloping onslaught?

This horse race bookends a rare and worthwhile exploration of the concept of honor itself, which is a confusing topic in the contemporary West where honorable ideals have been discredited as anti-modern, and the word "honor" has been reduced to a mere synonym for neutered, universal, non-hierarchical values like "goodness" or "honesty" or "integrity." The bumper sticker banality "honor diversity" renders the word honor a substitute for the verbs "value" or "esteem." While you can certainly follow the dilution of honor's meaning here, this is a world apart from a word once closely connected to glory won in battle.

I recently took part in a "males only" workshop at a local private high school. It was an unlikely opportunity for an advocate of traditional masculine ideals, especially given the fact that the workshop was part of this fairly liberal school's yearly "Diversity Conference." I was thankful for the chance to get across some countering viewpoints. I shared the floor with a veteran leader of men's groups, and I knew we had different aims from the get-go, but I had the first hour.

To begin, I played the guys my favorite scene from The Outlaw Josey Wales -- the part where Wales rides up to the Comanche chief Ten Bears and bargains for peace.

There is iron in your words of death for all Comanche to see. And so, there is iron in your words of life. No signed paper can hold the iron. It must come from men.

There is iron in your words of death.

This is how civilization happened.

Agreements between men, backed by the threat of violence.

This is how men made this world.

Christina Hoff Sommers recently wrote about "Equal Pay Day," the day feminists have set aside to moan about the fact that women earn on average 78 percent of men's pay. Among other things, she wrote,

Excuse me for interrupting, but this holiday has no basis in reality. Even feminist economists acknowledge that today's pay disparities are almost entirely the result of women's different life choices -- what they study in school, where they work, and how they balance home and career. This is not to deny that some employers will try to pay Jill 78 cents and Jack $1.00 for an identical job. But our strict laws give Jill the right to take that employer to court. The claim that American women as a group face systemic wage discrimination is groundless.

So, what determines the way in which women's lifestyle choices, including "what they study in school, where they work, and how they balance home and career," differ from those of men. Answer: to a large degree, hardwired sex differences, the product of millions of years of evolution, specifically in the differential effects which reproduction has on men versus women.

Wagner College on Staten Island will be hosting a conference on the subject of "Male Studies" this Wednesday, April 7. To learn more and find out how to participate, visit:

http://www.malestudies.org/

Some of the reactions to the conference I've seen so far have been bitchy and dismissive. Others have expressed anger, disgust and even confusion that anyone would even take an interest in the success or failure of males. Some find the idea that males -- who they've been taught to regard only as cruel oppressors -- may be suffering or struggling to be laughable no matter what evidence is presented.

Many strains of feminist thought regard men as if they were physically malformed women who are afflicted with a pathological superiority complex, and who are in need of immediate treatment and re-education so that they can function more or less in the same fashion and capacity as proper "healthy" women. (Though women may mercifully allow their "cured" males to open jars and take out the garbage once in a while).