The Masculinity Crisis and How To Solve It - Nick Freitas
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 19 minutes
Words per Minute
190.92365
Summary
On today's show, we have a special guest on the show, former US Army Sergeant Nick Freitas. Nick is a veteran of the Israel Defense Forces who served with distinction in combat in the War in Gaza. He is also a political activist, and has been a member of the Democratic Party for over 20 years. In this episode, we discuss his views on the current state of masculinity in America, and the role of men in society.
Transcript
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Never before in human history have we had an entire culturally shaped, like almost every
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single major culturally shaping institution telling young men they were crap. The more that
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the feminization of our educational systems, our churches, everything else, the more that
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has taken place, the less happy everyone is. There's a kind of idea that you're never ever
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supposed to just like bottle up your feelings for a bit and just get on with it, because
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that's bad, right? What do you think about that? It's crap. Yes, it is appropriate for men
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to cry at times. It is not appropriate for you to cry in the midst of crisis. The thing
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that never should have entered into this conversation is, and now you're a victim. That's a core
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component of your identity. There are people that have made their entire careers both professionally
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and politically off of convincing people, that there's no possible way they can do anything.
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It's destructive for the individual. It's incredibly beneficial for the political
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It's awesome to have you on. We were sitting here about a year ago, I think, or something
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like that in this exact same room. And as it turns out, actually, in the exact same clothes,
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at least somehow. We had an amazing conversation about your life, military service, combat,
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the war in Gaza, obviously. And then we did our usual question, what's the one thing you're
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not talking about? And paraphrasing, you basically said, if you keep demonizing young men and,
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you know, behaving towards them in ways that are unconstructive, good men, I hope that includes
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the three of us, are not actually going to be able to control what comes after that.
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Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, if I remember right, it was like, yeah, young men are going to revolt,
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and that doesn't mean they're going to revolt in the way you want them to.
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It's not going to be woke, because I don't know, I think some elements of the left have finally
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figured out that you probably are not going to win the revolution or seize the means of production
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with a bunch of mentally ill people who prioritize, you know, their mental health issues as their
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primary identity. And you're certainly not going to do that if you have to fight a whole generation
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of young men that you have systematically alienated for two decades. But again, the hope is, is that
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good men or that young men revolt in a direction that says, I'm going to reject this aspect of
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toxic masculinity. I'm going to reject the feminization of men. I'm going to reject all these
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other things. And then I'm going to choose to be a good, strong, competent, masculine man who is
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also noble and honorable and fighting for things that are not just within my own interest, but that
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are true. But that's not the only option. There's other options. The other options are, I'm just going
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to punish everyone that decided to treat me this way. And so I'm going to be strong, capable, and
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competent so I can get what I want and screw those people. And those, those are the two paths before
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young men right now. And again, we're still not sure which one is going to actually get a critical
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mass. But I'm a lot more encouraged now that I see a lot more people fighting for, for what I think
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is the right path. And of course, I think one of the reasons that the reaction to the horrific
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assassination of Charlie Kirk was so strong was that he was doing that for young people. He was leading
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them towards God, towards family, towards children, towards service. He's going to be a huge loss
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going forward. He is. The thing that I'm very grateful for with Charlie is Charlie wasn't the
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sort of guy to just advocate for these things. Charlie was the sort of guy to create other people
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that would come in his footsteps or behind him. And so he did develop a network in order to do that.
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And it's amazing the amount of young men and not just young men too, like families that were saying,
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hey, I'm going to the church for the first time. I bought a Bible for the first time.
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So Charlie really did do a good job of not just pointing to the political philosophy,
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but actually pointing to the transcendent, which I think is essential. I have a hard time believing
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that any sort of political philosophy is going to be ultimately successful, completely removed from
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any sort of transcendent principles of objective truth and morality. You know, unfortunately,
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we're already seeing, though, without Charlie's presence, we're already starting to see fractures
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within the right on that. And that's unfortunate because I felt like we had this moment in time,
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and we haven't lost it yet. I want to be clear on that. It's not like it's a lost opportunity.
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But I don't think we should be shocked by the fact that whenever you see unity around something,
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there's always going to be a lot of money to be made and a lot of strategy to be had and dividing
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it up. And one of the things that when we talk about this conversation, I don't think we focus
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enough on is positive male role models, but also fathers. I think one of the major reasons why we see
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these young lads and young boys in crisis, because that's what it is, is a complete absence of father
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figures or positive male role models. I mean, look, this was being talked about in the 1960s
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in the United States. And every single demographic within the United States has had an increase in
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fatherlessness. It's been the least prominent within Asian communities. But every single one of
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them has seen a significant increase. And the bottom line is, is that men, boys are looking for
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structure. They're looking for hierarchy. They're looking for someone to train them up and what they
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should do and to find their role and place within society. And they're going to get it from somewhere.
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And if they're not going to get it from a father figure who presumably loves them and has some sort
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of interest in them growing up to be good men, well, then they'll find it in a gang or they'll find it
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in social media or wherever else they might. There's also been, again, over the last couple of
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decades, this big push to where the idea was is that masculinity is bad. That's the source of all
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of our ills. And so all of the instincts that you have as a young man to want to be strong, to want
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to compete, to want to fight aggression, like all of those things, those are the problems. And so we
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have to train and educate those out of you. And so look, not to be flippant, but I think it's interesting
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that the more that the feminization of our educational systems, our churches, everything
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else, the more that has taken place, the less happy everyone is. Not to mention liberal women
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who are constantly going on TikTok, complaining about how they can't find masculine men. Oh, no
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kidding. Okay. And it just goes, it just goes to the old saying that it's like, okay, well, we have
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more boys being raised in single parent homes, predominantly by mothers. And then they go into
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a school system, which is predominantly female teachers. 77%. So if maybe masculinity is not
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the problem, maybe a lack of it or an absence of it is the problem. Now, I instantly know what
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people watching is going to say, well, you know, these women didn't ask to be single. I get it.
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I was predominantly raised by a single mother. Now, thank God, my father, good man, still involved
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in my life, but I got to see him three to four months out of the year, right? So predominantly raised
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by a single mother. I understand that the vast majority of them didn't sign up for that,
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but I also think we need to recognize that there is something going on in this country
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when the vast majority of young women don't list family or having kids or getting married as
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like anywhere near their top priorities. You know, that's socially engineered. That's not natural.
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It's interesting you say socially engineered, and maybe there is partly that, but isn't it also,
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Nick, the fact that, look, it is impossible to have a man who goes to work, practically impossible,
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I should say, a woman that stays at home, raises her kids. The reality is because of the way economics
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works now, how expensive everything is, housing, all the rest of it, there needs to be two people
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in the workplace. And that puts a strain on marriages and relationships.
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It absolutely does. And there's no question. And again, I'll be happy to sit here for an hour and talk
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about the evils of inflationary monetary policy and how it seems to be at the root of most of our
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problems and why those problems really exist. The other thing that I will say, though, is part of it,
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too, is this idea of what do we teach people to prioritize? And my wife and I got married at 19 and
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20. Both of us came from broken homes. I was in the military. I don't know if you know this,
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but being a private in the United States Army is not exactly a pathway to riches, right?
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So when we had kids at that point, we had our first child. I had just become a staff sergeant.
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Again, I'm a non-commissioned officer. I'm not raking in the dough, right?
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My wife and I had laid out a plan when we were 19, when we were 18 and talking about getting married,
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and we set out what are our expectations. And I remember telling her, I'm like, I see myself as
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I'm supposed to be the primary breadwinner. I feel like my goal is to make enough money to where when we
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start having kids, if you don't want to work, you don't have to. And she goes, good, that is what
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I would like as well. I said, okay, but I need it to be understood. If we have two incomes and we
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switch to one so that you can see them with the kids, the lifestyle changes are going to take place
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as a result. And her attitude was like, well, yeah, of course. A lot of people don't have those
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conversations. There's these expectations that, well, we're never going to make sacrifices in an economic
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environment in order to prioritize other things. And so a lot of this, it is amazing at how much
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you can actually accomplish when both of you are on the same sheet of music, both of you have the
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same priorities and expectations. So yeah, did we make as much money, have as nice a house,
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have as nice clothes, furniture, car? Nope. But I have an outstanding relationship with all three of
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my kids, and they're now 22, 20, and 17, and I like being around all of them. As I like to say,
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they love Jesus and they can't stand Karl Marx. I want us to have a conversation about something
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that I don't think it gets talked about, and, you know, for the reasons that you somewhat alluded to,
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which is that men, women will not be able to teach men to be men as well as men. I know,
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the internet is going to explode now, this crazy idea, but I sort of think that's probably true.
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No, it's absolutely 100% true. Can we just say something in the reverse?
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We need women to actually help raise daughters, right? Like, I can't, I hope I was a very good
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father to my daughters based off my relationship. They seem, the feedback they have given me seems
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to suggest that I was a good dad, but none of them will tell you, oh yeah, dad was all I needed,
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And boys are the same. Boys need both. But what I'm saying is,
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like, I see it, we have a three-year-old, so you've been through this, you probably
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got way more on this than I do. My wife is amazing with him, right? But there's just one or two things
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that as a woman, not everybody, there are women who are brilliant at doing this, but as a woman,
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generally speaking, it's harder for them to deal with the fact that a boy is aggressive, he might
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start hitting, and that has to be channeled. You're remembering that, you know, there's just
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a few things that as a guy you just understand because it sort of exists in the realm of guys
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and women are not necessarily even privy to. Like, I know for a fact that there are certain ways that
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I can behave that will cause you to punch me in the face. And so I know that I have to modulate
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my behavior to make sure that doesn't happen because that wouldn't end well for me, right?
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So the presence of the potential of violence is always at some level in our minds, and therefore,
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we have to act accordingly. And that is something I think is very, very difficult for a woman to
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understand and to teach her sons. Oh, no, it absolutely is. I remember having this conversation
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with my wife the first time my son got into an altercation and her inclination, because he was
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still pretty young, but he was old enough. And that's important, right? I allow my children to
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take age-appropriate risks and age-appropriate challenges. And she's like, oh, well, I'm going to
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call him. I'm like, no, you're not. He said, what do you mean? I'm like, he's got to handle that.
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Why? I said, baby, your son doesn't want the bully to be afraid of you. He wants the bully to be afraid
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of him. And I don't know how this is going to go. He's not going to get so hurt. The other thing I
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always try to say is I try to protect my kids from scars, but bruises are just a part of life.
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So I'm trying to protect them from things that are going to have life-altering impacts on them that could
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seriously hurt them spiritually, physically, emotionally. But when it comes to getting
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knocked on your ass, welcome to life, son. And if I don't teach you how to properly deal with that
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in a relatively safe environment, then you're not going to be ready for it when it happens out in
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the real world and the consequences there could be significant. And it's not as if women don't
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understand the nature of those threats outside of the home. They just have different mechanisms of
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dealing with it. And I need to teach my son to be the sort of man that his wife, that his children,
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that his friends can reasonably count on him in a dangerous situation to be able to handle it.
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And the bottom line is my wife respects those qualities in me. To be honest, they don't just
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respect him. Women find it highly attractive in a man. It's like, okay, do you want me to convey
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those capabilities to your son? Yes. Then you need to trust me. Just like there's times where I've looked,
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there's times where I've wanted to engage with someone with one of my daughters and my wife has
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been like, baby, come here for a second. Let me, let me fill you in on what's going on. Oh,
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thank you. Right. That's the other thing. Right. When you have mutual respect for the idea that
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my wife and I are not competing on raising our children, we are cooperating in raising our
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children. And she has special insights and experiences. And I have special insights and
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experiences. And we're going to utilize these because we both know that we love each other and we love
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our children. And so when you, when you support one another in that process, it's amazing what you
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produce. But again, my, my, I was very blessed to have a wife that understood that I needed to train
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a son that was one day going to be responsible for providing and protecting his family.
00:15:19.160
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And the other thing as well, I think, and by the way, your point about how men and women can teach,
00:17:10.640
like, I mean, when my son was a baby, I was just standing there observing and like making notes,
00:17:16.320
like, oh, she did that, okay. And by her example, she showed me all the stuff that you're supposed to do
00:17:21.000
in that time. So we learn from each other. But when we're talking about young boys, and you know,
00:17:25.480
you talked about fatherlessness, lack of male role models, I think this is where some of these things
00:17:30.760
are coming from. Because the other thing is, men are just fundamentally, I think, much more comfortable
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We just know it's part of life. Whereas for a woman, it's a very unpleasant thing to even deal with
00:17:42.220
particularly male aggression. I saw this great clip of a friend of mine called Paul Otea, Peter's
00:17:47.240
brother. And he talked about the fact that his boys were in some kind of fight. It got very intense.
00:17:52.640
And he basically helped them see that aggression is great when you're defending a brother from a wild
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animal or whatever. And that's, I think, another thing that has perhaps been suppressed where you now see
00:18:05.480
it come out in unpleasant ways, where it's like, you haven't been taught that aggression is useful
00:18:10.760
and good. Just, it's got to be channeled right. Because sometimes I feel the female reaction is
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Yeah. Well, and the problem is, is that you can't totally shut it down. You can't extinguish it.
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And you don't want to, because no civilization in history has ever been protected by docile,
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weak men that were afraid of conflict. That's just not how that happens.
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So I think it's important to understand that while aggression, all of us are prone to want
00:18:40.380
to avoid discomfort on some level. We typically don't prefer it, right? And that's, that's
00:18:45.400
understandable. But it is a reality. And the real question is the discernment that's supposed
00:18:50.680
to, again, in determining is what sort of, what level of aggression is appropriate for
00:18:54.640
this situation? Why am I utilizing this level of aggression? To what extent do I plan to use
00:19:00.480
that aggression, right? Is it until he stops moving? Or, you know, what is it? Or is it
00:19:03.840
just to where he's restrained, whatever it is? That all takes a great deal of training
00:19:07.720
and discipline. And in order to train and discipline on those areas, you have to put
00:19:11.600
yourself into those environments. Not unregulated environments, but training for those purposes
00:19:17.160
and developing the appropriate intellectual, physical, and emotional practices and disciplines
00:19:24.480
is very important. And, and, and again, it's, it's one of those things where a woman is naturally
00:19:31.640
going to be inclined to let's maintain the peace. She is able to do that and to be in an environment
00:19:38.080
where she feels so much more secure when she knows her husband has it. When, when she knows
00:19:43.260
that her husband has control of the situation, um, she feels safe and secure. Again, I have to
00:19:49.020
convey that to my son, which means you're going to have to watch your son go through difficult
00:19:52.180
things that you never had to watch me go through. Um, but this is part of the process. And again,
00:19:57.820
a lot, a lot of that is just, a lot of that comes from talking between husband and wife beforehand.
00:20:02.860
Um, but I, I'll use this as an example. I was speaking at a, uh, it was a young men's luncheon.
00:20:08.940
It was run by a young America's foundation. So conservative group, and they hadn't done any men's,
00:20:14.580
they didn't, they had done a young woman's luncheon for the last 10 years. They hadn't done a young
00:20:17.740
men's one for 10 years. And so they decided they were going to, they would bring it up. And, uh,
00:20:22.380
they asked me if I would speak at it. And so typically when someone reads off my bio, one of
00:20:26.120
these things, there's three things mentioned. Nick was a former green beret combat veteran. Nick has
00:20:30.580
served 10 years in the Virginia general assembly and Nick has a, you know, sizable social media
00:20:35.480
following. Now in this group of young men, the vast majority of them either are involved in politics
00:20:41.660
or want to be involved in politics professionally on some level. They want to be on staff. They want to run
00:20:47.060
for office, whatever it is, work for a think tank. And then some of them also are interested in
00:20:52.380
joining the military, but out of a room of 300 young men, I would say maybe 10% were interested
00:20:56.800
in the military. All of them were interested in politics on one way level. And so I said,
00:21:01.040
all right, gentlemen, when those three things get read off in my bio, which are you most impressed
00:21:05.840
with? And all of them almost in unison, green beret combat veteran. I said, isn't that fascinating?
00:21:11.220
The vast majority of you in here are not going to join the military. You respect the military,
00:21:15.560
but you're not interested in serving in that capacity. And even if you are, you're not
00:21:20.100
necessarily interested in doing what I did within the military. And yet every young man in this room
00:21:25.180
thinks that's the most impressive thing. Why? Because that's the credential that is listed off
00:21:30.580
about me that suggests to you that if someone violent were to come through that door right now,
00:21:34.480
I would know what to do about it and probably come out on top. Right? If that is the instinct
00:21:41.460
that I believe God has written into all of us, well, then maybe we should take some cues from
00:21:46.600
that. Not because we've all got to be soldiers or, you know, UFC fighters or whatnot, because we're
00:21:52.940
not, we're not all supposed to do that. We're not all called to do that. But maybe we should all
00:21:56.220
recognize that there's something in you that wants to be able to have some capability and capacity for
00:22:01.340
this. And so you should start asking yourself, what do I need to do in order to properly develop and
00:22:06.400
train that? Because it isn't all just physical. If you're, if you are physically strong, you're able
00:22:11.680
to shoot, you're able to fight, but you're a freaking idiot. Um, you're going to lose more
00:22:16.740
than you win. If you don't have any control of your emotions, you're a monster. You're now a terror
00:22:22.180
for your, for your family, for your community, for your country. But if you line up all these things,
00:22:27.640
like if you have, like, if you have a strong spiritual bearing, which says, I know why I have
00:22:32.380
these, I know why God gave me these, these desires. I have the intellectual capacity to be able to read
00:22:37.020
a situation and know when to use them. I have the emotional maturity to understand when to be,
00:22:42.280
when to restrain myself and when to utilize what I need to. And I have the physical capability and
00:22:46.400
capacity to actually execute it. You are now the sort of person that can be dangerous on behalf of
00:22:51.420
the things you love, but never to the things you love. But it takes all of that. And regardless of
00:22:57.100
what you do, I always think there's something beneficial about young men embracing that part of their
00:23:02.060
personality, embracing that part of their masculinity and developing it to, you know,
00:23:06.080
an appropriate level for what they want to do in their life. And it's so interesting. You talked
00:23:09.880
about the physical aspects of men, because one of the things that I noticed, so everybody knows this,
00:23:15.520
but I'll repeat it. So I used to teach and particularly. Whoa. Yeah, I know. I know.
00:23:21.220
Look, this is a good thing. Yeah. Yeah. But in one part of East London, in a place called Newham,
00:23:28.880
where majority of my kids didn't have a dad. And I used to see my kids come in. I used to teach
00:23:36.240
year six, year six with 10 and 11 year olds. I used to see them come in at 10 and mom used to be
00:23:42.160
able to control them. But 11 and 12 is when the gang started to circulate because the boys went,
00:23:49.480
started to go through puberty. Mom couldn't control them anymore. Physically, dad wasn't there.
00:23:55.200
They are craving male camaraderie, approval. And if mom can't control them, then the boys are going
00:24:03.220
to leave. So this this male dominance and people may be uncomfortable or squeamish about it. It's
00:24:08.940
really important, particularly from an older male. You know, this part is I think growing up in an
00:24:16.260
environment where I'm 46. So I grew up in an environment where we still revered traditional
00:24:24.080
masculinity on some level. But you definitely had, you know, the feminist waves coming in and whatnot.
00:24:30.040
And there was kind of these notions about humanity and human nature and what we could train and what
00:24:35.880
we could engineer through the right programs and education. And I think we're getting back to a
00:24:41.240
point where people are starting to recognize that, yes, nurture matters, but so does nature.
00:24:48.000
So does nature. And instead of us arrogantly presuming that we've just reached this level
00:24:55.060
of either enlightenment or scientific knowledge that we can just negate all of that and run people
00:25:00.740
through the appropriate programs and get the results we want. OK, we're several decades into
00:25:06.000
this experiment. How's it working out for us? Maybe, maybe the thousands of years of human
00:25:12.700
history that came before us have something to teach us about human nature. Not that we have to adopt
00:25:17.480
everything that came before us. But as C.S. Lewis likes to point out, the chronological snobbery
00:25:22.760
of the moderns who think that, well, we would never behave that way because we're just so much more
00:25:28.460
enlightened. Like, OK, yeah, go ahead and what is it, nine meals? You're nine meals away from chaos.
00:25:34.340
So I think it's I think we need to appreciate the fact that this seems to be a common phenomenon
00:25:42.440
among the males of the population across space and time and culture. And the real question we have
00:25:49.580
to ask ourselves is, OK, again, maybe God put it there for a reason. Maybe there's some positive
00:25:55.380
manifestations of this. And maybe our job as parents, as fathers, as mothers, as a society
00:26:01.320
is to help direct things in those positive manifestations. You know, one of the most
00:26:07.340
bizarre things about this whole concept of toxic masculinity. All right. Let's see if I can get
00:26:13.400
canceled here real quick. There's a point to it. The point to it is I'm going to look at these
00:26:18.960
masculine traits. And I'm going to ask myself, are there negative manifestations of those masculine
00:26:24.860
traits? Yes, of course. Of course there is. OK, good. Do I want to avoid the negative manifestations
00:26:32.300
of that? Yes, of course. But don't don't make the trait itself the problem. The trait itself is not
00:26:39.100
toxic. It's the way it's manifesting. Right. Because I could just as easily say the same thing about
00:26:43.800
femininity. Yes, there are things that we generally associate with feminine traits. Are there negative and
00:26:48.080
positive manifestations of those? No. Yeah, of course there are. Of course there are. All of us,
00:26:54.580
all of us know and are sometimes represented by insufferable women. Right. But the point is,
00:27:00.360
is that just like masculinity is not toxic for the traits that it contains, neither is femininity
00:27:05.340
toxic for the trait it contains. But like anything else, aggression is a good thing when I'm using it
00:27:11.460
to protect innocent people from those that would cause harm in them. It is a bad thing when I'm using
00:27:15.200
it to exploit and hurt people, hurt innocent people in order to get what I want. And that used to be
00:27:20.880
something that we just kind of understood. And it's such a profound point because these traits
00:27:28.760
are inherent within men. They flow through all of us. You can use them for positive or you can use
00:27:34.060
them for negative. But if as a society you demonize those traits and you effectively drive them
00:27:40.360
underground, you're not going to get rid of them. And what these traits are actually going to do is
00:27:45.320
they're going to end up mutated. They're going to be like a bone that doesn't grow properly.
00:27:51.340
And as a result of that, what is going to come out is not pretty. So if you think about aggression,
00:27:57.660
male dominance, pride, desire for success, I mean, all of those traits can be used to describe Andrew
00:28:04.640
Taylor. And maybe Andrew is a result of a society that has demonized men and the instincts that we have
00:28:13.680
to such a point where they naturally gravitate towards a character like that.
00:28:18.060
Well, I think, so first of all, I think it's absolutely true that when you, it is one thing
00:28:24.380
to not teach, to not teach a young man the way to develop those traits. It is another thing to
00:28:29.740
demonize those traits, right? When you fail to teach them, they might go to a gang or they might
00:28:34.200
do something else, you know, who knows? When you demonize them as society, you actually pervert this
00:28:38.680
entire process in a way that is far more dangerous. It's almost like this, you read the stories of
00:28:45.020
some of the most ruthless, brutal serial killers. And what do you find? You typically find people
00:28:51.400
with no, not always, typically people that really, really weird, strange, bad, domineering relationships
00:28:57.400
with their mother, either absent fathers or kind of like really, really weak, docile fathers.
00:29:03.840
And oh, so that manifests that. So now that you've put them in a completely feminized environment,
00:29:07.660
that created a positive result. No, they have this incredibly perverse way that they look at women.
00:29:13.900
It's not at all healthy. It ends up being brutal and even murderous at times.
00:29:18.300
And so I, again, I think it's important to understand that it is one thing to ignore those
00:29:22.200
traits. It is another thing to demonize them. And both of them are bad, but the demonization of
00:29:26.400
those traits is even worse. Because like you said, you don't get rid of them. They're just left to
00:29:30.520
fester and manifest in other ways. When it comes to things like, you know, Andrew Tate,
00:29:36.700
one of the things I always warn pastors about is I'll say, look, if anybody that looks at what I
00:29:45.140
say and what I believe and what I advocate for on what I call biblical masculinity, but just
00:29:49.880
traditional masculinity, nobody could look at what I'm saying and come to any, be confused that I
00:29:57.140
disagree with a lot of things that Andrew Tate says. But if you want to know why so many young men
00:30:01.920
flock to Andrew Tate, it's not simply because the man can fight, the man's financially successful,
00:30:07.260
the man is surrounded by beautiful women, right? These are all superficial things that also have
00:30:11.780
meaning, but superficial things that all men are kind of drawn to. It's also because Andrew Tate was
00:30:18.360
one of the few people sticking up for those young men when nobody else would. And so as much as I
00:30:24.580
disagree with a lot of the things that Andrew pushes for, not everything, because he does push
00:30:30.800
for some things that you should be strong, you should be competent. The question is why and for
00:30:33.920
what purpose? But, and obviously as a father, especially as a father of daughters, I abhor some
00:30:39.600
of the things that he did in the realm of pornography and everything else. But I think it's really important
00:30:47.640
for what we might call more conservative men to understand that you dropped the ball. You dropped
00:30:55.460
the ball and you didn't present strong role models for people to follow. And in fact, you go into your
00:31:01.540
churches and you treated Jesus like he was the fourth member of a boy band, right? You didn't talk
00:31:07.500
about what it meant to be strong and noble and competent and capable. You didn't lift up masculine
00:31:14.880
virtues as something to be applauded by society. No, instead, everything was, oh, women are so
00:31:21.400
perfect and wonderful and men, you really need to step up. Do men need to step up? Yes, of course we
00:31:25.880
do. Stepping up is something that we have to, in fact, when you hear the phrase, be a man, every single
00:31:31.300
one of us automatically got a picture in our head of what that means is that I will get the job done.
00:31:36.520
I will keep my word. I will do what needs to be done regardless of pain, of discomfort, of danger.
00:31:41.780
That's what being a man is, right? Well, last time I checked, real hard to maintain civilization
00:31:48.820
if you're not actually living in a civilization which elevates those characteristics as something
00:31:54.600
to be truly admired within society. And yet we did the opposite. We treated it as if it was just, well,
00:32:00.420
yeah, of course you're supposed to do that stuff. And then we didn't reward it. And now we're shocked
00:32:05.840
by the results. And now you're shocked by young men that are finding other men that are a little
00:32:11.600
bit farther down the path than they are, who have experienced some level of success, who have
00:32:16.020
experienced some level of discipline and aspects of our lives that they find meaningful. And they
00:32:20.620
were sticking up for them and you weren't. So don't be shocked. And before you go heavy on
00:32:25.740
trashing that, you better be able to provide an alternative. What are they fighting for? Have you
00:32:30.960
provided an alternative worth following? Or are you just trashing that guy? Because I can tell you
00:32:37.760
real quick what young men who have been starved for mentorship are going to choose. And so I'm very
00:32:44.120
encouraged though, because I do see a world where you got guys like John Lovell, you know, former Ranger
00:32:49.120
Regiment, Warrior Poets Society. There's no question that that man knows how to handle himself in a gunfight.
00:32:54.140
But he also knows how to handle himself in a marriage and with raising kids. You know, Chad
00:33:00.860
Robichaud. Nobody's going to say, nobody's going to talk smack about Chad Robichaud. That guy was not
00:33:05.860
only Marine Special Operations and doing, you know, operations, facilitating things for SEAL Team 6 in
00:33:10.480
Afghanistan and like two-man teams, but then got back and went 18-1 fighting as a professional MMA
00:33:17.320
fighter, right? Nobody's going to say that guy is, you know, well, you just don't get it. You're weak.
00:33:20.920
No, no, no. Victor Marks, right? Like all of these guys have established themselves.
00:33:26.720
And this is important for me too, because one of the things I tell people, again, I tell pastors
00:33:31.420
a lot when I'm asked to speak to them is, I was always raised in the faith, but it wasn't very
00:33:38.020
active in my life when I was a young man, because I associated with a lot of other men that I thought
00:33:42.300
were weak. And when I went into the military, I wanted to be an operator. I wanted to be a warrior.
00:33:46.440
I wanted to be a Green Beret, right? I wanted to do these things. And it wasn't
00:33:50.880
until I found other men that really impressed me as capable operators could handle themselves
00:33:55.900
in a fight, do all these other things that it became very, very clear to me that, oh,
00:33:59.620
you know, these things are not mutually exclusive. In fact, one makes you better at the other.
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I'm glad we've talked about that because I think it's also time to flip the conversation. And of course,
00:35:54.480
not only are you seeing the kind of angry response of Andrew Tay, but there's also a more kind of
00:36:01.920
vengeful and trolly response to all of this, which is to like check out of life and just become cynical
00:36:07.580
and bitter and resentful. And, you know, Jordan, of course, was first to really talk about what happens
00:36:14.060
when you do that. But actually, I think it's time for us to have a conversation about what it is that
00:36:19.140
now that we've stopped the demonizing, or some of us are at least saying we're going to stop other
00:36:25.240
people from doing the demonizing, we just should, I think, talk more about what it is that a man is
00:36:30.680
supposed to do. And you talk about being a man or, you know, the phrase man up. And that's one of the
00:36:36.360
things where I think there's been a lot of confusion. Maybe you can help us out with that,
00:36:40.240
which is there's a kind of idea that you're never, ever, ever supposed to just like bottle up your
00:36:47.820
feelings for a bit and just get on with it, because that's bad, right? What do you think
00:36:52.720
about that? I think it's crap. I was, I was talking to, I was actually talking about a high
00:36:58.360
school group a while back. It was a big conference they were having, and they wanted me to talk about
00:37:02.560
masculinity. And I asked the question, is it okay for men to cry? And everybody, oh, yes, yes, of
00:37:08.580
course, absolutely. I'm like, is it though? Like all the time, right? I said, now listen, because I can
00:37:15.960
already see the comments on this, right? Like, of course men can cry. How dare you? That's toxic
00:37:19.660
masculinity. Yes, it is appropriate for men to cry at times. It is not appropriate for you to cry in
00:37:26.580
the midst of crisis. That's when you're supposed to compartmentalize. We keep hearing about how well,
00:37:31.780
how good men are at compartmentalizing. That's part of it. Part of our emotional maturity is when
00:37:36.440
there's a dangerous situation, when there's a crisis, when you have to be there for other people,
00:37:40.040
you keep your emotions under control. You can call that bottling up. And yeah, if you keep them
00:37:45.460
bottling up forever, that's bad. That's not emotionally mature. But in the midst of a
00:37:50.100
dangerous situation and a crisis or whatnot where everyone else is looking and depending on you for
00:37:54.020
leadership and security, yeah, you don't need to be over there having a good cry, right? And then I'll
00:37:59.720
ask the ladies in the room. I'll be like, ladies, okay, we all know that the proper answer is I want
00:38:06.460
a man that's in touch with his feminine side. Do you? Do you? Do you want a guy that's all weepy all the
00:38:12.240
time? No, you don't. Maybe there's something to that. Maybe like just how we've identified certain
00:38:18.960
traits within men that need to be developed positively. There are certain indicators in
00:38:24.040
the way that women respond to masculinity. And if a guy's walking around like a weepy little punk all
00:38:29.160
the time, you're not interested. Why? Well, because he's probably not the sort of person that can defend
00:38:33.720
you or your children one day, right? So let's just admit something. Yes, it's okay for men to cry
00:38:40.540
in certain elements, certain times and whatnot. It's also incredibly essential that men develop
00:38:46.320
the sort of emotional maturity that allows them to keep themselves under control, under dangerous
00:38:51.680
and trying circumstances so that they can take care and protect the people that they love.
00:38:55.860
And instead of demonizing that as just bottling it all up, maybe we should once again recognize that,
00:39:00.800
no, when that's done properly, that requires a great deal of discipline and sacrifice on behalf of
00:39:05.920
man. And guess what? We love to be that guy. We love to be that. You show me the one male role model
00:39:11.920
in any sort of movie where the guy's weeping and crying all the time and dangerous. No, it's the guy
00:39:16.700
that got his crap together in the midst of chaos. Now, do we have to have a conversation on what
00:39:22.700
happens when, okay, now I'm out of the crisis and there has to be... Yes, this is exactly it.
00:39:26.900
That's such a good point. By the way, I love the way you broke that down because that's exactly right.
00:39:30.800
But I think the piece that historically has been missing, and I think there is a conversation to
00:39:35.140
be had, is... I'm going to, you know, people get offended by this, but like when I was at school,
00:39:41.420
if you showed your feelings, you were gay. Like, that was... What, you've got feelings? Gay?
00:39:46.640
Yeah. Right? That's how it was, right? Good times.
00:39:49.940
Right, yeah. And there's nothing wrong with being gay, obviously, but you know what I mean, right?
00:39:53.580
And that's maybe a bit... Well, I do actually feel we have made progress, which is it... Men have been
00:40:02.020
encouraged to have a conversation, maybe with other men, and go, you know, I was really struggling
00:40:07.240
there for a while, or I've been through this terrible thing, and to share that. What's a healthy
00:40:11.280
way to process that stuff once the crisis is over? I think there's two elements to this. One is,
00:40:16.600
like, I always talk about, like, men or women, but I specifically address this to men a lot. There's
00:40:20.800
five categories of your life, right? There's the spiritual, the physical, the emotional,
00:40:24.540
the intellectual, and the professional, right? No matter who you are, what you do, and you're
00:40:27.820
always going to be developing these aspects of your life. They're always going to have an impact.
00:40:30.840
The reason why I think the spiritual is important is because I get, like, I get my identity in Christ.
00:40:36.420
Okay, what does that mean, right? Because we've all heard the Sunday School version of this,
00:40:39.560
but what does that actually mean? Well, it actually means I have a transcendent source for my identity,
00:40:44.880
my meaning, my purpose that never goes away, right? So was I proud of
00:40:50.740
being a Green Beret? Yes, I'm not a Green Beret anymore. What happens to my identity if everything
00:40:55.960
is just encapsulated by that? You see, okay, I served 10 years in the Virginia General Assembly.
00:41:02.320
I'm proud of that. Look, I've met people that their entire identity is wrapped up in being a
00:41:07.420
politician, and they're typically the people you don't want to be in power. So the reason why having
00:41:12.700
something rooted in something that provides objective truth, objective morality, transcendent meaning,
00:41:17.420
and purpose, the reason why that's so important is because it actually gives me an intellectually
00:41:22.160
consistent way to explain suffering. I'm not confused by it. I'm not surprised by it.
00:41:29.000
I wasn't promised to know suffering in life. I was promised quite the opposite. And so when it happens,
00:41:34.600
it's like, okay, how do I deal with it? Right? I don't automatically look at it as, oh, this is some
00:41:39.180
source of great cosmic injustice, and something must be done. No, it's part of life. I got to deal with it.
00:41:45.900
How do I deal with it effectively? And how do I deal with it in such a way where I can also protect
00:41:49.600
the people that I love? So right off the bat, when you have that sense of identity, meaning,
00:41:53.640
and purpose, then no matter what you go through, your core is there. And that's critical. It's
00:41:59.440
absolutely critical. I watched so many guys that were just incredibly good operators,
00:42:03.640
incredible soldiers. They get home, their marriage breaks apart, their relationship with
00:42:10.240
their kids breaks apart, you know, their career suffers as a result. And now everything that they got
00:42:15.500
any sort of identity or meaning from is gone. And it's a really easy step from there to a whole
00:42:22.320
lot of self-medication and self-destructive behavior. So that's the first one. It's important.
00:42:28.220
And the reason I say that is because I have so many people like, I love everything you say,
00:42:30.880
just leave God out of it. No. Right? The second part is fostering strong, good relationships with
00:42:39.220
other friendships with other men. I think a lot of times that helps too when you have other men that,
00:42:45.000
again, they don't have to have all the same experiences that you do. And I think this needs
00:42:50.280
to go, I think there's three components to this. You need mentors, you need peers, and you need mentees.
00:42:57.840
So obviously when you're younger in life, you have more of those mentors and peers. And as you get older,
00:43:01.920
you start to get more of the mentees. The way you're now sharing your experience and one and helping
00:43:05.860
them navigate these problems. And the reason why that third component is important is because one,
00:43:09.800
that's what provides the next generation with the capabilities to be able to do what they need to do.
00:43:14.140
And we keep this whole civilization thing going in the right direction. But it's also one of those
00:43:20.020
things when you're thinking about, when you're getting mentorship from someone that you know that
00:43:23.880
you trust, when you have other peers that rely on you and you can rely on them. And so you have that
00:43:29.900
shared experience. And then when you have other people that you know you're going to be responsible
00:43:33.200
for bringing up, again, as a father, this was critical. I recognize that my son is replacing
00:43:39.500
me in this world. And I better conduct myself in such a way as to be worthy of his admiration,
00:43:47.660
as to be worthy of him following the path that I've laid out and then making one his own.
00:43:52.900
And so I think when we develop those kind of relationships where we can sit down and we can
00:43:57.940
talk with somebody that, again, I think the shared faith really, really does matter. I really do
00:44:02.140
think. I think it provides a commonplace, a common reference point that goes beyond either of you
00:44:07.400
and your experience. I think that's really important. But being able to sit down with
00:44:11.900
someone like that and be like, dude, I just need to talk. You're not going to have a ton of friends
00:44:17.460
that you do that with. I'm a little bit skeptical. And by a little bit, I mean incredibly skeptical of
00:44:24.000
modern therapy. And it's not because I don't think there can be benefits to therapy. I absolutely do.
00:44:29.300
But I think you've got to be real careful with who you trust going into that environment. We had a
00:44:33.960
lot of operators that went into traditional therapy and it was like they were getting therapy for
00:44:39.400
women. And they were treating guys that had served overseas in difficult situations as if they were
00:44:44.300
broken toys or, you know, oh, you're broken. We're going to fix you. Screw you. You know, one of the
00:44:51.240
most effective ways that I saw with a lot of men was this program, this program they had done where
00:44:57.160
they were trying to teach, you know, highly trained operators how to deal with all the stress and
00:45:03.700
whatnot that was coming in and impacting their marriage and impacting them as a father and
00:45:07.060
everything else. And they found that when they front loaded it and do this is going to make
00:45:10.980
you a better father, it was emotional. It was gay. It was gay. A 90s kid, right? Yeah.
00:45:16.500
But when they said, hey, look, we're going to run you through, we're going to run you through these
00:45:22.480
stress exercises. And the reason why we're going to run you through and give you these techniques in
00:45:25.660
order to deal with the stress is because look what just happened to your shot group. So they're going
00:45:29.940
through the shoot house. Their shot group goes to crap and they're like, how do I fix this? Oh,
00:45:34.820
you fix it by doing this, this, and this. This is what happens to happen with your heart rate.
00:45:37.460
This is what your mind's doing. This is what the various chemicals in your body are doing,
00:45:40.820
et cetera. And so all of a sudden they got them in a position where they could focus them in on
00:45:46.300
what their body, how their body was responding to stressful situations, prolonged stressful
00:45:49.740
situations, how they can deal with it to be a better operator. Oh, by the way, these are the
00:45:55.860
same things that are going to impact you. And you don't just have an obligation to be a good operator.
00:45:59.360
You have an obligation to be a good man, a good husband, a good father. And the same thing that's
00:46:03.620
going to help you in this environment is going to help you in that environment. So I think a part of it
00:46:07.980
is, is properly explaining these, this is part of the responsibility of men. This is where John
00:46:12.420
Lovell, I think does a really good job of saying, we're not just supposed to be warriors. We're
00:46:15.620
supposed to be romantic. We're supposed to be tender with our families. And I think when we look
00:46:20.280
at it as this is a part of your training of being a good and complete man is very important. And then
00:46:25.780
finding other men that are on that same journey that have had, again, mentors, peers, and mentees.
00:46:30.660
I think the whole idea of having a skillset in order to deal with difficult problems,
00:46:36.580
difficult situations is so important for men. Because one of the things that I didn't have
00:46:42.920
when I was young is I'd be put in a situation. I didn't know how to deal with it. I didn't have
00:46:48.240
the skillset to deal with it. I'd feel overwhelmed. And then before you know it, you start becoming
00:46:52.940
emotional. And that's when everything goes wrong, because you start making decisions based on emotion
00:47:01.140
Emotions should inform our decisions, they shouldn't direct them. Because when you have a visceral reaction
00:47:07.980
to something, there's a reason for that. Your body or mind is telling you something about this
00:47:11.440
particular situation. It's an invitation to thought. By the same token, I think when a lot of times men will
00:47:21.020
get accused of bottling up their emotions, when in reality, what they're doing is they're transferring
00:47:24.900
the emotions they feel over into the two emotions that they don't mind showing you, which is usually
00:47:31.280
So this is why my father was a homicide detective. My mom was a nurse, too. So I grew up around a lot
00:47:38.460
of gallows humor. But it was one of these things where the reason why, if I'm feeling insecure or
00:47:47.060
afraid or unsure of myself or whatnot, I go straight to sarcasm or humor or anger. Because sarcasm and
00:47:58.700
anger seldom get confused for weakness. And these ones constantly get confused for weakness. And so I
00:48:06.140
think it's important to understand. And again, this is something, too, where this is something where, again,
00:48:10.860
a woman who's interested can actually play a really, really important role in the development of a man
00:48:16.800
because, let's face it, a lot of the crap that we do, we do for them. We can't. You find a woman
00:48:22.240
that you're absolutely in love with, you will slay dragons and be thankful for it just to get to come
00:48:27.280
home to her. And so one of the things that, again, I try to explain is, okay, guys, because we
00:48:32.240
converted this is because we don't want to appear weak. That's not a negative impulse, by the way.
00:48:36.580
We shouldn't appear weak. But we have to understand when we're dealing with certain things and it
00:48:40.840
manifests in this way, we haven't bottled up our emotions. We've just transferred them.
00:48:43.960
I think it's also important for, again, wives that are interested in what's going on in their
00:48:50.000
husband's mind to appreciate that and appreciate he doesn't want to appear weak. He really doesn't
00:48:54.280
want to appear weak in front of you. So if you want to be able to talk to things or if you want him
00:48:59.020
to be able to open up to you, I would recommend that you do two things. One, you make sure that man
00:49:03.920
knows you respect him and you're on his side. I explain this to wives all the time. Men associate
00:49:10.540
love with loyalty. Every guy I know, myself included, has that one friend that is not good
00:49:18.220
for you. It's that one buddy where you're, all the women in your life is like, why do you even
00:49:23.900
spend, why? Guaranteed because at some moment, at some time, that guy was there for you. And because
00:49:30.620
you know that if you called him up at two o'clock in the morning and said he needs to show up with a
00:49:34.000
shovel, some lime and no questions asked, he'd be there. We associate loyalty with love. When a wife
00:49:40.360
makes her husband feel respected and he knows he has her loyalty, he is more willing to open up on
00:49:46.520
what's going on. The other thing she needs to understand is that there are some burdens that
00:49:52.200
men are just supposed to bear and we don't share it with our wives. We just don't. It's not that
00:49:58.340
there's something wrong within the marriage or the relationship. It's just that some of the
00:50:02.000
burdens are ours and you can't carry them for us. What you can do is create the sort of environment
00:50:08.640
where we don't mind carrying them. And I think when that's recognized in the way that men deal
00:50:14.060
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00:50:19.340
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of your financial future today. I think that's so important. And one of the things that I get really
00:52:01.280
worried about, Nick, is when we associate our emotions with who we are and also we turn them
00:52:08.720
into identities. And you see this with social media and someone's got bipolar. And bipolar, by the way,
00:52:16.060
it's a very serious illness. I don't mean to trivialize it. If you've got bipolar one or two,
00:52:20.820
it is awful and it's a real cross to bear. But that's not your identity. Your identity isn't
00:52:26.540
bipolar. Your identity isn't the fact that maybe you've got some type of anger disorder.
00:52:31.840
Yeah. Well, this is another problem I have within the larger philosophical realm of what they call
00:52:36.980
intersectional politics. So the generous definition of intersectional politics is the understanding
00:52:44.700
that there have been historical injustices, oppressions, and depending on what sort of
00:52:50.860
groups that you fit into, then theoretically you could have been subject to more of those oppressions
00:52:55.600
or more of those, you know, systematic racism or sexism or whatever else. And the idea is, is that,
00:53:01.480
okay, if you're a woman, okay, well, then there were certain, you know, injustices. And again, we can
00:53:08.400
debate on what they are to what extent, but just for argument's sake. If you're a woman, okay, there were
00:53:12.600
certain injustices that you were subject to. But if you're a black woman, you actually had more injustices
00:53:16.600
that you were subject to. And so goes the intersectional pyramid. It is one thing to use that as an
00:53:22.200
analytical tool throughout history to say like, okay, how have things impacted and, and how do we
00:53:27.400
process this? It is another thing to make those things your entire identity, right? The injustices,
00:53:33.720
real or perceived, the entire identity, and to create a whole reward structure based off of it
00:53:38.600
to where now, well, if I want to go to the top of the intersectional period, well, that's fine. I just
00:53:43.380
identify as a queer, non-binary, trans cat. Poof, I'm there. I'm at the top of the intersectional
00:53:51.760
pyramid. Nobody's more oppressed than that. And, and so we, we have done this thing where we've
00:53:56.960
taken, Allie Beth Stuckey refers to it as toxic empathy. It's this idea where we have, we have
00:54:02.140
taken, we have taken things that we struggle with. Oftentimes we add, I think, diagnoses that I'm not
00:54:10.140
quite sure. There's a lot of self-diagnosis, a lot of TikTok diagnosis going on out there.
00:54:15.120
But we have things that in some cases are, are unique and we've made them our identity. So if someone
00:54:21.520
has been, if someone, look, if you were a black person growing up in the era of Jim Crow, there
00:54:25.120
is no question that the government was being utilized against you. Now, the question that we
00:54:32.200
should ask is, okay, having acknowledged this, what do we do about it now? Well, step one, don't do
00:54:37.860
those things to the government anymore. Like get rid of Jim Crow. Step two is, okay, well then to the
00:54:42.920
degree that recompense is, is necessary. How do we do that? But the thing that never, never should have
00:54:50.000
entered into this conversation is, and now you're a victim. That's a core component of
00:54:53.620
your identity. You can't get ahead without some sort of outside structure doing it. You have no
00:54:58.240
control over your, your future. That has been determined for you based off of the circumstances
00:55:03.640
that you found yourself in. It's just some of the most destructive, uh, it's destructive for the
00:55:11.620
individual. It's incredibly beneficial for the political structures to benefit from them.
00:55:15.880
Um, there, there are people that have made their entire careers, both professionally and
00:55:20.340
politically off of convincing people that there's no possible way they could do anything.
00:55:25.240
Um, one of the people that did that just got elected to mayor of New York city, but, um, but
00:55:30.720
yeah, it's, it's an incredibly destructive mindset and it, it, it seeks to rob people of their own
00:55:36.820
agency so that they'll transfer all responsibility over to somebody else. And yeah, it's corrosive.
00:55:43.900
And it's designed to make men miserable. Yes. Because if you feel that you have a look,
00:55:49.860
I can't speak for woman. I'm not a woman. It, but as a man, if you feel that you have no agency,
00:55:55.200
if you feel that you have no control over your life, that's a moment you enter very, very dangerous
00:56:01.700
places as a man, particularly as a young man. Yeah. Eric Hoffer talks about this in his book,
00:56:06.980
the true believer, uh, where he talks about the, uh, the nature of mass movements. And one of the
00:56:12.000
things he talks about there is when you can convince a group of people that essentially they,
00:56:15.620
they don't have any agency in and of themselves. There's no way that they can actually fix their
00:56:19.900
problems. They have to operate as part of the group. Well, once they've realized, well, I have
00:56:24.800
no agency. Well, if I have no agency, I have no responsibility, but I'm a victim, which means I'm a
00:56:30.320
victim of injustice. And now I get to go meet out whatever violence or actions need to against my
00:56:37.520
oppressors. And, and how do I just, how do I justify now doing horrible and egregious things to other
00:56:43.220
people? Well, it's not me. I'm doing it on behalf of the group. The group ends up getting their own
00:56:48.080
morality and then their own realm of, of justification for various actions. And now I can
00:56:52.360
go do these things as part of this group because the group now provides my identity. The group's my
00:56:57.680
source of strength, the group's, and it's not hard to see how we go from otherwise, otherwise reasonable
00:57:05.800
or rational people to justify the most evil of things as the worst manifestation of that. The, the kind
00:57:12.780
of, um, the other manifestation of it is just the absolute sense of helplessness. And in an age where
00:57:18.980
there's endless dopamine hits from everything, from, you know, games to porn to everything else,
00:57:24.780
you're, you're never going to really get a sense of meaning or fulfillment or purpose, but you can kind
00:57:29.380
of push yourself along day to day with, again, these little stimulus. The end result though,
00:57:35.900
is that eventually that just leads to, again, a really dark place of depression. And then at that
00:57:39.680
point, you see a lot of people either choosing to, you know, rebel in very, very dangerous and
00:57:44.400
destructive ways, or they, they choose other ways to end their suffering. So if you're a young man
00:57:51.440
listening to this, you're going to these three old blokes, because, you know, when you're 20, you think
00:57:54.900
anyone who's 40 is a granddad basically. Um, but, but you are facing real challenges in the world.
00:58:02.320
Um, you know, um, and this is one of the difficulties with men because, you know, we talked before we
00:58:08.660
started about the politics of all of this, the kind of woke left, what I call the woke right,
00:58:12.360
the different forms of basically the same thing, in my opinion, right? Particularly when it comes to
00:58:16.040
men. Um, but you are facing in the same way you talk about black people under Jim Crow,
00:58:21.940
definitely did face oppression. In that same way, if you're a young man today, you have not been
00:58:26.780
dealt the hand that the three of us were dealt with the world that we grew up in. So you're going to
00:58:31.680
have to overcome things that maybe the three of us didn't have to do. What is your advice to young
00:58:37.500
men now? You know, they've got all the porn in the world on their phone. They've got a society that's
00:58:43.600
been telling them they're a piece of shit for the last, for their entire lives, right? Because this is
00:58:47.800
something that Francis and I talked about when all of this, like the future is female men are trash
00:58:52.280
crap came along. Yeah. I talked to my wife about it and she was like, this is ridiculous. Like,
00:58:57.040
of course, no sane woman believes any of this crap, right? But if you're a 15 year old boy,
00:59:01.540
you haven't got anyone to tell you that you think that's what society thinks. So how do young men now
00:59:08.060
deal with the world that they're dealing with today? Be powerful, be productive, be constructive,
00:59:13.920
and make a positive impact on themselves, their families, and the world.
00:59:18.400
There's two messages here. And one is for those young men and one is for men more our age. Because
00:59:24.560
I got in a fight with my co-host, who's one of my best friends. He's 31. And I was talking about
00:59:30.040
masculinity and I was very much going for the, you know, hey, you got to pull yourself up by your
00:59:33.740
bootstraps. You got to like push ahead. You got to do forward, be a man. And clicked off the camera.
00:59:39.300
He goes, I'm so sick of hearing that crap. And I said, what? He goes, I'm so sick of hearing it
00:59:44.480
from you. And now I'm going to like, oh, I'm sorry. His life's just so damn hard for you.
00:59:51.980
Oh, I'm sorry. Where were you at 25? Because I was sitting behind a 50 cal machine gun in Iraq.
00:59:57.620
You want to bitch to me about how tough life is? Let's talk about it. And he goes, you know what,
01:00:02.320
Nick? You're right. You're right. You were over there fighting a war. And you know what? They loved you for
01:00:07.740
it. They loved you. You were a man. You were a warrior. You had a beautiful wife waiting at home.
01:00:12.840
You had kids that couldn't wait to see you again. And he goes, I don't pretend for one second. I know
01:00:17.460
what it's like to fight a war the way you did, but you don't get to pretend that you know what it's
01:00:21.500
like to be told your entire life, that every single instinct you applied on that battlefield,
01:00:26.120
every sort of instinct that was rewarded by a wife and a child and a grateful nation.
01:00:31.480
I don't know what any of that is. That's what I'm going through.
01:00:35.860
And I had to apologize because I'm going to tell you right now, war sucks.
01:00:46.780
But that sucks worse. That sucks worse. And so we started really talking about that. Like,
01:00:55.920
okay, what was this like? What was this like going through elementary school, middle school,
01:00:59.880
high school, college? What was it like just being inundated with this?
01:01:03.040
And what's interesting is we came to the conclusion at the end of it that it has to be
01:01:12.280
acknowledged that young men and specifically, let's really piss everybody off, specifically
01:01:17.280
young white men and young Christian men and young Christian men, you were responsible for all the
01:01:23.240
world's ills, right? Everything about you is wrong. And the only thing that you have to look forward in
01:01:28.180
your life is to sit down, shut up, and now do as you're told as penance for things that happened
01:01:32.980
before you were ever born. That is unjust as hell. That is not just wrong on practical levels.
01:01:43.220
That is one of the most destructive things you could do to the human spirit.
01:01:46.540
So what do we do about it? So I would say for men my age, we need to understand that the unique
01:01:56.140
trials that we went through are unique trials. And our fathers went through different ones,
01:02:00.600
and our grandfathers went through different ones. But the one that they're going through
01:02:05.360
is actually really, really unique. I would argue that never before in human history have we had an
01:02:10.740
entire culturally, like almost every single major culturally shaping institution telling young men
01:02:18.300
they were crap. That's unique. And so respect what they're going through is very, very difficult in
01:02:23.920
that sense. And yeah, they might have more creature comforts. They might have more technology. They might
01:02:27.920
have things that appear to make life easier that we never dreamt of when we were their age. But would
01:02:33.780
you trade any of that for a real sense of meaning and purpose? I sure as hell wouldn't.
01:02:38.400
And so that's what they're looking for. That's what they're looking for. And they want the
01:02:45.300
challenges. There's a reason why young men are going back into the church in numbers that we
01:02:50.020
haven't seen. The church attendance has been on the decline, especially among men since the 70s.
01:02:55.580
It has now started to reverse for the first time in close to six decades. Why? They're looking for
01:03:01.800
meaning. They're looking for purpose. They want the truth. They want something worth fighting for.
01:03:05.660
But they got to have they got to come alongside people that actually understand what they've
01:03:09.620
just gone through and what they're rebelling against so that it can be moved in the right
01:03:12.880
direction. The other thing I would tell young men and this again, this sucks because young men
01:03:17.900
are polling more conservative than they've ever been. Young women are polling more liberal than
01:03:23.180
they've ever been. They did a NBC poll. They asked four different groups. They were all young men and
01:03:29.580
women, but it was young men and women that voted for Harris, young men and women that voted for Trump.
01:03:35.120
And it was 13 priorities. The number 12th priority for women that voted for Harris was having kids.
01:03:41.000
It was the ninth priority for men that voted for Harris. It was the sixth priority for women that
01:03:44.400
voted for Trump. It was the number one priority for men that voted for Trump. Having kids, having a
01:03:49.520
legacy, having a family, having something to fight for. Now, the good news about this is that
01:03:55.220
these men are insisting upon this, regardless of what culture tells them. And thank God,
01:04:00.720
because that is what has been needed this entire time. We need young men to see themselves as the
01:04:07.620
leaders that we need them to be. We're all familiar with that circle of strong men create good times,
01:04:14.360
good times create weak men, weak men create hard times, hard times create good men. Hard times do not
01:04:19.820
create good men. Good men are appreciated for what they do in hard times in ways that they are not
01:04:26.580
during the good times. And the sucky part is for young men is the only way through this is if you
01:04:34.760
choose to be the good men that the times require, that's it. If you're going to wait for anybody to
01:04:41.260
reward you for it, if you're going to wait for feminism to end, I understand every single instinct
01:04:47.140
that's got to be jumping out of you going, fine. You don't want the sort of men that actually make
01:04:50.880
all of this work. You don't get it then. And we'll see how long you last. I understand that
01:04:57.180
inclination. But I will tell you this, if we go back to that NBC poll and we check it again in about
01:05:03.360
five years, I promise you the conservative women will be placing family and getting married higher
01:05:10.400
up in their list of priorities. Why? Because when good men lead the way I believe that we were designed
01:05:16.520
and created to do it, when we actually display the sort of attributes, the sort of honor, the sort
01:05:21.340
of strength, the sort of integrity, women are attracted to it. And there's nothing that the
01:05:27.340
university can ultimately do about that. There's nothing the politics can eventually do. They can
01:05:30.660
fight it tooth and nail. They've created those conditions. Let's be very honest about it. They've
01:05:34.760
created these conditions. But the way to fight it is to essentially ignore it and do what you know to be
01:05:40.600
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Code trigonometry for 40% off at sheath.com. It's such a profound point because you look at
01:07:15.760
both sexes and you look at the men who are angry, disaffected, vengeful in many cases,
01:07:24.760
and you understand and you have an empathy for them. And you look at women who are distrustful
01:07:29.180
of men, angry, resentful, and vengeful as well. And you go, if we both continue down these paths,
01:07:36.400
what that will ultimately lead to is a destruction of civilization. We cannot go on like this. So we
01:07:42.820
really need to find a way to bridge the gap between men and women and not just conservative men,
01:07:48.500
but also liberal women. Because I'm sure if you sat down with the majority of them and you go,
01:07:52.560
look, you want the career in all of this, but what do you really want? And they're like, no,
01:07:57.160
no, no, no. What do you really want? Deep down. I'm sure that for the vast majority, they'd go,
01:08:03.100
I want to get married and I want to have kids. Yeah. And what they need to understand,
01:08:09.000
and this has been the other part, is I feel like on the more conservative side, on the Christian side,
01:08:15.000
it's almost like we've felt apologetic in the way that we explained what we believed and why we thought
01:08:21.620
it was necessary and why we thought it was important. I don't do that anymore. I don't
01:08:25.620
do that anymore. Like no more caveats. I believe this is correct. I believe it is true. I believe
01:08:30.240
it produces positive results when it is faithfully applied. And I believe that maybe, because one of
01:08:36.940
the most depressing statistics, shifting to women here for a second, we live in the most feminist,
01:08:43.500
futurist female empowering point in world history for women and the women who are most miserable
01:08:53.320
as judged by those that have been diagnosed with significant mental health issues are liberal women
01:08:58.740
between the ages of 18 and 29. It's over 50%. Over half of the women that you think would be celebrating
01:09:05.420
all of the victories that have been achieved. Nope. It's the women that have embraced this philosophy
01:09:10.520
the most completely that are the most miserable with the results of it. So maybe at some point,
01:09:15.680
it's time to just say, you know what? I don't care how many studies you throw at me. I don't care how
01:09:19.880
many experts, right, within the gender studies department tells me I'm supposed to feel this
01:09:24.360
way. I don't. It's not working. And yet, when I look at that couple over there that seem to be strong
01:09:32.380
in their faith, strong in their relationship, they're not competing with one another as husband and wife
01:09:36.800
or man and woman. They're cooperating with one another. They're respectful of each other's
01:09:40.640
roles. Not to say that all the roles have to be the exact same way, but no. My wife likes to joke
01:09:48.100
that if you go read the Proverbs 31 woman, that's the most intimidating woman she's ever heard of in
01:09:53.180
her life. So no, it's not this idea. It's not an aesthetic or a fetish where we talked like the trad
01:09:59.360
wife or the traditional. It's not that. It's the idea of if you're willing to entertain the possibility
01:10:06.000
that maybe, just maybe, we were created for very specific and important roles that are not supposed
01:10:12.720
to be competitive. They're supposed to be cooperative. And when we embrace them, instead
01:10:16.520
of doing everything within our power to rage against them because our professor told us to,
01:10:21.820
when we actually embrace them, we're all happier. We all feel a greater sense of meaning and purpose.
01:10:28.700
It doesn't mean that everything ends up perfect. I love my wife. I love my marriage. I love my kids.
01:10:33.520
It doesn't mean we faithfully executed everything that I just talked about here without any flaws.
01:10:38.100
No, we have screwed it up. But I think one of God's greatest gifts
01:10:42.260
is an imperfect but faithful attempt to apply these principles is blessed way beyond the value
01:10:51.420
of your individual effort. And I think if we can convince people of that, not just in the arguments
01:10:56.840
that we make, but in the way that we actually live our life, we're going to be able to show a lot of
01:11:01.200
young people away out of a darkness that they've been feeling for a long time right now.
01:11:05.200
And I think there's reason to be hopeful, not least because, as you said, the experiment's been
01:11:09.520
run for long enough now. And no one wants to talk about this because you're going to get,
01:11:15.320
you know, hay and whatever. But I can tell you, just from speaking to people, that if you talk to
01:11:21.460
women our age and a little bit younger who didn't have a family, who didn't have kids,
01:11:26.480
who were at the very forefront of the, you know, strong, confident, whatever the language is,
01:11:33.800
right? It's a tragedy, but a lot of them actually, if you speak to them in a trusting environment
01:11:41.940
and they are honest, they're not happy with the choices they've made. And that's the thing that
01:11:48.960
people don't like to talk about because particularly for women, it's obviously a very sensitive subject.
01:11:52.780
And once you've made a certain choice, it's very unpleasant to have to acknowledge that reality.
01:11:59.460
But I believe, you know, I believe we're going to see people like that on our show over time
01:12:03.260
who say, actually, I made the wrong choice and I was brainwashed into doing it. And I'm not for any
01:12:09.620
moment saying that every woman has to make the choice that the three of us approve of.
01:12:14.800
But I'm just saying, I'm hearing a lot more of that than I've ever heard before.
01:12:20.880
The way I've tried to explain it, because you're right, when you have made your political
01:12:26.860
philosophy your identity, asking someone to give it up feels like a part of you is dying.
01:12:34.120
And the way I try to explain this for anybody that at least is willing to give me a good
01:12:42.040
faith audience, I am not trying to beat them in an argument. Like no part of me wants to
01:12:49.920
gloat over this and say, see, I told you so. That could not be farther from my intention
01:12:55.820
or desire. I honestly believe that there's something to all of this. And just as if I
01:13:03.120
would try to warn someone from running, just as if I would try to earnestly warn someone
01:13:07.020
from running into a burning building. That's what this is. I don't want, I want you to avoid
01:13:12.820
the burning building. Not so I can say, see, I told you so, but because it sucks. And this
01:13:19.000
is perhaps even more important. It's not just about avoiding things that are going to cause
01:13:23.100
you pain. It's about truly getting to appreciate the beauty and wonder of what it is to build
01:13:28.920
a life with another person, to have kids, to watch them grow. Like I am, I am at a, I'm
01:13:33.920
at a phase of my life now where all my kids are graduated from high school. I've walked a
01:13:39.840
daughter down the aisle. My son is now in the military. I'm watching them go through these
01:13:45.000
milestones in life and I'm watching them be confident in their faith, what they believe,
01:13:49.960
what they want, their values. And it is so incredibly rewarding. It's just that I am
01:13:59.780
now, I'm now looking forward to being a grandfather here probably in the next couple of years.
01:14:05.780
And it's, it's one of those things where I am getting to watch, I am getting to watch a
01:14:12.140
legacy being built in real time. And man, man, if you want something that just worth fighting
01:14:20.960
for, um, that's, that's what I'm trying to convince people of. Not that I'm right,
01:14:28.860
Well, Nick, we appreciate you, man. You're a great voice in the space, responsible, principled,
01:14:34.080
dignified. You've thought a lot of these things through and you speak from, from the heart. So
01:14:38.600
we appreciate you, man. Thanks for coming on. We're going to ask you some questions from our
01:14:42.620
supporters. Uh, but before we do, you have another opportunity to absolutely nail the next year
01:14:49.060
and predict what, what the next biggest problem is going to be. What's the one thing we're not
01:14:52.800
talking about that we should be? Before Nick answers a final question at the end of the interview,
01:14:57.280
make sure to head over to our sub stack. The link is in the description where you'll be able to see
01:15:02.160
this. What is the most important thing I should teach my son? From the perspective of someone
01:15:08.180
with experience in the military, what is your opinion of the ongoing tensions with China?
01:15:12.760
What's the one thing we're not talking about that we should be? Um, we are reaching a point in the
01:15:18.140
West. And, and I, I, I do not relish saying this at all. I'm not advocating for this. I'm just observing
01:15:24.920
it. Um, we're reaching the point in the West where it is going to become very, very difficult to
01:15:30.840
peacefully reconcile our differences. Um, the worldviews that are battling it out right now.
01:15:37.060
And, and again, I, I'm always very, very, I'm always trying to be very specific in saying this.
01:15:40.980
I don't see other people as my enemy, but I do see other ideologies that I despise and hate and think
01:15:47.860
are evil and that we can't peacefully coexist with. So my job is not to defeat people that believe
01:15:55.120
those things. My job is to hopefully convince people to stop believing in those things. But we
01:15:59.980
are, we're coming to a point where there is either going, either one side's going to win or there's
01:16:05.320
going to be some sort of forced separation because I will not live under the things that they are
01:16:14.280
trying to impose. I won't. Um, I will, I will use every single peaceful measure I possibly can through
01:16:23.360
voting and through elections and through argumentation, but I've seen what they want
01:16:29.620
and I've seen what they're willing to do to get it. And there is a point where I'm not going to comply.
01:16:35.980
Can you be more specific if you're going to create legal conditions where I no longer feel
01:16:47.660
I have the ability to provide for my family, protect my family, or raise my children in the
01:16:53.680
way that I want them to go. If you're going to insist on constantly intervening in that process
01:17:00.060
to disarm me, to make it impossible for me to be able to provide unless I comply with
01:17:05.600
whatever new restrictions or regulations that you've put on to specifically target me because
01:17:10.040
you don't like me. If you take away my ability to be the primary educator within my, in my child's
01:17:16.560
life, I'm not living under that yoke. And so there's a, there's a point where, again, I don't
01:17:23.960
think we're at it yet. I don't think we're at it yet. And in the United States, we used to take
01:17:28.220
great, great pride in federalism as a way that we allowed California to be California while other
01:17:34.200
places could be other places. And what we found is that's not good enough for them. And so if
01:17:39.240
they're not willing to afford us an opportunity, a space where we can live and let live, then they're
01:17:46.240
the ones forcing us into a situation where one side has to win or leave. And I think we're getting
01:17:52.300
closer to that point. And again, I don't, there are a lot of people that say that because they just feel
01:17:56.260
like they can't wait to get into a shooting war. I've been in a shooting war. I don't want my kids
01:18:02.480
around a shooting war. I don't want the destruction of my country. I don't want the destruction of
01:18:06.660
Western civilization, but I see it happening in real time. And, and I see political forces, which are
01:18:14.460
not only welcoming it, but celebrating it. Well, I'm sorry. I'm not, I'm not going to tolerate that.
01:18:22.020
So. Nick Freitas, thanks for coming on. Head on over to triggerpot.co.uk where we're going to ask
01:18:28.540
Nick your questions. How does a Green Beret or any serviceman deal with the possibility they are not
01:18:36.020
fighting for a just cause? Ooh, that's a good one. How do you now view the USA's involvement in Iraq?
01:18:41.780
Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything like packing a spare stick. I like to be
01:19:05.660
prepared. That's why I remember 988 Canada's Suicide Crisis Helpline. It's good to know just
01:19:11.660
in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a trained responder
01:19:16.460
anytime. 988 Suicide Crisis Helpline is funded by the government of Canada.