TRIGGERnometry - December 03, 2025


The Masculinity Crisis and How To Solve It - Nick Freitas


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour and 19 minutes

Words per Minute

190.92365

Word Count

15,151

Sentence Count

936

Misogynist Sentences

33

Hate Speech Sentences

32


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

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

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Never before in human history have we had an entire culturally shaped, like almost every
00:00:07.960 single major culturally shaping institution telling young men they were crap. The more that
00:00:14.240 the feminization of our educational systems, our churches, everything else, the more that
00:00:18.900 has taken place, the less happy everyone is. There's a kind of idea that you're never ever
00:00:25.200 supposed to just like bottle up your feelings for a bit and just get on with it, because
00:00:30.960 that's bad, right? What do you think about that? It's crap. Yes, it is appropriate for men
00:00:38.100 to cry at times. It is not appropriate for you to cry in the midst of crisis. The thing
00:00:43.380 that never should have entered into this conversation is, and now you're a victim. That's a core
00:00:47.720 component of your identity. There are people that have made their entire careers both professionally
00:00:51.920 and politically off of convincing people, that there's no possible way they can do anything.
00:00:56.600 It's destructive for the individual. It's incredibly beneficial for the political
00:01:00.600 structures that benefit from them.
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00:02:06.980 Nick Freitas, welcome back to the show.
00:02:08.640 Great to be back.
00:02:09.880 It's awesome to have you on. We were sitting here about a year ago, I think, or something
00:02:13.740 like that in this exact same room. And as it turns out, actually, in the exact same clothes,
00:02:17.200 at least somehow. We had an amazing conversation about your life, military service, combat,
00:02:24.480 the war in Gaza, obviously. And then we did our usual question, what's the one thing you're
00:02:29.780 not talking about? And paraphrasing, you basically said, if you keep demonizing young men and,
00:02:34.300 you know, behaving towards them in ways that are unconstructive, good men, I hope that includes
00:02:39.660 the three of us, are not actually going to be able to control what comes after that.
00:02:45.500 I think you were kind of right.
00:02:47.140 Yeah. Yeah, no, I think, if I remember right, it was like, yeah, young men are going to revolt,
00:02:51.740 and that doesn't mean they're going to revolt in the way you want them to.
00:02:55.480 It's not going to be woke, because I don't know, I think some elements of the left have finally
00:03:01.400 figured out that you probably are not going to win the revolution or seize the means of production
00:03:05.640 with a bunch of mentally ill people who prioritize, you know, their mental health issues as their
00:03:11.060 primary identity. And you're certainly not going to do that if you have to fight a whole generation
00:03:16.120 of young men that you have systematically alienated for two decades. But again, the hope is, is that
00:03:21.960 good men or that young men revolt in a direction that says, I'm going to reject this aspect of
00:03:27.440 toxic masculinity. I'm going to reject the feminization of men. I'm going to reject all these
00:03:31.000 other things. And then I'm going to choose to be a good, strong, competent, masculine man who is
00:03:36.840 also noble and honorable and fighting for things that are not just within my own interest, but that
00:03:41.420 are true. But that's not the only option. There's other options. The other options are, I'm just going
00:03:47.900 to punish everyone that decided to treat me this way. And so I'm going to be strong, capable, and
00:03:52.120 competent so I can get what I want and screw those people. And those, those are the two paths before
00:03:58.040 young men right now. And again, we're still not sure which one is going to actually get a critical
00:04:01.960 mass. But I'm a lot more encouraged now that I see a lot more people fighting for, for what I think
00:04:07.200 is the right path. And of course, I think one of the reasons that the reaction to the horrific
00:04:13.780 assassination of Charlie Kirk was so strong was that he was doing that for young people. He was leading
00:04:20.840 them towards God, towards family, towards children, towards service. He's going to be a huge loss
00:04:29.080 going forward. He is. The thing that I'm very grateful for with Charlie is Charlie wasn't the
00:04:34.360 sort of guy to just advocate for these things. Charlie was the sort of guy to create other people
00:04:38.360 that would come in his footsteps or behind him. And so he did develop a network in order to do that.
00:04:44.840 And it's amazing the amount of young men and not just young men too, like families that were saying,
00:04:49.240 hey, I'm going to the church for the first time. I bought a Bible for the first time.
00:04:52.120 So Charlie really did do a good job of not just pointing to the political philosophy,
00:04:56.760 but actually pointing to the transcendent, which I think is essential. I have a hard time believing
00:05:01.320 that any sort of political philosophy is going to be ultimately successful, completely removed from
00:05:08.520 any sort of transcendent principles of objective truth and morality. You know, unfortunately,
00:05:14.600 we're already seeing, though, without Charlie's presence, we're already starting to see fractures
00:05:22.920 within the right on that. And that's unfortunate because I felt like we had this moment in time,
00:05:30.440 and we haven't lost it yet. I want to be clear on that. It's not like it's a lost opportunity.
00:05:35.640 But I don't think we should be shocked by the fact that whenever you see unity around something,
00:05:41.800 there's always going to be a lot of money to be made and a lot of strategy to be had and dividing
00:05:46.760 it up. And one of the things that when we talk about this conversation, I don't think we focus
00:05:53.400 enough on is positive male role models, but also fathers. I think one of the major reasons why we see
00:06:00.840 these young lads and young boys in crisis, because that's what it is, is a complete absence of father
00:06:07.160 figures or positive male role models. I mean, look, this was being talked about in the 1960s
00:06:13.720 in the United States. And every single demographic within the United States has had an increase in
00:06:18.840 fatherlessness. It's been the least prominent within Asian communities. But every single one of
00:06:26.440 them has seen a significant increase. And the bottom line is, is that men, boys are looking for
00:06:34.200 structure. They're looking for hierarchy. They're looking for someone to train them up and what they
00:06:38.600 should do and to find their role and place within society. And they're going to get it from somewhere.
00:06:43.000 And if they're not going to get it from a father figure who presumably loves them and has some sort
00:06:47.560 of interest in them growing up to be good men, well, then they'll find it in a gang or they'll find it
00:06:52.120 in social media or wherever else they might. There's also been, again, over the last couple of
00:06:59.160 decades, this big push to where the idea was is that masculinity is bad. That's the source of all
00:07:04.680 of our ills. And so all of the instincts that you have as a young man to want to be strong, to want
00:07:10.280 to compete, to want to fight aggression, like all of those things, those are the problems. And so we
00:07:16.760 have to train and educate those out of you. And so look, not to be flippant, but I think it's interesting
00:07:24.440 that the more that the feminization of our educational systems, our churches, everything
00:07:29.880 else, the more that has taken place, the less happy everyone is. Not to mention liberal women
00:07:35.480 who are constantly going on TikTok, complaining about how they can't find masculine men. Oh, no
00:07:39.320 kidding. Okay. And it just goes, it just goes to the old saying that it's like, okay, well, we have
00:07:44.120 more boys being raised in single parent homes, predominantly by mothers. And then they go into
00:07:50.360 a school system, which is predominantly female teachers. 77%. So if maybe masculinity is not
00:07:57.240 the problem, maybe a lack of it or an absence of it is the problem. Now, I instantly know what
00:08:03.080 people watching is going to say, well, you know, these women didn't ask to be single. I get it.
00:08:07.800 I was predominantly raised by a single mother. Now, thank God, my father, good man, still involved
00:08:12.280 in my life, but I got to see him three to four months out of the year, right? So predominantly raised
00:08:15.880 by a single mother. I understand that the vast majority of them didn't sign up for that,
00:08:19.560 but I also think we need to recognize that there is something going on in this country
00:08:22.840 when the vast majority of young women don't list family or having kids or getting married as
00:08:29.400 like anywhere near their top priorities. You know, that's socially engineered. That's not natural.
00:08:36.600 It's interesting you say socially engineered, and maybe there is partly that, but isn't it also,
00:08:42.280 Nick, the fact that, look, it is impossible to have a man who goes to work, practically impossible,
00:08:50.200 I should say, a woman that stays at home, raises her kids. The reality is because of the way economics
00:08:55.320 works now, how expensive everything is, housing, all the rest of it, there needs to be two people
00:09:01.160 in the workplace. And that puts a strain on marriages and relationships.
00:09:04.600 It absolutely does. And there's no question. And again, I'll be happy to sit here for an hour and talk
00:09:09.480 about the evils of inflationary monetary policy and how it seems to be at the root of most of our
00:09:14.040 problems and why those problems really exist. The other thing that I will say, though, is part of it,
00:09:19.960 too, is this idea of what do we teach people to prioritize? And my wife and I got married at 19 and
00:09:26.600 20. Both of us came from broken homes. I was in the military. I don't know if you know this,
00:09:30.440 but being a private in the United States Army is not exactly a pathway to riches, right?
00:09:34.440 So when we had kids at that point, we had our first child. I had just become a staff sergeant.
00:09:41.320 Again, I'm a non-commissioned officer. I'm not raking in the dough, right?
00:09:46.440 My wife and I had laid out a plan when we were 19, when we were 18 and talking about getting married,
00:09:52.680 and we set out what are our expectations. And I remember telling her, I'm like, I see myself as
00:09:57.400 I'm supposed to be the primary breadwinner. I feel like my goal is to make enough money to where when we
00:10:02.200 start having kids, if you don't want to work, you don't have to. And she goes, good, that is what
00:10:06.360 I would like as well. I said, okay, but I need it to be understood. If we have two incomes and we
00:10:11.240 switch to one so that you can see them with the kids, the lifestyle changes are going to take place
00:10:15.800 as a result. And her attitude was like, well, yeah, of course. A lot of people don't have those
00:10:20.440 conversations. There's these expectations that, well, we're never going to make sacrifices in an economic
00:10:25.320 environment in order to prioritize other things. And so a lot of this, it is amazing at how much
00:10:31.800 you can actually accomplish when both of you are on the same sheet of music, both of you have the
00:10:36.120 same priorities and expectations. So yeah, did we make as much money, have as nice a house,
00:10:42.920 have as nice clothes, furniture, car? Nope. But I have an outstanding relationship with all three of
00:10:47.960 my kids, and they're now 22, 20, and 17, and I like being around all of them. As I like to say,
00:10:53.000 they love Jesus and they can't stand Karl Marx. I want us to have a conversation about something
00:11:01.640 that I don't think it gets talked about, and, you know, for the reasons that you somewhat alluded to,
00:11:07.960 which is that men, women will not be able to teach men to be men as well as men. I know,
00:11:18.280 the internet is going to explode now, this crazy idea, but I sort of think that's probably true.
00:11:22.680 No, it's absolutely 100% true. Can we just say something in the reverse?
00:11:29.400 Sure.
00:11:30.520 We need women to actually help raise daughters, right? Like, I can't, I hope I was a very good
00:11:35.960 father to my daughters based off my relationship. They seem, the feedback they have given me seems
00:11:39.880 to suggest that I was a good dad, but none of them will tell you, oh yeah, dad was all I needed,
00:11:45.320 right? Yeah, they needed mom too. Right.
00:11:47.000 And boys are the same. Boys need both. But what I'm saying is,
00:11:53.080 like, I see it, we have a three-year-old, so you've been through this, you probably
00:11:56.680 got way more on this than I do. My wife is amazing with him, right? But there's just one or two things
00:12:04.040 that as a woman, not everybody, there are women who are brilliant at doing this, but as a woman,
00:12:09.000 generally speaking, it's harder for them to deal with the fact that a boy is aggressive, he might
00:12:14.200 start hitting, and that has to be channeled. You're remembering that, you know, there's just
00:12:20.520 a few things that as a guy you just understand because it sort of exists in the realm of guys
00:12:26.520 and women are not necessarily even privy to. Like, I know for a fact that there are certain ways that
00:12:31.160 I can behave that will cause you to punch me in the face. And so I know that I have to modulate
00:12:36.440 my behavior to make sure that doesn't happen because that wouldn't end well for me, right?
00:12:41.160 So the presence of the potential of violence is always at some level in our minds, and therefore,
00:12:46.200 we have to act accordingly. And that is something I think is very, very difficult for a woman to
00:12:51.960 understand and to teach her sons. Oh, no, it absolutely is. I remember having this conversation
00:12:57.240 with my wife the first time my son got into an altercation and her inclination, because he was
00:13:02.040 still pretty young, but he was old enough. And that's important, right? I allow my children to
00:13:07.560 take age-appropriate risks and age-appropriate challenges. And she's like, oh, well, I'm going to
00:13:13.560 call him. I'm like, no, you're not. He said, what do you mean? I'm like, he's got to handle that.
00:13:18.200 Why? I said, baby, your son doesn't want the bully to be afraid of you. He wants the bully to be afraid
00:13:23.320 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
00:13:28.920 always try to say is I try to protect my kids from scars, but bruises are just a part of life.
00:13:34.680 So I'm trying to protect them from things that are going to have life-altering impacts on them that could
00:13:40.280 seriously hurt them spiritually, physically, emotionally. But when it comes to getting
00:13:44.600 knocked on your ass, welcome to life, son. And if I don't teach you how to properly deal with that
00:13:51.800 in a relatively safe environment, then you're not going to be ready for it when it happens out in
00:13:56.280 the real world and the consequences there could be significant. And it's not as if women don't
00:14:03.720 understand the nature of those threats outside of the home. They just have different mechanisms of
00:14:07.800 dealing with it. And I need to teach my son to be the sort of man that his wife, that his children,
00:14:14.360 that his friends can reasonably count on him in a dangerous situation to be able to handle it.
00:14:20.280 And the bottom line is my wife respects those qualities in me. To be honest, they don't just
00:14:27.000 respect him. Women find it highly attractive in a man. It's like, okay, do you want me to convey
00:14:31.800 those capabilities to your son? Yes. Then you need to trust me. Just like there's times where I've looked,
00:14:37.480 there's times where I've wanted to engage with someone with one of my daughters and my wife has
00:14:41.240 been like, baby, come here for a second. Let me, let me fill you in on what's going on. Oh,
00:14:45.160 thank you. Right. That's the other thing. Right. When you have mutual respect for the idea that
00:14:50.440 my wife and I are not competing on raising our children, we are cooperating in raising our
00:14:55.880 children. And she has special insights and experiences. And I have special insights and
00:14:59.800 experiences. And we're going to utilize these because we both know that we love each other and we love
00:15:04.040 our children. And so when you, when you support one another in that process, it's amazing what you
00:15:08.440 produce. But again, my, my, I was very blessed to have a wife that understood that I needed to train
00:15:14.680 a son that was one day going to be responsible for providing and protecting his family.
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00:17:06.720 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
00:17:35.960 with aggression.
00:17:36.600 Yeah.
00:17:37.800 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
00:17:58.600 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
00:18:16.220 just, let's shut this down. You know?
00:18:19.140 Yeah. Well, and the problem is, is that you can't totally shut it down. You can't extinguish it.
00:18:23.960 No.
00:18:24.560 And you don't want to, because no civilization in history has ever been protected by docile,
00:18:30.880 weak men that were afraid of conflict. That's just not how that happens.
00:18:33.500 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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00:35:50.220 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
00:46:58.600 instead of rationale or logic.
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
00:47:28.740 sarcasm or rage.
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 with these issues and the way we express emotion, the way we deal through problems, we now, it allows
00:50:19.340 us to develop the sort of emotional maturity we have that is not only beneficial for us, but then is
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00:51:53.600 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
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01:07:06.700 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.
01:12:14.100 No, no.
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.
01:12:34.040 Right.
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,
01:14:27.080 but that this is worth it.
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.