Oh, I don’t know. Why don’t you ask some of the veterans who signed up without hesitation after 9/11, why they are some of the most jaded people on the planet? You know the same ones who used to proudly wear a t-shirt with an American flag and “freedom isn’t free” on it? After they got out and started complaining about the direction of American foreign policy (which they saw the flaws of firsthand), they were treated like dirt. “White supremacists! Racists! Yatzees! Deplorables!” They saw how there was no accountability after Iraq and Afghanistan. The same people still have a job and those that retired are now working as lobbyists for Lockheed and Raytheon. Gen. Milley still has his job and all he is good for is press briefings trying to understand “white rage”. No one even gave a damn about their buddies who died or were maimed. The American public has so little trust in Washington and the media, that if they say the sky is blue, the public will do a double check just in case. “WMDs in Iraq! Progress in Afghanistan! We totally know who we are arming in Syria!” Yet somehow it everyone else’s fault that there is no trust left. If you even ask basic questions like, what were we doing in Ukraine in 2014, you are called “unamerican”. Because everyone knows you are not allowed to ask questions of your government in free countries! Every time the dust settles after an overseas embarrassment, Washington briefly locks hands together and tries to reassure us that this latest disaster was not counterproductive to our interests. I could write an entire essay about how the intervention in Libya was a disaster for every single one of our stated foreign policy goals.
That is just overseas. What about at home? Talking heads go on and on about freedom overseas but then demand the destruction of civil liberties at home. Oh, I wonder why no one believes their talk of freedom and democracy anymore? The destruction of faith in institutions by wokeness is almost complete. The military was one the few institutions left people had some faith in just a couple of years ago but now even that has changed. Fighting wars, who cares about that? Trans issues are their biggest concerns now. Getting our money’s worth? No one in the Pentagon even cares if our military even gets quality equipment on time as long as a lot of money was spent. Look at how they lied about the F-22 program when it was finally time to start purchasing and mass producing fighters. Most of the money was already spent in development. As they cut the orders down the price per plane became higher and higher. Our defense people then used it as an excuse to ignore delivering on the planes and go all in on the also ridiculously expensive F-35 Joint Strike Turkey project. Wow, I sure love a defense industry that is not even obligated to deliver on the basics! Then we get to the awkward realization that most of the loudest voices denouncing your lack of “patriotism” just happen to be committed internationalists and globalists.
Finally, the contempt for the parts and social classes of the country who traditionally sent their kids to carry rifles and lug sandbags around cannot be denied. In America, it is just a 24-hour Twitter and media blitz about how they are the worst people on the planet and the world would be a better place if they dropped dead. Guess what? That white boy who shoots regularly with his AR-15 and long range with his scoped bolt-action, the poor Hispanic kid who fixes cars for a living, the rural guy who likes to camp and fish, the skilled machinist trying to stay in business, and the black guy working logistics in a warehouse for minimum wage are the ones who already have inbuilt skills the military needs. Try putting a bunch of Berkley students in the same position and see what happens. Despite all this they think those people are still obligated to sign up and serve even as they are debating on kicking them out because they are just racist trash (even the ones who aren’t white). Then they mock them for every religious or cultural value they have. Does that answer your question, Mary?

Thank you Mary, this is a very interesting article, and I can agree with a lot of it. However I think that it isn’t necessarily masculinity alone that makes men want to go to war, but also belief in and a sense of duty to a community to which they belong.
In 1939 my father left a small village in Derbyshire to fight a war in Egypt against the Axis powers, he was 19. He volunteered to take up arms against the enemies of the England, the country to which he was proud to belong. He was driven by a sense of duty as much as his pride, love, and loyalty. This motivation was to his family, his street, his village, his county, and his country. These were concentric circles of community that ever increased until they reached the boundaries of the empire. He would never have understood why they should ever be a reason for shame.
Yes, he was of an age and at age when masculinity was expected, but the masculinity was what enabled him rather than what caused him to fight. In 1945 King George VI sent a card to thank everyone involved in the conflict, his card was kept by his bed until the day he died.
My father was not unusual. Just before the pandemic I visited Cockermouth in the Lakes and went to see an exhibition in William Wordsworth’s house. In a room on the top floor was a display of letters from an earlier war, the Great War. They were written by the men of Cumbria who had followed their king’s call to save the life they knew and loved from the war-mongering Kaiser and his rapacious horde. These letters revealed a common belief in what they were doing, and love for the people and country they had left behind. I would challenge anyone not to be deeply moved by what they wrote, however much masculinity they might have.
Today, we live in a country that we are encouraged to hate. I know that, but will my grandchildren?

What has happened to literature’s manly men?

They have been shunned into complete and total meekness by female feminists and male feminist-pleasers.
Nowadays, as a man with my own opinion that runs contrary to the group-think (an opinion based on extensive education and critical reflection, I might add), as soon as I open my mouth I am generally shouted down or guilted by both of the aforementioned groups of people. On top of that, as a hard-working but average-looking young man, I have rarely received any degree of appreciation in a romantic or even friendship setting with women my age. Ultimately, this has led me to the realization that young women generally see the average man as an absolutely replaceable source of attention, and nothing more than that.
As such, while I would have much to contribute to society, either by working to build and improve it, or by giving my life to protect it in a war, I feel that any effort on my side is not going to appreciated in any way, or would be deserved by any criteria. Society as a whole isn’t even trying to improve itself, so any effort on my part would be a complete and total waste.
The time I have saved by avoiding such wasteful activities I have invested into self-development. I am in excellent health, know how to use a weapon and am prepared for even a prolonged emergency setting. For a while now I have developed a beginning understanding for how it is that hard times create strong men. Unfortunately, if I do turn out to be a strong man I will only protect those who are immediately dear to me. Everybody else will have to live with the consequences of their own decadence.
Don’t expect the masculine men who are shunned by society to pull you out of the dirt if bad stuff starts happening. They won’t.

It’s an opinion piece so it’s understandable as a heap of subjective generalisations. At least it’s not like a lot of armchair generalising at the moment glorifying other peoples’ deaths such as being ingloriously burnt alive in a BMP in a corner of a muddy field. Hardly Horatius at the bridge. Of course there are plenty of societies around that prefer male peacocking- Pakistan, Colombia. Hmm. Meanwhile this morning millions of peacable men will get up and set off for hard dull physical jobs to support their families without a warlike grimace or macho strut. Not so sexy or interesting.

I’m a Vietnam Era US Air Force Veteran. My view is that western men have given up on fighting wars because western governments don’t think wars are important enough to win them. Our strategies are generally designed to postpone losing, rather than win. The architects of failure suffer no penalties.

My first example is Vietnam. In December, 1972, 11 days of unrestricted bombing and sea mines delivered by air closed all the ports in North Vietnam. We could have done that in 1965 or 1968. Our casualties would have been far lower. We might even have won.

It was obvious to me as a Reserve Officer Cadet in 1968 that we weren’t using our air power effectively in Vietnam. It must have been obvious to many generals and admirals. Not one resigned in protest. The only general punished after Vietnam, General John Lavelle, was punished for bombing Cambodia without orders. Congress forced him to retire as a 2 star, instead of a 4 star, general. Lavelle was posthumously cleared when President Nixon’s secret orders to Lavelle were discovered.

The next example is Afghanistan. You can’t win a guerilla war if your enemies have a reliable source of funding and supply, can use human shields effectively and have sactuary to retretreat to where they can rest and regroup. The US allowed the Talaban to collect and sell opium. The US required artillery and air strikes to be cleared by lawyers, some of them stateside. The US allowed the Taliban sanctuary in Pakistan. The US continued this folly for 20 years. It was a guaranteed loser.

Again, no generals or admirals complained about our losing strategy, neither in the US nor any other country. There was no penalty for anyone for playing along with a losing war.

Why would anyone want to be a soldier in an army that fights to lose? Unless western countries get serious about winning, we’re not going to find as many volunteers as we might want.

In 1757, British Admiral John Byng was famously executed for not fighting a battle hard enough. Voltaire wrote at the time that the execution was to “encourage the others,” the other admirals. Although Voltaire meant it as a sick joke, it actually worked like that. Britannia ruled the waves until 1939.

While I’m not recommending executions, there are other things that we can do to generals and admirals who fail at war or managing the development of a weapons system. Bad performance should mean retirement at reduced rank.

In the US, the Senate has to confirm retirement at 3 or 4 stars, because 3 and 4 star rank is temporary. If the Senate doesn’t vote to confirm your 3 or 4 star rank for retirement, you retire at your permanent 2 star rank. The Senate can do alone. They did it alone to General Lavelle.

I think that we all contain a brave version and a cowardly version of ourselves and either can come to the fore depending on circumstances.

Eventually we understand which is which, and can work on ourselves to develop the brave version. The more we do that, the less we need to seek validation from others by bragging about what we do. The genuinely braver the person, the less others will hear about it. This used to be known as humility. I’m uncertain if the word is even still in use.

The people we all hear plenty from are the adrenaline junkies and the thrill-seekers. They’re in early development – just getting to know what superficial bravery is, but not yet understanding of the real thing. Some will make it all the way; most won’t. But all may still have useful and satisfying lives.

You could argue that being a Hero included a certain amount of behavioural latitude from the remainder of society. Heroes could be violent, depressive, often drunk, and sexually unconstrained, but their heroism ‘for a good cause’ gave them a pass.
All of those personality foibles have been demonised by the managerialism of the late 20th century. It’s unforgiving being a hero in modern times – there are plenty of people willing to pull you down.
It’s perhaps not surprising that young men choose to avoid the unattractive Hero Contract with wider society.

This is not about the modern male experience, this is about the modern upper middle class suburban experience.
Want to experience existential threat? Grow up in a ghetto. Want to experience situations of life and death? Join the police, the firefighters, or paramedics, or mountain or marine search-and-rescue. The problem is not the absence of challenges, the problem is that the “communication” is taking place within an echo-chamber populated by financially insecure but physically unthreatened individuals in occupations like communications, social media, marketing, IT or some other function that has absolutely nothing to do with reality.
This is not the first time in history we have had an elite in that situation. But no, it has never ended well.

Harrington at her best. Unherd at its best.

Given that physical violence is not my thing, I’ve tried to express my masculinity through construction work, woodworking and heavy lifting in the garden. Would it be possible to gear young men towards endeavours of that type, given that one essential element that makes it so easy to activate blood thirst in mobs and propagandise populations into war, is that craving in (young) men for showing their bravery and getting away from the mothers, wives and kids to have fun with the boys (shooting, looting and raping)?

I remember Aldous Huxley writing about this in his last book, Island, but can’t remember what exactly. In that utopian world they do stuff with young boys who show these characteristics, like making them leaders in dangerous group mountain climbing expeditions.

I always thought Hemingway a bit of a show off. Real men don’t need to do that.

“Why western men gave up on war” – it’s more fun to become women and win all sport competitions-)

The excellent article also makes an indirect argument for bringing back conscription in Western Europe. Military training seems to have been quite useful in Switzerland and Israel for example.

Danger and opportunity definitely does not have to take place during war. Heroism does not have to take place during war. Masculinity does not have to be synonymous with war.

“The lurid and angry literature emerging captures these men’s ambivalence: sickened by, but also usually still implicated in, the banality and perceived effeminacy of a modern world denuded of both danger and opportunity.”

I’m a bit too old to be able to relate directly to any thirst for violence and danger myself, but I do think that the modern world has been sapped of vitality at many levels, not merely that which is referred to here and the symptoms of which emerge in the disaffection of young men. The West in general is suffocating under a soul-destroying burden of self-inflicted, risk-avoidant, safetyism, and we see the problems everywhere, from energy policy through social policy, industrial policy and a general set of social attitudes that reflect such priorities.

What amazes me is that politicians still seem to be stumped by the apparent mystery of why growth rates in the West are so poor, yet the answer is staring us all straight in the face: nobody’s allowed to take risks any more, which is essential for progress.

I often make the point in other arguments that if the motor car had not been invented until last week, the modern State would ensure that it never would be possible for private individuals to own and use them. The notion, for instance that on a country road twenty feet wide, two cars could pass in opposite directions at 60mph each separated only by a white line painted down the middle of the road – can you imagine the risk assessment that would describe such a proposition?

We live in a world now in which there are multiple nuclear reactor designs that are hundreds of times safer and more efficient than the high pressure designs of the 1950s, we have drone technology that can transform regional freight and personal travel, we have nanotechnology that could revolutionise medicine and manufacturing, and yet for some reason the overwhelming sense is that the last century of material progress and comparative luxury is a historical aberration soon to end. The collective stupidity involved in accepting such self-defeat is mind-boggling, and it is very much the same problem as that which is described in the article above in what I see as highly selective and narrow terms.