ARLINGTON, Va. (ChurchMilitant.com) – A conservative legislator is defending the family and encouraging virtuous manhood.
Sen. Josh Hawley
In an interview released Sunday, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., emphasized the necessity of authentic masculine virtue, slammed pornography use and tackled the myth of toxic masculinity.
“A man is a father, a man is a husband, a man is somebody who takes responsibility,” Hawley responded, when asked his definition of manhood. “As conservatives, we’ve got to call men back to responsibility.”
The lawmaker from Missouri proceeded to castigate not only laziness and the porn culture, but the man-child’s proclivity for playing time-consuming video games.
“We’ve got to say that spending your time not working … spending your time on video games, spending your time watching porn online while doing nothing — is not good for you, your family or this country,” he chided.
The interview referred to a speech Hawley delivered early last week at the National Conservatism Conference in Florida. In that speech, “The Future of the American Man,” Hawley expounded on themes he promoted in Sunday’s interview. Of note, he explained the political Left is intentionally targeting men.
“That’s the leftist project; that’s their grand ambition — to deconstruct the United States of America,” the senator proclaimed. “The deconstruction of America begins with and depends on the deconstruction of American men.”
Hawley noted some of the chief areas where the Left focuses its assault: industry, marriage and the family.
He lamented the economic destruction wreaked by outsourcing jobs and seeking cheaper labor to such an extent that eventually slave labor is sought. Hawley laid these sins at the feet of the Left and those he identified as “globalists.”
An absence of available jobs, Hawley explained, inevitably leads men to become lazy and stagnant. Without an honest day’s work, men seek false fulfillment or excitement in pornography use; without good labor, men seek a virtual challenge in video games.
The Left further assaults marriage, and of course pornography is a primary tool in this endeavor. Research demonstrates porn use is fatal to marriage and relationships, warping the user’s view of the conjugal act and turning other humans into mere objects for use. More than that, with the internet’s accelerated promotion of all manner of sexual degeneracies, pornographic fetishization of sexual violence has increased, resulting in an increase in acts of sexual violence.
Furthermore, cultural propaganda informs men they’re inherently oppressive. In his speech, Hawley referenced a 2019 commercial that opens with men being told they’re responsible for “bullying, sexual harrasment, toxic masculinity.”
“The Left,” Hawley noted, wants “to define traditional masculinity as toxic. They want to define the traditional masculine virtues — things like courage and independence and assertiveness — as a danger to society.”
This not only turns women off to the idea of supposedly toxic men, but dissuades men from pursuing masculine virtues and dejects them. And when they’re dejected, porn awaits them with open arms, to turn them into the toxic, sex-crazed, self-obsessed monsters they’re told they are.
Finally, the Left assaults the family. Hawley highlights the absence of fathers in our society and the necessity of straight married couples leading families. He proposed revising the tax code to reward married couples, especially those with children, following in the footsteps of pro-family Hungary.
“There is no higher calling,” the senator declared, “and no greater duty than raising a family, and we should encourage every American man to pursue it — without apology.”
Unlike so many of his politically correct colleagues, Hawley loudly trumpets the necessity and the inherent goodness of men being men.
“American men are and can be an unrivaled force for good in the world — if we will strengthen them, if we will challenge them, if we will empower them to be who they were made to be,” he concluded.
