Posted on 12/23/2011 5:30:09 PM PST by Steelfish
MONA CHAREN
DECEMBER 23, 2011 Merry Manly Christmas and Hanukkah The code of the gentleman is not obsolete.
This is the time of year to turn our thoughts to noble sentiments and inspiring stories. William Bennett, who has established something of a cottage industry in uplift, has a new book out that celebrates and explicates all that is bracing, wholesome, affecting, and necessary about men and manliness
That such a book is required, it must be acknowledged, is not good news about our cultural health, and Bennett introduces The Book of Man: Readings on the Path to Manhood with tidings of oy.
In 1954, about 96 percent of American men between the ages of 25 and 54 worked. Today that number is around 80 percent. One-fifth of all men in their prime working ages are not getting up and going to work.
In 1970, 80 percent of 25 to 29-year-old men were married and in 2007 only 40 percent were.
In American colleges, for every two men who graduate with a bachelor of arts degree, three women receive a BA. Women now dominate 13 of the 15 job categories expected to grow the most in the coming decade.
Many men no longer seem to know — because our society is confused — what it means to be a good man, or a “mensch,” the Yiddish word that conveys reliability, honesty, and a big heart. The code of the gentleman — particularly where women are concerned — has long since been declared obsolete, if not a thought crime.
This collection attempts a corrective, offering examples and exemplars of manliness from antiquity to the present. Through poems, letters (such affecting letters!), profiles, news accounts, and testaments of various kinds, The Book of Man presents men in the spectrum of life’s....
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
Our 15 year old son is reading this in (home)school this year. It’s a wonderful book!
Dang it. You beat me to it; homeschoolers are raising men - real men (we’re raising real women, too, not wymen). Not the current crop of hyper macho dolts that compensate for a clueless and infantile existence. Men who are their word and anchor families. In short, we’re rebuilding civilization.
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