Man Up — Masculinity Amidst Madness by Ryan Landry Reviewed

The Spanish conquerors were amazed by the giant pyramids of Teotihuacan but nobody could tell them who built them. In today’s Washington Post one Brandon Hasbrouk employed by Washington-Lee university writes that the names of both racist terrorists should be deleted. Teotihuacan —
Edward N Luttwak

It is a nice coincidence to discover Luttwak’s tweet (we met this gentleman earlier) while reviewing Landry’s heartfelt essay, Masculinity Amidst Madness.

The Enemy’s plan of raising up barbarians inside the gate, instead of rousing foreign invaders, was brilliant. It’s not that the alarm against destroyers in our midst wasn’t raised, often and loudly, but that because the barbarians were, we thought, our own people, we believed they would come to see their sins and repent.

They did not.

We now pay the price of our failure to heed the warnings, itself the result of our love of comfort, fear of open conflict, and, it must be admitted, our own lapses into barbarism. Before we get to that, what makes Luttwak’s remark important is first the obvious historical parallel, but also the unspoken one. The obvious connection is that many scholars believe Teotihuacan fell because of riots, its destruction caused by its own people.

The less obvious connection was what came after: the Aztecs. Something to look forward to. Only instead of feathered priests cutting the beating hearts out of prisoners, we’ll have blue-haired Karen priestesses doing front-alley post-birth abortions. The sacrifices in both cases are to the same Enemy.

Trump well summarized our situation in South Dakota this weekend—and it does’t matter who wrote these words—“Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities.”

The war is upon is. What can we do?

Man up.

The days of comfort and ease are over. We have to figure a way to both draw back and remain in the degrading culture simultaneously. We can’t all flee. We have to fight, but fight wisely since our enemies are much stronger.

The best way to rebel, says Landry, is to restore the tradition of manliness, cast off all vestiges of equality between the sexes, and rediscover the true understanding of the essence of men.

Landry, like Bronze Age Pervert before him, does not beyond broad targets offer a blueprint or a step-by-step guide to achieving our goals. He instead reminds us what we lost, a most valuable service.

There is today a distinct absence of manliness, a deficit encouraged and facilitated by our enemies. It starts at birth. “Today, a young man of 18 is lucky to have had one man in his life to emulate”, beside what he sees on line and on screen, says Landry. “We now have a mass of young men who have grown up with their heads hung low, never knowing their father.” Other men must step up to provide these boys with guidance. We must look after our own.

How to become worthy of emulation is what this essay is about. There are many ways.

Shut off the noise. Eschew your thinking suppression device when going for a walk. Wean yourself from it entirely if you can, or treat it, like TV and the internet, for the tools they are. A carpenter is not forever fondling his hammer.

Read old books. Learn something in depth. Learn to use your hands. “Do not consider your small studies to be insignificant.” Be humble and approach your betters—not in credentials, but in ability—and be willing to be taught.

The biggest problem for most of us is food. Stop eating crap. Eat meat. Keep in mind the inverse relationship between quality and processing. The more a thing is created in a factory and developed by food scientists—food scientists!—the less likely it should pass your lips. Learn to cook—and sit down in peace for a meal.

Get in shape. “The human body is not meant to be overinflated skin filled with fat. Those that encourage this want you sluggish and slow. They want you sick and limping through life.”

Incidentally, how many people do you know who take no medicines? In Paul Harvey’s For What It’s Worth there was a story of a lady who lived to be 103. Asked the secret of her longevity, she replied with an answer regular readers will recall: Stay away from doctors.

Everybody already knows how to stay away. To learn to eat well, or to get into shape, is the same to learn anything. “Control your emotions”. Self discipline is not going to come easy, especially in a culture that views self-control as a vice. I fail more than I succeed. But we must all try harder.

Not only that, this: “If you see an obese man at the gym struggling on the treadmill or with a weight, do not mock him. Encourage him.” If we are going to develop a brotherhood, we must have it in all things.

A gym is not a necessity. Join what my Number One son calls “the push-up club”. “Three simple, foundational compound movements are the pull-up, push-up, and the squat. What is the excuse when a doorframe pull-up bar costs as much as a case of beer?”

We must resist the matriarchy. “It is a mad world or a sick society, but one where men comply with feminized norms.”

It’s only going to get worse.

No one is coming to save you. You can assume the mantle of authority in your life. Build a life around you and it will become your realm. A moment of crisis may endanger you or a loved one. Do you have that spark to defend your honor or your territory? Have you lived so that others know what stakes you are willing to risk for your honor and loved ones?

Honor is a dead word. We all remember what CS Lewis said: “We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” But we seldom recall what he said right after: “We castrate and bid the geldings be fruitful.”

Seek honor for yourself, but first make it your duty to honor that which is deserving. Your ancestors, the best of your culture, and not some other peoples’ (Landry warns strongly about “purchasing” experiences). Seek the transcendent in everything. Worship God. Find a priest who still believes in mystery. (Priests should only be spiritual leaders, by the way.)

Seek beauty. Junk art and music and entertainment does the same to your soul, or worse, as soy-drenched breakfast flakes.

Men these days seem to have trouble finding good women. This is because women have bought the lies of our matriarchy. When women live by them, they become wrecks. Don’t complain about average women, says Landry, but become a better man yourself to attract superior women. Women long to find strong men.

There is much more, covering every time of a man’s life, but perhaps the most important is the discussion, well familiar to certain of us, of the creation of a Männerbund. This is “a group of men that is organized and aligned with males instincts and drive.”

This is much more than a fraternal organization that men join to get ahead in life and spend some time away from the ladies. It is a true brotherhood, a network of men—only normal men!—who count on, support, and rely on each other. A community. And the best, and probably only, defense against the accelerating corruption.

The Männerbund respects its members’ family, property, and women. The Männerbund is formed prior to the addition of women and children. It helps encourage family formation. What member of a Männerbund would seduce a friend’s wife, harm a peer’s child, or not care for his fellow member’s family as if they were an extension of his. To be part of a Männerbund is to fulfill these responsibility and duties for your fellow members and to enjoy greater security for yourself.

Nobody knows the best way of forming these brotherhoods, but Landry has apt advice: don’t write anything down, no membership lists, control entry rigorously and limit membership to those of your own people only. No “fed poasting” or active talk about overthrowing anything. Forming these bonds seems to me difficult to do in a city, if only because there are more spies about.

“Every male virtue,” says Landry, “Is treated as a vice for which we must repent and apologize. Simply exhibiting [manly] traits makes one suspect in the eyes of the bugmen.” It is our duty to save what we can from the bugmen, and to save what bugmen we can, too—while well recalling the aphorism about pearls before swine.

If you are already convinced of this, then this book will be a reminder to you of how much has been taken from us. In that case, the service you can do is put this book in the hands of some young man who is vulnerable. But if you’ve not yet seen through the lies and filth that surround us, then you will want this book for yourself.

To use the old cliche, you might not care about the culture war, but the culture war cares about you. Join the fight.

To support this site and its wholly independent host using credit card or PayPal (in any amount) click here