What He Said

Kim du Toit points us to this article written by Anthony Esolen, and in doing so says (to our troops):

Forget the childish chirps and querulous wails of the Commies, the hippies and the little boys and girls come fresh from the mall. Compared to them, the number of men, real men who stand behind you is enormous.

Never forget that

Damn skippy. But that's not the half of it. The rest is below the fold.

The article is entitled "Over Our Dead Bodies" and it addresses many points I see bandied about from time to time.

Like Kim's "Pussification" essay, Mr. Esolen addresses one plight of today's man:

Men cut the rock, and the rock cuts back. We men who have neither been born eunuchs nor made ourselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven, but who have allowed others to make eunuchs of themselves and of us, all for a watercolor impression of peace, a safe life of Monet purple, with even erotic love blurred into the bland, as we pretend to courage while rutting in padded cells with helmets and shin guards and other soft and slack prophylactics of the soul—we nannied men could not have carved this place.

He also addresses something near and dear to my heart - those who carried their country's flag into battle.

The lad who carried the flag in the old fields of war was unarmed and most conspicuous, but most necessary for the rallying and ordering of his comrades. He was indispensable in his choosing the honor of being the single man least likely to survive the battle.

The same people who pee all over themselves at the thought of the movie "300" wouldn't think twice about letting someone desecrate their country's flag. Just a piece of cloth, my ass.

Of course, not all heroes are in uniform:

A man need not bear a saber to be a true soldier. When Louis Pasteur was searching for cures for infectious diseases, he had not our same luxury of safety. He was a devout Catholic who attracted to himself young men of high ideals and similar devotion. Those men knew that to be Pasteur’s assistant meant constant exposure to, and experimentation with, disease. Theirs was less a profession than a creed. They went forth in the wake of a plague in Egypt, to seek knowledge and cure the sick.

There's so much there, do yourself a favor and read it all.

One last bit:

Or, more outlandish still, it is as if men themselves were to forget their manhood and were to coddle their flesh, prinking it and bedaubing it and festooning it with trinkets,

That goes out to all you boys out there walking around looking like you've been hit in the face with a tackle box. Grow up. That goes for you "Metros" too.