Decline of the Warrior Male: Is Ann Coulter the Last of the “Real Men” on the Intellectual Right?
In a widely discussed article in the prestigious journal Behavioral and Brain Sciences (1995), the late Linda Mealy addressed the issue of what makes a sociopath versus a psychopath. She argued that there are two basic types of sociopathy- the primary type which is genetically-based, extremely dangerous, and almost impossible to treat (the psychopath) and the secondary type which can emerge in most highly masculine males when under stress or provocation (the “sociopath” in common terms). That is, there is a small number of persistently dangerous psychopaths out there motivated by their own inner demons (e. g., the monstrous Jerry Inman who brutally raped and murdered Clemson student Tiffany Sauers), and a substantially large number of sociopaths ready to be set off under elicitative conditions such as natural disasters, social breakdown, group conflict and war, and even a soccer match that goes the wrong way.
I was one of 30 or so discussants of the Mealy article, and my emphasis was on the “warrior hawk” aspects of primary and secondary sociopathy. In my view, most of the world is populated by peaceful “doves” who can go about their daily tasks of eating well and living well, producing and rearing offspring, producing and maintaining a particular culture, and enjoying a modicum of liberty and freedom when- and only when- their particular warrior class (”hawks”) provides protection against the tribe down the river or against some foreign power threatening to invade. If the Ogboos over the mountain have a core group of six warrior hawks and your tribe has merely two or even none, then do not plan on a good night’s sleep until the balance of power slips in your favor.
The warrior hawk is typically male, large and muscular, prone to recklessness and excess, fearless and brave by nature, easily aroused to fighting and combat, and is extremely loyal to band and tribe. In light of Harvey Mansfield’s new book on Manliness, he is not very “sensitive” or empathic and is manly to the core. Moreover, he is great defender of cultural order and propriety but not a very good practitioner. While these warriors are away on the hunt or on what Harvard anthropologist Richard Wrangham calls the “lethal raid” against neighboring groups, they are lionized and worshipped by the home tribe much as our star athletes are today. But when they come home their presence is problematic…they become what I called “warriors without portfolio” in the Mealy article. They may bully, force themselves on females, fight among themselves, and simply be a threat to life and limb to everyone around them. They may compromise the freedom and liberty of others, but without them there is no freedom and liberty. They are all that stands between you and the warrior hawks of a strange and foreign entity that at minimum will subvert and alter your way of life, or, at maximum, will destroy you and your group altogether.
In my various commentaries in MND (see archives), I have argued that traditional American life, Christianity, and conservative ways of thinking were given up with little or no fight in the cultural revolution of the sixties as the warrior hawks of the left marched unopposed into the universities, law schools, the news and entertainment media, the churches, and every other important nook and cranny of our culture. The fact that these new brand of “warriors” were skinny nerds and dweebs with high IQs who could not whip my granny in a fistfight makes their complete and total victory even more puzzling. When the traditional American wears T-shirts that say “my country is for the taking” or “we whipped Hitler and there is no fight left in us” or “occupation of mind, body, and soul is really not that bad when you get used to it” can we blame the intellectual termites for invading our grand mansion of democracy?
The attack was not the problem, but the failure to mount any kind of defense. Now we are trying to defend marriage, the church, the borders, and what is left of our culture, but we will never again fully recover what was lost. All we can do now is negotiate with the invader and hope it will be generous in victory…e. g., “you can keep marriage but the recently ratified Treaty of New York requires that you accept civil unions as the law of the land.” Could anyone living in the fifties even imagine such an assault on tradition?
Where on earth was the intellectual right while all of this was going on? Where was our core of warrior hawks that was ready to march against the Marxist, communist, socialist, and “liberal” invaders? Were we so paralyzed by “white guilt” (see Shelby Steele’s new book) that we allowed the radical left to shape our behavior through the clever use of words and concepts that all revolve around the notion that Christians of European descent are racist and sexist bigots to the core and deserve to be relegated to the margins of society. With the clever phrase “sir have you no shame” the personally flawed warrior hawk Tailgunner Joe was transformed into the personification of evil and, indeed, was hounded to his death at age 48. Seeing that a mere five words could annihilate its relentless foe and simultaneously stop the anti-communism movement in its tracks was exhilarating to the radical left and set the stage for their attack on traditional society.
The great and definitive victory over McCarthy set into motion a kind of linguistic sweepstakes where radicals on the left competed with one another for the most indignant, the most colorful, and most inflammatory verbal attacks on the majority that their devious minds could manufacture. It started with accusations of Commie baiting, then racism, then sexism, then homophobia, then right wing Christianity, and now we epitomize evil “nativism” for trying to stave off an alien influx that will re-define the majority and transform our country forever. The radical left has a well-stocked armory of conceptual firebombs that it routinely tosses at the majority with impunity.
How, then, does the intellectual right routinely respond to one personal attack after another? It prostrates itself, it tearfully apologizes, and it resigns from one important and powerful governmental position to another, and it begs forgiveness from the radical termites that rule the country. Trent Lott comes to mind here. It has been a shameful performance for the past 50 years. The intellectual right has been so out-maneuvered in the war of words and concepts that one can only feel pity and contempt.
The intellectual left has one firebomb after another that it uses to maintain the occupation of minds and souls, but what does the intellectual right have to fight back? What great and innovative ideas, what commanding rhetorical flourishes, and what logical arguments do we have to preserve what was once ours? None…not even conceptual and rhetorical popguns to set against their firebombs. They have white guilt, racism, mean-spiritedness, Afrocentrism, multiculturalism, diversity, affirmative action, feminism, intolerance, and so on, ad infinitum, but aside from Falwellian Christian traditionalism, we are defenseless in the war of ideas, concepts, words and phrases.
And then into this swamp of defeatism rode the skinny, blonde, acerbic, irreverent (to the occupying forces), intellectually brilliant, verbal and conceptual, unabashedly religious, and in-your-face warrior hawk that we have come to love and admire. She knows what is going on, she knows who the enemy is, she resists the occupation with every cell of her body and- as her book sales will show- she speaks for the people of the heartland. She knows that the intellectual elite of the New York city- blue state nexus are the true movers and shakers of the country and it is no surprise that the most violent and hysterical response to her new book Godless has come almost entirely from…guess where. Matt Lauer, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Mike Barnicle, Hilary, Chucky, and the rest of the Manhattan elite are simply beside themselves and their hatred and vituperation know no bounds. She has done the unthinkable…she has resisted the occupation…she has played their own game even better than they…and she has cleverly set them back on their heels.
Like all members of the warrior class, Ann Coulter may be brutal and harsh in the din of battle and her attacks on the opposition are not always pretty. Yet, who else is willing to call the termites of the left exactly what they are- slanderous, treasonous, and godless radicals who are committed to the goal of first subverting and then re-defining American culture in the Marxist image. Aside from a precious few on the religious right, Ann is the only “real man” in the fight for our side, and the least the rest of us can do is provide moral and spiritual support and leave the criticism to the opposing side.
Kent Bailey is professor emeritus of clinical psychology. His major focus is on how ancient evolutionary processes affect current human affairs. His major monograph is Human Paleopsychology: Applications to Aggression and Pathological Processes. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1987.
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Stumble It!
June 11th, 2006 at 6:21 pm
Just like the Pharisees (right wing conservatives) and the Saducees (left wing liberals) united together to murder Christ in their day…
Both liberals (led by the likes of Hillary Clinton and conservatives (led by the likes of Ann Coulter)will soon unite to destroy all the true children of God and who remain loyal to him in our day…
June 11th, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Yes, there is a real battle to define manliness and male identity in America, but it is simply wrong to claim that the Left has triumphed. Look at our action movies, the way the American president speaks, and look at US foreign policy in Iraq and the war on terror. The warrior hawk and traditional manliness is far from being vanquished in American society. If anything, I would say that the manly warrior-hawk has been winning over the sensitive male in the aftermath of 9/11. Personally, I think the manly warrior hawk is a horrible model of manhood and I find it repugnant. Trying to live up to such an ideal of manhood destroys a lot of male lives. If I were expected to act like “tailgunner joe” I would suffer a personality crisis.
Gloria Steinem claims that these sort of conceptions of manhood harm men even more than they harm women. She points to the life of Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 terrorists, and how his conceptions of manhood helped him become a terrorist. I’m not sure that I totally buy her argument about what influenced Mohammed Atta to become a terrorist, but I think that I do see a lot of the conflicts in the world which are spurred on by silly conceptions of manhood. Looking at the current crisis between the US and Iran, I can’t help thinking that Almadinajad and Bush remind me of two boys trying to assert their manhood in the schoolyard, neither side wanting to loose face and back down although the rest of the world thinks both of them are acting irrationally and foolishly.
I’d also like to point out that leftist language has not dominated American discourse, nor has it won the culture wars. In many ways, the conservatives or rightists have redefined American political discourse on their own terms. People use terms like “family values”, the “liberal media”, and the “war on terror” almost without questioning how biased the language is.
It has become more culturally acceptable for there to be a whole range of ideals of manhood. We now believe that men can be care providers, nuturing, and empathizers, but we still see men as breadwinners, warrior-hawks, and prone to violence. I don’t believe that we have lost the ideal of the male warrior; instead society has given men the choice to also want to take care of babies and want to cook. As a male, I see this as a positive development, giving me more choices in life. A lot of males seem to agree with me, given how many I see adopting non-traditional gender roles.
June 12th, 2006 at 12:56 am
“It has become more culturally acceptable for there to be a whole range of ideals of manhood. We now believe that men can be care providers, nuturing, and empathizers, but we still see men as breadwinners, warrior-hawks, and prone to violence. I don’t believe that we have lost the ideal of the male warrior; instead society has given men the choice to also want to take care of babies and want to cook.”
A somewhat feminised notion.
Makes the efforts of Fathers in the past seem an irrelevance, or worse still non-existant. It’s gone from “Father know best” to Fathers only know what feminists allow them to know.
This too is a feminist beatup.
I and I am sure many Fathers were caring and considerate, Fathers that took the family situation very seriously, I sat down with my four kids two years ago and asked them what their major memory of their childhood days were, they all say “you were there for us all of the time”.
So I get really annoyed when someone tries to explain to me that Fathers are now more relevant just because feminists feel they should.
It is the usual load of diminished irrelevance that we have come to expect from them.
June 12th, 2006 at 8:12 am
There is nothing wrong with men wanting to do some of what once was called womens work, to nurture babies etc. There never has been. And, during the natural ebb and flow of life, the occurence of such does not take the warrior out of the man.
What does is the mere fact that someone feels the need to herald it. To talk about men being “given the choice” to do these things is absurd and exceptionally feminist. Warrior men are natural leaders, not GIVEN a choice to nurture. If it is given to you, then your nurturing activities are not cojoined with masculinity but rather subordinated to feminist influence.
This article is correct, unfortunately for us men we are afraid to say these things because after all a women might hear us, and we’d be branded. Can you imagine what men would say if we let down all walls and spoke our hearts and minds w/ no concern for feminist correctness? It would be shocking to hear, if there are men still around who can think that way.
June 12th, 2006 at 8:18 am
I noticed this before about Ann Coulter but didn’t want to be insulting. She does come across as an adrenaline charged pit bull whose more masculine than feminine and this seems to be reflected by her personal life.
Her success is derived partly by her turning feminist principles back on themselves: She’s attractive, intelligent, and “empowered” and she uses those gifts to trash the left that claims to be on her gender’s side. Sound familiar? That was the typical behaviour of _men_ who were leftists and white guilt advocates and trashed the same culture that empowered them.
That doesn’t make Ann a bad person. After all, revolutionary war veterans of the U.S. were formally British subjects too. Ann is defending freedom and western civilization through betraying the feminist values of the left, not the other way around. This is partly what inflames the left: That she’s a traitor to their cause.
That begs another interesting question: Where are the fox feminists of the left? The “nice” feminists of old who slept with 10 guys a day and helped to seduce men into the arms of masculine guilt much like a siren song?
Answer: Most such women have run back into the kitchen. They’ve blown off their high powered careers or lost taste for politics especially as the bull dyke feminists or aging icons like Geena Davis demand all the goodies for themselves.
Leftism has gotten _ugly_. Have you noticed?
The “real men” of America are “warriers” in the sense that they want to be survivors: Have families and children and try to stay out of the way. In a way, they are winning the battle as American women slowly come to realize that they aren’t going to get a traditional patriarchal husband by attending NOW rallies.
June 12th, 2006 at 9:10 am
[...] Decline of the Warrior Male: Is Ann Coulter the Last of the …Men’s News Daily, CA - 15 hours ago… She argued that there are two basic types of sociopathy- the primary type which … when you get used to it can we blame the intellectual termites for invading … [...]
June 12th, 2006 at 2:37 pm
The “warrior male” is alive and well.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/06/12/D8I6QFP00.html
“…
Murders rose 4.8 percent, meaning there were more than 16,900 victims in 2005. That would be the most since 1998 and the largest percentage increase in 15 years.
…”
To be completely fair to these men, they are also running most of the multinational corporations, building most of the real estate, producing most of the film, comprise most of the police, the fire fighters, military, merchant marine, flying most of anything that flies, creating new technology, manning the oil fields, and on and on.
I think intellectualism has had a healthy 500 year run and is on the way out. It is being replaced by the hard truth of technology. The true intellectuals are the mathematicians, and they have gone so far out there that most of what they do lacks any kind of non-mathematical meaning.
Ann Coulter writes like a woman, and I lack a taste for the “female pen†so I have to take her in small doses. She is highly intelligent frank, blunt, and bold. Manly she is not.
June 15th, 2006 at 5:10 am
[...] Decline of the Warrior Male: Is Ann Coulter the Last of the …Men’s News Daily, CA - Jun 11, 2006… and almost impossible to treat (the psychopath) and the secondary type which can … when you get used to it can we blame the intellectual termites for invading … [...]
June 18th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
“They may bully, force themselves on females, fight among themselves, and simply be a threat to life and limb to everyone around them. They may compromise the freedom and liberty of others, but without them there is no freedom and liberty.”
These sage words by Mr. Baily say it all for me. I for one, am eternally grateful to Ann Coulter for blazing the trail back. To the extent that the intellectual right has abrogated their responsibility to protect and defend have our freedoms and liberties been eroded. This is true both at the personal level and the societal level.
Rather than being the “last” of what has been a dying breed, I take her to be among the FIRST of the breed to launch meaningful salvos into the enemy camp. Be mindful that this would scarcely have been possible 10 years ago, but thanks to courageous warrior hawks on the intellectual right like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Neal Boortz and others who started blazing the trail 15 years ago, Ann Coulter and the rest of us now have a viable theater of war to fight in.
The cowards on the left have lost their “cover” now of a hegemonic left-wing media, and just like the playground bully who runs away as soon as someone stands up to him, these pathetic liberal bullies are running for cover now. Now’s the time to POUR IT ON. Go Ann!!! The rest of us, STEP IT UP and elect true conservatives with the cahones to tell it like it is.
June 19th, 2006 at 7:21 am
Pharisees: Former protectors of the faith turned self-serving hypocrits.
Ann Coulter: A modern-day Deborah in a new “Judges” world, where far too many males have rejected their God-given responsibilities as leaders, courageous fathers, and warrior hawks.
GO FOR IT ANN, do what you gotta do and say what you gotta say, knowing there are so many others who are able but unwilling.