At the beginning of the twenty-first century, we had a little “Golden Age” of television when manly shows with manly characters briefly flourished.  Sopranos, Band of Brothers, The Wire, The Shield, Deadwood, Rome, Generation Kill, Justified, Boardwalk Empire, Breaking Bad, and the first season of True Detective broke the network mold and told dark, gritty stories in ways that had never been shown on a television screen.

I found myself in a gathering with a Sopranos writer once, and someone asked him why the show was so successful.  Without hesitating, he answered that HBO had given the writers wide latitude in creating something new.   Like a brass section playing jazz, those guys just let their creative talents flow.  That’s why a lot of these shows have more in common with great literature than with the primetime hits of previous decades.  As cable television experimented with original programming for the first time, many of the companies just let the writers write.  The result was that some of the most memorable male characters in television appeared.

Some very manly movies came out in theaters during this period, too.  As audiences applauded the new “Golden Age” of television, studios looked to emulate that success on the big screen.  There Will Be Blood, The Departed, and No Country for Old Men are three that come to mind, but there were many manly films at the turn of the century.  There was a fleeting push in Hollywood to green-light projects that read as if they had come from the typewriters of novelists such as Elmore Leonard and Cormac McCarthy.  The content that came out in the aughts included some meaty masterpieces that are far better than anything out today.

When Obama entered the White House, the era of masculine television gradually ended.  Popular shows that featured male-driven storylines were flipped on their heads.  Mad Men started as a 1960s tale about hard-drinking men in the often misogynistic world of New York City advertising; it ended with all the women in charge and the men in various stages of collapse.  Black Sails began as a brutal story about early-eighteenth-century pirates set decades before Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island; eventually, the violent and feared Captain Flint is revealed to be a heartbroken man mourning the loss of his gay lover, and several of the lowly Bahamian prostitutes wind up managing the islands’ business.  Most of the shows during the last decade consistently show men as feminine, broken, and weak.

That doesn’t seem like a coincidence.  Just as Obama, Eric Holder, and their Democrat friends have been desperate to control what Americans publicly express and debate on social media platforms, they couldn’t have been happy with some of Hollywood’s manly-man content that arrived at the beginning of the century. 

The shows mentioned above do not portray men more positively than they exist in real life.  They are not meant to exclusively showcase manly character and virtue in their various forms.  They tell the stories of some bad dudes who do some bad things.  But they do depict men behaving in authentically masculine ways.  As Matthew McConaughey’s character says in True Detective, “The world needs bad men.  We keep the other bad men from the door.”  

That is one message the Democrat Party and their Marxist-globalist allies around the world don’t want men hearing.  It’s the old “Sheepdog” philosophy that warriors embrace by directing their capacity for violence toward the hero’s path.  It’s the creed that motivates a man to intervene when he sees a stranger being victimized.  Healthy societies produce masculine men who are not afraid to put themselves in danger, so that others might live.  Unhealthy societies demoralize and castrate men, until no heroes exist at all.

Ask yourself if the global “elites” who have been constructing a technocratic surveillance state around citizens for decades want heroes in this world.  Do they want men who are unafraid to tell government officials when they have abused their powers?  Or do they want men who drop to one knee and do what bureaucratic tyrants say?  Do they want fearless men who will fight for their freedoms?  Or do they want fearful men who blindly obey?  Do they want men who will protect their families at all costs — even if doing so means they must sacrifice themselves?  Or do the global “elites” in this world prefer men who walk away from their families without giving the matter a second thought?  

You know the answers.  When it comes to the exercise of government power, real men are a constant threat.  If they refuse to cover their faces with cheap paper masks, then COVID mandates fail.  If they refuse to let boys beat up their daughters in competitive sports, then “transgender” delusions are relegated to the psych ward.  If they refuse to allow government welfare programs to play “daddy” to their families, then Marxist Democrats can’t turn children against their parents.  If they refuse to bow down to the strictures of “political correctness,” then critical thinking skills are passed from one generation to the next.  If they refuse to embrace moral relativity as a worldview, then they remind all those who meet them that honor and virtue are real.  If they refuse to hand over their weapons just because leftists find self-defense “scary,” then they remain stubborn sheepdogs guarding the flock.  Tyrants don’t like real men because real men have a code that includes this promise: Not on my watch.

There’s a memorable scene in the first season of The Wire when flawed but earnest homicide detective William “Bunk” Moreland is interviewing a dangerous man named Omar Little.  Omar makes a living robbing drug dealers on the streets of Baltimore.  He’s a modern-day highwayman who targets other criminals and avoids civilians.  When “Bunk” asks Omar why he’s willing to testify against a killer from his neighborhood, Omar tells him that he’s done plenty of bad things but never hurt anyone who didn’t have it coming.  Peering back at him, Bunk nods in agreement and acknowledges, “A man must have a code.”  “Oh, no doubt,” Omar replies, as both police detective and criminal realize that they have much in common.

If I had to speculate why all the manly shows at the beginning of this century disappeared, I would guess that the political left — who have long maintained a monopoly over news, music, and entertainment — began to regret producing series that reminded men that they must have a code.  In those gritty dramas, there are probably more bad men than good men.  But almost all of them live by some code that defines who they are.  That code doesn’t come from the government or some contingent of “woke” culture police.  It comes from deep inside the men who operate as individuals with purpose.  They are not merely shaped in this world; they are characters who shape their world.  

What word do we use to describe a person with the ability to effect his own will?  We call that person “powerful.”  A farmer who clears and cultivates the land exerts power over it.  A husband and father who protects his family is a powerful man.  A person whose virtuous character is recognized by others is a powerful member of the community.  And when a man’s will is intentionally directed to advance God’s will here on Earth, His power provides that man with immeasurable strength.  

Can you see why manly men are a problem for Big Government?  When they follow a code — especially one imbued with the purpose of God Almighty — government power is small by comparison.  And when fathers teach their children to live by that same code, tyrants never stand a chance.  We don’t need television shows to remember that.  We need only pray, teach, and act.

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