As a Catholic and a Distributist, I find certain elements of the Democratic Party’s platform alluring. There’s a greater emphasis on addressing poverty, providing healthcare for all, protecting the environment, and at least the appearance of advocating for the little guy. One can certainly identify flaws in the DNC’s methodology for achieving such goals (namely big government), but few would deny that such aims are well in accordance with Catholic Social Teaching.

For most practicing Christians, however, issues of life are deal-breakers for voting blue. Social justice may be laudable, but the DNC’s close ties to Planned Parenthood and abortion are simply nonstarters. An issue as grave as life is certainly reason enough to reject a liberal candidate – but for men at least, there’s another reason every bit as important.

Liberalism is inherently unmanly.

Intelligent Catholics may very well  favor liberal economic policies, but the cultural and philosophical zeitgeist undergirding modern liberalism has become indefensible. From my home here is one of the last presidios of sanity (Texas), I’ve observed the acceleration of Western civilization’s collective suicide over the past few years.  I’ve seen liberalism’s emasculating underbelly reveal itself and spread like a cancer – and it’s not pretty. Leftism isn’t simply wrong or misguided, it’s dangerous. It’s politicized weakness that no self-respecting man can endorse. Here are five reasons why: (feel free to add your own in the comments)

Self-loathing: Cultured men respect their elders. They admire the achievements and legacies of their forefathers, viewing the adversities overcome and progress they made with gratitude. They also value tradition and feel a sense of pride for their ethnic and religious heritage. Leftists view the past with contempt. They ignore the historical reality of the Church preserving and forging Western civilization, and they despise the men who discovered, settled and built the Americas.

Leftists instead posit a reductionist narrative of patriarchy, class-conflict, genocide, racism, slavery, greed and white privilege. (Having been through grad school in a history department, and currently teaching AP US History, I experience it firsthand). Leftists are often ashamed of the country they inhabit, and feel a collective sense of guilt for its economic prowess. They hate the hardworking men who bequeathed them the unparalleled prosperity and political freedoms they now enjoy. Like ISIS or the Taliban, they advocate the destruction of monuments, renaming of schools, revision of textbooks and erasing of history deemed politically incorrect. They demand mass cultural atonement for injustices that occurred well before any of us were born, and they view all tradition – especially of the religious variety – as an impediment to progress. This is a degenerate, Jacobin mindset beyond contempt. It is the duty of every conservative man to abhor it.

Cult of Victimhood: Men strive to be protectors and providers for their families. They work hard, take pride in their vocation, and avoid blaming others for their failures or limitations. This attitude is completely antithetical to the Left. Liberals have established a collective cult of victimhood. Anyone who isn’t a heterosexual white male receives an automatic claim to victimhood status. By claiming this persecuted status, all personal failures can be attributed to vague abstractions like sexism, racism, or intolerance – or simply blamed on straight white males themselves. Being a Leftist means never having to accept responsibility for your socioeconomic circumstances. Millennial white males can only atone for their innate depravity by publicly declaring themselves feminists, pretending to care about silly causes, regularly posting trendy videos of John Oliver or The Daily Show on their social media accounts, and voting democrat. Needless to say, this kind of pathetic charade is beneath an aspiring gentleman.

Islamophilia: Conservative men understand that Islam is inherently incompatible with secular democracy. They aren’t afraid to acknowledge the obvious reality that suicide bombers and the overwhelming majority of terrorists are Muslim. They call the annihilation of Middle Eastern Christians what it is – genocide. And they are prepared to fight for their families and the preservation of their way of life.

Leftists project a delusional utopia in which all Muslims are peace-loving beatniks who cherish Western culture. In their world, it is only an aberrant, virtually nonexistent minority that occasionally act out violently, and anyone who suggests that Islam may be a factor in such violence is intolerant. This denial of reality is dangerous…and perplexing, considering Islamic countries systematically oppress the very communities liberals claim to champion – women, gays, political dissenters and religious minorities. (Evidently Christians judging such persons is despicable, while Muslims killing them is perfectly acceptable). Even when liberals concede the reality of Muslim violence, they blame the West for the attacks, reverting to the aforementioned tendency towards self-loathing.

This is a dangerous road to travel. While EU populations continue shrink, their Muslim communities grow rapidly to replace them. Belgium is estimated to be majority Muslim by 2030, and with 1.4 million refugees entering Germany and the likelihood of Turkey joining the EU, the rest of Western Europe won’t be far behind. It will be interesting to see how liberals fare under the “moderate majority” rule of the new Islamic masters they’ve so sheepishly defended. Sharia courts have already been established across major European cities and attacks on Jews, gays and women are now so commonplace they often go unreported. (European Jews are now fleeing to Israel in record numbers, while Germany introduces segregated, female-only train cabins to protect women from sexually depraved migrants). Unfortunately for progressives, the Quran makes no provisions for infidel safe-spaces to cry in over the microaggressions they’ll experience..

Competition: Men are competitive by nature. It comes with testosterone. Be it at work, on the playground or on the battlefield, we feel a constant, albeit subtle impulse to top our friends and foes. The evolutionary benefits of competitiveness are obvious. Men who strive to be stronger or smarter are more likely to secure a partner and reproduce. They’re also more likely to succeed in protecting their offspring from predators and enemies. In economics, competition results in innovation, higher quality goods and services, and lower prices. In young people, playing competitive sports builds character, camaraderie, and self-discipline.

For liberals, competition is hurtful and archaic. This is because in any competition someone has to lose. Losing can upset the delicate psyches of children and millennials. They need to be sheltered from potential traumas like losing a soccer game. Liberals have thus constructed the culture of “everyone gets a trophy”, everyone is special, and any personal failings are the result of their children’s teachers.

Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. There is now a growing push to take sports like football, rugby and wrestling out of schools altogether. Such physical sports promote “toxic masculinity” and are dangerous to female and LGBT students. As an educator I can assure you that within 30 years there will be no contact football in public schools. States like Texas will resist, naturally, but the federal government will find a way to force it out. Liberals now have the silver bullet needed to accomplish this goal – concussion hysteria. Enjoy it while you can.

Emotionalism: Because many Leftists abandon the religions of their forefathers, they often declare themselves the side of reason and cast conservatives as anti-intellectual. This is ironic, given how averse liberals are to fact-driven data. For liberals, facts are largely irrelevant. All that matters is the narrative and the feelings or good intentions behind it. Whether you’re debating the nature of terrorism, economics, climate change or feminist myths like the campus rape culture/gender wage-gap, no amount of facts will bolster a conservative’s argument. Liberals construct their own reality, designed to maximize social division and reinforce the broader narrative of inequality. Cultural balkanization isn’t a crisis, it’s the goal. Dividing voters into victim subcultures and uniting them via shared anger at a common enemy (conservatives) is the name of the game. Leftists avoid honest debate by dismissing those who question the narrative as racists, bigots, and kooks. Real men are rational and analytical creatures. Being a crybully is simply unacceptable.

To conclude, what should characterize a conservative? We do ourselves a great disservice by reducing conservatism to mindless FoxNews talking points about lower taxes, supporting Israel or saving our guns. The most elegant and moving descriptions of conservatism come from Russell Kirk. Below is a quote from Bradley Birzer’s excellent biography:

The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead, that the object of life is Love. He knows that the just and ordered society is that in which Love governs us, so far as Love can reign in this world of sorrows; and he knows that the anarchical or the tyrannical society is that in which Love lies corrupt. He has learned that Love is the source of all being, and that Hell itself is ordained by love. He understands that Death, when we have finished the part that was assigned to us, is the reward of Love. He apprehends the truth that the greatest happiness ever granted to a man is the privilege of being happy in the hour of his death. He has no intention of converting this human society of ours into an efficient machine for efficient machine-operators, dominated by master mechanics. Men are put into this world, he realizes, to struggle, to suffer, to contend against the evil that is in their neighbors and in themselves, and to aspire toward the triumph of Love. They are put into this world to live like men, and to die like men. He seeks to preserve a society which allows men to attain manhood, rather than keeping them within bonds of perpetual childhood. With Dante, he looks upward from this place of slime, this world of gorgons and chimeras, toward the light which gives Love to this poor earth and all the stars.  

For more on Kirk, start here. For something less cerebral, you may troll your liberal friends with this provocative bit of social science.