Rugged Americanism on the Political Pistachio Radio Revolution

According to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) regarding when times get tough: “I met with some people while I was home dealing with domestic abuse. It has gotten out of hand. Why? Men don’t
have jobs…. Men, when they’re out of work, tend to become abusive. Even though women are losing jobs as well, women aren't abusive, most of the time. Men, when they're out of work, tend
to become abusive.”

Feminist groups, social workers, and liberal activists claim there are studies to support Reid's connection, and say that battery reports in the past couple years confirm it.

If that's the case, then from a liberal perspective it would mean a Jobs Bill is more than an employment effort, but is also necessary to rescue women from all of that unemployment induced violence!

Whether or not Reid's assertion is accurate is not a debate that can be settled by simple observations. The core problem goes deeper than economic difficulties. In our society, where self-esteem has become king, and everybody is "special", we are not teaching our young men to be resilient during tough times. Now, faced with a society full of people unwilling to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, people like Harry Reid wish to legislate behavior in lieu of the parenting necessary to train young men on how to handle economic, and other, life hardships.

Despite what the touchy-feely worldview tries to promote, life does have winners and losers. Parents who teach their sons to work hard and strive for success, and allow the boys to feel the sting of failure when it strikes, gives their boys the tools to deal with setbacks. The ability of these young men to bounce back and try again is the key to their future, and the future of America.

The fundamental priorities of our nation during tough economic times should encourage the real men of America to fight through an uncertain future, and become leaders in their households, and in the workplace.

Hal and Melanie Young, authors of the new book Raising Real Men: Surviving, Teaching and Appreciating Boys, say that parents need to take an intentional and principled approach to teaching their sons what it means to be a man. As our educational system has responded to the demands of feminism and concerns about school violence, boys are finding it difficult to express their growing masculinity in ways that are acceptable to their teachers. Raising boys into men is not a job that can be left to schools and clubs, they say, but has to be tackled in the home.

According to the Youngs, boys are born with the seeds of masculine virtue - strength, energy, courage, adventurousness - that need to be cultivated to yield the kind of men we want for the next generation. Basing their response on traditional moral principles and their own experience raising six boys, Hal and Melanie reveal that much of what parents and teachers find difficult about boys is a basic misunderstanding of how they are made, and how they should be trained. And part of this involves consciously providing boys with good and bad examples, heroes that will teach them more than guitar riffs, end-zone antics, and wisecracks.

Hal and Melanie Young are tonight's guest on the Political Pistachio Radio Revolution. Join us live at 7:00 PM Pacific, or catch the archive later, at BlogTalkRadio.com/PoliticalPistachio.

At 5:00 PM Pacific you can also catch me on the air as co-host of the Constitutional Radio Show, Founding Truth.