Modern Politics

Most men have a complicated relationship with politics. We do not want to be the guy who talks about it at every barbecue. We do not want to be consumed by it. We want to work, provide, raise our kids, love our wives, and worship God. That is a good instinct.

But here is what we have to understand: the public square is not optional. It is not a hobby for the politically obsessed. It is the arena in which the rules of your life are written — the rules of your business, your church, your school, your family.

The culture does not wait for you to decide whether you want to participate. It writes the rules whether you are watching or not. Every year that you look away, someone else writes another line of your life.

There is a lot of noise in political conversation. It helps to simplify. Four fronts matter more than all the rest combined.

1. The Family

The family is the first institution. It is where children learn what love is, what authority is, what work is, what sacrifice is. When the family is redefined, everything downstream is redefined too.

Dennis Prager has documented the collapse of the family in stark terms. He notes that "nearly half (48 percent) of American children are born to a mother who is not married," that "43 percent of American children live without a father in the home," and that "about 50 percent of Americans over 18 are married, compared with 72 percent in 1960"[reference:0]. These are not abstract statistics. They describe the world your children are growing up in.

And the consequences are not neutral. Prager notes that "63% of teenagers who commit suicide come from homes without fathers"[reference:1]. The family is not one issue among many. It is the issue.

2. Education

For a century, American education was a local affair — governed by parents, school boards, and teachers who knew the children by name. That model has been systematically replaced by a centralized one, and the results are visible to anyone who looks.

Boys are falling behind girls at every level. According to Pew Research analysis of U.S. Census data, 47% of women ages 25–34 hold a bachelor's degree, compared with 37% of men — a gap that has widened for decades.

The question is not whether boys can learn. It is whether schools are still designed to teach them. The answer, increasingly, is no.

3. The Church

The church is not a building. It is a body of believers. But that body has been told for decades that its primary calling is to be nice — to avoid offense, to keep the peace, to fit in. And the result is that the church has lost its voice in the public square at the exact moment it was most needed.

This is the subject of the Silent Church page. But it is worth naming here: a church that has nothing to say to the culture is a church that has already been defeated.

4. The Economy

Men's labor force participation has been declining for half a century. As Edward Conard's analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data shows, "men's labor force participation declined 13 points over 1976–2024"[reference:2]. In 2024, "3.8 million men ages 25 to 40 we're not in the labor force, and a total of 7.8 million we're not working full-time"[reference:3].

This is not a matter of lazy men. It is a matter of a system that has made men increasingly unnecessary. And when men are unnecessary, they do not simply disappear. They drift.

Of everything that has happened to American men in the last sixty years, the collapse of fatherhood is the most consequential. It is not a coincidence that the two-parent household has declined at exactly the same rate as male we'll-being.

Dennis Prager put the shift in plain terms: "We have gone from father knows best to father doesn't matter"[reference:4]. That is not an exaggeration. It is a description of the cultural change that has reshaped what children believe about men.

And the consequences are not just theoretical. Consider what the data shows about fatherlessness:

• According to the U.S. Census Bureau, "18.2 million children, 1 in 4, live without a biological, step, or adoptive father in the home"[reference:5].
• "71% of high school dropouts are fatherless"[reference:6].
• "90% of homeless and runaway children come from fatherless homes"[reference:7].
• "Students living in biological father-absent homes are twice as likely to repeat a grade in school"[reference:8].

These are not statistics. They are the stories of children who grew up without the one thing that was designed to protect them.

It is one thing to describe the drift. It is another to explain it. And the explanation matters, because if we do not understand why men are drifting, we will not be able to call them back.

Dennis Prager offered one of the clearest diagnoses. He wrote: "Men do best when they are relied upon, when needed; and they feel most needed when they do something distinct from women" [reference:9]. That is the key.

Men need to be needed. It is not a weakness. It is a design feature. A man who is not needed has no direction. He drifts because there is nothing pulling him forward. He drifts because the culture has spent fifty years telling him that the things he used to be needed for — protecting, providing, leading, sacrificing — are no longer necessary or even desirable.

And what happens when a man is told he is not needed? He becomes unnecessary. And when a man is unnecessary, he becomes invisible. And when he is invisible, he becomes dangerous — to himself, to his family, and to his community.

The answer is not to tell men they are needed in the abstract. It is to actually need them. To build families and churches and communities where men have real, concrete, irreplaceable roles. That is the work. And it is the work of every man reading this.

So what is the response? Not a program. Not a party. Not a personality. A set of disciplines:

• Pay attention. Read. Watch. Know what is happening in your town, your state, your country.
• Speak up locally. Your school board, your city council, your church leadership. This is where the real decisions happen.
• Build your family first. A man who neglects his own home to save the world has saved nothing.
• Raise your sons. Teach them what it means to be a man. The culture will teach them something else if you do not.
• Vote. Not as a duty to a party, but as a duty to your neighbor.
• Do not be ashamed of your convictions. The world will try to make you feel foolish for believing what your grandfathers believed. Do not let it.

This is not a political program. It is a set of disciplines. And disciplines, practiced by men, change the world.

I know this can feel like too much. The problems are enormous. The forces arrayed against the family, the church, and the traditional understanding of manhood are powerful and we'll-funded.

But here is the thing about political and cultural change: it almost never comes from the top. It comes from the bottom. It comes from neighborhoods, from churches, from families, from individual men who decide they will not go along with a lie.

The culture you live in was built by ordinary men who decided to stand. It can be rebuilt by ordinary men who decide to stand again. That is not a slogan. That is history. And it is your history, if you choose to enter it.