Relieved of moral pretense and stripped of folk costumes, the raw masculinity that all men know in their gut has to do with being good at being a man within a small, embattled gang of men struggling to survive.

It must be scary to stand up for beliefs also held by Eric Holder.

Civilization comes at a cost of manliness. It comes at a cost of wildness, of risk, of strife. It comes at a cost of strength, of courage, of mastery. It comes at a cost of honor. Increased civilization exacts a toll of virility, forcing manliness into further redoubts of vicariousness and abstraction.

White guilt is more of a sanctioned social convention than a genuine emotional experience. It’s a form of theatrical empathy that’s socially and financially rewarded. When you learn to say and perhaps even believe the right things about race, doors are opened for you. When you say the wrong thing, those doors slam shut. Then, the gossips and church ladies will shame you publicly, demand that you be fired from your job, and use every avenue available to them to coerce a confession, a public apology and a staged conversion that contributes to their progressive narrative.

Sometimes men pick fights just for something to do-just to feel something like the threat of harm and the possibility of triumph.

When someone tells a man to be a man, they mean that there is a way to be a man. A man is not just a thing to be-it is also a way to be, a path to follow and a way to walk. Some try to make manhood mean everything. Others believe that it means nothing at all. Being good at being a man can't mean everything, and it has always meant something.

A man is not merely a man but a man among men, in a world of men. Being good at being a man has more to do with a man’s ability to succeed with men and within groups of men than it does with a man’s relationship to any woman or any group of women. When someone tells a man to be a man, they are telling him to be more like other men, more like the majority of men, and ideally more like the men who other men hold in high regard.