(Questions about Virtue, Class, Honor and Privilege, oh yeah, and Manhood)
When you think today of the brashness of our President, the thuggery of our “masculine models”, the “tail-between-the-leggedness” of others, you can seriously wonder what’s become of manhood in our times. Today I want to review what we once held up as a gentleman, for good, bad and indifferent, and what if anything should be done to resurrect him?
Being a gentleman used to mean you were of a certain upbringing, family, heritage. This has become problematic and “loaded” for our age, because today we are mostly very much against anything that smacks of “regionalism”, “familyism”, “racism” or “traditionalism”. But back in a certain day this was not the case, and there were some understandable reasons why. Certain families had an untaintable reputation surrounding their social conduct. They were fair in their economic dealings, their word was their bond (they weren’t known for dealing falsely), they weren’t afraid to deal with hardship in the middle of the night when it came calling. In these traditions, a gentleman would have been a man who was not known for cheating, or shirking responsibility, or running when a situation was difficult.
