How can anyone seriously contend men are increasingly powerless when everywhere they outnumber women as officeholders and in the upper reaches of business? Well, the political philosopher, James Burnham, said it makes little difference whether one is armed with a broom or a bazooka, if one lacks the will to use it, or, if out of ignorance or self-hatred uses it in ways that undermine one’s own interests.

In 1914, all visible power was in the hands of the Czar and his hangers-on. Less than ten years later, the ruling class had been wiped out without a murmur. The triumph of Communism traces back to the romantic self-destruction of a bored aristocracy— weary from running around and patching up a society that was tottering. Instead of seizing the productive opportunities of Twentieth Century entrepreneurship, it engaged in rounds of effete ceremony intended to cover up its loss of real power.

Males now seek positions in politics and business, but not to exercise power. That would require real work and patience— both of which are boring to most. Men seek the trappings of power for its high salaries and perks.

Money commands others— which is the sole measure of status. Money guarantees the luxuries— which are now the sole purpose of life. In our society where the "pursuit of happiness" is everything, that’s all most of us want. Money assures older men eternal youth and power that attracts young women, who would not pay them a mind were they not rich and influential. But in more vigorous cultures, as men age, they enter a new spire where they aspire to earn respect and wisdom.

The stock market boom over the past decade reflects this weakening of entrepreneurship. An adrenaline excitement of buying and selling replaces any consideration for usefulness and inherent value. This wild division of cancerous cells characterizes growth rather than a slow and steady gain in knowledge of physiology that dictates proper nutrition, exercise and, most important of all, sleep. Those who do not truly work cannot sleep. In fact, inflation is a fiscal and monetary growth without the pause (like sleep) that would permit reflection on policy.

Chronic inflation is synonymous of the decline of a class or a society. That inflation, feminism and Clintonism emerged hand-in-hand should have caused no surprise to anyone. They all felt good . . . like the declining phase of a ruling class feels good. So much time for frivolousness . . . and so little concern for duty.

Ruling classes are not overthrown in a struggle with superior force. That is but the last, and most visible step. The inner rotting comes long before that. Ruling classes collapse as interest in solid achievement gives way to pleasure seeking— not as recreation, but as the end in itself.

In animal studies, where the need to struggle in order to survive has been replaced by the safety of captivity, life becomes fixated on pleasure. Then the female dominates. Like performing dogs, the male submits to being trained, acting any part in exchange for favors. Food and sex are so powerful in stimulating the pleasure centers of the brain that the largest and most ferocious animals can be used in animal acts.

The breakout of violence in our high school exclusively by males may have its roots in this sense of safety and captivity. Young males need to take risks and know challenge first-hand (risks as older men were taking risks in the manic stock market of the nineties). Those for whom such behavior was justified and for whom it would have been a relatively social escape were denied it. Those who should have matured beyond that compulsion didn’t. They may have driven us closer to the brink than most are yet willing to admit.

Imperial Rome is another illustration of where males (young and older) stand today. As real power declines, the trappings become more exaggerated. Grandiose monuments are built to a vision already dead.

We might also note that women acquired power during Rome’s imperial stage that they never had during the republic. The lack of real interest in constitutional restraints on power by the feminists today suggests that there may be a constant element in this. For the first ten million years of human evolution the woman waited for food hunted by the man for herself and her children. But it was also too often the closer tyranny of the husband that she felt rather than the more distant tyranny of the state.

Once men must vie for real power it became obvious that what they possess is increasingly illusory and highly insecure. It is subject to a state and federal law that is increasingly whimsical. The law’s current purpose is to use heightened eroticism to erode close bonding within families. Our state doesn’t promote unstable families, promiscuity and homosexuality simply because it is immoral. It promotes and protects them because they undermine the autonomy of the family.

It is power the state seeks— not sexual or psychological freedom for the masses. As Nazism and Communism demonstrated in our time, both systems suppressed sexual freedom— as does the small totalitarian wing of feminism led by the likes of Katherine MacKinnon.

The last stand against all tyrannies is the privacy of the home and the family circle. Tribes are family networks. Religion and family were once intertwined as ballast against the state. Throughout history, it is these family networks that have stood up against invasions, illicit rulers and excessive taxation.

The most powerful force for the disintegration and annihilation of the family is the law.

Government cannot create wealth. But government alone sanctions its inheritors. Women no longer need wait for the death of their husbands to inherit his wealth. Divorce instantly seizes the wealth of its creator. In traditional societies where the state shares this prerogative with the church, marriage serves this purpose and also serves the purpose of holding families together— despite the natural ebb and flow of carnal love.

Starting largely with the Clinton Administration even wealthy men began to lose all but the trappings of their success. That’s why even wealthy men began to hedge marrying as the nineties began. Even the privileged began to sense that in trading real power for a counterfeit sociability the loss far exceeded the gain.

Ordinary working men were the invisible men. The power structures refused to hear them and called them voiceless. They have suffered this loss of a meaningful social function since the 1970s. Sociologists have known for a century that this causes ennui, a terrible and irreversible lethargy, one of the influences which keep the father’s movement from organizing effectively.

Real power is easier to take if your adversary is too demoralized to wake up, or is kept asleep. That is why— as the feminists seize all power and power unchecked is ultimately exploitative— they consciously keep up the illusion of men as exploiters. Like Lenin’s fiction about the Czar and his frumps and the patriots about George III, the feminists need to imbue men with power. They need to inflate them until they appear larger than life.

It is laughable that American men could frighten anyone anymore. Even their children ignore them. That is sadly irrelevant. Men serve a useful purpose. The feminists need a feared object (men and patriarchy) to rally around— not unlike Hillary Clinton’s right-wing conspiracy, although it should be obvious how impotent all scapegoats are.

For a time, appearances can fake reality. As noted, stocks with no resources behind them can be successfully marketed and make fortunes for their promoters until someone notices "the king has no clothes" and finally "bursts the bubble."

Andrew Carlan

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