The Right Turns Against Military Service Members

Military disability scams, turning lost boys into men, and more in this week's digest.

Some recent conversations have made it clear that one of the things that sets my work apart from other evangelical public figures is that even secular liberals read me to gain insight about the world.

This is true of very, very few other people, who are read almost exclusively by other evangelicals. Or, if they are read by outsiders, it is to get a window into what’s happening in the church, not the world.

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I’m much more of a liberal than you are politically but still read everything you write because of how effective of a communicator you are and because what you write feels grounded in a sense of broad public-spiritedness and decency.

That’s what I’m striving for. I’m working hard to elevate the discourse.

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The Right Turns Against Military Service Members

A trend I’ve started noticing in online right wing discourse is a growing skepticism of people in the military. They are increasingly viewed as scammers who are gaming the system to get money and benefits without putting their lives in danger.

Here’s an X post that got over two million views. It’s about a military couple who are purportedly both getting high dollar disability pensions without ever being in a combat zone. The actual video of this segment is downthread.

Many right wing accounts piled on criticism of the couple. It’s not clear if this case is real or not. But the reaction sure was. And this is hardly the first such criticism I’ve seen.

I can very much believe there is disability abuse in the military because I’ve seen it in places like police and fire departments. I wrote an article noting that 58% of Providence, RI firefighters retire on a disability pension, and mentioning various scams involved.

My understanding is that the military has made it much easier to get classified as disabled, including for mental conditions like anxiety for people who weren’t ever in combat areas. I’m sure there are plenty of scams taking place.

But police department disability or union scams haven’t caused people on the right to stop “backing the blue.” These are people who would always historically have been all about “supporting the troops” and hailing them as heroes regardless of any scandals.

This new critical turn towards people in the military is very interesting. It will be interesting to see where it goes.

By the way, here’s an example of a cultural trend you are probably hearing about from me first. It may not turn into anything big, but if it does, you had early insight into it. This is a reason why you should support my work.

Lost Boys to Men

The Wall Street Journal ran a big essay on the front page of the Saturday Review section about a church’s mens ministry that’s about teaching lost boys to be men.

Holt is 35, bald, barrel-chested and the father of three children. He works as a construction manager when he’s not volunteering at church. As Holt demonstrated how to rethread the spool line and mix oil for fuel, he talked about how the message of Ecclesiastes goes hand in hand with taking care of your property—or earning money by mowing a neighbor’s yard. Men need to provide for themselves and their families, he explained, as the boys passed around the machine.

Holt sees his mission as teaching these boys to be men of faith. But first, he says, he must teach them to be men. He shows them how to change a tire, shave and start a savings account. He also helps them become, as he says, leaders of their households.

“God designed men with an innate desire to be a provider, even if that’s just providing for themselves and being productive,” said Holt. “So when they’re not fulfilling that, they do feel lost.”

Life Tabernacle Church is a pentecostal church in Baton Rogue, a working class city. I would infer that, similar to the pentecostal church in Southern Indiana I grew up in, it is serving many troubled people who may be battling addictions, a criminal record, etc., and which probably includes many who came from broken and dysfunctional homes.

While I critique evangelical “Man up!” lectures, I think this approach can work quite well for people in these working class environments. These young men do need to be told to do the basics like staying sober, getting a job, and not hitting women. There are a lot of oil and gas jobs in Baton Rogue, so likely decently paid blue collar work is available in Baton Rogue for those who can clean up their act and do the basics right.

I also appreciate that the church is teaching these men practical skills like how to change a tire or open a bank account.

Unfortunately, this church buys into the women good/men bad evangelical framework. The Journal correctly deduces this by even titling one section “‘Good Women’ and ‘Worthless Men’.”

“There are so many good women with a home and a car, and you have all these worthless men who are just bums,” he said. “It’s time to cut grass. It’s time to learn how to change a battery on a car.” He preaches against idleness and spends his downtime fixing broken cars and lawn equipment.

Given the milieu of this church, very likely many of these women are single mothers, some with children by multiple fathers, and may have had other severe problems of their own. And that the types of behaviors behind these are not entirely in the past.

It’s very easy and safe for pastors to beat men up all day long for being “worthless” or “bums.” It’s quite another to call out women, so they rarely do it. In fact, it’s more likely that they encourage men to ignore obvious red flags in a potential wife than to ask women to step it up themselves.

But in general, I would suspect this church’s ministry is effective in helping a number of very troubled young men get their life back on track. I’ve seen such things do that elsewhere. So we can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

However, evangelicals often transpose this same basic approach from working class environments to middle and upper middle class ones as well. Lots of beating up men, for example, but much less practical training and help. These ministries tend to be much less effective at producing life change, and even alienate a lot of men who can objectively see that they are far from being worthless bums.

CAFF Innovation Award

America Reformer’s Center for Academic Faithfulness and Flourishing just won an innovation grant from the Heritage Foundation. This award is going to support CAFF’s Christian college guide. It’s great to see CAFF win this highly competitive award.

This guide is a superb resource for parents. It includes more information on these colleges than any college guide of any type I’ve ever seen. Unlike with US News or other groups that try to rank colleges based on the guide makers’ criteria, the CAFF college guide provides tools to allow families to select a college based on their own criteria.

Whether you have a child selecting a college or just want to know more about a particular school, check the CAFF college guide out.

Best of the Web

NYT: Why Boys Are Behind in School From the Start

Matt Yglesias: Where are all the daddy blogs? - An interesting analysis, but needs to be paired with a manosphere perspective. Unfortunately this piece may be paywalled.

NY Post: Weed increases risk of major health issue — even without smoking

Freya India: The Mass Trauma of Porn

Christianity Today: How Erotic Fiction Harms Women - Evangelicals have not been that aggressive in taking on erotic novels, which are perhaps the principal form of sexually explicit material consumed by women. So this piece is notable.

Musa al-Gharbi: The Cultural Contradictions of the Anti-Woke

WSJ: How Cheating Spreads at Law Schools - Note: This focuses on Pepperdine’s law school. This is a school that still has a strong Christian identity and which many Christians and more conservative people attend. Not a good look.

New Content and Media Mentions

I got a mention this week in National Review.

I was a guest on Dillon Baker’s podcast, and also the Two Mikes show.

New this week:

• The Problem of Male Friendship - Why we don't have male friends today and what to do about it

• Evangelicalism's Patronage Problem (paid only) - A failure to support their own helps keep evangelicals from reaching the top ranks of America's key institutions

• My podcast this week was with Philip K. Howard on why America can’t build anymore.

• My Member only podcast this month has some reflections on John Piper’s “seashells” sermon.

For more about the benefits of being a Member, see my Support page.

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