Cornell: Where Have the Real Men Gone? | FRIDAY FIELD NOTES

In this episode of Friday Field Notes, Ryan Michler dives deep into the high-profile Cornell controversy to break down the critical differences between legal culpability, moral responsibility, and mainstream media narratives. Addressing the ongoing cultural attack on men, Ryan challenges the popular claim that masculinity itself is inherently toxic. Instead, he explains the distinction between raw, amoral masculinity and mature, righteous manliness grounded in divine principles. Ryan calls on men to stop outsourcing their morality to institutions, start holding their peers accountable, and actively model strength, virtue, and leadership for the next generation. Tune in to explore what it truly takes to restore real men in today's society. SHOW HIGHLIGHTS 00:00 - Introduction & The Cornell Controversy 02:35 - Legal Culpability vs. Moral Responsibility 09:50 - Deconstructing Anti-Male Narratives 18:22 - Due Process and the Flaws of Public Opinion 25:50 - Masculinity vs. Manliness Defined 32:00 - The Role of Objective Morality and Righteousness 40:10 - Stop Outsourcing Your Sense of Morality 43:30 - Policing Our Own and Embracing Confrontation 47:09 - Raising the Next Generation & Modeling Virtuous Behavior 54:34 - Joining the Iron Council Battle Planners: Pick yours up today! https://store.orderofman.com/products/order-of-man-annual-battle-planner Order Ryan's new book, The Masculinity Manifesto https://www.amazon.com/Masculinity-Manifesto-Establishes-Influence-Credibility/dp/1684513316/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1665048672&sr=8-1. For more information on the Iron Council brotherhood https://orderofman.link/iron-council. Want maximum health, wealth, relationships, and abundance in your life? Sign up for our free course, 30 Days to Battle Ready https://orderofman.link/battle-ready-0

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Where are all the real men? Well, you told them not to be men. You told them to act like women. You told them to sit down. You told them to shut up. You told them to color within the lines. You told them they don't have a place here in society. You neutered them. You neutered them. And you did it on purpose. And you did it to the great detriment of our society. You can't neuter men and expect them to step up. Men, we have got a lot to talk about. A lot has happened this weekend or this weekend. Specifically, I want to address this Cornell controversy. Now, I made a post about what I thought about the issues after looking at it and diving deep into it.

• 0:45Speaker 00

  And I can't say that I know everything. But one thing I am good at, I'm willing to admit, is that I can look at the nuance of situations and realize that it's not always so black and white. And there's a lot of, I don't want to say gray area, but there's a lot of nuance. So one of the comments that I received is that there is no controversy about this. We all know what the situation, the problem is. Well, clearly, that's a ridiculous thing to say because if there was no controversy, we wouldn't be talking about it so much. So what I want to do with you today is talk about the fact that it is a controversy. Talk about what I've actually seen with the case.

• 1:28Speaker 00

  We're also going to talk about the narrative that I see primarily driven by what I would call the doctrine of popular culture or just, or just pop culture. What is popular currently? But we're also going to get into the difference between manliness and masculinity and why that's so important in the discussion. People continue to buck me on this, but I promise you, rational, level-headed people, men and women, will see it my way more and more as we progress. And I'll share that with you today. But we're also going to be talking about what we as men can do to actually address the situation. And there is a real discussion around men and masculinity and manliness that we as men ought to address.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  So those are the four parts I'm going to address with you today. So let's, let's break it down with number one. Let's talk about what happened. If you've been living under a rock, you may not know. But for everybody else who's not living under that rock, we know that there were seven men who have been accused of, and that's the right verbiage. It's important we use the right language, but have been accused of, not convicted of, not indicted of, accused of a civil complaint that they have raped a woman. And this is Jane Doe is who she goes by. She, her, her information is not public, rightfully so, I get that.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  But these seven men have been accused of drugging and sexually assaulting and raping her. Part of the story, a big part of the story, is that when she had originally come out with these allegations, that was in 2024. Now we're in 2026. The story has changed. There's, it's, it's a lot less favorable to the men, those seven men, than it was initially when she had made those original complaints to Cornell University. And I believe the police as well, in a civil suit, not a criminal suit, but a civil suit. But the, one of the big things that has come out more recently is that there's some

• 3:37Speaker 00

  sort of a chat thread where 50 other men are talking about how easy this woman is, come up and get what you want. And it's, it's bad, to say the least. It's, it's a very bad look, to say the absolute least. These men are vile, they're disgusting, they're taking advantage of the people that, quite frankly, I believe that we are called to lead and serve. And it's horrible. And I also think at the same time that there is a difference between legal culpability and moral culpability.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Now, those who want to be agitated, want to be mad, want to be fired up, want to look for what's wrong in men, want to affirm the narrative they've already thought, cannot, for whatever reason, seem to differentiate between legal and moral culpability. Legal culpability, look, if these, if these men are tried by a jury of their peers and they have been found guilty of raping this woman, then we ought to throw the book at them. I want to make that very clear. I do not advocate for this, obviously, I hope it's obvious. I do not condone it. I will not be silent on it. Our job as men is to protect, to provide and preside for ourselves, for our families,

• 5:00Speaker 00

  our communities, and for those who are incapable of doing it themselves. And that is those who are compromised. Alcohol abuse, drug abuse, they're compromised. So there's a legal culpability potentially, and that ought to go through the legal system. I'm trying to give you a very level-headed, rational approach to this because most people, same as the Lindsay Clancy case that we talked about several weeks ago, most people just get agitated and fired up and can't even think about opposing ideas or concepts or insights. And it creates a real problem on social media. And social media is just designed to rile us all up. So let's be level-headed about this.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  There potentially is, I'm not saying there is, but there is potentially a legal culpability. And if that is the case, then that book ought to be thrown at those young men. And, and frankly, if any man rapes a woman, I, I believe, well, I'll just go ahead and say, I believe in two things. Castration, physical castration, not chemical, physical castration and/or the death penalty. Because you might as well kill a woman. You might as well. If, if, if you are going to violate a woman in that way, that is going to be with her forever.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  And depending on the circumstances, from where I sit, could potentially be worse than death. Now, I'm not in that situation. I've never been in that situation, but I imagine that it's, it's horrific, to say the least. So there's, there's potentially, potentially a legal culpability, responsibility here. And then there's also the morality of it. And this is the, this is where it gets brought into question because this young woman's testimony has changed over the past couple of years. It's a lot more favorable in her position today than it was two years ago. Like, if you actually look at the testimony, you actually look at what is being, those

• 7:11Speaker 00

  young men are being accused of, it, it, it's different. It is. It, it's honestly, it's different. And you need to look at it before you start running your mouth about how, how, you know, it's only on them. And we don't know yet. And this is why an investigation is so important. But from a moral standpoint, from what I can gather, based on her original testimony, and it could have been frankly, that she was just embarrassed. It could have been that she, she didn't, you know, want to stir up trouble or want to bring down wrath upon her. I mean, there's a lot of reasons why a woman might make those decisions. And if, and if she's telling the truth, then all the power to her.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  If she's not, then that's just as horrible. Frankly, I, I think she ought to be responsible for whatever a man could potentially face if we have false allegations. That's maybe a different story. But there is a moral ramification to this. And what I would suggest to you guys, and I've been talking about it now for 11-plus years, this is why it's so, this is not why, this is a reason why it's so important that we live moral lives. Your morality matters. And when you start to degrade yourself morally or degrade other women morally.

• 8:40Speaker 00

  It doesn't matter about the legal implications when we're talking about that discussion. The reality is, is that we all ought to be righteous. We all ought to work hard to protect women. We all ought to work hard to honor and respect women. We all ought to work hard to be the protectors, providers and presiders that I believe morally, righteously, spiritually, we're called to be.

• 9:06Speaker 00

  And I get tired of hearing people talk about legal ramifications without the morality or morality implications without the legal side of things. Those two are, should be, in a healthy society, inextricably connected. You know, when you look at the Lindsey Clancy case, we've had a lot of women, I mean, a lot, millions, literally millions of women, talk about, you know, how horrible men are and, you know, he, he did this and Patrick was responsible for this and that. And, and outside of that, she had postpartum and she was dealing with mental health issues. Now, on this conversation, it's a little bit of a different story.

• 9:50Speaker 00

  You know, women, a lot of these women, I'm not saying all women, but a lot of these women will say, you know, these people are horrible and masculinity is a, is a mental disorder. I've heard, actually, I've heard that, which is wild. And that all men are horrible, evil, evil villainous scum. And yet, they don't apply the same sort of leniency, for lack of a better term, to the conversation. And that's just a dub, it's just a double standard.

• 10:20Speaker 00

  So I'm going to try to give you a very level-headed, rational commentary on what I've seen, because I've dug into this one, actually. I didn't jump on the bandwagon immediately and talk about how horrible she was, or how horrible they were, or Cornell, I didn't do any of that, because I like to see things play out a little bit before I start giving you my opinion, and it is my opinion, but my opinion on a case like this. But what I'm frustrated with, not only that these men are morally culpable, I have no doubt about that in my mind. Okay, even if she consented, they still were taking advantage, based on what I've

• 10:59Speaker 00

  seen, are still taking advantage of a young woman who was mentally compromised. I mean, to say the least. So although we might find out that they are not legally culpable, we can definitely, I'm pretty confident in this, say they are morally culpable.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  And that's why it's so important we talk about the two. But the narrative that I get frustrated with, outside of what I just shared with you, is that we hear this, that all men are villainous. All men are evil. All men are scum. And what I want to tell you right now, and I'm going to give you a disclaimer, and this is an important disclaimer.

• 11:45Speaker 00

  I'm not excusing evil, vile, villainous behavior when I speak the reality of who men are. Are there evil, immoral, vile, villainous men? Yes, absolutely. And also, this Jane Doe might still be a victim, okay?

• 12:11Speaker 00

  Are there evil, vile, villainous women? Yes, absolutely. But to say that all men are horrible, or to, the one I see more, more often than not lately is the 57 men, right? The seven men who have been indicted, or at least allegations in this, in this situation, and the 50 men who did nothing. And if those guys did nothing, they're at a minimum culpable of it as well.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  But what you often hear in common narrative is that because 57 men were involved, either directly or indirectly, people will say, well, you know, we say not all men, but here's 57 guys who were all culpable. 57? Out of four-plus billion people on the planet, all men are evil? I want you to take pause on that for a second. And I want you to think deep and hard about the men in your life. I don't care if you're a man or a woman, think about the men in your life.

• 13:13Speaker 00

  Your dad, your brothers, your boss, employees that you have, neighbors, colleagues, coworkers, friends.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  Now, I don't know about you, but the circles that I run in, well, all of them are good men. Does that mean they're without fault or without, without, without struggles? Of course not. I have my own struggles, just like you do. I would consider myself a good man, a good man. You know, somebody said, in one of the comments, they said to me something like, well, you know, these, these boys are just, they're going out on their own and they've never been on, out on their own and, you know, they're trying to figure their way out. Look, I've been on my own, I, I graduated high school, I didn't ever rape a woman. What the hell are you talking about?

• 14:08Speaker 00

  Okay, just because somebody is young and goes out and tries to figure out the world, I mean, I've made mistakes. I, I, I have an open container of alcohol in my vehicle, I have an underage drinking ticket. By the way, none of these are public, because they've, they've all been expunged, or whatever it's called, but I'm, I'm willing to tell you that. I got hit when I was, I don't know, 19 years old with a possession of marijuana. I have some minor things in my life, but I never raped a woman.

• 14:42Speaker 00

  I never got a woman drunk or high and took advantage of her. So what the hell are you talking about when you say that, well, they're just trying to figure out their way in life? What a horrible, horrible way to look at it. And I say that because the overwhelming majority of men aren't engaged in this behavior. And you know that. If you're being honest, you know that. If you took all of the people in your life, or excuse me, all of the men in your life, and you said, okay, well, you know, I've had some bad experiences and, and maybe I, I can put a number on it and say 2% to 3% of the experiences I've had in my life were, were bad experiences. And people will say, well, it's not all men, but it's always men. Oh, okay, and? And?

• 15:27Speaker 00

  There's 97, 98% of men who, who don't act like that.

• 15:35Speaker 00

  Who, who aren't an issue, who aren't a problem, in fact, they're antithetical to that. They're good and they're righteous and they're moral and they're trying to do the right thing. And yeah, maybe they're, they get angry sometimes, maybe they get loud sometimes, maybe they get physical sometimes. But you know what people don't complain about regarding men? When it hits the fan, they don't complain about the strength that men exhibit. They don't.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  They don't complain about the natural desire to protect, which is also somewhat synonymous with, with territorialism, protectiveness.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  But we don't complain about it then. We only complain about it when it goes south. And we should, okay? We should complain about it when masculinity is used in the wrong way. And I'm going to talk about that when I get to part number three of this conversation. But guys, masculinity is not the problem. In fact, I would argue that the lack of masculinity is a problem. I mean, you can look at the statistics, and people don't like when I bring this up, but you can look at the statistics of a young man who doesn't have a permanent father figure in his life. Look at the rates of drug abuse, look at the rates of alcohol abuse, look at the rates of incarceration, look at the rates of depression and suicide.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And you will see that, and you can pull this up very readily, you will see that when there is not a permanent fixture, a permanent, healthy male role model in those young men's lives, they're much more likely to drink, they're much more likely to abuse alcohol, they're much more likely to be violent, they're much more likely to be involved in violent crime, they're much more likely to be depressed, they're much more likely to commit suicide.

• 17:20Speaker 00

  What, what statistics are we looking at here? We're not even having a healthy, honest discussion. Everybody's just trying to talk over each other with, with their emotions, rather than actually look at the statistics. Okay, if masculinity was truly the problem, then we would see, for those households who do not have a male role model in the household, we would see a less drug abuse, less alcohol abuse, less violent behavior, less criminal activity, less rates of suicide and depression, higher rates of high school graduation, higher rates of college enrollment, higher income earnings, and none of that is true.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  And we have a society where we have an increasing situation where fewer and fewer men are involved in their children's lives. So if masculinity was truly the problem, is it safe to assume that for those households who did not have men in the household, that those kids would, would be doing better? Yeah? I think that's a, that's a fair assumption. So why is that not the case?

• 18:37Speaker 00

  We're going to talk about that here in a minute. But the last point that I want to make about the narrative that I see is that due process is, is the obstacle to justice.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  But we don't operate that way in America. Okay, this whole thing about the Me Too movement really created a problem. We don't operate that way. Now, look, we can take allegations and we can investigate them and we ought to. But we don't operate based on how we feel. I mean, I saw this stuff with the Lindsey Clancy case and I can't tell you how many people I saw on TikTok that started looking at their cosmic signs and, you know, this person was a Virgo and this person was an Aries and this person was a this and this person was a that. And because the stars aligned on that particular day in this cosmic order, that obviously he did it. Meaning her husband Patrick Clancy. What the hell are we doing?

• 19:35Speaker 00

  I don't, I don't know how else to say it. What are, what are we doing? Okay, we don't operate that way. We operate through due process and we can, we can formulate opinions. We should be able to change our mind, like if new information comes to light, we should be able to do that. Right? I, I can't tell you how often I hear people who say, well, Ryan, you know, you're saying this now, but you know, 10 years ago, when you first started podcasting, this is what you said. Yeah, I was 35 years old. I wasn't young by any stretch of the imagination, but I was 10 years younger than I am now. I would like to think I'm a little wiser. I would like to think I'm a little more prudent. I would like to think that I have the ability to discern right from wrong, truth from fiction, a little bit better.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  And yet in society, we do this thing where it's like, if I ever say anything, I'm obligated to believe that thing. What, for the rest of my life? What a horrible, horrible way to stagnate growth. So whatever I say today, if I find something new tomorrow, I'm going to change my opinion. The same way you should. If new information comes to light, we ought to be all of us, ought to be mature enough to say, I was wrong. I didn't have that information two days ago. I do now, and so I was wrong about that and here's my correction. But we get so dogmatic. We get so tribal.

• 21:03Speaker 00

  We get so arrogant and egotistical that heaven forbid, I change my mind. Yeah, I change my mind a lot when I get new information or I do some self-reflection. That's another one. You just reflect and think to yourself, well, maybe I, I was being unkind or not compassionate. Or maybe I wasn't looking at the data or the facts and I was driven by emotion. Okay, change, change your mind. But we live in a country and I'm so, I, I thank God for this. We live in a country where due process drives our legal decision-making process. Again, legal and moral, right? But due process is important still.

• 21:48Speaker 00

  I don't know what those men did because we don't have all the information. Now, what I've seen is incriminating to the highest level, to say the least. But I'm going to let the facts play out, but I think there's some other conversations that we can have here. But I do get really tired of the narratives that I hear that all men are evil, that masculinity is the problem, that, that due process of the law is the obstacle to justice. None of that is true. And yet you've got all these people in the peanut gallery just flapping their gums, telling you all these things. And they're letting emotion and ignorance run their decision-making process.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  And in the meantime, you've got at least eight people, at least eight people, if not 58 people, whose lives will be ruined by the discussions that we're having. Now, some of it justified, don't get me wrong. If we find out that those seven men raped this woman, their lives should justifiably be ruined. I want to be clear on that. If we find out that she is misleading or falsely accusing, then her life ought to be ruined, justifiably so. So I'm not saying just because somebody's life will be ruined, that it's wrong. It might actually be justice.

• 23:07Speaker 00

  But what I am saying is that these are real world scenarios. You can take a look at the Clancy case. That woman murdered her children. And women will say, oh, no, no, no, no, no, no. Her defense team didn't even argue that she murdered those kids. She did. The case was, was she aware enough mentally to be tried for consciously murdering her children? Or incapable of understanding and knowing that she did. But you know whose life, lives are ruined? Those children's lives are ruined. They're not ruined, they're gone, they're not with us anymore.

• 23:50Speaker 00

  Her life is ruined. Patrick Clancy's life is, I won't say ruined, but he's got an uphill battle moving forward. These are real situations we're taught. These aren't like, this is not the real housewives of Mormon housewives of Utah. I don't even know what the shows are called. This is not, this is not what we're, this is real life. So we ought to treat it with the justice and the, and the patience and the level-headedness it deserves. But let me talk with you guys about what I see being the real issue here, the underlying issue. Cause we've kind of danced around it a little bit for a while now. But the real issue here is that not all men are the problem and that not masculinity is the problem.

• 24:35Speaker 00

  We know that. And even the people who say, all men are evil, all men are horrible. I had a guy tell me that just, just on Instagram the other day. He's like, well, it's always men. Now, I think this guy might've been a troll because he said he was a pro Palestine, open border, LGBTQ, T plus, or whatever it's called, I don't even know what it's called. But he was in support of all of those and I, and I can't help but think like, I, I don't even know if that's a man. They can't even decide, determine what a man or a woman is. So I asked him, are you a man? And he didn't answer. I asked him three times, he didn't answer. But if he is, because that's kind of who he portrays himself to be. And he says, all men are horrible, only I have ever stepped up in situations like these.

• 25:20Speaker 00

  Well, that's incoherent. How can, if you say you're a man, right? And you, you, you can determine whether or not you're a man, apparently. And you tell me that all men are horrible and you're the only one that have stepped up. And so I said, well, are all men horrible? He said, yeah, all men, always, men are horrible. Said, are you a man? He wouldn't answer it because he knew he was about to get set up. All these white knight males that come in and say, well, men are always the problem. And then I say, well, are you a problem? Are you, like, if you were in that chat, let's say of those 50 guys, would you have said something? Well, yeah, of course I would have. Well, then not all men are the problem. You just proved the point.

• 26:04Speaker 00

  Not all men are the problem. So if that's the case, what I think we need to realize and what we need to start working towards is understanding, how do we move men from this raw, unharmed, unbridled version of masculinity into what I call a more mature, developed version of manliness? And this is something I've been talking about for quite literally 11 years. And people have poked at it and mocked me and ridiculed me for making this distinction. I'm just telling you, I, I really believe, like I said in the opening, that anybody who's level-headed and honest about this discussion will see things my way if they don't already.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  There's a difference between masculinity and manliness. Masculinity is amoral. If you look at the definition of masculinity, it's a set of characteristics that we attribute to biological males based on their biological makeup, primarily hormones. And we don't need to get into all the specifics, but that's the definition of masculinity. That's amoral. There's no, there's no moral discussion in that. So the American Psychological Association in, ooh, don't quote me. I think it was 2019, it might be 2017, you guys can look it up, but two, I think it was 2019. Or 17, I can't remember.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  They came out with a study and I'm using, if you're following me in video on YouTube, I'm using quotations, study. This was not a study. Okay, you can poke holes in it all day long and I have and I will, and I'll continue to do so. But in it, their synopsis or their general consensus was that the characteristics, and there was four of them they named, that we generally attribute to men, AKA masculinity. And they particularly called out dominance, competitiveness, aggression and stoicism are, and I quote, inherently toxic to our young men.

• 28:12Speaker 00

  Well, men are more dominant than women. Men are generally more competitive than women. Men are typically more aggressive than women. And men are generally more stoic than women. So what the American Psychological Association did, and mind you, this is the body that determines medical diagnosis and prescription for literally millions and millions of our young men. And they'll put them on SSRI's and they'll try to sedate them and treat them more like women and effeminate them. Came out and said, who you are, because I just explained it, dominance, competitiveness, aggression, stoicism, who you are is bad.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Young men, who you are is bad. And you've seen society do this, and we know this because if you look at high school dropout rates, if you look at college admission, if you look at college attendance and grades, and even more currently, if you look at the amount of women who are entering the workforce relative to their male counterparts, you can see it's horribly tragic for our young men. So there is an active campaign against men. Some of it is deliberate. Some of it is just driven by useful idiots, many of which are getting wrapped up in this case and promoting the wrong narrative.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  But what I want you to know is that there's a huge difference between masculinity and manliness. Masculinity is amoral. I know of plenty of situations where I want to be aggressive, but I wouldn't call it immoral. I wouldn't even call it evil. I mean, I aggressively pursue my business. Does that make me evil? A guy, a guy, a man, just posted a comment on my post just a day or two ago, I think it was on Instagram. And he said, well, I define aggression as an unprovoked attack on other people. That's not, could that be an aggressive move? Yes.

• 30:23Speaker 00

  But that's not what aggression means. And I asked him, I said, have you ever aggressively pursued a business or a promotion? Have you ever aggressively pursued a win? Not immorally, not illegally, just aggressively. And he's like, yeah, okay. Then clearly you're, you're making up a definition that doesn't apply to you. You're cherry picking, essentially. Dominance. I mean, what man worth his weight doesn't want to dominate? I want to be the best podcaster there ever was. Does that make me amoral? Excuse me, immoral? I want to win. You know, if I'm, if I'm competing in basketball with my kids, yeah, I want to win.

• 31:07Speaker 00

  Of course, my underlying issue is to teach them competitiveness and teach them how to be better. But even competition has created amazing opportunities, more advancement, more technology, more life-saving devices and medication, more exploration into space than any other concept in human history. Now, should there be collaboration? Yeah, of course. But it doesn't mean that competition is inherently evil. So what's the difference? Well, the difference is righteousness, guys. The difference is God. I don't know how else to say it more plainly than that. The difference is believing in something that is unflappable, that is immovable, that

• 31:51Speaker 00

  is unshakable, that stands the test of time. And that's our divine creator. You have this concept of moral relativism where, you know, everything's pliable, everything's movable. And that's part of the problem with what we see in this case with Cornell, is there are certain people, there's a group of people, and we'll just say liberals, who have no basis to tell us that what that woman or those men did is wrong on a moral level if she participated

• 32:29Speaker 00

  willingly in drug abuse, if she participated willingly, willingly in sexual impropriety. The left has no, no verbiage, no language to talk about that. In fact, what they will say, and they try to use language, what they will say is that a woman who's sexually promiscuous is empowered. That sex work is, is righteous work, or at least moral work, or maybe at a minimum immoral, amoral, excuse me. This is the language of the left.

• 33:08Speaker 00

  They will say this all the time, is that that's empowering, women's rights, feminism. And in the same conversation, they'll say, well, these guys took advantage of her. Well, I don't know, we have to figure that out. Because if she, and by her own testimony, her first testimony, she said that she willingly participated in drug abuse, she willingly participated in, in alcohol abuse, and she willingly participated in sex with multiple men at a time. That, that's her own testimony. That's not me saying that. She said that in her original testimony.

• 33:51Speaker 00

  So we need to get away from this idea that just because something is not illegal, it's not immoral, it is. And, and quite frankly, God, God would say that. He has said that. And I think maybe it's time to start paying attention to it. Guys, look, you can get yourself into all sorts of trouble, not legally necessarily because you did anything legally wrong, but because you did something immorally questionable, let's say. And again, I'm not whitewashing what those guys did. I'm saying that the morality is horrible. But forget about the legal debate for a second, the moral issue is, is horrible.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  I mean, imagine that as a guy, like how, how many of you, and I'm asking this rhetorically because I know the answer, how many of you listening to a podcast would either willingly get a woman drunk? Or high? And then exploit her sexually? Even if she did say yes? Like how pathetic, at a minimum, how pathetic that the only way you can get some action is if you get a woman high or drunk? That's horrible. That's scandalous. It's, it's bad. But I think it's really important that we talk about the distinction between masculinity and manliness, the distinction being righteousness.

• 35:21Speaker 00

  And so we as men have a moral obligation to instill righteousness, virtue into masculinity, because that's what makes it manly. And we know it, right? So we'll see a guy who will, a firefighter, let's say, who will run into a burning building at his own risk, clearly, his own well-being. And he'll pull somebody out of a burning building. We don't chastise that, we shouldn't, right? And we don't. But that's somebody who's taking aggression to, infused with righteousness, to produce positive outcomes for the people around him. And that's what it means to be a man. And we say it. Now there's a real man.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  That's a man's man. Like, we actually have verbiage for it because instinctively and intuitively, we know that there's a difference between masculinity and manliness. I don't, for example, chastise, well, I will discipline, but I don't, I expect my young children, especially when they were younger, to throw temper tantrums, to fight with their friends, to get in unnecessary fights, to do silly things, not because I advocated it for, for it, but because I just knew my three boys are going to act like that. And my job was to take that rowdiness and that roughness and that aggression and, and the dominance that they have inside of them and the competitiveness that's inherent in

• 36:50Speaker 00

  who they are, and say, hey, there's nothing wrong with the competitiveness, but let's just do it righteously. There's nothing wrong with being aggressive, but let's make sure we're not exploiting or taking advantage of other people. There's nothing wrong with the dominance as long as you are abiding by a set of rules. Whose rules? God's. God's rules, not man's rules, because man's rules ebb and flow, shift depending on elected officials and the doctrine of popular culture. But by God's rules, we're going to follow these, and if we do these things, we are going to live a better life and our people are going to live better lives. And so all of these people who don't believe in a sense of morality are now coming out

• 37:35Speaker 00

  and saying, well, that's immoral. Well, why is it immoral? Who said it's immoral? Well, it's illegal. Okay, if you conflate morality with being illegal, why wouldn't then, let's just say, let me give you an example. So I was turning on a movie last night and I ended up watching Top Gun Maverick. And a preview or an ad came on for The Purge. And if you guys don't know the premise of The Purge, I guess there's one, I've never watched it, but there's one day of the year where all illegal activity becomes legal. You can basically murder people, rob, you can do whatever you want. No rules.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Well, if your morality is based on legality, then you would probably say that murdering people on that one night of the year is not immoral.

• 38:27Speaker 00

  Nobody believes that. Even the most ardent atheist does not believe that. And they don't believe it because morality comes from a higher place that is immovable. Okay, if I said, here's another example. Hundreds of years ago, we as a country embraced slavery. It's a dark spot in our history. It's immoral, I would say, right? I think we would all agree with that. We're not going to subjugate people depending on the color of their skin. So we'd all say it's immoral. But it was legal. It was legal at the time. So a big daddy government is what determines your morality.

• 39:10Speaker 00

  Why then if we decided in the year 2026 that slavery again is now legal? Would all those people who said slavery was the atrocity that it is? Would all of them now say that it's no longer an atrocity? Because the government deemed it as legal? No, no, of course they wouldn't do that. They'd still say it's immoral, which tells us that there's something higher than the government that is dictating and directing morality. Why, why is this so hard for people to understand? We all have morality infused and built into us. The only thing we need to do is override it. And plenty of people override it.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  But it's infused in you. So the question now becomes, what do we do? Okay, what do we do about this? And I would love a further discussion about this because this is the kind of stuff that really fascinates me. I know it's a horrific example. I know a woman's life is ruined. Regardless of the outcome, a woman's life is ruined. These young men's lives are ruined. Regardless of that they deserved it or not, that's ruined. There's a lot at stake here. So what do we do? Well, number one, we need to outsource, stop outsourcing our, our sense of righteousness and morality to outside sources. Big daddy government is not the place of morality. They, they, they cannot determine what is moral.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  And we know that because there's been horrendous, horrendous atrocities created and perpetrated on behalf of governments. I mean, even those people who say that they don't believe in God and that government dictates morality are sure as hell willing to admit that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians. Okay, if you actually really believe that, then why are you saying it's immoral? If it's written into either the code or the culture of Israelis? Because you don't actually believe morality is derived from God. We need to stop outsourcing to schoolteachers, outsourcing to our neighbors, outsourcing

• 41:17Speaker 00

  to government, outsourcing to the doctrine of popular culture. Out, stop outsourcing to the kangaroo court or public opinion. And instead, we need to start not outsourcing, but embracing the idea that morality is not subjective, but objective. And that as men, it's our responsibility to infuse that in our young men. That when our kid comes home and says, hey, I got in a fight because this little four-eyed geek was bothering me, so I punched him in the face, that that would be an improper use of our aggressive tendencies. We should call that out.

• 41:59Speaker 00

  But if he comes home and he says, hey, Billy was making fun of Joey for having glasses and he was trying to push him around, so I punched him in the face and I broke his nose. We ought to say, that's a good use of aggression. Thank you, son. I know because there's a zero tolerance policy in school, you might've got suspended, but you know what we're gonna do? We're going on, we're going to Disneyland. Because you did something that was right. When a man steps up and embraces his, his masculinity and he, and he funnels it and he channels it towards productive outcomes, we ought to say, that's a man. We appreciate that guy.

• 42:43Speaker 00

  We want to honor, respect and acknowledge him. And not just we, I'm talking about everybody. Everybody, left, right, center, libertarian, I don't care. Everybody ought to say, that guy did something good. And we recognize him as a man. Number two, we need to start policing our guys. We've all heard, we are a brother's keeper. Not only does that mean that we should take care of them when they're going against, or they're having a hard time or struggling with something. I've had friends who are dealing with health issues. I've got friends whose wives are battling cancer right now. I've got friends whose wives passed away and children passed away. I've got friends who have lost jobs and been in financial hardship, made dumb decisions

• 43:27Speaker 00

  and dealing with the consequences and ramifications of that. I am my brother's keeper. I'm supposed to serve those guys. But you know how else that applies? And this is one thing we often don't talk about, is that when your guys are doing it wrong, you need to say, hey, uh-uh. That's not how we behave. That's not how we show up. If you have a guy, for example, who's been married for 15 years and you see him flirting with the waitress at Applebee's when you go out for wings this week and watch the game, you probably ought to say, hey, bro. Like, you're kind of flirting with the waitress a little bit, but you got a great wife and you're married, like, maybe lay off on that stuff.

• 44:11Speaker 00

  Or when you hear guys say, you know, boys will, uh, boys will be boys. Or this other comment that I got that I told you about earlier where somebody's like, well, they're just trying to, trying to learn their place. No, you don't get to rape people because you're immature and trying to figure out your place in the world. That's, that's not allowable. And so we ought to police that. When you see your friends doing dumb things, you ought to say, hey, you're doing a dumb thing. Hey, don't do that. Hey, that's not how we operate. Hey, here's what we do as friends. And then you ought to be willing to confront those individuals. But if, if you've bought into this idea that society says, which is, A, just effeminate

• 44:55Speaker 00

  men, like masculinity is the problem, so let's just get rid of it. Let's just get rid of it. Let's just teach boys and men to sit down, to shut up, to color within the lines, to not make a scene, to not bother anybody and just to like, sit in the back corner, then you can't at the same time say, where have all the real men gone? I mean, how many people have you heard say that? Where are all the real men? Well, you told them not to be men. You told them to act like women. You told them to sit down. You told them to shut up. You told them to color within the lines. You told them they don't have a place here in society.

• 45:35Speaker 00

  You told them zero tolerance policy at school, and so you can't defend your fellow student. You did that. So you can't be frustrated when men are like, okay. Okay. I'll do what you told me to do. And then they do it. And then when things go wrong, you're like, where are all the real men? You neutered them. You neutered them. And you did it on purpose. And you did it to the great detriment of our society. You can't neuter men and expect them to step up. We see this even in the dating world.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  I mean, I, I haven't personally experienced this, but I've had a lot of stories and I've seen a lot of stuff out there where, you know, women get frustrated. They're like, you know, this guy, he didn't even pay for my date. He didn't offer to do this. He didn't offer to do that. Right? Because collectively, you told him you wanted equal rights and you got it. Be careful what you wish for. And hope and pray that you're not on the receiving end of unharnessed masculinity that hasn't been conditioned into manliness. So you need to be comfortable with confrontation. And then guys, the last thing, a couple of things here. We've got to raise our men right.

• 47:02Speaker 00

  If you have sons, you've got to raise them right. If you have daughters, you've got to raise them right. And I'm an advocate for martial arts for our daughters. I'm an advocate for hunting. I'm an advocate for being physically fit. I'm an advocate for situational awareness. I mean, the reality is, is that the likelihood of somebody messing with me, like if I went out to dinner this weekend, the reality of somebody messing with me is pretty small. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm in fairly decent shape. I'm situationally aware. I scan my surroundings. I know what's going on. I usually have like RBF, whatever the version of men that is for, but like, I don't want

• 47:47Speaker 00

  to be messed with. And I portray that, I exude that when I'm out in public. So the reality of somebody messing with me is significantly lower than somebody messing with my female counterpart. It's the reality of it. So it's more important that women learn martial arts. It's more important they learn situational awareness. It's more important that they learn to be assertive. And if you're raising boys, we need to teach them how to become men, masculinity versus manliness. And if you're raising daughters, you need to teach them what the real world is like. I honestly believe that our lovely, beautiful women are generally a bit more naive. And I'm glad, actually, I'm glad that they're more naive because that's what makes them lovely and beautiful, at least partially.

• 48:30Speaker 00

  But that means they also need to be protected. And women will say, well, I don't need to be protected. Okay, then don't cry when you're not being protected. And don't cry when masculine men don't want to be in relationships with you because you're not being feminine. Polarity, right? It's important. And the last thing, guys, I'll share with you is just modeling behavior. You know, if you see your son do something and you're like, hey, and he's talking back to his mom, hey, we don't talk to our women like that. We honor them, we respect them, we protect them. That's my wife you're talking to. And if you really want to go at it, we'll go at it. But I'm going to protect my wife over you.

• 49:16Speaker 00

  You're gonna show up and you're gonna be respectful. You're, you're gonna go out to the bar with your buddies after the game and you're not gonna get shitfaced. Have a drink, sure, do whatever you want, but you're not gonna get shitfaced. You're actually gonna be coherent so that you can protect your people, you can get your people home safe, you can have decent conversations in a decent way with people of the same sex and opposite sex. You're not gonna act like that. You're gonna go train jujitsu, you're gonna fire guns, you're gonna learn about situational awareness, you're gonna be educated so you don't sound silly when you're trying to have debates and discussions. You're gonna find a way to develop skillsets so that you can be promotable and you can earn more money and then you can pour into your community or you can give back to charity

• 50:00Speaker 00

  or you can take your kids on a trip. The whole goal is just to model the behavior and then talk about it. Communication's important, but model the behavior and then communicate the behavior to the people who are watching you and everybody's watching you. The other day I had this experience, it's not flattering, but I'll tell you. I had this experience with my son and I got home, I ran a quick errand and I got home and I was like, hey, did you take the dog out? And he's like, yeah, I took the dog out. And I'm like, I don't, I don't think you took the dog out. I don't believe you because it didn't look like it moved. And he's like, no, no, I took the dog out. I said, okay, so if I pull up the security camera, I'll see a video of you taking the

• 50:45Speaker 00

  dog out. And he's like, no, no, dad, I did, I'm sorry, I didn't take the dog out. And I told him, I said, look bud, I know it's convenient, I know you don't wanna get in trouble, but you did two things wrong instead of one. Number one, you didn't take the dog out. Number two is you lied to me about it and now you're caught. So you did two things wrong. You didn't do what I asked and you lied about it. And he's like, well, dad, you've lied to me too. And I was like, oh yeah, you're right, I have. I have.

• 51:27Speaker 00

  Some of it, I mean, none of it is malicious, but it's a lie, the same. Told him I'd take him out, I didn't. Told him I'd hang out in the morning, with him in the morning, I didn't. Those are lies. There's a great book, The Four Agreements, you might've read it by, I think the, the author is Don Miguel Ruiz. And one of the four agreements is to be impeccable with your word. Well, you can't call people out for what they're doing if you're engaged in the same behavior. So model the behavior, show up fully so that you can actually stand by what you say. Guys, this is a very complex case and I'm, I'm very interested to see where it goes. People's lives are ruined. That's a given.

• 52:10Speaker 00

  We're gonna figure out whose lives are ruined based on what they did or did not do. And I think justice is important. We need to be a country who believes in equal justice under the law. I fully agree with that. But I would, I would think long and hard about the cultural implications of what we're talking about. If there's a negative connotation or tinge towards the dangers of masculinity, then that's gonna be a problem. So my call is for you is not that we say men are dangerous, men are horrible, men are evil, it's always a man, it's always, that's not the narrative we're gonna paint. The narrative that I think we as men and even women who might be listening to this podcast, we do have a lot of single mothers who listen because they're trying to raise

• 52:53Speaker 00

  her boys in righteousness and proud of them for wanting to do so, is to get us around good and righteous men and have conversations and have discussions and check each other and call each other out and talk about the distinction between masculinity and manliness. That's, to me, that's the only path forward. The alternative where we just villainize men and we treat them as less than and we don't invite them to step into their masculinity, it's gonna be a very, very dangerous dystopian world. I hope you know that. Without men, people say, oh, the world would be safer. The world would be horrible, horrible without men.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  You'd be less safe, you'd have less provisions, you'd have less access to abundance and prosperity. And by the way, I don't, I think the same thing about women. The, the world would be a horrible place without women. I don't like this thing where we're like, oh, if men didn't exist, the world would be a better place. The same as I don't like the narrative, if women didn't exist, the world would be a better place. I don't believe that's true, either one. The world can be a beautiful place if men and women learn to acknowledge and recognize and embrace masculinity and femininity in each other and hone it, honor it, respect it, call it out, be excited about it, call it out when it's wrong and just be level headed about the discussions that we're having.

• 54:22Speaker 00

  Let's stop with the emotional vomiting and the social media clout chasing and just be normal. Clearly there's a moral problem here in this Cornell case, clearly. That doesn't make it illegal, we need to figure that out, but I think we can be more level headed about the discussion and the prescription, the diagnosis and the prescription. So anyways, guys, that's what I've got for you to share. Now, on that fourth point, I talked about not outsourcing your, your manliness and masculinity. I talked about policing this with other men, confrontation, healthy confrontation with other men and modeling that behavior.

• 55:04Speaker 00

  If you guys really want to do this right and you feel like, man, I would love to be around other men who are having these kind of conversations. I would love to be around men who I can hold accountable and who will hold me accountable. I mean, I had a friend this morning send me a text and he's like, hey, man, I needed to send you a text, you seemed off the other day and I wanted to send you a text. Is this what's going on? And I said, no, I'm good. And he's like, okay, cool, I just wanted, and I, and I told him the truth, but I really wanted to check in on him. I wanted, he wanted to check in on me, excuse me. And I wanna check in on my guys to make sure they're doing good. If you're looking for something like that, there's no better place than the Iron Council. This is what we do every single week, every single day.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  And in fact, for the month of October, we're talking about five fears that every man needs to overcome and what exactly you can do to overcome it. So make sure you check it out. Head to orderofman.com/ironcouncil. But until next week for our interview, guys, go out there, embrace your masculinity, harness manliness and become the man you are meant to be.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  Thank you for listening to the Order of Man Podcast. You ready to take charge of your life and be more of the man you are meant to be? We invite you to join the order at orderofman.com.