Masculinity and the Value of Work

I spoke with Mark Tapson about his recent Substack articles regarding Work and Prayer, Masculinity and we talked about Spiritual Warfare.

Mark hosts the Right Take with Mark Tapson.

You can listen here Your American Heritage 5 17 2025 

You can read it here:

Ed Bonderenka (01:00):

I've said it before, I'm going to say it again. Probably say it again For years. As long as I'm doing this show, there is a war going on for control of America and you and it is a spiritual warfare. It's a struggle to enslave mankind and it's been going on since before we arrived on this planet. As an aside, I suggest you find The Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser. I do not say this lightly and yet I do not say believe everything he says, but listen to it, research it.

So how do we fight back? We get organized preferably to good church. We go to court, we educate our neighbors. We support those who take the battle to the enemy and we support those who are running for office that support Godly values. And then we make sure they do and we arm ourselves intellectually.

Ed Bonderenka (03:53):

Oh, thank you. My guest today is Mark Tapson. Mark's been on the show a few times and I like having smart people on. So I look smart by association. Mark's a writer almost everywhere. I'm not going to list everywhere he writes. He's a writer, he's a screenwriter, he's a homeschooling father of six, so he's a warrior. He's a culture warrior. He writes on Substack as Culture Warrior and at Mark Tapson, and he's the host of the Right Take with Mark Tapson broadcast or podcast, which I listened to regularly. And I'll be replaying one of his podcasts during the second hour, very highly informative podcast. And I thought, why should I reinvent the wheel? And I got Mark's permission to re-broadcast and you will enjoy that. He's on X as Culture Warrior @MarkTapson and he's a Knight Templar in a former life. Who knew? Welcome back, Mark.
Well, I first want to mention the passing of David Horowitz. I think I mentioned it a show or two ago, but you as a fellow of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, would you speak about his passing briefly?

Mark Tapson(05:01):

Yeah, absolutely. Let me interject there real quickly before I forget. I just want to emphasize what you mentioned at the outset about spiritual warfare. And I want to second that motion because we are definitely in a period of intense and intensifying spiritual warfare. And I also want to recommend the book that you recommended Unseen, the Unseen Realm by Michael Heiser, who died just a couple of years ago actually. And my best friend, Brian Gawa, who is a screenwriter, was friends with Michael Heiser and also highly regards his work. So I too recommend that book Unseen Realm and everything else that Heiser writes. But as far as spiritual warfare goes, we are definitely engaged in it. In fact, my men's group at my church is putting on a spiritual warfare retreat in a couple of weeks where I'm going to speak and talk about that because it's something that it's easy to forget that we're in spiritual warfare because we get focused on the politics or on the culture, but there's this whole other realm beyond and behind all of that that is really where the battle is taking place. And if we're not focused on that, then we we're not going to win in the political or cultural realms either.

Ed Bonderenka (06:17):

Before you go on about David, then let me add to what you just said. By the way, there is a YouTube video, the Unseen Realm. It might be easier for you to watch that video rather than read the book. And there's also a book called Supernatural, which is a summation of the Unseen Realm, which is more readable if that's what you like. And it's a little less expensive on Amazon too, but something's going on. When I was a kid, I used to read comic books, well actually guiltily enough, I read 'em as an adult too that we call them, what do you call 'em? Graphic novels. And there used to be some called The New Gods and this and that Marvel characters and I used come on the Thor and Loki stuff always drove me nuts. And now there's stuff going on. There really is stuff going on.

Ed Bonderenka (07:06):

And you watch, I‘ve mentioned it here before, you watch Babylon Five and which I think is one of the finest science fiction TV series ever. And there's some characters in the background called the Vorlons and they're sort of the good guys. And then there's these other characters called The Shadows that nobody sees except a few people and they inform their characters who do bad things. And so it kind of correlates to the fact that there are spiritual forces that speak to people and motivate them to do good or evil. And I watch political characters sometimes and I think who are they listening to? So if you want to fill in on that, go ahead before I ask you to talk about David Horowitz.

Mark Tapson(07:55):

No, that's a good point. Well said. I wasn't aware that there was an Unseen Realm video on YouTube. I might check that out myself.

Ed Bonderenka (08:01):

And you can listen to it on Spotify, also the audio version, which is where I first caught it. So I was driving and I said, man, there's a lot of musical interludes in here. This must be on YouTube.

Mark Tapson(08:17):

Well, David Horowitz, for those people who might not know David Horowitz for the last 40 years or so has been one of the real intellectual powerhouses of the conservative movement and a real driver and fighter for our side. The David Horowitz Freedom Center, which is the nonprofit that I worked for was founded decades ago. And David founded it not as another think tank, but as a battle tank. And David, his background is very interesting because a lot of conservatives, myself included, he started on the left, although he started way, way farther left than I did, I was what you would consider a classical liberal. Now, and the conservatives are actually classical liberals, but David grew up the son of full-fledged communists. I mean, he was a red diaper baby and grew up as a communist himself. He was a far left radical who worked with the Black Panthers and supported the far left agenda.

Mark Tapson(09:25):

He even wrote a couple of books supporting that cause. And then along with his co-writing partner who has also passed away a few years ago, Peter Collier, they had a political epiphany of sorts and a complete 180 conversion for various reasons, which I won't go into here. But essentially they saw the light politically and began to write for conservatism. And David since then has written, I don't know, dozens of incredible powerful books in support of freedom and conservatism and American culture and liberties. And I just can't say enough about his influence on me and countless other Americans. He died just about a month and a half ago, I think at the ripe old age of 86. So it was not untimely or unforeseen, but I'm telling you, the guy fought to the last breath because I know personally I work with him that literally until the last day, he was writing as much as he could, and working to fight for our cause.

Mark Tapson(10:46):

And that's one of the things that David taught me and many other conservatives, is to take off the gloves and get in the fight because conservatives have this tendency to sort of play by the rules. I mean, not that we shouldn't play by the rules, but David came from the left and he understood the left better than they understood themselves because he knew all of the ideological background and the Marxist indoctrination. He understood all that on an intellectual level and understood that conservatives need to fight also, that we need to get in the gutter and fight sometimes on their own terms, on the left's terms. And that's what Trump does. That's one of the things that Trump does that has made him so successful against the left and it drives the left so crazy is because he fights on their level and they can't deal with it. They're used to conservatives like Mitt Romney or John, oh, what's his name? McCain. McCain, yes, John McCain. We're used to noble losers as David put it like that. And Trump comes along and he takes the gloves off and fights and it makes the left insane. They don't know how to handle his mockery, for example, which is their strategy. That's their tactic.

Ed Bonderenka (12:08):

That's an Alinsky tactic.

Mark Tapson(12:09):

That is exactly right.

Ed Bonderenka (12:11):

Exactly. Exactly. And it's funny, he also drives a lot of people on the right nuts too. That's true. I have a friend who writes a blog and almost every other day her post is, oh, I wish Trump would be quiet. I wish he wouldn't talk like that. He's going to alienate people. And the rest of the commenters, are you kidding me? This is Trump whole package, what you get. That's why he is where you

Mark Tapson(12:33):

Yeah, and it's fine. Personally Trump's not my style either. I personally had to come to terms with some aspects of his personality that I would not ordinarily be in favor of. But as you put it, the whole package works very well for conservatism. And I think that's what a lot of establishment conservatives are very uncomfortable with. Well, of course a lot of establishment conservatives don't want the boat rocked at all so that they're opposed to Trump for much the same reason that the left is. But yeah, Trump makes me uncomfortable sometimes too. But the alternative is someone who is nice and polite and plays by the Markus of Queensbury rules as they say, like am Mitt Romney and conservatives like that just get steamrolled by the left. So we have to learn to fight to win. And that's what David Horowitz taught

Ed Bonderenka (13:37):

Exactly. And we have a guy who when he gets shot at stands up, says, oh yeah, fight.

Mark Tapson(13:41):

Fight. Instead of ducking down,

Ed Bonderenka (13:43):

he's standing right

Mark Tapson(13:45):

Up there. Exactly. Or apologizing for offending someone,

Ed Bonderenka (13:50):

Speak for bleeding on your microphone. No,

Mark Tapson(13:52):

It's not.

Ed Bonderenka (13:55):

And by the way, we're going to take calls in the second half of the show, so if we say something that triggers a comment, we'll let you bring it up later and feel free to call in then. But for right now, I just want to set some ground rules, but basis for the conversation here. For instance, like I said, I listen to Mark's podcast and I read his substack. I actually subscribe and get the elements in my mail so I know what's going on. And you had something that really struck me and a couple months ago, I think ago, and I said, I got to get Mark on. I got to get Mark on. Actually, by the way, I had David Horowitz on a couple years ago, and I've been saying the same thing. I’ve got to get David back on and I waited too long, so I won't wait so long.

Ed Bonderenka (14:40):

Next time again for you that Ora and Labora the value of work you wrote on that, I thought that really strikes home because I've had these conversations. I want to tread lightly here because I have a lot of friends, I have relatives who are retired now and ask me why am I not retired? And this is not a criticism of anybody, frankly. My brother works harder now. He likes to say that all the time. I dunno, I had time to work before because I worked so hard in retirement, doing work for other people, doing good for other people. And I like what I'm blessed to what I do for a living, and I find creative output in it, even though it's telling a machine what to do, I do it creatively. I can't point to anybody else and say, do you see how cool I did that? Nobody else knows. But yeah, there's value of work. You want to speak to that for a bit?

Mark Tapson(15:46):

Yes. I think it's really important. I think especially for men, and I write a lot about men and masculinity, it's important for everybody to feel that they have purpose in life, that they don't just have a job that they go to in some kind of eight to five job. And there's nothing wrong with that, but people need to feel that the work that they do is more than just clocking in and clocking out and earning a paycheck. It needs to be something that is meaningful to their soul and sense of identity. And so I wrote an article which I think it was called Ora et Labora, which is Latin for prayer and work. And it's a phrase that's associated with a sixth century monk named Benedict St. Benedict, who started the Benedictine order and Benedictine basically almost, I don't want to say he invented monasticism, but the Benedictines were really a monastic order that took off and popped up all over what at the time was a Europe that was mired in the dark ages. I mean the Middle Ages in their entirety were not dark, but certainly the beginning period of the Middle Ages, the first few hundred years after the collapse of the Roman Empire, when things went, it was just chaos and disorder and barbarism upon.

Mark Tapson(17:17):

Yeah, because all of the structures of Roman civilization had kind of collapsed. And so the only real locus or loci of civilization were monasteries where all of the previous works of the classics and things like that, and also intellectual works of monks and early Christians were preserved and added to throughout the centuries. But anyway, St. Benedict wrote a famous rule for monastic living and he promoted the idea of aura. At labora prayer and work, we usually think of monasticism as being very contemplative and spiritual, but Benedict believed that prayer and work formed a kind of partnership of labor that engaged not only your body, but also your spirit and united body and spirit. And I think that's really important for people to aim for in their lives and in their work, something that nourishes both their body and spirit. Because if work is undertaken in the right frame of mind, then there's a kind of humbling, spiritually nourishing aspect to it, and that's very meaningful to people.

Mark Tapson(18:38):

And in that respect, hopefully you don't have to retire. Hopefully you can find some way to continue work in a prayerful fashion. And even if you're not religious or not Christian, you could view it as a meditative form of work. But in any case, either way, bringing a sort of a prayerful focus to your productivity adds a meaningful dimension to it. It makes your life worthwhile. So that's what the article was largely about. And I went on about a personal experience that I had about a mentor, that I had a professor and a friend who really embodied that whole aura at Labora way of life, and I learned a lot from that. So that's what that article is about.

Ed Bonderenka (19:25):

Yeah. You actually apprenticed at his house, so you helped him remodel his house, right?

Mark Tapson(19:32):

Yes. And that also has a kind of medieval aspect to it because the cathedrals, the cathedral building was sometimes a centuries long process that involved dozens if not hundreds of people, and sometimes generations of people because there were lots of people who worked on cathedrals, who started the cathedral had been started before they were born, and it kept going after they died. So cathedrals were really a work in progress. The cathedrals was sort of the architectural embodiment of aura at Labora, something that's kind of an ongoing work of praise and worship. And my friend who was a professor and mentor, as I said, I helped him for a summer, actually a whole year, helped him for a whole year remodeling his house. But it was an ongoing project. It was never his intention to actually finish working on the house. I learned that after a while, it was something that his wife had grown accustomed to and just kind of accepted was the fact that her husband was going to constantly be hammering somewhere in the house because that was his form of worship, I think was building on that house and doing productive, meaningful, spiritually engaging work.

Mark Tapson(20:58):

And I learned that from him about working on his house.

Ed Bonderenka (21:03):

It's funny you mention it like that, and I was thinking about this yesterday and the day before because speaking about always working on your house, just yesterday my son came over and helped me finish tiling the hallway in my house, which has been since the water damage of last late summer. And the wood came up, I put ceramic tile down and I did about half it. He did about half it. It's been sitting there waiting to be grouted, and I just hate grouting and I don't like getting down on my knees these days so much. And so he said, come on, let's do it. Let's do it. We did it. And we looked back at that and I thought for one, we had a sense of fellowship working together on this,

Ed Bonderenka (21:46):

A real sense. I look back on that hallway even now and I look like, wow, that's something we did together. It's done. It didn't come out horrible. It came out looking rather nice after all, for all the fear I had of screwing it up. I don't know why, I've done tile before, but it's been about 10 years and you just get kind of antsy. I was working on a friend of mine's brakes the other day. I came home from work and I had him pull his truck in the garage and then I, oh, you need this and now you need that. Now it’s run out to the store and get this. And it just became a long project. Yeah, I took the afternoon off and I was working at it into the evening and he looked at me and he says, you like doing this, don't you?

Ed Bonderenka (22:31):

And I said, I don't like doing this so much. I like doing it. I like punching my man card to prove I can still do this stuff. But the other thing is, is that I get a satisfaction out of helping people, and I'm not trying to be careful here and not sound as self aggrandizing or anything like that, but I just like being able to be of value to other people by doing stuff for other people. And then there's a sense of bonding. There's a sense of bonding, working on stuff. If my brother and I are swapping an engine out or something like that, he said, well, that's the only time we ever visited was when we're working together on vehicles. I said, yeah, but it's so satisfying. We look back and say, we did that

Speaker 5 (23:13):

And

Ed Bonderenka (23:14):

We've probably only got a minute left. And I just want to say, you don't want to get so wrapped up that all your self image is in your work to where you have No,

Speaker 5 (23:25):

No,

Ed Bonderenka (23:26):

Yeah, you don't relate to anybody else or your kids, go ahead.

Mark Tapson(23:30):

No, you got to have balance. You can't be the kind of, or it's not good anyway, to be the kind of guy who is so obsessed with career that he neglects his family or comes home from work after his kids have already gone to bed. Because you have to find the right kind of balance to make sure that the various dimensions of your life as a man are not neglected. It's great to have a career, but you've also got a family, and so you need to learn to prioritize those kinds of things. That's something I've had to work on myself.

Ed Bonderenka (24:03):

Yeah, I get what you mean. Unfortunately, when I was younger, I worked the afternoon shift and that's just part of the job. And so I missed my kids in the evening a lot and I regret that to some degree. I'd take evenings off to go to ball games and the like, but that's just the way it works sometimes. Derek says, we got a minute left, we got 30 seconds left. That's about the length of the music. So we can take this conversation up after the break. And folks, I hope you come back. We're talking to Mark Tapson and come on back, your American heritage

Speaker 1 (24:55):

Front lines

Ed Bonderenka (24:57):

Standing

Ed Bonderenka (24:58):

Afraid. Well, welcome back to your American heritage, today's Mark Tapson day. He's my guest and he's going to be hosting his guest on my show the second hour. So don't get confused when you tune back in after the break. It'll be Mark interviewing somebody that he was talking to. And I thought, that's so great. I want my audience to be able to hear that. And he was gracious enough, despite all his disclaimers on his broadcast about unauthorized rebroadcasting, this is authorized, so that's good. We were talking about the value of work and we're talking about spiritual warfare. If you want to call in, the number is (734) 822-1600. Oh, look at that. We have a caller already. So Derek, who's calling? It's your wife Sherry. Oh, and now for a word from our sponsor. Hi Sherry.

Speaker 6 (25:55):

Hi sweetheart. When you first started talking with Mark, you mentioned spiritual warfare. So not to take away from what you were last talking about, but it made me think about a man that I was sitting at the table with yesterday. When I was down in the dining room with my dad, he asked me if I had seen the movie The Exorcist. We had started talking about Christianity and he asked me if I'd seen the movie The Exorcist, and if I knew what it was about. And I said, yes, I'd seen the movie. And yes, I knew what it was about. And he said, so do you believe in all that speaking in tongue stuff? And I said, I do believe in speaking in tongues. I said, but speaking in tongues, when you're praying in the Holy Spirit versus being demon possessed, I said, there's a big difference in this exorcist with being about demon possessed that's not praying in the Holy Spirit and talking to the Lord through with the Holy Spirit talking through you. And I think if we don't teach the people the right way, the right things, people need to know what they're being taught, not just hearing words, then they're not going to learn correctly. The same with anything political or spiritual. So I don't know, that just made me think of that when you guys were saying that.

Ed Bonderenka (27:23):

Alright, well thanks for joining and I'm going to talk about this after you hang up a bit. It brings the memory something. So thanks for joining us and thanks for the call and thanks for the coffee. So my wife and I went to a church and speaking of this is germane to the conversation because I talked about watching people and wondering what their motivations are. I ran into a guy and I said, Hey, we met this guy. And I says, I like this guy. Let's get together for dinner sometime with our spouses. And so the guy says, I'm not so sure that would work. And I was at work a couple days later and I really felt the spirit of God was telling me, call him up and have a dinner date with him tonight. And so I put it off, I put it off, off, and it kept popping up in a minute.

Ed Bonderenka (28:12):

And then somebody called me and distract me. And then, so I'm driving home undistracted, and it's like all of a sudden I'm reminded call that guy for dinner tonight. So I call him up, he says, well, probably, I'm not sure it would be a good idea. It's a spiritual demonic opposition, blah, blah. I was like, what do you want on your pizza? My wife and I are bringing pizza. What do you want on your pizza? Give me your address. So I called Sherry and she orders us a pizza and we go over there and the guy's sitting in his house and the whole house is dark except for a single lamp. I mean, this looked like a movie, like a horror movie, single lamp over the dining room table. Wife is sitting there and she has this clouded dark look over her face and she's not happy to see us.

Ed Bonderenka (28:52):

And he and I go talking. He tells me about some events that took place recently in his house. And so I'm leaving. I says, come to church tomorrow night. Make sure you come to the Bible study tomorrow night. He says, yeah. I says, I'm telling you, come to the Bible study tomorrow night. He went to the Bible study. His wife stood up at the very beginning of the guy teaching, said something about the blood of Christ. She stood up, started cursing like a sailor and walked out. He followed her. And these are people who went to a Christian Church. They were saved. Everybody knew they were saved, but something got into her. And I know how it worked, and that's not germane to the story, but regardless, we went back in the the foyer while I told the teacher, I says, join us and have everybody pray, obviously pray.

Ed Bonderenka (29:34):

Okay. So we got a whole church full of people praying, well, this guy's name was Ed too. He comes in the back of the church, says, I want you to lay hands on her and pray for her. He laid hands on her and prayed for her. We stood around and prayed and all of a sudden her face just lightened up. That was it. It was all over. No green puke, no nothing. But there was definitely something there. We did not go back to church with them. It was kind of embarrassing for them. And we went out to ice cream and coffee with them instead. And he and I are at the register while they're sitting outside on the sidewalk and we're looking at each other and he says, I don't know either, but I'm just glad that's over. And the thing is, is that I watch people on the news and you go like, are they demonically possessed or oppressed or what's motivating them to do that? And there's some people that just, they're opening themselves to do it, but I don't think they've done it yet. But part of the discernment is knowing what to do about it. And it's part of the spiritual warfare, but then you see it on a grander scale on the political stage, let's say.

Ed Bonderenka (30:42):

That was pretty heavy. Sorry about that. Do you have any comment on that before we take a call?

Mark Tapson(30:48):

Well, yeah, and it's funny, I remember seeing The Exorcist in the theater. There had never been a horror movie like that before. It caused quite a controversy. And I think it's because it really exposed or pulled no punches about the real horrific evil that is behind demon possession. And that's part of this whole spiritual warfare. And I think people witnessed this kind of evil, at least in the movie screen for the first time ever when that movie came out. The book also is very good, by the way, but I do think that if you look around at the political world, you can see demonic activity. I mean, some of the progressive radicalism I think can really be described only in that way as demonic activity. I think if you look at some of the drag queen, drag queen story hour, the whole drag queen phenomenon. Now if you look at some of these drag queens, they look like demons.

Mark Tapson(32:04):

This is not the drag of Jack Lemon and what was the movie? Some like It Hot. This is not, it's not Benny Hill dressing up like a woman. This is a whole other level of exaggeration about feminine characteristics. And some of these drag queens look like demons straight out of hell. I think that's no coincidence. I think it's because there's demonic activity pushing that aspect of progressive politics. But anyway, there's definitely spiritual warfare going on and manifesting itself in the political realm. And you can see it in some of the progressive radicals who scream the protesters who are screaming insanely. It's not politics as usual. There's something driving it that's really evil.

Ed Bonderenka (32:59):

Yeah, exactly. Well, we have a call from Joe Leonard from Wyandot, and it's not surprising that Joe would call, since I opened the phone lines, Derek, could you put Joe on please?

Speaker 7 (33:14):

Hello brother. How are you today?

Ed Bonderenka (33:17):

Fine, brother, yourself. Go on.

Speaker 7 (33:19):

Oh, like I always say, could be better, could be worse, right? We had our pro-life thing this morning, I just got home. But two, the work shall set you free. You're speaking die diehard. Yeah, of course the Nazis put that above the concentrations camp completely warping. Of course, forced labor is the opposite of setting anyone free. But indeed the Bible that makes sense still. And it makes the distinction between the unable who we are to be our brother's keeper and help widows and orphans and all that, versus the unwilling, which we have no obligation to. And to follow that up to get your reaction, how it ties together with the idle hands phrase,

Ed Bonderenka (34:22):

Workplace of the devil.

Speaker 7 (34:24):

Yep. Yeah, I mean those all tie together. Skipping the whole Nazi warping of it. That's a valid biblical thing.

Ed Bonderenka (34:39):

Yeah. If I might, I misquoted the phrase above Auschwitz. It's aright Rey, which is work makes free. Come on, you kidding me? This is or Orwellian, you know what I mean? The perversion of the language. But that's a good point, Joe. We'll ask Mark to talk about that a bit.

Mark Tapson(34:58):

That is a good point. It depends on what you're working toward or working for or whom you're working for. I mean, the communists also would say that people should always be engaged in work, but work for the state because the state is their God.

Mark Tapson(35:17):

So they don't intend for it to be spiritually meaningful, but to just be working always as kind of a slave for the state. I think Ben Franklin said, be always employed in something useful, but cut off all unnecessary actions. He said, of course Ben Franklin a little bit, he was kind of intense, but I don't think he intended that we just maintain a sort of a perpetual busyness just for its own sake. As Henry David Thore said, it's not enough to be industrious because the answer industrious, what are you industrious about? So then are you committing yourself to work for the state or work because of enforced slave labor or are you doing it as a sort of a prayerful work for the to glorify God and to glorify his name through your work and through what you do? So it depends

Speaker 7 (36:22):

On absolutely to tie that all back together. Yeah, working for oneself and others through biblical community. Free will and choice, not communistic, worldly forced and theft of most of your labor for others, there has to be free will in there is kind of what we're all tying together here.

Mark Tapson(36:52):

That's right. That's a good point.

Speaker 7 (36:54):

Alright, love brothers. Take care. God bless.

Ed Bonderenka (36:57):

Alright, talk to you later. Thank you. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, even my dad was a coal miner and he used to tell me about how he'd be on a cart on his back and going up and chiseling away and then loading 16 tons and what do you get? And then he'd actually be paid by how much he produced. But there comes a point where I was an assembly line worker, nowhere near the same kind of drudges as that. But you go in and you work the torque gun, you put the parts in and you can look at it as like, oh, it's a trap job. Or you can say, you know what, if I do my job, I get paid for this and somebody's car is going to run right. As long as we all work together and do this, everybody does their part. Somebody's going to get a car out of this and it's going to run. And I get a paycheck and benefits and get to go home in one piece. So it doesn't have to be the most creative job. I hate to be a Robert cheerleader or something like that. But really it just depends on how you choose to view your work. I suppose it is.

Mark Tapson(38:03):

Yes.

Ed Bonderenka (38:05):

So something else you talked about the topic that you talked about were manicures and manliness. That's pretty interesting. I was driving back from the diner this morning, a guy had kind of a Rasta hairdo on walking down the street and he had beads on the end of each one of his. They're not corn rows, so they're just braided locks coming down around him. And I thought, doesn't strike me as manliness. But then again, if you watch the movies, the Predator Alien Hunters, they had that same dew. I like to keep a good manicure on my fingers, keep my fingernails clean and look presentable, but I'm not going to wear makeup. But Jesse Waters, you watch Water's World at all sometimes you ever see him with his rules for men, you don't drink with a straw and you don't lick an ice cream cone. You're like, this guy does not look to me like the guy who's the arbiter of what real men do or don't. But

Mark Tapson(39:14):

You want to speak on the subject. Yeah. The reason my article was called Manicures and Manliness is that I was spinning off of something I had read about these two entrepreneurs who created a program called Hard as Nails, which was an experiment to have men or research participants, men who would have their nails manicured, not just manicured but painted like women. And in the process of that, the whole idea or the purpose was to explore men's attitudes about their own manhood and manliness. And the idea was to get them to open up about feeling suppressed by toxic masculinity or by stereotypes of manhood that they're expected to live up to. But instead inside they're just pressure feeling this incredible pressure of rigid masculine expectations. And that's really the left's view of masculinity, this notion of toxic masculinity. The left believes that masculinity itself is toxic, not that there's just a toxic version of it, but that masculinity itself is the problem and that it's nothing but a social construction.

Mark Tapson(40:37):

There's nothing natural about it. The same thing with femininity. The Left believes that these are all social constructions that we're enforced on men and women by a patriarchal, oppressive society. And that if we could just liberate ourselves from these rigid stereotypes, so the thinking goes, then we'll all be free and we can all be all genders. We don't have to present ourselves in certain ways. We can just go with the flow. So one day if we feel more feminine than another, we can claim to be a different gender. And the whole gender madness, it's a neo-Marxist idea that is designed to break down our understanding of masculine and feminine and our understanding of the roles of man and woman. Because this goes back to Marx's priority, which was the abolition of the family. Marx explicitly wanted the abolition of the family. And the reason for that is that the family is sort of the first and last line of defense against the kind of collectivist totalitarian society that Marx wanted or Marx envisioned as a utopia in order to make his dream come true. This utopian, although it's actually dystopian, but

Mark Tapson(42:05):

In order to bring about the kind of society that Marx wanted, he had to break down the relationships between men and women. And to do that, you break down our understanding of masculinity and femininity. So that's really what is behind all of these things like the left, pushing gender ideology and trying to claim that men can be women and vice versa. They want to say that there is nothing natural about this, that it's all socially constructed and weak, and therefore it can be deconstructed in order to liberate us all. So my article kind of explored that whole idea, and as I said, what it comes down to, the whole agenda behind it is the breakdown of the family. And you can see that happening over the last half century in America or in the West in general, the breakdown of the family. That is because cultural Marxism has been so successful, it's been way more successful over the last 60, 70, 80 years than economic Marxism, which fails everywhere that it's tried.

Mark Tapson(43:14):

So the Marxists realized this early on. They thought this whole economic Marxism idea isn't really bringing about the Grand Revolution we expected it to. We got to find another way. So they begin to focus on the culture where Marxism is extremely effective or the Marxist agenda I should say. So that's their focus now is the breaking down of the family. And you can see it in all of its gender ideology that's being pushed. This is why the left works so hard to start as young as possible, indoctrinating kids in the idea that gender is merely constructed and that you can choose to be a boy or a girl, and that you were born in the wrong body. Somebody assigned you your sex at birth. That's what's behind. And driving all of this gender nonsense.

Ed Bonderenka (44:07):

Part of that is a social program that says, by the way, your poor, you should have the man move out of the house so that we can give you

Ed Bonderenka (44:20):

Social programs, but if the man moves in the house, you're not eligible because he should be the wage earner, which is exactly true. So you just encourage this absence of manhood from the childhood of these poor and fortunate kids, and then they lose that role model. And then now their moms are single moms. And then the state comes along and says, by the way, you don't have a role model, but let us tell you, you could be anything you want. And you probably are not a really a boyer. You're really not a girl. You're probably not a

Speaker 3 (44:57):

White Christian, cisgender male.

Ed Bonderenka (45:00):

I love that. Ever since I heard that I had to copy that. Yeah. So yeah,

Mark Tapson(45:05):

Go ahead. I was just going to say that yes, the whole reliance on the state is part of the Marxist idea also because Marx wanted not only men to be the labor force, but women too. The whole idea of feminism was to liberate women from this oppressive role as mother and a wife and put them out in the workforce as well, working for the benefit of the state. And children should be raised collectively by the community. That was the whole Marxist ideal. And it's all for the benefit of the state. And that's why they needed to break down the family. And that's why feminism has been the tip of the spear of Marxism for the last half century. And now transgenderism has supplanted feminism as the whole tip of the spear of cultural Marxism.

Ed Bonderenka (45:58):

Yeah. You also wrote about war men and the soul of the West, and we don't have time to get into that, but as you were speaking, I was thinking of the disaster. I'm not against war, don't get me wrong. I mean, I don't think I'd rather have a peaceful solution like Trump. I'd rather have a peaceful solution, but hey, here's the carrot, here's the stick. And you got to fight for what you got to fight for. But then again, Paul Harvey imitation here, if I were the devil, I would probably have a World War I and a World War ii, which would kill so many of the men, that the women would be left without partners and they'd be willing to have multiple, they'd be willing to share the partners they have. And then, oh, we have this big war effort. All the men are off to war.

Ed Bonderenka (46:38):

So all the women got to go to work. And then the war is over, and all the women are like, I don't want to go back in the house. I kind of enjoy making my own money. Said, there's two sides of that coin. Yeah, you'd be independent, but then decide what is really, and this goes back to biblical theology, teaching, whatever. What does God want for you to do? What does God want for the man to be and for the woman to be? And is there a time where you say, okay, I did that for a season. Now I'm going to be a mother and I'm going to work in the house and raise these kids because there's nothing wrong with that. You yourself are homeschooling eight kids? Oh, well, five. Five.

Mark Tapson(47:23):

Okay.

Ed Bonderenka (47:24):

Oh six. I'm sorry, I said six and you're telling me five. Okay. Yeah. It seems like eight sometimes. Doesn't they be honest, seems like

Mark Tapson(47:30):

Eight. They can be a handful, but they're good kids. And if we'd gotten started earlier on kids, we would have more because they're just an incredible blessing.

Ed Bonderenka (47:41):

Sorry, you caught me with coffee in my mouth. No worries. I've got one minute left. So with the time remaining, why don't you plug some of your efforts and then I want to remind people that you are going to be basically featured in the second hour of this show as you interview Josh Hammer. Thank you, Josh Hammer. And so I appreciate you letting me broadcast that, but go ahead and plug some of your work. Tell us where people can find you.

Mark Tapson(48:13):

Thanks, Ed. Yeah, the best place to go is my Substack account, which is https://substack.com/@marktapson. Or you can go to substack.com and look for Culture Warrior. And that's me. That's where most probably most of my writing is. Otherwise I write for, and sometimes there's overlap I write for,

Ed Bonderenka (48:32):

 We've got 15 Seconds left. Oops, I'm sorry about that.

Mark Tapson(48:34):

No Worries.

Ed Bonderenka (48:35):

Alright, Mark, thanks a lot folks. Come on back. You're American Heritage.