Over the years, my tastes have become increasingly more narrow and singular so that what was once a host of “favorites” has dwindled to a core two or maybe three. My all-time favorite television show is the first season of True Detective — it’s the only thing that I can watch over and over again from start to finish. I find it to be a beautiful celebration of a fading America, particularly the nation’s southern heritage, and a well of insights into the human psyche and soul, the triumph of good over evil, and the necessity of absolute morality in a progressively relativistic and nihilistic world. While the show (and again, I am referring only to the first season) is layered with strong and intelligent dialogue, one of the more meaningful moments comes when detective Marty Hart (portrayed brilliantly by Woody Harrelson) asks his partner Rustin Cohle (played to perfection by Matthew McConaughey), “Do you think we’re bad men?” Cohle replies rather tersely, “The world needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.” While Cohle’s initial moral worldview differs starkly from my own, the line is still, in spirit, true. Men Are Meant to be Dangerous Men are meant to be dangerous, it is part of our purpose, breathed into our hearts by God Himself. This is why men join the army, it’s why men cook in pits of an open fire, it’s why men get such a kick out of setting off fireworks, and it’s why men love racing cars. More than just testing ourselves against dangerous situations, men are supposed to be dangerous. It’s why little boys turn every stick into a sword or a gun, it’s why men go to the firing range, it’s why men go into boxing or wrestling or fencing contests against each other, it’s why men enjoy films like The Godfather, Goodfellas, or Braveheart. Those movies are about dangerous men, and even though their moral codes may be flawed in some cases, they still do dangerous things to stick to those codes. That fact has become nearly taboo under the secular standards of today. Dangerous men are labeled “toxic” and ordered — often by feminists of the pantsuit variety, whiny newscasters of both sexes, butch lesbian types, or blue-haired, nose-ringed gender theory professors — to become more docile, more feminine. This phenomenon has been occurring since at least the 1980s (as my friend Dr. Carrie Gress carefully documents in her book The End of Woman: How Smashing the Patriarchy Has Destroyed Us) and has now reached something of a crisis point. (READ MORE by Carrie Gress: Think the First Wave Is a Model for Women? Think Again.) What is often derided as “toxic masculinity” is, in fact, not masculinity at all, but an absence of masculinity. Certainly, rapists, kidnappers, sex-slavers, murderers, and the like are dangerous, but the threat they pose lies not in their masculinity but in their perversion, their sickliness. Such would be examples not of dangerous men but of men too weak to tame danger, allowing the thing to roam wild like a starving wolf. Of course, the inverse of this principle is equally true. Many men are blithely called “good” because they are harmless. But the harmlessness of this latter is just as unmanly as — and is indeed simply a variation of — the weakness of the former. While one type does not develop the strength to tame its dangerousness, the other does not develop the strength to be dangerous in the first place. The French moralist François de La Rochefoucauld wrote in 1665, “Nobody deserves to be praised for goodness unless he is strong enough to be bad, for any other goodness is usually merely inertia or lack of will-power.” The realities and consequences of these dual principles can be seen in our world today. Crime runs rampant with no one to put a halt to it while courageous men like Daniel Penny are arrested and declared too dangerous. Women are gaslit, coerced, bullied, and abused into pornography because the men with the gall to say “No” to porn are labeled fringe extremists. A frail, senile octogenarian is allowed to run the greatest nation in the world into the dirt and allow wars to break out across the globe because his political opponent is “mean.” (READ MORE: Senility, the Press, and a Tale of Two Presidents) Weak Men Cause Wars. Dangerous Men Prevent Them. In fact, Joe Biden and Donald Trump are prime examples of how this “dangerous men” principle operates. Last week, Biden mumbled and bumbled his way through a painful-to-watch ABC interview. He admitted that he pushed to expand to NATO, which predictably resulted in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine two years ago. During his clown show of a debate performance less than two weeks ago, Biden boasted of his calamitous Afghanistan withdrawal, which killed 13 Americans, left many more Americans stranded behind enemy lines, and dumped millions of dollars of military equipment right into the Taliban’s lap. This is a man who is only dangerous because he is weak. In contrast, Rep. Wesley Hunt (R-Texas) shared a story recently about Trump negotiating, while president, with Taliban leadership to ensure a successful U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan — the very event which Biden so horrendously botched less than eight months into his presidency. According to Hunt, Trump wanted a “conditional withdrawal,” and his chief condition was the safety of Americans. “If you harm a hair on a single American, I’m going to kill you,” Trump told the leader of the Taliban. He then stood up, took a photo from his pocket, and slapped it down on the table: It was a satellite photo of the Taliban leader’s own home. Nobody wants to mess with Michael Corleone, because he’s a dangerous man. Henry Hill is terrified of Jimmy Conway because he’s a dangerous man. Nobody crosses Tony Soprano, because he’s a dangerous man. Though only one example, Trump’s conversation with the Taliban leader is like a scene from a gangster film. Nobody wants to mess with Trump, because he’s a dangerous man. A weak man like Biden has overseen the rampant degeneration of the nation. Due to his weakness, wars have erupted in Europe and the Middle East, and China and North Korea are poised for aggressive expansion. Cohle’s maxim holds: Trump is the dangerous man we need to keep the other dangerous men from the door. The post ‘The World Needs Bad Men:’ The Good Thing about Dangerous Men like Donald Trump appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.