Vance in a Vise

By Abe Greenwald

Friday, April 10, 2026

 

It takes about 14 hours for Air Force Two to get from Joint Base Andrews to Islamabad. That’s a lot of time for Vice President JD Vance to think about the tough situation—correction, situations—in which he now finds himself. 

 

Let’s take the Iran talks first. Vance is off to Islamabad to lead negotiations with the Iranian regime. As he was departing, the speaker of the Iranian Parliament announced that there would be no negotiations without “the release of Iran’s blocked assets,” adding another impossible demand to the regime’s already science-fictional list. 

 

It’s almost unthinkable that Iran will stick to this or any precondition for talks. The regime’s main purpose in negotiating with the U.S. is to drag out the so-called cease-fire, not cut it short. But Tehran’s increasing bluster is an indication of how pointless these talks are as actual diplomacy. 

 

For one thing, the battered regime is trying to project strength by showing belligerence and intransigence toward the U.S. For another, the Islamic Republic—no matter how decimated—doesn’t negotiate in good faith with the U.S. 

 

From its inception in 1979, the regime has defined America as its sworn enemy. Its fanatical anti-Westernism, anti-Americanism, and anti-Semitism are constituent elements of the revolution that Khomeini foisted on the country.

 

So when Vance arrives, and talks likely proceed, what’s going to happen? Iranian negotiators will state their impossible demands but, perhaps, indicate that there’s an opening for progress if only the U.S. were to offer some concession to get things rolling.

 

At that point, Vance will come face-to-face with his first lose-lose proposition. If he does the wrong thing, and gives in, he will have let the regime play the U.S. for suckers. And we will once more head down the fruitless road of extended Iranian negotiations. 

 

If Vance does the right thing, and walks away, I’ll certainly approve. But he will be deemed a failure or a fall guy on his first big diplomatic adventure. Donald Trump has already (not-so) jokingly said that he’ll blame failed negotiations on his vice president. Watch that space. 

 

This isn’t the only thing Vance needs to worry about right now. Yesterday, Trump unleashed on the leading anti-American “right-wing” podcasters who’ve attacked the president as Bibi Netanyahu’s chump and even insinuated that he could be the anti-Christ. Chief among them is Tucker Carlson, a close Vance associate whose son works in his office. 

 

The vice president has desperately courted Carlson’s anti-American, anti-Semitic audience in a bid to pull them into a Vance 2028 coalition. The Trump administration’s support for Israel has already convinced most of these groypers that Vance is a sellout. Trump’s unbridled war on the podcasters means there’s no road back. Vance must now spend the next two and a half years serving by Trump’s side and steering clear of his old buddies. 

 

He has deliberately let it be known that his was the loudest administration voice in opposition to the war with Iran. If the war resumes, and we finish the job, he will be remembered as the man who was wrong from the start. And if the Iranians play us at the negotiating table, he will be forever tied to that blunder.

 

So there he is, up in the air—on his way to Islamabad. Vance, whose popularity is polling lower than that of any previous vice president at this point in office, will have a lot of time to ponder over the weekend. The return flight is estimated to be an hour longer.

Identity Politics Is a Problem for Conservative Christians Too

By George Yancey

Sunday, April 12, 2026

 

Everyone remembers COVID, right? How could we forget feeling like we were on our way to a dystopia? One key dynamic that I observed as a social scientist was the depth of polarization in our society. Here we were in a medical emergency, and those on the left and right decided to cherry-pick the science they liked and ignore the science they did not like if it helped them to attack their political opponents. Generally speaking, those on the right ignored the need for social distancing and disdained the use of the vaccines. The left ignored the costs of societal shutdown and refused to open schools long after it was clear that doing so was not inordinately dangerous to children and that children were far less likely to pass the virus on than adults.

 

The power of polarization in the United States took a bad situation and made it much worse.

 

Of course, polarization has no single cause, but some causes can be more foundational than others. Arguably, one of the most foundational is the development of identity politics, first on the left and now on the right. The emergence of identity politics on the right has dragged many conservative Christians into the poison of that political practice, and we need to understand both the presence and pitfalls of the toxic trend.

 

Identity politics emerged around the middle of the 19^th century as leftists figured out that Marxism was not a winning political strategy and instead moved toward identity politics as the way to advance their agenda. Identity politics has been defined as “the belief that identity itself—its elaboration, expression, or affirmation—is and should be a fundamental focus of political work.”  In modern society, this is often used to justify political activism on behalf of groups defined as marginalized. Thus, in the latter part of the 20^th century, progressive activists grounded their political activism in motivations to protect marginalized groups rather than to bring about a new social order.

 

Progressive identity politics led to the rise of movements such as MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which were more successful political endeavors than outright Marxism. Conservative political activists became aware of this relative success; consequently, it was unsurprising that Republicans such as Donald Trump tapped into some dynamics of progressive political identity to create their own form of identity politics. Whereas the left had defined racial minorities, sexual minorities, and women as oppressed groups for those promoting progressive identity politics, the right defined whites, men, and Christians as oppressed groups for those promoting conservative identity politics.

 

Now we have the rise of Christian identity politics. While conservative Christian activism erupted in the 1970s and has remained active, the early version of Christian identity politics did not focus on the notion of Christians as victims. Instead, it focused on implementing Christian values in the issues of abortion and sexuality. But more recently, some conservative Christians have focused on the idea of Christians as an oppressed group. Though it may seem counterintuitive, conservative Christians are not especially likely to be politically active. Indeed, they tend to lag behind the nonreligious and progressive Christians in the degree to which they participate in political activity. But some of those who have become very politically active have tapped into their own version of identity politics to motivate their political activism.

 

In my new book on identity politics, I have identified several dysfunctional tendencies that hold true regardless of whether we are discussing progressive or conservative identity politics. First, those who engage in identity politics have a powerful tendency to dehumanize those they define as oppressors. Oppressors can be anyone who impedes their political goals. Second, those involved in identity politics tend to seek out heretics who are members of their groups, but who do not fully support the group’s political goals and methods. And those engaging in identity politics are willing to suspend intellectual consistency and moral standards if it is necessary to achieve their goals. These tendencies are connected to the desperation members in identity politics have, since they believe they are defending oppressed individuals, and losing politically is considered to be unacceptable. Thus, they feel they must win at all costs.

 

Conservatives have criticized the inflexibility of those who engage in progressive identity politics, their inability to be open to compromise, and their tendency to demonize their political opponents. Unfortunately, I have noted some of these tendencies within Christian identity politics. Space does not allow me to fully illustrate these tendencies, but examples abound. Look on social media and see how much time and effort conservative Christians used to malign other conservative Christians, such as J.D. Greear, Beth Moore, Karen Swallow Prior, David French, Russell Moore, Phil Vischer, and others who oppose abortion and define homosexuality as sin but refuse to support Trump or blindly vote Republican. Christian enthusiasts of identity politics see them as heretics who must be removed from good standing among Christians. Or we could look at the ease with which many of these individuals have used dehumanizing rhetoric against undocumented immigrants: statements that go beyond policy disagreements but paint such immigrants as marauding bands of rapists and murderers. Finally, it is notable how many conservative Christian influencers argue that because of the focus on anti-black racism, not enough attention has been given to anti-white racism. While in theory, Christian identity politics does not have to be racialized, it has become racialized in that many of its adherents link the interests of conservative Christians to the interests of whites.

 

In my book, I include much more evidence of the way conservative Christians, as progressives have done before them, engage in an identity politics that dehumanizes their opponents and makes it all but impossible to find workable compromises with political adversaries. They feed into the polarization that makes it difficult to solve challenges like COVID and immigration policy. Clearly, conservative Christians are not the only players in this game of toxic identity politics. But their entry into it is especially disturbing to me since I am a theologically conservative Christian and I want us to do better.

 

Some may argue that the dynamics I am documenting are due to the emergence of Christian nationalism. For Christianity Today, I discussed why Christian identity politics is a better explanation for the recent political activism of conservative Christians than Christian nationalism. A major problem with reducing these issues to a concept like Christian nationalism is that doing so implies there is an exceptional nature to the activism of conservative Christians. Thus, the way it is applied implies that conservative Christians are a unique evil relative to other social groups. But classifying these tendencies as identity politics is a recognition that conservative Christians are basically doing what other vested interest political groups are doing to gain and maintain political power. This diminishes the implied mystery sometimes associated with conservative Christians. The fact that they are doing what others are doing does not make it right, but it does explode the myth that conservative Christians are worse than others.

 

The problems of the development of a Christian identity political movement produce political dynamics that can create spiritual impurities. As a result of the emergence of identity politics, a growing number of conservative Christians have linked their Christian faith to political fidelity. To be a Christian in good standing, or for some to be a Christian at all, one must be ready to pull the lever for the Republican no matter what. If a Christian concludes that his or her faith is an influential factor in becoming a Republican, then I see that as a matter between him or her and God. But when Christians promulgate a myth that to be a Christian, or a Christian in good standing, is to be a Republican, then that Christian has cheapened what we believe about Christ being the only way of salvation. The notion of Christ as the only way is extended to “Christ plus the right political attitudes” as the path to salvation. It is hard for me to think of a more effective way of distorting our faith.

 

Let me be clear: I do not begrudge conservative Christians for being politically engaged. Indeed, given that per capita, conservative Christians are less likely than many other groups to engage in political participation, it would be problematic if there were no conservative Christian voices in the public sphere. And they have legitimate issues to bring to that sphere. Beyond issues of life and religious freedom, some of my previous work on anti-Christian hatred indicates an important need for conservative Christians to help shape our political atmosphere. But this expression should not be locked into an identity political framework that demonizes those who are not in their camp and prevents conservative Christians from working with other groups to find compromises that build community instead of demanding compliance.

 

Polarization in our society will persist until we take intentional steps to overcome it. Whether the proliferation of identity politics is the most important factor is debatable, but there is no doubt that it has played a major role in facilitating polarization. Conservative Christians are not the initial source of the problems linked to identity politics, and clearly, we should remain concerned about the effects of progressive identity politics. But conservative Christians have become a major source that supports this poisonous political approach, thus harming our society.

 

It does not have to be this way. Christians can become part of the solution by offering a path out of this mess. My work in racial reconciliation points toward a potential path. In that work, I argued that our understanding of human depravity should lead us to prioritize more constructive conversations to identify solutions acceptable across racial lines: conversations where we look for solutions that transcend the needs of our particular groups and where we can make the compromises necessary for us to work together, instead of against each other. Thus, we should call for more constructive conversations that seek solutions for everyone, not just the groups we envision as marginalized. Whether we are talking about blacks, Christians, the LGBT community, men, or other groups that have been seen as marginalized, our solutions cannot revolve around only addressing the concerns of those groups. Learning to listen to others and to communicate with them in ways that ensure they can hear us is critical to finding solutions that not only address the concerns of our in-group but also attract support from those who might otherwise oppose us.

 

Developing a way to find common ground and solutions that consider the concerns of everyone can get us away from the problems of identity politics and toward a healthier society.

Trump’s NATO Threats Highlight Deeper Structural Tension

By Benn Steil

Monday, April 13, 2026

 

President Trump is threatening to pull the United States out of NATO over its members’ refusal to join the U.S.-Israeli war effort against Iran—an effort undertaken with no prior ally consultation. “Without the United States, there is no NATO,” warned Secretary of State Marco Rubio. “An alliance has to be mutually beneficial. It cannot be a one-way street. Let’s hope we can fix it.

 

But can we fix it? NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, an accomplished Trump whisperer, insists all will be fine.  The European allies “are doing everything the United States is asking,” he offered last Thursday, implausibly. But with Washington’s 77-year commitment to NATO’s Article 5 collective defense principle now subordinated to an “America First” duty to do what the president wants, when he wants it, Europe’s least bad option may well be to go its own way. Europe should begin building its own integrated nuclear deterrent and unified combat capability—either inside or outside NATO—with a new intra-European “Article 5.” Whereas an alliance without U.S. participation will clearly be less powerful, a European grouping without a credible mutual defense trigger would invite aggression from Russia and other hostile powers.

 

To be clear, leaving NATO would be a bad U.S. decision. This is not a matter of liberal idealism or Cold War nostalgia. The only time Article 5 has ever been invoked was by America’s NATO allies, in solidarity with the United States after the September 11, 2001, al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington. More importantly, NATO remains the least costly mechanism the U.S. has for preventing the emergence of a hostile hegemon in Europe while preserving forward military access, intelligence sharing, and political leverage over the world’s richest and most advanced states. But the challenge of sustaining NATO extends well beyond managing Trump.

 

The president’s repeated claims that the European Union was created to “screw the U.S. on trade” are baseless, but it is important to understand NATO’s role in the development of the union—a union that has long aspired to geopolitical power without a commensurate homegrown military foundation. By popular account, NATO’s creation was a U.S. initiative in the wake of World War II—the centerpiece of a new grand strategy of “containing” the Soviet Union. Yet George Kennan, containment’s earliest architect at the State Department, opposed the creation of a military alliance. He sought instead to make a bold West European reconstruction program the heart of his security concept.

 

It was, in fact, France, Britain, Belgium, and the Netherlands that were the driving forces behind a transatlantic military alliance. Their argument was that the Marshall Plan’s blueprint for integrating Europe’s economies—which tied their security to revived German production of coal, steel, and industrial goods—was dangerous without American guarantees against both German and Russian aggression. Although the Truman administration launched the Marshall Plan as an alternative to a continued U.S. military presence in Europe, it ended up expanding and entrenching one. NATO became the military guarantor of reconstruction, and it has remained, decade after decade, the well-armed watchman for the ongoing business of European integration. American frustration with bearing the greater part of the associated cost predates Trump’s first term, having begun with the Eisenhower administration.

 

Today’s crisis in NATO is not just a product of Trump’s politics—it reflects deeper structural tensions embedded in the alliance’s post-Cold War evolution. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Clinton administration faced a hugely consequential decision: whether to keep NATO and its composition as it was, to disband the alliance (like the Warsaw Pact), to replace it with a body that included Russia, or to expand it—perhaps up to Russia’s borders. Counterfactuals have limits, but post-Cold War history unfolded largely as Kennan—opining well into his 90s—warned it would under Clinton’s chosen option: expansion.

 

Clinton was a consummate political salesman. Yet it proved impossible simultaneously to convince East Europeans that NATO would protect them from Russia, to convince the Russians that expansion had nothing to do with them, and to convince Americans that expansion would be cheap—since NATO had no enemy.

 

In 1997, Kennan warned that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-cold-war era.” He predicted it would “inflame nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion,” “have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy,” “restore the atmosphere of cold war to East-West relations,” and “impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking.” Compare these predictions with those of NATO expansion’s most prominent advocate in the State Department. “[Y]ears from now,” Richard Holbrooke      wrote in 1998, “people will look back at the debate and wonder what all the fuss was about. They will notice that nothing has changed in Russia’s relationship with the West.” Holbrooke’s confidence was profoundly misplaced.

 

NATO’s membership has doubled since 1999, from 16 to 32. There are two standard defenses of the enlargement. One is that it was intended only to stabilize Eastern Europe politically. NATO never had plans, or even the capacity, to invade Russia, and so its expansion was never more than a pretext for Russian aggression. But this argument misses the point. The issue was never invasion, but the behavior of border states acting more confrontationally under the assumption of automatic U.S. backing. In 2015, for example, Turkey shot down a Russian fighter jet that had crossed briefly into its airspace from Syria, where it was bombing opponents of the Assad regime. Turkey could claim self-defense and lack of territorial ambition, but it also acted knowing it had a call on Article 5 support. “Turkish airspace … is NATO airspace,” Ankara declared afterward. Russia took notice. “Turkey has not set itself up” as the actor, “but the North Atlantic alliance as a whole,” observed then-Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. “This is extremely irresponsible.” It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine Turkey taking such radical action absent the belief that Washington had its back.

 

The second defense of expansion is that, absent forward alliance guarantees, Russia would be free to overrun its neighbors. But this rests on a highly compressed view of how Russian power is actually exercised. Russian interventions have not taken the form of sudden mass invasions; they have entailed political crises, force mobilizations, and escalating signals that unfold over weeks or months. The United States possesses unmatched intelligence capabilities and global power-projection forces. It does not require permanent alliance expansion to detect emerging threats or to respond decisively once they become clear.

 

Seen this way, the choice facing the United States in the 1990s was not between expansion and insecurity, but between competing models of post-Cold War order—one aiming at consolidating victory, the other at advancing the mothballed “One World” policy vison developed under Franklin Roosevelt. Neither model was without risk, but it cannot be ignored that the choice of the former was a factor in the creation of dangerous Russian counter-alliances in Asia and the Middle East.

 

A final problem with the NATO status quo is that too few Americans understand what their country’s membership entails. A 2024 Pew study found that only 30 percent of Americans could correctly identify elementary facts about NATO’s membership and purpose, while 31 percent could not answer any basic questions correctly. This ignorance creates political constraints for any president seeking to justify why the United States must fight to defend, say, Latvia or Montenegro.

 

Trump’s threats to withdraw from NATO are rash and misguided. Nonetheless, the U.S. desire to shift resources away from European defense is longstanding and, given mounting pressures in the Middle East and Asia, likely to intensify. It is therefore high time for Europe to extend its political and economic union into a credible military one.

The Rise of the Anti-Manosphere

By Ari David Blaff

Monday, April 13, 2026

 

Tucked at the end of his newest book, Notes on Being a Man, Scott Galloway outlined for his sons “the three legs” of what it means to be a good man: to protect, provide, and procreate. Alarmed by the “crisis with the boys and young men just ahead of you,” he walks his boys through what each of those attributes means. Being a man, he writes, is a birthright in the most rewarding sense.

 

“You have an obligation to protect and advocate for others, because you were born with advantages others don’t have,” Galloway writes. He doesn’t wield privilege in a demeaning way: It’s an invitation to do better and elevate those around you.

 

“I hope you embrace your strength, physical and mental, as you go forward,” Galloway continues. “The most masculine people leave a legacy of surplus value from a place of kindness, generosity, and strength. They give more love, hope, and encouragement, pay more taxes, and create more jobs than they get back.”

 

If this sounds different from the toxic pillars of the oft-discussed “manosphere,” it is. The unifying principle of the manosphere and its boosters—men like Andrew Tate, Nick Fuentes, and Myron Gaines—is an unabashed view that women belong in the kitchen and that men should exercise absolute social control, all of which is predictably laced with racism, antisemitism, and a general hatred for men not like them.

 

Galloway is different. And he’s part of a new group of podcasters, researchers, and public intellectuals I call the Gentlemanosphere.

 

The Gentlemanosphere has a straightforward mission statement for men today: Raise your hand when you need help; get off screens and into the real world; build communities with partners and friends; take risks; express yourself emotionally; and look after your physical health.

 

This new anti-manosphere operates at two levels: from within and outside traditional forms of authority. Figures such as Galloway, researcher Richard Reeves, New York Times columnist David French, and writer and academic Arthur Brooks advocate for boys and men from mainstream perches in academia or major newspapers.

 

The second wing of the Gentlemanosphere consists of the influencers circumventing the traditional gatekeepers of thought, exploring the crisis—of meaning and purpose—that many men feel today.

 

These influencers bridge the gap with the establishment wing of the Gentlemanosphere by speaking directly to everyday boys and men, and include people such as podcaster Chris Williamson, writer Rob Henderson, and former Navy SEAL Jocko Willink. These men offer young guys a space for sustainable personal improvement beyond the cheap upsells of cryptocurrency and online universities peddled by manosphere personalities.

 

Together, these two wings actually seem to be helping men.

 

***

 

Gentlemanosphere views aren’t new. The 2010s saw Adm. William McRaven demand men start every day by making their beds, Jordan Peterson exhort men to “clean your room!” and Willink famously advise listeners to meet hardship with a simple “Good.” Although critics often dismiss such advice as platitudes equally suitable for boys and girls, these messages resonate because they’re delivered at a frequency men are attuned to hearing: discipline geared toward accomplishment.

 

But something has changed in recent years. The dawning recognition that boys are not doing well—academically, socially, mentally—has opened Americans to the reality that guys need help. New solutions. New ideas. And proponents of the Gentlemanosphere are at the forefront of that recognition: They see male struggles as worthy of our empathy and attention. They offer antidotes beyond diagnoses of toxic masculinity or hegemonic masculinity and don’t treat masculinity as a lethal diagnosis in need of curing.

 

Another distinction of the Gentlemanosphere is that it doesn’t see gender politics as zero-sum. Members believe that advancing the cause of boys and men elevates girls and women. They see better men making better husbands, better families, and healthier societies.

 

“Advocating for boys and men is not mutually exclusive to advocating for girls and women,” Arthur Brooks, another public intellectual I consider to be part of the Gentlemanosphere, told me. “For policymakers and thought leaders, the goal should be to not cast away masculinity as ‘toxic’—or to accuse femininity as being a militating force against men. No: We must describe masculinity and femininity as mutually reinforcing, and help both sexes find ways to rediscover meaning in their lives.”

 

***

 

Daring to articulate a vision of manhood today isn’t widely encouraged. As Galloway experienced, few make it across the minefield of gender politics unscathed.

 

The reaction to his book, which touches on his own upbringing, lessons from fatherhood, and his experience becoming financially independent, he told me, was “so severe and swift. Quite frankly, I was expecting it; I wasn’t expecting it at this kind of volume. To be honest, it’s a bit rattling,” Galloway added. “But what I tell myself is that—if you’re in World War II,” he continued, “the pilots would say, when the flak gets most intense, drop your bombs cause that means you’re over the target.”

 

Galloway likes that historical period. You can almost imagine him strutting in some Patton-esque fatigues before a battle, amping the troops up. Chatting shortly after his book was published in November, he was unfiltered and happy to disclose his own perceived shortcomings. He acknowledged that he isn’t a gender studies expert, and that his goal was to share his experience of “where I think I got it right and where I think I got it wrong.”

 

“To be honest, some of the criticism is valid and I try to learn from it,” he said, pointing to pushback that his advice could be seen as too narrow to apply to all men.

 

“The book is somewhat autobiographical, and I project what’s worked for me—pursuing economic security, and finding a mate,” he added. “Some criticism [is] that there are other paths, and ways to demonstrate masculinity. Which is fair.”

 

He maintained he’s “never blamed women for men’s problems,” and said the reasons for the failings of American men are diverse, “including men of my generation not stepping up.”

 

Galloway also spoke candidly about everything from Donald Trump being a poor mentor for men to how the suicide of a teen he knew led him to the cause of young boys.

 

However, he was frustrated by attempts to link him with influencers such as Andrew Tate because “their solution was to take women back to the 50s.” He credited the “far right” for being among the first observers to spot the problems faced by men, but denounced their ideology of conflating “masculinity with coarseness and cruelty.”

 

“When you, in any way, advocate for men, there is an understandable gag reflex that, Oh, he’s one of them,” Galloway said, referring to the far right.

 

***

 

Lingering in the background of our conversation was a recent essay in The New Yorker. “Bald, white, and jacked,” journalist Jessica Winter opened the piece, describing Galloway as “an action figure of the tech-and-finance overclass.” The article describes him as one of “the ambassadors of the centrist manosphere,” a segment that praises “women’s advancement and the feminist cause while insisting that men’s economic and vocational anxieties are more naturally potent.”

 

Pilloried alongside Galloway in the article was the aforementioned Richard Reeves, founder of the American Institute for Boys and Men. Reeves, a polite Brit unfailingly open to conversation and bipartisanship, is a major reason why governors across the country—Gavin Newsom, Wes Moore, and Spencer Cox, to name a few—are talking about the well-being of boys. Winter derided his 2022 book, Of Boys and Men, as a “best-selling jeremiad,” which prompted Reeves, a policy wonk, to joke his book was “way too boring to qualify.”

 

Winter draws a contrast between the Galloway wing and the Tate/Fuentes wing. But she seems to think that the latter is more effective, because it articulates a more specific and accurate version of masculinity.

 

The right-wing manosphere knows that masculinity is a series of dominance signals beamed from behind iridescent Oakleys and the wheel of the most enormous pickup truck you’ve ever seen; it is a smirking multimillionaire who “DESTROYS” a young woman at a college-hosted debate; it is—must it be said?—an AR-15, openly carried.

 

While the “right-wing manosphere” wants tougher abortion laws and traditional gender roles, “the squishier centrist side has no such certainties,” she continues. Galloway’s construction of masculinity, Winter argues, is “a state of mind and a lifestyle, one equally available to men and women, and therefore impossible to define.”

 

“Within this amorphous framework, men’s biggest problem is, likewise, a feeling—an unreachable itch, or a marrow-deep belief—that men should still rank above women in the social hierarchy, just not as much as before,” she continues.

 

But it’s hard to read Galloway and Reeves and come away with the impression that their efforts to raise awareness about men’s struggles are a smokescreen for male supremacy. Take Reeves, for example. “One of the great revelations of feminism may turn out to be that men need women more than women need men,” Reeves wrote in Of Boys and Men. Later, he writes: “Economically independent women can now flourish whether they are wives or not. Wifeless men, by contrast, are often a mess.”

 

Lisa Britton, a contributor at Evie, experienced the very same binary thinking when she turned her passion for advocating for girls and women and applied it to boys and men. While speaking with people around Capitol Hill as part of her advocacy, one aide of then-Sen. John McCain suggested she also look into what was happening with boys. Since then, Britton has written extensively about the state of American men, from the shortcomings of the term “toxic masculinity” to misandrist advertising.

 

Britton described herself as “very progressive,” but recalled her appeals about men to her fellow progressives falling on deaf ears.

 

“In the early days, anybody who was left-leaning did not understand what I was doing. I lost friends; family members telling me to give up. Like ‘Why? What are you doing? Who’s controlling you?’ They couldn’t understand why I would be standing up for boys and men, really,” she said.

 

***

 

At a time when men make up the majority of premature deaths, workplace injuries, the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the academically struggling, an inability to see and speak about men undercuts our ability to help them. As Galloway learned, anyone speaking to a male audience is liable to be accused of manosphere propaganda.

 

“It’s not a thin line,” Galloway said. “It’s a razor and you’re gonna fall and get cut no matter what you say, no matter how eloquent, reasonable, how many land acknowledgments you do. You’re just gonna get cut wading into this.”

 

Prominent men are covered on front pages—the Trumps and Putins and CEOs—but everyday men are often presented through simplified tropes. (Winter’s story predictably featured cartoonish graphics of moping men, some curled in fetal positions.) Guys remain passive actors in their own stories: written about, talked down to, and diagnosed by mostly indifferent journalists. Mainstream outlets routinely blame men for their own problems and rarely feature voices arguing otherwise.

 

This has pushed discourse beyond the control of mainstream gatekeepers, fueling the rise of the second wing of the Gentlemanosphere. Guys are hungry for thoughtful content, but the void left by academia and mainstream media has led to the emergence of a vibrant ecosystem of alternative voices.

 

Chris Williamson’s podcast, Modern Wisdom, talks about everything from sobriety to finance, and it’s one of the most thoughtful places where masculinity is discussed today. Williamson started the podcast because “there was a vacuum of advice to men,” he told me. And he seems to have been right: Williamson’s podcast was included on Spotify’s “Top Global Shows” in 2025 alongside The Joe Rogan Experience.

 

“We have a generation of fatherless homes. …Toward the end of my 20s, I was looking around for a patriarch to teach me,” he said, jokingly calling this phase of his life “Manopause” and saying it hits lots of men approaching their 30s as they begin attaining early career success but can’t escape a sense of emptiness.

 

Williamson reflected on his pre-podcast life success and the lack of satisfaction he felt. He wanted to find the ground truth: what actually made him, and often other men, happy and successful. “Modern Wisdom is a thinly veiled autobiography masquerading as a podcast,” he said. Having conversations with researchers on topics from the ethics of artificial intelligence to the social psychology of men is his way of getting at the fundamental questions of life.

 

“Some may say academically less legitimate or even intellectually less legitimate,” Williamson joked. “I would prefer to say, closer to the common man or maybe a little bit more relatable.”

 

His journey, he feels, mirrors what many young guys feel today. His audience, he said, comes from a “big cohort” of curious men who aren’t “so sure” how they are doing in life and want to be the best versions of themselves.

 

***

 

Williamson sketched out a history of the manosphere’s evolution that has updated roughly every decade since the new millennium, beginning with “first wave” pickup artists in the mid-2000s before shifting to the “second wave” red-pill era in the 2010s. We are entering a third wave.

 

Williamson thinks some of the best voices of this third wave are guys like Chris Bumstead, a six-time Mr. Olympia winner who openly talks about self-doubt and vulnerability.

 

“He struggles with his emotions and he talks about how uncertain he is,” Williamson, a close friend of Bumstead’s, said. “It’s messy and I’ve tried to embody that as much as possible. The transparency in the messiness of the process.”

 

Williamson also spoke about the wild success of the major nodes of the Gentlemanosphere: Arthur Brooks (Harvard academic and Oprah Winfrey coauthor), Reeves (creator of the first think tank on boys and men), and Galloway (“rich as hell and biggest podcaster on the planet”).

 

“It would be very difficult to look at this group of people and say, ‘Well, they don’t make things happen,’” Williamson said. “But there is a gentleness, I think, in the messaging. Bringing people along for the ride; not binding their ingroup together over the mutual hatred of an outgroup; there is a gentleness with themselves when they fall short.”

If Jefferson Was Right

By Timothy Sandefur

Monday, April 13, 2026

 

Few historical figures have experienced the whiplash of public opinion more than Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson, who was born 283 years ago today, was both despised and adored during his own lifetime, and his popularity has ever since waned and waxed with shifting political attitudes. The renowned Jefferson scholar Merrill Peterson even devoted an entire book (The Jefferson Image in the American Mind) not to Jefferson’s life, but to the various changes in public perceptions of his legacy. It’s no surprise, then, that as we approach America’s 250th birthday — a day uniquely tied to the man primarily responsible for the Declaration of Independence — that legacy is again something of a battlefield.

 

As recently as 1993, President William Jefferson Clinton traded on his middle name to such a degree that he began his inauguration day by touring Monticello. But since then, the Virginian’s fortunes have fallen to the point that historian Pauline Maier opened her book American Scripture with the assertion that Jefferson is “the most overrated person in American history.”

 

Naturally, assertions like that have more to do with today’s politics, especially racial politics, than with the man’s actual achievements. Since the ink on the Declaration was damp, he has been condemned for being a lifelong slaveholder despite professing the equality of all mankind. The 1998 publication of research showing that his DNA is shared by male descendants of Sally Hemings — the enslaved woman rumored for centuries to have been his concubine — seems for many to have permanently stamped him as a worthless hypocrite. However that may be, it’s at least clear that in our search for historical figures to admire, Jefferson is now often treated as embarrassing or passé. In 2021, New York City ordered a statue of Jefferson removed from its City Hall after publicly displaying it for nearly two centuries.

 

That probably wouldn’t have bothered him much. Jefferson firmly believed that “the earth belongs to the living,” and that each generation of Americans should (soberly and knowledgably) pore over his record to decide for themselves what they think. And the truth is that, for all his flaws — some severe, indeed — Jefferson was immensely admirable, and his achievements deserve the honor and thanks of all Americans.

 

A brilliant polymath, equally at home in mathematics, law, history, architecture, ancient literature, and archaeology (of which he was a true pioneer), Jefferson became one of the models of the American intellectual. He was a splendid writer, with a gift for immortal phrases. And he was an enthusiast for everything really new about the New World.

 

Like his contemporaries, Beethoven and Goethe, he straddled the rational Enlightenment and the passionate Romantic era, and from an early age he brought his high idealism about individual freedom and American exceptionalism to politics. He was a radical for independence, so extreme that in 1775 he told a Tory relative he would gladly “lend my hand to sink the whole island [of Great Britain] in the ocean.” He was 32 at the time.

 

His enthusiasms led him to dream of the overthrow of all despotisms, at a time when many thought that average people were too ignorant, foolish, and corrupt to make law for themselves — and that they needed to submit unquestioningly to their “betters.” He exposed the fallacy of that idea when he said, “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.”

 

Jefferson’s sometimes exaggerated rhetoric about the innate virtue of the common man often brought ridicule from critics, but they usually missed his real point, which was that however bad ordinary people might be at running their own lives, there’s no reason to think government bureaucrats will do a better job of it. The best option is instead what he called “a wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, [and] leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits.”

 

As president, he largely accomplished that. He cut taxes and spending, signed legislation banning the slave trade, sought peaceful resolution of American conflicts with Britain (but made war on the Barbary pirates), oversaw the demise of the grotesque Alien and Sedition laws, bought Louisiana, and eliminated highfalutin practices — such as the State of the Union address — that had been devised to overawe the people with government’s grandeur. His libertarianism was far from perfect. But compared to others of his era, he was astonishingly advanced.

 

Of course, slavery remains the great cloud over his life — as he himself expected. He had opened his career in the 1770s as a radical on the subject, even bringing a half dozen of what we would now call civil rights lawsuits challenging aspects of Virginia slavery law. (In one case, his rhetoric about the equal rights of man outraged the judge so much that the court ruled against him without even hearing the other side’s argument.) Later, he tried unsuccessfully to make it legal for Virginians to free their slaves, and — again without success — to ban slavery in ten western states. His 1785 book Notes on Virginia contained such eloquent passages condemning slavery that John Adams said it was “worth diamonds.”

 

And — contrary to the views of many intellectuals today — Jefferson did indeed believe that “all men are created equal” included all people. It’s now commonplace to assert (in the words of a commentator in last year’s six-hour History Channel attack on him) that Jefferson “didn’t write those words considering black people.” But this is simply not true. He even tried to insert a bold attack on slavery into the Declaration of Independence itself, and he wrote afterward that “nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free.” When critics challenged him about the racist remarks he published in the Notes, Jefferson replied, “My doubts were the result of personal observation on the limited sphere of my own State. . . . I expressed them therefore with great hesitation; but whatever be their degree of talent it is no measure of their rights. Because Sir Isaac Newton was superior to others in understanding, he was not therefore lord of the person or property of others.” Indeed, Jefferson even counseled then-Governor James Monroe against executing the leaders of a slave uprising in 1800, on the grounds that the enslaved were justified in seeking to liberate themselves. There can be no reasonable doubt that Jefferson emphatically believed in the equal right of all human beings to freedom.

 

But over time, he did cease drastic efforts against the institution, and by his retirement, he had basically given up. When his neighbor Edward Coles wrote him in 1814 to “entreat and beseech you to exert your knowledge and influence in devising and getting into operation some plan for the gradual emancipation of slavery [sic],” he demurred. Coles took his own slaves to Indiana, freed them, and gave them land. But Jefferson, while admitting that it was “a mortal reproach to us that they should have pleaded [for liberty] so long in vain,” told Coles “No. . . . This enterprise is for the young.”

 

That moment does deserve condemnation, for if Jefferson had taken some dramatic step at that moment to call attention to the urgent need for action against slavery, he might have altered the country’s fate. He was right that public opinion had to change before slavery could be eliminated — but only drastic action by a universally admired figure could have given public opinion the push it needed, and he was the only man who fit that bill. His silence at that moment was the greatest failure of his political life.

 

Yet even here, Jefferson compares favorably to many contemporaries — James Madison, for instance, who appears never to have uttered a public word against slavery, whereas Jefferson often risked his career by doing so. Moreover, it was Jefferson’s denunciations of slavery that set the template for the abolitionist movement that began after his 1826 death. Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, and other anti-slavery activists were proud to associate themselves with Jefferson, because he so often attacked the “peculiar institution.” And in 1842, the 75-year-old John Quincy Adams — who had known Jefferson from infancy — told Congress that “there was not an abolitionist of the wildest character in the Northern States [who would not] find in the writings of Jefferson, at the time of the Declaration of Independence and during his whole life down to its very last year, a justification for everything they say.” Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the abolitionist movement without Jefferson’s legacy — and it’s literally impossible to condemn slavery without invoking the principles of equality and liberty to which he devoted his life.

 

In 1874 — less than 50 years after Jefferson’s death — biographer James Parton wrote, “If Jefferson was wrong, America is wrong. If America is right, Jefferson was right.” That seems a silly thing to say; Jefferson himself would have considered it blasphemous to suggest that the country’s “rightness” could rise or fall with the reputation of a single man. Yet Parton’s deeper point was correct: The principles of liberty Jefferson articulated, and for which he became a metaphor, do indeed lie at the core of what Americanness means. “We can no longer say there is nothing new under the sun,” Jefferson told a friend, after defeating the authoritarian Federalists in 1800, “for this whole chapter in the history of man is new.” If the ideas of freedom expressed in the Declaration are indeed self-evident, then what we now call the American Dream is, in that profound sense, “right.” But in our day no less than his, that’s a question that can never be answered once and for all. The rightness or wrongness of the nation’s legacy can only be determined by our actions in the present — because the earth belongs to the living.

The Passion of Ben Sasse

By Kathryn Jean Lopez

Monday, April 13, 2026

 

Former Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse is the first to tell you these days that he wasn’t ready for the fight in Washington, in some respects. He wasn’t a politician; honestly, the man is a nerd in the best of ways. He believed in the nobility of public service. During his time in office — he resigned early in his second term to become the president of the University of Florida — he was America’s much-needed civics teacher.

 

Sasse is currently dying of cancer. The experimental trial he’s on might not prolong his life significantly. These are precious days for, as Sasse understands it, “redeeming the time.” In a most recent interview with Ross Douthat for the New York Times, he appears bloodied. His face is broken. His skin isn’t healing. He tells Ross — whom I like to refer to as my former intern (at National Review) — that a pharmacist recently called him over to the consultation area; she was curious and concerned. “Did they do something electrical to you?” she asked. “Either acid or electric shocks produce a face that looks this hideous,” Sasse told Douthat, who in turn joked: “Well, you told her that you’d gotten on the wrong side of like six different mafias. And they’d all taken turns.”

 

Despite his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, Sasse has not lost his sense of humor, gratitude, love of God, and appreciation for the gift of participating in the American experiment. He reminds us — now he is living the premature sunset of his life — that life is a gift and is meant to be lived in love for God and His people. His priority is to share the wisdom that has been forced on him too early. Ross joked that pending death has Sasse at 54, “where Henry Kissinger was at 100.”

 

When the conversation turns to politics, Sasse predicts that contemporary America won’t be remembered for her insane politics. Instead, “What we’re going to talk about is the fact that we were living through a technological revolution that was creating economic and cultural upheaval, and we were living through institutional collapse, and way, way, way, way, way below that, there’s a whole bunch of political institutions that are part of that institutional collapse.” In part, we are letting screens do it to us. “These superdevices in our pockets,” Sasse says, “allow our consciousness to leave the time and place where we actually live, the places where we break bread, the people who are living next door to us, the people that you can physically touch and hug, the small platoons of real community, and we allow our consciousness to go really far away.”

 

About more eternal things, he says: “I believe in the Resurrection, and I believe in a restoration of this world.” At the same time, he’s honest about the human condition. “Death is terrible. We should never sugarcoat it. It is not how things are meant to be. But it is great that death can be called the final enemy. It’s an enemy, but it’s a final enemy, and there will then be no more tears.”

 

Nonetheless, Sasse grieves for his family. He and his wife have a teenage boy at home and two girls out of the house. He will not be around for his son during some of his pivotal years, he knows, and he will not walk his daughters down the aisle should they marry. “I felt a real heaviness about that,” Sasse recalls, when he learned that he had cancer. “I’ve continued to feel a peace about the fact that death is something that we should hate. We should call it a wicked thief. And yet, it’s pretty good that you pass through the veil of tears one time and then there will be no more tears, there will be no more cancer.”

 

Easter is a celebration of the defeat of death. (We Yankees can’t even bother with a federal holiday the day after. That’s okay. God works with us.) This year, we have a living paschal icon in Sasse, who is living the mysteries of salvation. He says: “I’m pretty grateful that cancer is a stake against my delusional self-idolatry.” This suffering is, moreover, “sanctifying.” He adds: “I now, in the midst of this disease, know much more the truth of my finitude than I ever let myself believe in the past.”

 

As I write, Sasse is still alive. And his soul will forever be so. The bloody — and grace-filled — way he is dying is a mercy for all who look and listen: Christianity will save us from the powers of hell, which are too real when we have no sense of the meaning of this time that we have been given. Sasse doesn’t have the luxury of more time. And we shouldn’t assume that we do, either. Every single day — every moment — is an unearned gift. Especially in the U.S., where we enjoy freedoms that others would die for. Give thanks.

What Would It Have Cost For Israel To Maintain Its Popularity?

By Seth Mandel

Friday, April 10, 2026

 

There isn’t much question that Israel is facing an unusually tough challenge to its image in America. The question, then, is twofold: What should Israel do about it short of committing national suicide? And how much of this was inevitable?

 

These are not easy questions, and they will no doubt be the subject of much debate in the near term. But it’s worth noting how much October 7 complicates the picture.

 

Folks online are pointing to this latest Pew survey as a marker of Israel’s public-relations struggles in the U.S. And they are not wrong that it shows what they say it shows. But I found the dates listed in the survey to be interesting.

 

In 2022, according to Pew, Israel was viewed favorably by 55 percent of the country and unfavorably by 42 percent. Four years later, those numbers are 37 percent and 60 percent respectively. Israel is underwater. In 2025, the numbers were in the middle: 45 percent and 53 percent. The trend was clear.

 

Curious as to where 2023 sat in all this, however, I looked at Gallup’s running survey which included that year rather than jumping from 2022 to 2025.

 

Gallup polls a different question, asking respondents whether their sympathies lie with Israel or the Palestinians. Still, with that in mind, Gallup shows a similar trend—but widening the lens, we see Israel’s last peak at 60 percent in 2020, six years ago and three years before October 7.

 

The trend is downhill from there. In 2023, it was 54 percent, just slightly lower than it was in 2022. In 2024, it dropped three points to 51. If the surveys are taken the same time each year, then it was still early in 2024 and just months after October 7. Where was the so-called sympathy boost for Israel? The Palestinians carried out the most deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, using methods no less barbarous than the Nazis themselves on a wide scale, and took over 200 hostages—including a baby whom Hamas would kill with their bare hands and then mutilate the corpse.

 

So: What could Israel have done at this moment to prevent its continuing fall in U.S. public opinion? We have our answer: not hit back.

 

Well, sure, some people say, Israel could have carried out airstrikes without a ground invasion. But first of all, that wouldn’t have worked either, since the accusations of “genocide” began while Israel was still trying to capture or expel the remnants of the invading Palestinian forces. Israel carries out airstrikes in Lebanon and gets accused of genocide there, too. The accusation is held at the ready and fired at Israel the second it does something in response.

 

Second, the idea that Israel shouldn’t go in after the hostages is genuinely insane, not to mention the fact that Israel absolutely had to strike back hard and that Western leaders agreed from the outset that taking out Hamas was a legitimate goal.

 

But let’s go back to the hostages. Americans were among those taken by Hamas, and the American public was punishing Israel for going in to find them?

 

Now, it’s true that along the way, various media figures falsely reported claims of a famine in Gaza, of intentional starvation, of genocide, and whatever else they could think of. There’s no question this hurt Israel’s standing, but since Israel didn’t do those things, it is necessarily limited in what it could have done to prevent people lying about it.

 

Either way, the underlying point seems to be clear here: Israel could have stopped or slowed its popularity slide in the U.S. had it been willing to let Iran and its proxies get away with Nazi levels of violence against Jews.

 

Are there things Israel can do at the margins to improve its public image? Absolutely, and those will be enumerated and debated as this discussion continues. But I can’t shake the feeling that marginal effects have been the only ones on the table outside of Israel doing something suicidal.