31 Day Writing Challenge Day 15 - Grow a Set

Tonight I was relaxing in my recliner after an afternoon of napping, watching the movie Tears of the Sun starring Bruce Willis.  It’s really a great movie about following orders and doing what is the morally and ethically correct thing to do; something which men can relate to because we are forced to deal with the same issues on a daily basis. 

While it may not be disobeying a commanding officer’s orders and leading people through the African jungles with enemy soldiers on your six, we do face this moral dilemma more often than any of us would probably want to admit.

And as important a message as this is, it is not really what intrigued me the most as I re-watched this movie.  What really struck me tonight was the senseless and brutal violence which humans can exact on other humans.  There is a scene in the movie where rebels have come to a village, and are destroying it.  The thing which gets me is they didn’t just come in, kill everyone and burn the village down.  They took there time, making a day of it, raping women, killing children and torturing the men.

Where does this total lack of compassion come from?  I understand men needing to fight a battle against their enemy.  But I will never understand the utter disregard for life and the use of superiority over civilians.  It is thinking these humans are worth less than you are, and I totally do not understand this thought process.

It was Edmund Burke who said, “All it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing.”  I hope to be counted as one of the good men, not one of those who can put himself above others.  I want to be one of those good men who stand in the way of evil, regardless of the outcome.  I want to charge into danger to protect the innocent, not be the one who stands on the sidelines and gripes about how bad things have become.

There is a time when a man just has to stand up and say enough is enough!  The main problem with our society today is there isn’t a lot of room for men to do this.  We are looked on as mindless oafs who just want to go around beating our chests and grunting, all while holding a turkey leg and chasing girls.  And the biggest problem about this is so many men have bought into this ideal of what it means to be a man.

Men should be men, and not worry about how society is going to judge them.  I liked it when John Wayne movies were still popular, when guys would open doors for a lady and wouldn’t put up with it if someone said a cuss word in front of a lady.  Yeah, men back in the day may have not been perfect, but nowadays you don’t see a lot of men, you see a lot of boys in men’s bodies.

I read something the other day which said, “In 1944 eighteen year old boys were storming the beaches of Normandy.  Today, eighteen year old boys are looking for safe places, and getting their feelings hurt because words are mean.”  What have we allowed ourselves to become?  A bunch of limp wristed namby pambies, who are more concerned with their own welfare instead of the welfare of others. 

What I think needs to happen more than anything in today’s society is it’s time for all of these boys to quit being women and grow a set of balls and act like men; real men, those guys who go out and take care of business.  Seeing to it their needs fall second to the needs of those around them.  And when we see injustice being done, don’t just tweet about it, actually do something about it.