Who better to write a book called “The Man Book” than BlazeTV host Nick Freitas, a former Green Beret and Virginia legislator, husband, father, and — let’s be honest — an undeniably rugged, manly looking guy?Freitas has built a huge social-media audience with dry humor and blunt observations about politics, culture, marriage, and family. His Instagram following recently crossed 2 million. More important, he offers young men an alternative to influencers peddling a hollow parody of masculinity built on conquest, self-promotion, and obsessive image management.National renewal begins when men accept that calling at home and live in a way their wives, sons, and daughters can trust.I have argued for years that real masculinity is not toxic. The one-dimensional brute whom the left beats like a cheap piñata is a cartoon caricature. Toughness, discipline, and endurance can make a man a better father, husband, and protector.Freitas’ book makes much the same case. Published this spring, “The Man Book” — subtitled “A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done” — reached the New York Times bestseller list and peaked at No. 6.Appearing recently on A.J. Rice’s “Dangerous Laughter” podcast, Freitas said national renewal begins with men who accept responsibility, build strong families, and transmit faith, character, and durable values to the next generation.“I am 100% absolutely convinced that the way you're going to save the country and the way you're going to save our politics is through godly families that are strong, that are cohesive, and that are transferring their values to future generations,” Freitas said.His political career grew out of frustration. Freitas served two combat tours in Iraq and later said he became fed up with political leaders imposing rules of engagement that, in his view, constrained warfighters in the field. After leaving the Army, he entered politics and served in the Virginia House of Delegates from 2016 to 2026.“The real problem,” Freitas told Rice, “was our side had kind of given up making the argument on what we believed and why. And to the extent that we did make the argument, it was always kind of this stuffy, overly academic, esoteric argument, instead of actually just talking to people and maybe — God forbid — adding a little bit of sense of humor and sarcasm to it.”That direct style eventually migrated from politics to questions about marriage, fatherhood, Christianity, and manhood. The questions Freitas received changed too. Young men wanted to know how to become good husbands and fathers. Young women wanted to know how to recognize one.RELATED: Before you ask us to trust again AscentXmedia/iStock/Getty ImagesThe central distinction in “The Man Book” is between masculinity and its counterfeits. A good man is neither passive nor recklessly aggressive. He is strong but disciplined, capable but humble, protective without being domineering, and willing to use force when necessary without making violence an identity.Freitas argues that progressive politics has alienated many men by treating qualities they naturally want to cultivate — strength, courage, competitiveness, competence — as suspect. Attempts to manufacture a politically acceptable masculinity therefore ring false. Aggression can imitate strength, but violence without self-command, responsibility, and moral purpose is not manhood.“There’s no pinnacle that you achieve with respect to manhood,” Freitas said. “There’s just things that you go through and experiences that you develop and character that you develop that helps shape you and turn you into the sort of a godly man that other men want to follow and look up to and that your son can follow and look up to.”That formation requires doing hard things. Freitas encourages fathers to create rites of passage and even to give their sons what he calls a “violent hobby” — learning to shoot or fight, for example — not as an invitation to recklessness but as a way to develop competence, courage, and self-command.“The problem is that when you get to a critical mass where there’s enough men that don’t know how to do the difficult things,” he said, “you end up in a society where you remember very quickly why you needed men that could do difficult things.”Theodore Roosevelt made much the same argument more than a century ago: “We need ... the iron qualities that must go with true manhood,” including resolution, courage, indomitable will, and the ability to do “the rough work that must always be done.” Roosevelt immediately added that strength without moral purpose becomes little more than force and cunning.“You’ll be your son’s hero until you prove to him that you shouldn’t be,” Frietas told Rice. A boy’s natural admiration gives his father an extraordinary advantage — and an obligation to become worthy of imitation.“Part of being a man is doing hard things that hurt — that may make you tired, that may make you frustrated — and developing the emotional and intellectual maturity and the intestinal fortitude to push through in order to keep your word and take care of the people that you love.”RELATED: The Christian counterculture is already here RyanJLane/iStock/Getty ImagesThat means bringing sons into real work instead of relegating them to passive entertainment. The invitation tells a boy he belongs and that his contribution has value.“You will never understand how important it is to your little boy to be included on projects dad is doing,” Freitas said.A father’s example matters just as much to daughters. His strength, honesty, presence, and affection establish their earliest standard for honorable manhood. “Understand that you are the first vision to your daughters of what a good man looks like,” Freitas said.That is where the interview moves beyond a book about masculine habits. Its larger claim is that politics reflects culture, and culture is formed most powerfully in families. Strong nations require men who can govern themselves, do difficult things, protect others, and transmit faith and virtue to their children.National renewal begins when men accept that calling at home and live in a way their wives, sons, and daughters can trust.
