National Review Father's Day Issue, Why We Need Men, and How to Make Them:

Robert P. George (McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University; Nootbaar Honorary Distinguished Professor of Law, Pepperdine Caruso Law School; Google Scholar), Running into the Fire: That's What Men Do:

When I was twelve years old, I watched my father rush into a burning building to rescue a paraplegic man in a wheelchair. …

My father found the man in the kitchen, on the floor. The blast had blown him out of his wheelchair. He was over six feet and probably weighed 200 pounds. My father was 5’ 9” and weighed about 165. But Dad somehow lifted the man — deadweight — and carried him out of the house. He was injured but alive. In the meantime, my mother had called the local volunteer fire department and the firemen and medics soon arrived.

My dad, a World War II veteran who had served valiantly in Normandy and Brittany, didn’t think twice, despite my grandmother’s pleas, about whether to risk his life by rushing into that burning building. He certainly didn’t consider whether he should go or, instead, ask my mother to do it. It was, as far as he was concerned, a man’s job, and, since he was capable of doing it, it was his duty. I have no doubt that my mother, who is a brave woman, would have attempted the rescue had my father not been there or had he himself been disabled. (She probably would not have succeeded — she would not have been able to lift and carry the man. And she might have lost her life in attempting the rescue.) But since my father was there, she did not consider it a question whether he or she should go. Of course he would be the one. He was the man.

I doubt that the situation would have been different in any culture known to human history.

So, tell me, what do you think? Should my mom and dad have flipped a coin to decide who should go? Or should it have been my dad, but only because he was bigger and stronger and therefore more likely to succeed? I assure you, my parents didn’t pause to think that out. My father went because he was the man. My mother did not volunteer to go in his place because . . . he was the man.

Is the lesson to be drawn from this true story that my parents are sexists or victims of a culture of sexism? Is the attitude they shared about the man’s role in these circumstances (viz., to rush into the burning building to rescue the paraplegic man) and the woman’s role (viz., to gather, protect, and comfort the children) a bad attitude? Is it a vestige of the benighted days of male supremacy and “the patriarchy”? …

My father was always a protector, and he brought up his five sons to be protectors. It was not just that we were taught to be protective of girls; nor did he teach us to view girls as weak or as “damsels in distress”; we were taught, and expected, to go to the aid of anyone — boy or girl, young person or older person — who needed protection. My father — and my mother — were not satisfied simply that we not be bullies or not participate in bullying when others were doing it. We were to confront the bullies, no matter who the victim of the bullying was. Even if it wasn’t a matter of bullying, if another kid was being neglected or made to feel inferior or small or excluded, we were to very conspicuously befriend him and lift him up.

By precept and, as the story of the burning house shows, by example, my father was constantly shaping our character and forming us to be protectors. It was all about channeling thumos. His rambunctious gang of boys, growing up in the hills of West Virginia, were full of spirit, and he wanted that spirit to be directed properly. He knew that the best way to prevent a boy from becoming a predator is to raise him to be a protector.

• Jim Geraghty (National Review), Notes on Fatherhood
• Rikki Schlott (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression), Twenty Rules for Dating
• Michael Brendan Dougherty (National Review), Let Go the Smartphone
• Hadley Heath Manning (Independent Women’s Forum), Boys Need a Pathway to Manhood
• Madeleine Kearns (Independent Women’s Forum), Masculinity as Prison or Escape
• Katherine Howell (National Review), The Gift of a Good Father

My Father's Day reflections:  A Bittersweet Father's Day 

More Father's Day reflections:

• Erick Erickson, Father's Matter
• Mike Kerrigan, Father's Day And The Prodigal Son
• New York Times Op-Ed (Zach Gottlieb), My Sperm Donor Father Lives in the Double Helix of My Cells, but I Do Not Know Him
• NPR, 8 Life Lessons We Can Learn From Our Dads
• Washington Post Op-Ed (Cassandra Good), As a Dad, George Washington Gave Love Advice and Fretted Over Grades
• Washington Post Op-Ed (Alyssa Rosenberg), This Father’s Day, Stop Treating Dads as Dopes, Deadbeats or Icebergs
• Washington Post Op-Ed (Paul Hendrickson), To His Final Days, My Father Always Knew How to Pull Off the Landing
• Washington Post Op-Ed (Jaswinder Bolina), What a Dad Wearing a Brash Hat Taught Me About Fear and Fatherhood

If you would like to receive a weekly email each Sunday with links to the faith posts on TaxProf Blog, email me here.