One of the valuable things about reading older literature is the way it forces us to question certain assumptions we hold as “modern” Westerners. Not just assumptions about “democracy” and whatever else you learned in AP government but about the very essence of our human nature.
A hero for our time
For me, a prime example of this is Edgar Rice Burroughs’ “John Carter of Mars” series. Reading these books is like a splash of cold water in a cultural desert. In them, you meet a character unlike any current male protagonist.
What the dissident right desperately needs is to cultivate in itself a spirit of joy and a zest for life. It is this energy that can bring about true change, not the moping and whining you see so often on X.
While it’s notable that John Carter is a Confederate soldier portrayed in a supremely sympathetic light, there’s more to the character than his political incorrectness. He also brings with him a particular brand of masculinity that has been all but forgotten in today’s discourse. To illustrate my point, here are a few choice quotes from the 1912 installment “A Princess of Mars”:
Fear is a relative term and so I can only measure my feelings at that time by what I had experienced in previous positions of danger and by those that I have passed through since; but I can say without shame that if the sensations I endured during the next few minutes were fear, then may God help the coward, for cowardice is of a surety its own punishment.
I have ever been prone to seek adventure and to investigate and experiment where wiser men would have left well enough alone.
I do not believe that I am made of the stuff which constitutes heroes, because, in all of the hundreds of instances that my voluntary acts have placed me face to face with death, I cannot recall a single one where any alternative step to that I took occurred to me until many hours later.
A forgotten archetype
John Carter is a chivalric ideal, a man who embodies all the masculine virtues in their perfect Aristotelian mean — or at least comes close to it. Duty, but not weakness. Strength, but not cruelty. Adventure, but not recklessness.
He’s a man who knows what he wants and goes after it with every ounce of his being. He does not shirk from battle; in fact, he embraces it. Battle is in his blood, and he’s called to it as his vocation. He’s a leader of men, at all times honorable and fair, ingenious and tenacious in his pursuit of victory. You’d rather have no one else by your side and rather anyone else against you. He is a hero and a true king, an archetype that has been lost in today’s culture.
When was the last time you saw a man portrayed so favorably on television or in a movie? When was the last time you saw a man like John Carter?
Away with ‘flawed’ protagonists
I can tell you this, it certainly wasn’t in the 2012 “John Carter” movie (despite the title, actually an adaptation of “Princess of Mars.”)
Now, I don’t want to rag too harshly on this movie as it at least succeeds in portraying Carter as the hero. But it does insist on making him “flawed” in a way that is typical of the last few decades of pop culture. We’ve swung from strong men being strong men to weak men becoming strong men and finally to weak men being weak men.
You can see this everywhere, even in Peter Jackson’s acclaimed “Lord of the Rings” movies. Tolkien’s Aragorn is far from a reluctant hero in the books. He doesn’t second-guess himself. But for some reason, Hollywood writers in 2001 could not conceive of such confidence. And it has only gotten worse since then.
It’s easy to trace the way masculinity has been increasingly portrayed as tragic in some way. When men are not outright evil, they’re to be demeaned as the fundamentally lesser of the two sexes. It is always the man who is less capable, less aware, less actualized. If the man is loving, he must also be bumbling and weak. If he’s ambitious, he must also be cruel and tyrannical. And if he is genuinely well-meaning, he must be tragically removed and replaced by his superior feminine clone.
Gone are the days when fathers raised sons. Now they must raise their daughters as sons, and everyone is left unhappier as a result.
Choose vitality
Why so much bleakness? As if the constant stream of bad news weren’t enough, our storytellers constantly amplify our worst aspects, offering the most cynical, hopeless, and demoralizing media available to human imagination.
We are so inundated with failure and heartbreak that it’s easy to forget that we have the power to reject it. We don’t have to have male protagonists who are left biting their nails until adventure takes them anyway. We don’t have to have incompetent fathers drinking themselves to an early grave. And we certainly don’t have to have eunuchs for sons who roll over on their bellies and wait for the girlboss to arrive.
Dissident literature, if it is to stand against left-wing art, must be uplifting to the soul — and especially to this masculine spirit. It must awaken the heroism in men again. And while this does not mean all men are called to be warriors, all men are called to be as virtuous as John Carter, to live out whatever his vocation may be with that same vitality.
While I do have a few tiny quibbles, @LastThings4 is fundamentally correct in his assertion that what the dissident right needs is not a Dostoevsky-esque, 800-page manuscript of depression and nihilism. If anyone wants that, they can just go read Dostoevsky.
Something worth fighting for
What the dissident right desperately needs is to cultivate in itself a spirit of joy and a zest for life. It is this energy that can bring about true change, not the moping and whining you see so often on X.
It is only in celebration of the good things — no matter how small they are — that you will find men willing to fight. It is only in cultivating a spirit of hope that you will find young men who are willing to take a stand for it. No one fights for a nihilistic cause that can offer only varying degrees of defeat.
In the Old Testament, the Ark of Covenant was stolen by the Philistines, and they made a mockery of it, placing it before their own heathen god in victory over Israel. All seemed lost. Then, at the last possible moment, God overthrew the pagan idol and the Ark was returned safely to Jerusalem. Upon the Ark’s arrival, King David was so overcome with joy that he began leaping and dancing in the procession, going so far as to make a fool of himself with his outburst.
It is with that same overflowing joy that men must begin to live again — if they are to live at all.
A version of this essay previously appeared on Isaac Young’s Substack, Trantor Publishing.