Home
/
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
/
Trump is the lewd American male
Trump is the lewd American male
Feb 11, 2026 9:03 AM

The implosion of Donald Trump’s campaign is a reminder that at the end of the day, character matters more than professional success or mitments. At the beginning of the second presidential debate Donald apologized again for the ments recorded during a private discussion with Billy Bush in 2005 in which he boasted of romantically pursuing married women and groping others. In his apology, he referred to that discussion as regular “locker room talk.” In other words, Trump believes he is just a normal locker room guy. If lewdness is normative, America is in deep trouble. But should we besurprised?

What I found especiallyinteresting was the attempt to contextualize ments as something we might expect from younger men but not from older men. For example, during the October 8 edition of The News Hour on PBS, Roger Simon, Chief Political Columnist for mented that ments emanate from “frat boy culture” before adding, “but he’s no longer a frat boy.” Simon may have uncovered the root of the problem. Young men do see moral virtue celebrated as a young man’s norm.

For example, teenage and college male fraternity life has been depicted in the exact terms that Trump used in movies as old as Animal House (1978) or Porky’s (1981), and even as recent as the series of Neighbors films starring Zac Efron, in 2014 and 2016 respectively. This “frat boy” culture was evident in the political scandals of President Bill Clinton and Congressman Anthony Wiener.

The absence of any celebration of moral virtue for young men has long been a problem in “frat boy” culture. In 1996, A. Ayres Boswell and Joan Z. Spade published the landmark article, “Fraternities and Collegiate Rape Culture: Why Are Some Fraternities More Dangerous Places for Women?” in the journal Gender and Society. In the article, Boswell and Spade summarize what we have known for decades about much of university Greek life—namely, that fraternities turn a blind-eye to rape, encourage sexual assault in group settings, consume higher doses of alcohol and drugs, and place a higher value on social life in general. In fact, for many the practice of sexual aggression is learned behavior in Greek college life in ways absent prior to enrolling in college. These trends have been repeatedly confirmed in research data. According to Department of Education data analyzed by NPR, the number of ‘forcible rapes’ reported at four-year colleges increased 49 percent between 2008 and 2012 and continues to rise. In other words, we are currently in the midst of a campus sexual assault crisis.

Why has this happened? Because America has all but abandoned the celebration and promotion of moral virtue and character in raising boys to men in the public square. Character forming organizations like the Boy Scouts, for example, no longer pass the “cool” test after 9th grade. To make matters worse, today’s future male leaders are far less likely to receive regular, sustained, life-long moral formation in the church than their fathers and grandfathers. Instead, it seems that athletic, academic, and financial success are the real cardinal virtues we point men to. As a result, we should expect to have more and more financially successful men who have the moral character of men like Donald Trump.

As long as excelling in moral virtue is disconnected from what it means to be successful in the marketplace and politics, America’s teens and college students will continue to disappoint us when they assume positions of influence and authority. Markets and moral virtue cannot exist apart from one another. In fact, “frat boy culture” should see everything happening to Donald Trump—the man that he is, the attributes that he displays, his arrogant narcissism—and seek radical change. Our country needs future leaders who we can be proud of fortheir upstanding moral character.

Comments
Welcome to mreligion comments! Please keep conversations courteous and on-topic. To fosterproductive and respectful conversations, you may see comments from our Community Managers.
Sign up to post
Sort by
Show More Comments
RELIGION & LIBERTY ONLINE
‘Mission Accomplished’?
“The mission in Iraq may be on the way to being plished…” So says Bartle Bull in Prospect magazine (HT). Maybe we should start thinking of the first declaration of “mission plished” (May 1, 2003, pictured above) as a sort of D-Day, and the imminent(?) “mission plished” as a sort of V-E Day (that’s also mon analogy used to describe the “already/not yet” dynamic of the times between Christ’s first and ing.) See also, “Democracy in Iraq.” ...
Islam’s Quiet Revolution
Society is changing as economic freedom and diversification gradually creep into the Middle East. Dr. Samuel Gregg, director of research at the Acton Institute, explores the effects of free trade on nations including Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates and, in turn, the effect those nations are having on their neighbors. The diversification of economies, notably the development of new products and services for export, allows nations to grow out of reliance on oil production as the main...
Saving Secular Society
I used to have more regular and extensive interaction with people whose worldviews were starkly different from my own. That’s not so much the case anymore, so it’s good to be reminded occasionally that some people live in different worlds that are sometimes hard prehend. That happened today when I came across an announcment for a conference, “The Secular Society and Its Enemies.” In the strange universe in which the conference’s organizers live, “The world is finally waking up to...
Prison for Paul Jacob?
For those of you following the case of Paul Jacob, here’s a link to John Powers’ column in the Chicago Daily Observer. For those of you catching up: Jacob, the Senior Advisor at the Sam Adams Foundation, has been indicted on charges related to his work leading a petition drive in Oklahoma. Jacob is charged with a felony of conspiring against the State of Oklahoma in collecting signatures in favor of a Taxpayer Bill of Rights by an out of...
As if by an Occult Hand…
Freemasonry has been deemed to be worthy of protection under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA). Does this mean that freemasonry is a “religion”? A California court of appeals statement said in part, “We see no principled way to distinguish the earnest pursuit of these (Masonic) principles … from more widely acknowledged modes of religious exercise.” That’s a stance the Christian Reformed Church would probably agree with. As I’ve noted before, the CRC’s position on...
Un-Christian Retributiveness
How’s this for an expression of un-Christian retributiveness? If God wants to make my plete, he will grant me the joy of seeing some six or seven of my enemies hanging from those trees. Before their death I shall, moved in my heart, forgive them all the wrong they did me in their lifetime. One must, it is true, forgive one’s enemies – but not before they have been hanged. –Heinrich Heine, Gedanken und Überlegungen; quoted and translated in Freud,...
Southerners Lead Church & Religious Giving
I remember riding back to seminary in Kentucky a couple years ago with a young lady and we pulled off the expressway to grab a bite. As we were getting ready to pay our bill, the young lady, who happened to be from Mississippi, said, “God is telling me to give 100 dollars to this young man behind the counter of this restaurant. ” Needless to say this young man was thankful of God’s decision to speak through the young...
Jayabalan on Radio Free Europe: The Pope and Islam
Kishore Jayabalan, director of Acton’s Rome office, was interviewed by Radio Free Europe’s Jeffrey Donovan today about the Vatican’s reaction to a letter sent this week to Pope Benedict XVI by more than 130 Muslim leaders. The letter urged peace and understanding between the faiths, warning that the “world’s survival” could be at stake. The audio of the interview is not available online. What follows is a transcript of ments to Donovan: “The Vatican is actually ment until it’s had...
Global Warming Consensus Alert: Gore Snubbed by Nobel Committee!
In a stunning turn of events, the Nobel Committee failed to award a Nobel Prize for Science to Al Gore, instead opting to present him with the Peace Prize despite the scant evidence that his recent climate change-related activities have contributed anything to the advancement of global peace. The award can be seen as something of a consolation prize for Gore, however, as in recent days even the British judicial system has ruled that “An Inconvenient Truth,” Gore’s global warming...
The Nobel Peace Prize has lost all pretense to objectivity
Truth is definitely stranger than fiction, with Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change sharing this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. In recent years, the Nobel Committee has shown itself more and more willing to name the Peace prize for political reasons. In awarding Al Gore and the IPCC the Peace Prize, however, the Nobel Committee has lost all pretense to objectivity. Not only are Al Gore and the IPCC shamelessly partisan choices, but also irrelevant ones. Whatever one...
Related Classification
Copyright 2023-2026 - www.mreligion.com All Rights Reserved