Kansas City Chiefs star kicker Harrison Butker shocked our ruling class earlier this month with his commencement speech at Benedictine University, a small Catholic liberal arts college in Atchison, Kansas. Instead of speaking about the LGBT community and its struggles, or the continued oppression imposed on procreative people by the “patriarchy,” Butker offered this inspiring advice to the female graduates: “Some of you may go on to have successful careers in the world, but for most of you, what you’re most excited about is marriage and the children that will come.”
At that point, tears began to form in Butker’s eyes as he continued to explain, “My beautiful wife, Isabel, will be the first to say that her life truly began when she found her calling as a wife and mother. I am the man that I am standing here on this stage today because of a wife who is dedicated to her calling.”
Lip-service compromise with the other side should not even be considered.
Our awakened masters, upon hearing of this speech, Enraged. Soon, a flood of negative letters arrived at the offices of the professional football team that Butker had helped win a world championship, with critics calling for his firing. The Democratic mayor of Kansas City, hoping to please his feminist supporters, blasted his commencement speech. And the Harpies The View host denounced the “radical religious cult” that led Butker to express blasphemous views, and Taylor Swift launched into a furious tirade against Butker for disrespectfully quoting lyrics from one of her songs.
These critics were right in that Butker is, at least implicitly, challenging the oppressive woke theocracy in which ordinary Americans are now forced to live. Every human institution that was until recently considered beneficial and natural, such as clear gender roles for men and women and the nuclear family, is now under attack. And failure to denounce these institutions in the name of fairness, diversity, and the fight against patriarchy will bring swift retaliation from the media, the administrative state, and corporate capitalists.
One striking aspect of the response to Butker’s defense of traditional marriage and motherhood has been the mostly lukewarm defense it has received from the conservative establishment. The main defense arguments are as follows: Butker is not saying women can’t work; he is simply saying career women should work. Maybe you want something morefor example, family life and Mother’s Day cards. Kirsten Fleming of the New York Post asks why marriage and parenting should be downplayed as complementary professions.
Also, Butker spoke at a conservative Catholic university somewhere in Flyover County, and the invitees were reportedly expecting a sermon like the one he delivered. And finally, Butker was simply stating his opinion, and according to supposedly conservative coach Andy Reid, “We So that everyone has a say.” This makes Reid’s team “a microcosm of America.”
The problem with these defenses is that they are patently inadequate. They are a timid counterattack against the woke left, which in a matter of decades (or even years) has waged war on every stabilizing institution of society that we once took for granted. Butker’s statements should not be carefully decontextualized or glossed over; they should be unconditionally defended as something that all sane people believed in until the woke started poisoning our politics and culture. Lip-service compromise with the other side should not even be considered.
The oft-made point is true that Butker was not dismissive of career opportunities for women. But he also suggested that a woman’s domestic role was essential to a functioning human society. Butker also suggested that this role was a divinely ordained calling for the benefit of humanity. For most of my life, the idea that men and women worked together in different capacities to create and maintain a family was accepted. That began to change when former communist Betty Friedan expanded her hoax campaign to destroy the family by making women believe they were slaves as mothers and wives.
It’s too late now to stand with Butker. A congregation of nuns affiliated with a Benedictine university He slammed the Speaker for his harsh anti-abortion and DEI comments.
Self-described conservatives have tried to “explain” Butker’s message in a way that trivializes it, and in the process, they have avoided attacking the left with an appropriate level of combativeness. This tactic has often resulted in the conservative establishment making more and more concessions to its opponents. To truly defend Butker requires defending what until recently was a normal view of society. And not softening the impact of his words is the only way to counter a powerful and determined opponent.
