Esolen highlights man’s undaunted agency — a spirit that seeks difficult action — an agency that acts to serve others at cost to self: “what a man wants and what a man must do are seldom the same” (16). Heavy is the crown for which feminism gropes. Much of man’s thankless labor “demands a constant self-denial, a self-effacement. It says to the men what the battle says to a soldier: ‘You are not the central thing. This work is. Do it’” (38). A man must not just be physically strong but strong of spirit to rise to the challenge and needs of family and society. “I mean here to reject every philosophy that would cut the sinews of man” (49). Wryly, Esolen observes, “The world cannot run on courses in sociology or on politically enlightened novels. They do not think, Who’s going to dig that well?” (41, emphasis original). Good men gladly grab the shovel.

Editor’s note: The following essay appears in the Fall 2023 issue of Eikon.

Anthony Esolen. No Apologies: Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 2022.

As a university student, I remember stumbling upon an article in The Atlantic, “The End of Men.” Women now surpassed men in the workforce — to the betterment of society? Were women better adapted to a post-industrial workplace than men? Had we finally arrived at the end of men — ruling, leading, providing? That was over a decade ago.

Into a world further adrift in confusion, Anthony Esolen has written a book he himself wished need not be written. But write it, he did. And read it, we should. The title contains the tone — No Apologies — the subtitle, a thesis — Why Civilization Depends on the Strength of Men. Esolen attempts to convince us of what was once obvious: that this world does not run by magic but is built and sustained by the might of men living happily as men. 

What if we have come to the end of men? “It would mean our end, our death; imagine a great city, rotting at the core, with no one strong enough to shore up the ruins” (2). Six chapters chisel and sculpt man as civilization has needed him — then and now. And this against that ideology whose desire is contrary to the man: Feminism and all her sickly offspring. 

Man as He Was Fashioned

What kind of man does Esolen place before us? 

First, Esolen chisels the muscles of this gritty warrior. He displays the forte, the force, the brawn of the taller, faster, thicker, action-craving man. God created the world, man builds it, which we can easily forget in a post-industrial, technically-advanced world. “Every road you see was laid by men. Every house, church, every school, every factory, every public building was raised by the hands of men. You eat with a stainless-steel fork; the iron was mined and the carbon was quarried by men. . . . The whole of your civilization rests upon the shoulders of men who have done work that most people will not do — and that the physically weaker sex could not have done” (x). 

Feminism then, to Esolen, is an ungrateful fantasy, attempting to expel man from the city he built. She scribes her scathing treaties within a well-heated, warmly-lit world built (and sustained) by men. The oil in her pen, the paper upon her desk, the plastic in her Starbucks cup, the electricity in her computer all join voice together to refute her — but she cannot hear them. And neither, often, can we. So with his engineer’s mind, Esolen examines the civilization we take for granted and points repeatedly to the small font scribbled on the infrastructure: “Made by Men.” Not by angels or elves, not by women or children, but by men — forgettable, forgotten, and too often flattened. No apologies, then, for men holding the plough to war with the earth — no one else can.

But the strength of men is not the only trait vital to our civilization.

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