Episode 20

September 02, 2026

01:14:11

America Is Running Out of Strong Men | Green Beret Nick Freitas with A.J. Rice

Hosted by

A.J. RICE

Show Notes

What does it take to turn a boy into a capable man?

Green Beret veteran, former Virginia legislator, Making the Argument host, and New York Times bestselling author Nick Freitas joins A.J. Rice on Dangerous Laughter for an in-depth conversation about masculinity, fatherhood, marriage, faith, family, discipline, and personal responsibility.

Freitas is the author of The Manbook: A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done.

He argues that American culture has become increasingly uncomfortable asking difficult things of young men, even though overcoming challenges is one of the ways boys develop confidence, competence, resilience, and character.

Nick explains why boys benefit from rites of passage, physical challenges, responsibility, strong male role models, and fathers who live the values they hope their children will adopt.

Topics include:

  • America’s masculinity crisis
    • Raising boys to become capable men
    • Rites of passage
    • Physical challenges
    • Personal responsibility
    • Discipline and resilience
    • Fatherhood
    • Father-son relationships
    • Father-daughter relationships
    • Marriage and loyalty
    • Biblical masculinity
    • Faith and family
    • Traditional family values
    • Men and modern politics
    • The political divide between men and women
    • Political pandering
    • Nick Freitas and the Green Berets
    • Making the Argument
    • The Manbook
    • Donald Trump and the Trump family
    • Harry Sisson
    • Don Lemon
    • Stephen Miller
    • Humor, marriage, bourbon, and family life

Nick also explains how fathers can establish lifelong trust with their daughters and why he believes strong marriages require an extraordinary level of loyalty between husband and wife.

The conversation examines the difference between strength and aggression, leadership and domination, confidence and arrogance.

The Bigger Question

What experiences should every boy have before he can truly consider himself a man?

Freitas argues that capable men are not produced simply by getting older.

They are formed through responsibility, adversity, discipline, service, faith, family, and the experience of discovering that they can accomplish difficult things.

Subscribe to Dangerous Laughter with A.J. Rice for conversations about politics, culture, family, faith, free speech, media, comedy, and the ideas reshaping American life.

NICK FREITAS

The Manbook: A Point-by-Point Guide to Sucking It Up and Getting the Job Done

HarperCollins:
https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-manbook-nick-freitas

Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0FHHNCYP2

Website:
https://nickjfreitas.com/

Official Links:
https://linktr.ee/NickFreitas

YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/@Nickjfreitas

X:
https://x.com/nickjfreitas

Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/nickjfreitas/

Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/NickFreitasVA

TikTok:
https://www.tiktok.com/@nickjfreitas3.0

Making the Argument:
https://open.spotify.com/show/0PGCCatgQGZcatLmNSQ9oz

A.J. RICE / DANGEROUS LAUGHTER

Dangerous Laughter:
https://dangerouslaughter.com/

Podcast:
https://dangerous-laughter.castos.com/

A.J. Rice:
https://ajricepr.com/

X:
https://x.com/PubliusPR

BOOKS BY A.J. RICE

The Curse of the Bearded Lady
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Curse-of-the-Bearded-Lady/A-J-Rice/Publius-Prose/9798895656082

The White Privilege Album
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-White-Privilege-Album/A-J-Rice/Publius-Prose/9798888455586

The Woking Dead
https://posthillpress.com/book/the-woking-dead-how-societys-vogue-virus-destroys-our-culture-1-publius-prose

 

View Full Transcript

Episode Transcript

[00:00:01] Speaker A: Dangerous laughter. Laughter. Dangerous. Dangerous laughter. Dangerous laughter. Danger. Laughter. Sam. [00:00:52] Speaker B: Let. Day 8. The Emergency Destruct system is now activated. The option to override detonation procedure has now expired. Ship will automatically destruct in E minus one minute. Three, two, one. Another episode here of dangerous laughter. Today we're going to do a little danger, a little laughter. Always remember, there is no substitute for perfectly timed derision. And I would be remiss. I just have to tell you guys, and you guys are blowing me up, too, through social media, as if I. If this is my fall. You all know that I'm a Philadelphia sports fan and I'm getting text messages from the White House staff, from people on Capitol Hill, sports writers, people that the PR firm represents, as if this is my fault. But it appears the Philadelphia 76ers, my hometown team, inventor of the Marine Corps. My next guest might not like that, but no, he sure he loves Marines. Inventor of America is now the sole owner of Crybaby LeBron James. We got Crybaby LeBron James coming to Philadelphia. Took a league minimum, so he took a pay cut. What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna load up, you know, a station wagon and I'm gonna buy a pallet of these, okay? The man book, my next guest. And I'm gonna drive the man book a palette of it to Sixers HQ there in Philadelphia and drop it off. So we look when LeBron, when crybaby LeBron gets there, he gets copies, multiple copies of my next guest book. Look, my next dangerous guest was my former neighbor until recently. He's a husband, a father, a soldier, former Virginia legislator. He's the host of the Making the Argument podcast. You know, I only. I only got to vote once for Nick, my next guest, when we almost stopped Abigail Spanberger from ruining Virginia there. I mean, he. He was the one that got the closest. You know, today Nick's going to teach me how to win an argument with my Scotch Irish wife. So I look forward to that. His new book, a New York Times bestseller, the Man Book. Send us some copies of LeBron. A point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done. You hear that, Mr. James? Ladies and gentlemen, I give you a no nonsense patriot and my buddy Cameron Hamilton's favorite, Green Beret, Nick Freightas, everybody. The man book for LeBron. What do you think, Nick? You think he could use a copy? [00:03:57] Speaker A: I'd send him the audiobook instead. You know, the. Yeah, because LeBron's gonna get that book and he's gonna be like, there's no coloring. Like, I don't, I don't know that it's gonna be his jive. So I, I go with the audiobook that might be. [00:04:11] Speaker B: LeBron is one of the last that went directly from high school to the pros. Can't do that anymore. You gotta go pretend to go to school for a year and then you can join the NBA. You do the one and done rule and you can get paid now to do the one and done rule. [00:04:26] Speaker A: Yeah, well, the university, the unit. The one thing that I learned being in the Virginia legislature, whenever it came to higher ed is higher ed always gets their cut. [00:04:34] Speaker B: They. They do. They do indeed. And now they're. There's a portal and they're going here and there and Auburn can bid against Ohio State and all the rest of it. You know, it's funny when you think about athletes, soldiers, politicians, just regular dads at Walmart or Target or wherever. You know, the, the type of athlete that we now have in the 21st century. Very different. And Nick and I are around the same age, although I look like his son. You know, it's just a different type of athlete out there. Every once in a while. You get like a throwback guy. Yeah, it's like a Charlie Hustle type guy. You get him in hockey, you get him in football, sometimes baseball players. You know, I, I was always a dirtbag baseball player. You know, I, My, my grandmom used to say. My German grandma used to say if my uniform wasn't dirty, that I wasn't doing something right when I came home. Yeah. So, I mean, that's raised right. Yeah. Times have changed. And that's why you wrote this book. Because, I mean, look, before we totally dig into it and you know, look, the audience, you know, I think my audience in particular, they know who you are, but I think we should give them at least a little bit of the Nick Freitas origin story. [00:05:49] Speaker A: Well, I, I mean, I met my. Met my wife in high school, so we were high school sweethearts and I wanted, I originally wanted to go to West Point, but I wasn't smart enough. And so by. It was funny. My good friend of mine, we both want to go to West Point together. He paid attention in school and I found other things to do. And so he got in, but I decided to enlist. So I went 82nd Airborne Division. And when I was in there, when I was in the 82nd Airborne, proposed to my wife. We got married, went to the 25th Infantry Division for a while. When we got to the 25th Infantry Division of Hawaii. That's when 911 kicked off. And so I volunteered for Army Special Forces, better known as Green Berets. Did a couple of combat tours over in Iraq with 1st Special Forces Group. After my second tour, I got a little bit. I got a little bit jaded. I'm not going to lie. I loved being in Special Forces, but I got really frustrated with the politics of the war and feeling like we were in this situation where, you know, we had our hands constantly tied behind our back. Rules of engagement were getting a little bit ridiculous. There was the internal politics of the military. And I remember telling my sergeant major at the time, it was really, really great guy. His name was Jerry. And I said, look, the problem's not guys in uniform. The problem is primarily guys in suits. And so I got into the working in the defense space with the idea that I wanted to one day impact policy. And that led me to eventually running for office in the State House. As you mentioned before, I did run for Congress against Abigail Spamberger. We got close, we got close. But yeah, so I served for 10 years in the Virginia General assembly in the State House. And that's really what led me into what I do now. Because one of the biggest things I realized was that one, you did have a lot of good Republicans that were strong and trying to fight, but you had a lot of bad ones as well. And the bad ones were constantly giving in to the media narrative. And I'll never forget this time, and it was 2018, where the Democrats were just being horrendous to us, like, you know, calling us segregationists and sexist and bigots. And you know why? Because we didn't want to take everyone's guns away. And I gave a floor speech and the floor speech caused, and I'm a pretty happy go lucky guy. The floor speech caused, I think, three of my Democrat colleagues to leave the floor in tears. And then for the entire Democrat caucus to take a 15 minute recess to gather their composure because they were so thus offended by my remarks, which, by the way, was nothing like what they called us on a daily basis. And my own side, people on my own side were like, nick, I think you really screwed up. They're really upset. And I was like, who cares if they're upset? When are they ever, when are they ever concerned when we're, we're upset? But they were adamant about it. The Washington Post went after me and I took this speech and I put it on social media and I said, look, everyone else is telling you what I said, or what I meant, or what I really meant. Here's what I said. Decide for yourself. And about 100 million views later on that speech, I realized something. I realized that the real problem was our side had kind of given up making the argument on what we believed and why. And to the extent that we did make the argument, it was always kind of this stuffy, overly academic, esoteric argument instead of actually just talking to people and maybe, God forbid, maybe adding a little bit of sense of humor and sarcasm to it. That's what I started doing. I started doing it with respect to politics, but I also started doing it with respect to, you know, being a husband, being a father, being a Christian, just being a man. And here we are. [00:09:31] Speaker B: And look, that, that, I mean, I remember that. And I was running Publius PR at the time. And I, I, you know, we, we played it, we shot it all over the place. I mean, I, I've been in Virginia since 04. When you were saving all of our asses or defending the Constitution. I was the executive producer of the Laura Ingram show and then the Monica Crowley show. So I was on the, I was in the media side of that. That second tour. You're talking about what years were. That was that. [00:10:05] Speaker A: That was 2000. That was 2008. [00:10:08] Speaker B: So this is after the surge, after Pelosi took Congress in 06 the first time. Yeah. Okay. [00:10:15] Speaker A: I was there in. Oh, I was there in 06. And my second two are in 08. I remember Obama getting elected and we're like, oh, well, this sucks. [00:10:23] Speaker B: Right? [00:10:24] Speaker A: We thought this job was hard. Now it's about to get a whole lot harder. And it did. [00:10:29] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And then obviously the Tea Party comes in in 2010, and it, you know, shook some conservatives, especially on the libertarian wing, woke them up a little bit. But the establishment just kind of used the Tea Party as it saw fit. It raised money off of it, know, Baner and, and, and, you know, the sort of Trent lot, bill frisk, Mitch McConnell crowd. They were doing that. I mean, I was there, I was fighting them. I, you know, I worked with Glenn Beck, I worked with John Solomon on some shows. I was at the Washington Times, and, you know, we, Paul Ryan and the gang, they would repeal Obamacare for fun 700 times, knowing Obama's never going to sign it. But culturally, while all this is happening, and Chris, get, Get this book ready here to pull up. It's not Nick's book, but Nick's book wouldn't exist. I don't think the need for Nick's book would not exist because early on, when I was a puppy with Ingram, we had used to have a guest on all the Time named Christina Hoff Summers who wrote a book, and we used to have her on all the time to talk about this book. Now she's written some other stuff since, but this is the thing that she's most, you know, remembered for. [00:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:11:43] Speaker B: And you could see because Nick and I. I think Nick's about four months older than me. We're Z lennials. We're like the Goonies generation, where. [00:11:54] Speaker A: I love that. The Goonies generation. [00:11:56] Speaker B: I'm stealing Generation Goonies Never say die. And, and. And so there's this group of us that remember what a VCR is. Remember, you know, a pager and a laserdisc player. We know who John Hughes is. [00:12:11] Speaker A: We remember Rotary phones, my friend. [00:12:13] Speaker B: We do pay phones, rotary phones, the whole. The whole deal. So we're on the sort of cusp between geriatric millennial and Gen X. And, you know, I think, I mean, Nick and I are about 25 years old, 26 years old on February 14, 2005, when YouTube is created. So that book that you just saw came out right around 2000, 2001. And I think what we've had now is multiple generations of, you know, boys under attack, masculinity under attack. We. It can be diagnosed, but very few people take it into their. Into their hands to come up with some cures. You know, we always like to. About everything, but, you know, and we can see it, and we can see the Me Too movement and we can see this, we can see, can see that. You know, we could see second and third and fourth wave feminism. But what Nick has done here, guys, is that, you know, he created a field manual basically on the philosophy of masculinity. So tell us, you know, we're going to get into it more. Why did you decide to do this? I'm assuming you're seeing what all of us have seen over the last 25 years. [00:13:28] Speaker A: Yeah, the inspiration kind of came from a couple of different places. I remember, you know, Young Americans foundation reached out to me, which is interesting. It was where I first time I met Laura Ingram was with actually with Young America's Foundation. But they had reached out to me and I thought what they were going to ask me to do was to go kind of around, talk to college students about politics, about political philosophy, free markets, Ronald Reagan, which I'm happy to do. And as we're talking about it, they're like, well, yeah, but would you. Would you be willing to talk about masculinity? You seem to talk about this a lot in your content online. Would you like to talk about that? I was like, well, yeah, actually I would. I think it's really important. And then I had another group reach out to me about writing a book. And originally the idea was going to be, is I was going to make. I'm going to make a bunch of, like, practical arguments to all, like, the nonsense and craziness of the Democratic socialists of America and things of that nature. And. And again, the editor was like, yeah, pretty cool. But would you actually be willing to talk about kind of like, masculinity? And so I started recognizing, like, okay, maybe God's setting this up in a particular way for a particular reason. And the next thing I know, not only am I, you know, kind of talking about this a lot, and it's kind of blowing up on social media, but then I'm also running into a lot of other guys that are in this similar space, whether it's people like John Lovell or Josh howerton or Josh McFarlane Pearson. And we're all kind of recognizing some of the same trends, but we're hitting it from different angles. Some are hitting it more specifically from the church. I'm hitting it largely from kind of the political realm and what's going on in the policy perspective. But the other thing that I noticed is Yaff was really on to something because five years ago, when I would go speak at a college campus, it was all about running for office or tax policy or socialism versus capitalism, whatever. And I noticed that the questions started significantly changing. The young men were asking me what it meant to be a man, what it meant to be a good Christian, what it meant to be a good father. The young women were asking me, like, how do you find a good husband? And sometimes they would be asking me these questions sitting next to one another. And so I'm sitting here going, okay, there's a real problem with respect to how we communicate with what it means to be a man. And there's a real problem with, you know, young, young men and young women who want to reject kind of the overall cultural narrative that's telling them that. It's telling the women you should be more manly, and it's telling the men they should be more feminine. [00:16:00] Speaker B: That's. [00:16:00] Speaker A: That's what's effectively going on from the left. And so all I did was I wrote this book. And it wasn't meant to be preachy. It wasn't meant to Be one of these. Like, here's the 12 steps to none of that. It was supposed to be like, look, here's some foundational truths that I believe, and here's what I've learned over 46 years of being a man of, you know, 27 years of being a husband, 23 years of being a father, being a soldier, going to combat, serving in politics, being a business. These are just the things I've learned. A lot of it the hard way. And a lot of people have stopped me since and said that they really got something out of it with respect to either. Maybe they just had a little. I love the ones where a guy will come up at the airport, will say, hey, you know, Mr. Freitas, I just had a daughter. And I've just been watching everything that you've been putting out about raising daughters and how important it is to spend time with their little. And I just want you to know it's really helped. Or, you know, Mr. Freitas, I just had a son or I just got married. And I've been looking at the things you were talking about. So that's how this kind of all started and why I think it's important because Charlie or Charlie Kirk articulated better than anybody. But if you want the most succinct explanation for why this is the space I'm predominantly in now, it's because I am 100%, absolutely convinced that the way you're going to save the country and the way you're going to save our politics is through godly families that are strong, that are cohesive, and that are transferring their values to future generations. And so that's, that's where I'm at. [00:17:31] Speaker B: Look, there's. There's like 53. You know, you don't have to read this cover to cover. There. You can jump around. There's 53 lessons. You're right about Charlie. I, you know, the audience knows. I was Charlie's publicist for two of his books in recent years. And, and look, I've spoken to Young America's foundation and, and obviously, I'm glad they're still out there. I'm glad. Turning points out there. We're going to take a break here in a second. But you are right, there is a gender gap. There's a values gap. We saw it in the demographics of the 2024 election. We may see it this year. You know, women are going one direction and men are going another. It's funny, you were at least in a room with mostly conservatives. You could have just, like, said well, why don't you guys cross the room and hang out together? But we're talking to Nick Freitas. His book, the Man Book. Everyone needs one, everyone needs two. We're gonna take a quick break. We will be right back. [00:18:28] Speaker A: Yo, yo, yo the Chamber like a daycare Toys all scattered Democrats throw tantrums Ego's all batted Popcorn flying out Greens in the mix Booted out the union like a bad magic trick Crying, whining wh. Can't keep it low Nancy holding tricks, trying not to explode Chewing on her tongue Silence, a weapon A circus in the capital A lesson on step it in, step it in, step it in. Alphabet soup, the DNC's a mess juvenile antics, no adult finesse Chucky in the corner scheming with a grin Politics, a playground let the chaos begin Al Green serenades but they mute the tune Ejected from the floor by the afternoon tug of war Politics, truth lost in the fray Pelosi's tongue Acrobatics steal the play Congress acting up, no teacher in sight Time keeps ticking but ain't making it right Throwing fits, paper planes in the air this democracy looks more like daycare Our family here at Dangerous Laughter has a new mission. After 250 years of American history, we seek to showcase moments of great statesmanship, moments of courage, moments of restraint and uncommon wisdom. Moments of Maxine Waters, Victims of this president. You have members of your cabinet that are being booed out of restaurants. She's taking up at their house and saying, no thanks, no sleep, no pr. No sleep. And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you call a crowd and you press back on them. The management of this station are clueless. You're listening to Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the Publius Media Network. [00:20:39] Speaker B: I've suggested to people before in interviews. I'm like, I want to fight them. [00:20:44] Speaker A: I think like a fight them. [00:20:45] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, if Stephen Miller would agree or one of the Trump children or like anybody in the administration, I want to fight them. [00:20:52] Speaker A: You know what? That I would go pay to see on the White House law. [00:20:56] Speaker B: That's what I'm saying. [00:20:56] Speaker A: In the ufc. [00:20:57] Speaker B: Why are we doing the UFC event? Why don't we just settle some political beef? I'll take anybody in the white. I box for four years, and if they want to, I'd get back into training camp, get in the best shape of my life and go fight one of them. [00:21:08] Speaker A: I would do it, too. [00:21:12] Speaker B: Wow. How about that, Nick There's Harry Sisson, who's famous for something I'm unaware of, and the former CNN host Don Lamond. Don Lemon, who likes to bum rush churches there in Minnesota. What do you think? What do you think, Nick? Do you think Eric and. And Don Jr. Could take them? I think if. I think Lara and Ivanka could take them. What do you think? [00:21:34] Speaker A: I volunteer as tribute. No, Let me. Let me just say right now, if anybody from the Trump administration is watching, I would love to be a temporary member of the Trump administration. No pay. No pay. In fact, I'll pay. I'll pay to be a member of the Trump administration for however long it takes to organize that. I think that is a one. I think I've agreed with almost nothing Harry Sisson has ever said, and I know I've never agreed with anything Don Lemon has ever said, but if they want to jump into the octagon, I think that is a great idea. I think a wonderful idea. I'm all about it. I think we could raise money. I think we raised a lot of money for some really good causes for charity. Oh, my gosh. You name it, we could probably cure hunger because that's because Democrats are constantly reminding us that if we just spent our money the way that they wanted, we'd cure hunger, even though they've spent trillions of dollars and can't seem to cure hunger. Probably because of all the grift. But, yeah, if. I know. I will say this. I'm more of an mma. I don't claim to be, like, a great MMA guy like Chad Robashaw or those guys, but I like mixed martial arts. I think it's a more practical fighting style. I would. I'm all down for the MMA style, UFC style fight with Sisson, with Don Lemon. I'm not doing John. I am not doing jiu jitsu with Don Lemon. I'm not doing it. That guy would just go. That guy would go straight to the guard. You're not. It's like, it'd be. It constantly be like, don, no, no. You're not supposed to let your opponent take your back. You're not supposed to do that. [00:23:02] Speaker B: Don't. Yeah, he might enjoy you wrestling and rolling around. [00:23:07] Speaker A: I think. I think Citizen. I think Citizen is. Is sincere that he wants to fight and is arrogant enough to believe that he would win. I think Don has ulterior motives. [00:23:18] Speaker B: I think you're right. I think he's trying to give you the hucklebuck or something. [00:23:21] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:23:21] Speaker B: You know, and look, I've known. I'VE known Stephen Miller since, you know, a long time at 20 years. Used to work for Jeff Sessions, Senate office, years and years ago. You know, Miller's one of those guys, you know, he's from California, but I. Miller's one of those guys that, you know, a wiry guy, you know, lost his hair early. You know, he's got pen up rage in him. You know, he's one of those guys that, if you, I think if you f. With him, I think he may take you out. He'll. Whatever's nearby. He'll use John Wick style, right? I mean, whatever, whatever, whatever. He needs to use number two pencil, a briefcase, whatever it is. [00:23:57] Speaker A: I, I agree. I, I think, I think Steve Miller is more the kind of guy, whereas he's paid to win, not fight fair. [00:24:03] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. And you know what? Rice here, I'm a little bit like that too, so. But I am from Philadelphia, which means, you know, I am all the worst nightmares of Eagles fans. I've got them all living between my ears, believe me, I took out Santa Claus. I can take out Harry Sisson, believe me. [00:24:21] Speaker A: And they say, they say stuff like this because again, Sisson, I think, I think Sisson's politics are absurd, but Sisson's not an idiot. And one of the things that you'll notice about Harry Sisson and the reason why he persists despite being wrong so much is because he's something of a chameleon whenever he gets into situations. I don't know if you ever saw Harry Sisson get in a conversation with Isabel Brown. Well, Isabel Brown was destroying him. And so Harry does this Mott Bailey tactic thing where he then pulls back and, well, I think everybody wants this and I certainly want to get married and I certainly want to have kids and all. Well, what the Democratic Party has recognized right now is they have a massive masculinity crisis. And every time they try to pick their version of a masculine man, it always backfires in their face. They're like, gosh, who do we really need? Somebody that will appeal to working class, sports loving, patriotic men who should we. Tim Walls. [00:25:15] Speaker B: That's right. [00:25:16] Speaker A: Because on paper, they're not looking at anything Tim Walls has actually done. They're not actually looking at, like, who he is. They're just looking on paper. It's like, okay, well, he was in the military and, and, and he coached football. You guys like football in the army, right? Okay, okay, Tim Walls is your guy. And then 20 seconds after being introduced to the rest of the country men are like, who's this douchebag? [00:25:38] Speaker B: Runs out like Richard Simmons loading that 12 gauge with a Tampax product. I mean, but that. You know, I was going to ask you about this later, but you just brought it up. So the 2024. The 2024 version of Democrat masculinity was Tim Waltz and Doug Emhoff. All the stories about the new face of the new face of masculinity, Doug Emhoff. Right. Yeah. Washington Post is spawning over. So that was the 2024 version. So then they hire a bunch of freaking consultants. Yeah, right. They go to K Street, they go to Hollywood, they find all the linguini spines they can find. So the 2026 version is Graham Platner and James Telerico, the vegan trans Jesus guy in Texas. One of them's gone already. Right? [00:26:23] Speaker A: So it's two, it's two different, two different approaches here. Like one with Tim Walls, like, okay, crap, that wasn't what they wanted. Oh, I know what they want. They want a Christian man. They want to. Okay, James Talarico is like, no, no, we said a Christian man, not a heretic. And again, because these terms, because they don't place any real value on masculinity or Christianity. [00:26:44] Speaker B: That's right. [00:26:45] Speaker A: It's really difficult for them to identify. Graham Platner was the first. Funniest. I remember when Graham Platner and, and Bernie Sanders, they had this picture in front of a podium where they're, they're holding each other's hands up. And I was like, oh, it's the Molontov Ribbentrop pact again. [00:27:02] Speaker B: Right? [00:27:03] Speaker A: The Soviets. The Soviets and the Nazis, they're once again teaming up to take down the West. And I was like, you know, last time this didn't go so well for the Nazis. And once again it didn't go well [00:27:13] Speaker B: for the Munich Agreement. I mean, it's just. No, you're, you're absolutely right. Right. Let's refresh, Chris. Let's. We might as well hit Nick with this. Let's. Let's ruin Nick's day and refresh his memory on the. The multi. Tens of millions of dollar ad that the Harris campaign ran two years ago to try to convince men that they should vote for him. This is why Nick's in business. Hit him. Hit him. I'm a man. [00:27:36] Speaker A: I'm a man man. And I'm man enough. I'm man enough to enjoy a barrel proof bourbon neat. Man enough to cook my steak rare. Man enough to deadlift 500 then braid the out of my daughter's hair. You think I'm afraid to rebuild a carburetor? I eat carburetors for breakfast. I ain't afraid of bears. That's what bear hugs are for. I'll tell you another thing. I sure as am not afraid of women. I'm not afraid of women. I'm not afraid of women. They want to control their bodies. I say go for it. They want to use IVF to start a family. I'm not afraid of families. They want to be childless. Cat ladies have all the cats you want. Woman wants to be president, well, I hope she has the guts to look [00:28:12] Speaker B: me right in the eye and accept [00:28:13] Speaker A: my full throated endorsement. Because I'm man enough to support. Man enough to know what kind of donuts I like. Man enough to admit I'm lost even when I refuse to ask for directions. Man enough to not ban young women from reading Little women or one of those pants books that the sisters like. I'm man enough to raw dog a flight. It sucked. Not worth it. [00:28:32] Speaker B: What? [00:28:32] Speaker A: I'm man enough to be emotional in front of my wife, in front of my kids, in front of my horse. I'm man enough to tell you that I cry at love. Action. Good Will Hunting, west side Story, vet and predator. I'm sick of so called men. Domineering, belittling and controlling women just so they can feel more powerful. That's not how my mama raised me. I love women. I love women who support their families. Women who decide not to have families. [00:28:57] Speaker B: Women who take charge. [00:28:58] Speaker A: And I'm man enough to help them win. [00:29:02] Speaker B: Wow. [00:29:03] Speaker A: Look, cut. When you look at that, when you look at that first of all, that one dude out there, like, I'm a farmer, like, okay. [00:29:13] Speaker B: With his raised beds in Napa Valley. [00:29:15] Speaker A: Yeah. There's, there's no way your crops make it to marketable. And then you look at that one dude sitting on the, the, the, the truck, back of the truck. And he's sitting like, I'm man enough. It's like, dude, this is the first time you've ever sat on a tailgate and is very, very obvious. Like the only dude in there that was somewhat believable, like as, like as an actual man. Because if you would have told me later that, well, no brilliant transition surgeries, I would have believed it. For, for all the white guys, except the one older white guy with a white beard by the motorcycle, that guy at least looked like somebody that I would have thought was an actual man. And then the black dude on the Bench. But none of those guys, like you can tell this script was written and handed to them. There is no way. And by the way, there was no men that actually assisted with the writing of this script. There couldn't have been. There might have been again, there might have been some trannies. There might have been a couple of people that had dabbled with barbecue once when driving through Texas, but that's it. And again, there's so much bad at it to the point when they lost. When they lost bigly. When they lost bigly. And the Democrats were like, all right, we really need to, you know, we keep doing these different things to try to appeal to men, and we keep failing. I know what we need to do. We need to spend $20 million on an internal Democratic National Committee organization to really track this down. Who should we get to lead it? I know a large feminist female from a university in California, because nothing says appealing to men like picking someone who isn't one in order to lecture at them about what they should want. [00:30:58] Speaker B: Well, you know, I know a little bit about how these. I mean, look, you want, ladies and gentlemen, if you don't know how Kamala burned through $1.3 billion in a hundred days, 108 days under. Whatever the hell it was, it's the fact that they focus grouped the hell out of that. They had a casting call. You know, they wanted to get the. The just the right. You know, they had all 72 genders come in, get a couple bearded ladies. Couple bearded ladies, and a couple, you know, oversized, feminine cowboys. You know, I mean, but that's. Here's the funny thing. They thought they were doing something unbelievable with that ad, and it's just like one freaking stereotype of men after another. I mean, James Telo could have been in that ad. He looks like the guy you're talking about on the back of the bed of the. The pickup truck. Oh, you know, Jesus doesn't. Jesus is transgendered. And I'm a vegan. And I mean, are you kidding me? So they've learned nothing. What. [00:31:51] Speaker A: What I love is when homeboy set it up, they goes, I'm giving him my full throated endorsement. I'm like, I'm guessing that's not the only full throated thing you've done in your life. [00:31:59] Speaker B: That's right. That's right. He was full throat and something. That's for sure. They. [00:32:02] Speaker A: They couldn't. Don Lemon was originally cast for that part. [00:32:05] Speaker B: Harry and Don could have been in that. Well, look, I mean, this. But this shows you why they're having a problem. And it's not just with white men. I mean, Trump increased his, you know, with, with Middle Eastern men, with Jewish men, with black in Atlanta and Phoenix and Glendale and, and Clark County, Nevada. Hispanic men. They don't. Look, you cannot go 40, 50 years of the humanities departments of America bleeding into the newsrooms of America running down men, basically telling women that men are either, you know, talking toxic predators at worst and unneeded at most. I mean, that's where we have gone. [00:32:48] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:32:49] Speaker B: You know, for all the, the, the, you know, the unmarried cat ladies, to quote Vance talking about, you know, Taylor Swift tweeting about it and all the rest of it. Taylor Swift didn't go marry one of those guys in that, in that, in that commercial. She married a real man from Ohio. I mean, the, the Kelsey boys, you know, the Kelsey boys are, you know, they could chop wood. I mean, they're, they're not, you know, they're not effeminate Harry Sisson type guys. [00:33:16] Speaker A: Well, liberal women. Liberal women don't like the men they've created. And all you have to do is peruse TikTok because any liberal woman that you see on there that's reasonably attractive, which is to say that she isn't full of septum piercings and weird hair dye and, and she hasn't, she hasn't. And she doesn't regularly eat her weight in Krispy Kremes. Right. Any woman that's on there on social media is constantly saying, I don't understand why I'm only attracted to conservative. Where are the masculine liberal men? It's like, oh, they don't, they don't exist. You got rid of them. You literally purge them from society. And to the extent that a modern man like you used to have Democrat men, but Democrat man was back when the Democrat party was kind of like this. More like, you know, pro union. Right. Not pro trans children. Pro pro union. This is back when you actually had pro life Democrats and pro gun Democrats and, you know, war heroes. And instead what you've replaced that with, what you've purposely replaced this with, was this feminization of men. And now you're walking around as a little girl boss trying to wonder why you don't like any of the men you're around. It's because, well, it's because you want strength and genuine masculinity. And now you're forced to choose in your realm. You're forced to choose because genuinely masculine men don't want you. Here's who wants you. Effeminate men that you don't like and never want to sleep with because they give you the ick. Right? As they should. And then you get the guy and then you get the guys who are not good men. [00:34:42] Speaker B: Right. [00:34:42] Speaker A: But they're really good at understanding what you want. And so they will say the things that you want. They will behave in certain ways while still maintaining an air of masculinity all the way up until they get you in bed. And then after that, they don't care about you anymore because they didn't look you as a long term solution either. And that's the problem, is that feminism is creating two types of men right now. It's creating the totally emasculated one, and then it's creating the ones that are really good at playing the game to get laid, but are actually not genuinely good, honorable men. And that's where they find themselves. And they're miserable about it. [00:35:19] Speaker B: Yeah. And those men are liars. They claim all the time that they're willing to go home with the 400 pound blue hair, but they're. They're not going home with the 400 pound blue hair at all. You know, I think, you know, maybe this debate is something that is going on in Western civilization, going back to Athens and Rome and other places where you had, you know, Sparta, you know, versus Athens, you know, Peloponnesian War, you had, you know, the thinkers versus the warriors. But I think, you know, your book kind of basically bridges the gap that you can be both. And once, once a certain political party or a certain philosophy, that that sort of breaks towards conservatism, Western civilization, once, once, you know, you become both and, and, and a lot of right wingers. I mean, look, there are all different types of philosophies. You can do Marcus Aurelius, you can do this one and that one. You could be a stoic sort of. There's masculine guys like that. But the fact of the matter is the modern Democrat party doesn't seem to be representing any of them. [00:36:19] Speaker A: No, no, they don't. Because. And again, this is interesting because they're going to start to pivot away from this. One of the reasons why Harry Sisson is saying things like I want to fight someone in the Trump administration is because he recognizes that that's where the major deficit is. They went all in on this kind of feminism and they went all in on, on not just lgbtq, but specifically the trans side. That's right, because that, that allowed them to completely redefine everything and what they're Starting to recognize is that does not have sufficient legs. It doesn't work. They've been trying this. They've been trying the feminist experience experiment kind of since the before the 60s, but really started to get into mainstream in the 60s, and they've been trying the trans experiment here for the last decade or so. And they're starting to recognize, okay, this doesn't work. This doesn't actually give us longevity. So what do we got to do now? And they're trying to figure out their way back to masculinity of some kind. The problem is, is that left wing politics is all about intersectionality. It's all about the Olympics. It's all about how many things can I. How many mental health issues and sexual perversions can I divide myself by? And none of that appeals to men. And so the only way they can actually pivot to appeal to men is, is they've either got to create some sort of aberration of it that doesn't make sense, or they're going to have to piss off pretty core members of their coalition. And so what you're seeing is that [00:37:46] Speaker B: is why Nick I. And I wrote. I write political satire books. That's why my book over my shoulder is called the Curse of the Bearded Lady. [00:37:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:37:54] Speaker B: Because they can't escape this. They're captured by the bearded lady, and the bearded lady is singing, like I said, She's 300 pounds and has blue hair. [00:38:03] Speaker A: Before we go to their answer to that, their answer to that is to take one attribute of masculinity and now try to infuse it into their side. And the attribute they're going for is violence. That's why they're talking about fighting that. That's why they're talking about decolonization. That's why they're talking about Charlie Kirk had it coming, is because they're, they're, they're trying to find a way to actually project strength from a source that doesn't provide strength. And so violence is the mechanism that [00:38:33] Speaker B: they're using now, Cliff Notes of How to Be a Man is, I'm gonna fight Eric Trump. I mean, it's just. It's insane. All right, so before we, before we go to the next break, I want to get this in. So let's give an example of when you're. You're riding on a plane and you see an apex predator in front of you. Okay? He's sitting on the plane, he's minding his freaking business. You obviously didn't grow. Nick and I did. You Obviously didn't grow up playing Mike Tyson's punch out on the first Nintendo. Okay? You're like glass jaw McGee or whatever that guy's name was that we used to bust his jaw, right? And your Mike Tyson's on a plane, he's minding his business, and this is what happens. [00:39:12] Speaker A: Chris, let's this crazy, bro. Mike Tyson. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. [00:39:21] Speaker B: Mike, Mike. Come on, let's go. Stop that. Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey. Mike, Mike, look out. That's right, Mike Tyson. I mean, these kids, they think the history began yesterday. And there's Mike Tyson. I know some MMA guys that idiots on the street think, you know, you know, you get a shot at the, you know, Cuervo in them and they think they could take some MMA guy out and he just, you know, one, one kit, one roundhouse kick and you go, you're going sailing. But this, this is what I'm talking about, is that there is a, there's a lack of respect, there's a lack of knowledge, and there's Mike Tyson, I'm going to talk trash to him. And, you know, you had it coming, right? [00:40:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, it used to be that men generally understood that there was certain lines you don't cross because violence was always an option for men. [00:40:13] Speaker B: Right? [00:40:13] Speaker A: It's. If it's not our, like, a good man, violence is not your first option. But there are lines of disrespect that you can cross where it's like, okay, now we're taking this outside and we're going to get in a fight. The difference is, is that most men have kind of a higher threshold or haven't spent their entire youth beating the living piss out of the world's best fighters. So when you do this crap to Mike Tyson, there's this Internet environment where these kids get so used to being able to say and do things on the Internet that they think it transfers into reality and, and then they find someone from a different generation and it's like, dude, that guy could have killed you. Like, we remember watching Mike Tyson as a 20 year old, obliterating guys. [00:41:01] Speaker B: That's right. [00:41:02] Speaker A: And a short guy too. Like, Mike Tyson is not some big towering dude. He's just jacked. Like, that is. That is 100% like freaking creatine and anger. Like, why are you messing? [00:41:15] Speaker B: Let's say that this guy's only frame of reference was Mike at the end of his career when he was, I don't know, biting ears off people like, I'm on the plane, I'll have a Bag of peanuts in an ear from my passenger behind me. It's ridiculous, but I mean, look, this is why we got. We gotta. We gotta educate. We got the man book here. Nick Freitas. We're gonna take a quick break. Remember, ladies and gentlemen, we believe in the equal distribution of mockery. We will be back on the other side now. AJ Another. Another actor I know you follow very closely is Elliot Page, who's making an argument about animals and lgbtqia too. [00:41:56] Speaker A: Looking at nature as if it's this heteropatriarchal structure is absurd. And that this gender binary that we've created is nothing but a quaint little myth. What we have been taught in school in regards to these structures, men being superior, women being inferior, it being this heterosexual existence is just completely false. AJ I know you're not heteronormative, so [00:42:24] Speaker B: I'm really yearn for your analysis of this. Well, Elliot, they. Whatever. Whatever's happening there. The former star of Juneau. Never forget, ladies and gentlemen, what they took from you. Because that right there is what Homer. Because she's going to be in the next. She's going to be in the Odyssey movie this summer. That's exactly what Homer had in mind when he. When the great poet wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey. That. That's the star right there. The bearded lady. [00:42:53] Speaker A: You should be women. And yet your beards forbid me to interpret that you are so. Someone once said comedy is the art of turning horror into humor. That's the essence of the comedy. Hearse of the bearded lady laughing in the face of madness before it devours us whole. Nothing in living memory has been funnier or more horrifying than a movement convinced there are 72 genders. Boys have a penis. Girls have a vagina. The curse of the bearded lady. The curse of the Bearded lady. The Trans mafia has whipped up America's sanity. It's Monty Python by way of Minalo. Absurd theater with real victims. I'm not here to conduct a medical examination of the trans mafia. This is a cultural autopsy. If Billy Shakespeare could write tragedies, histories and comedies, why can't I? The radicals refuse to surrender their gender mats. Stranglehold on America's vital institutions. This book will show how we got here, how we fight back, and how the Democratic Party's obsession with mainstreaming the bearded lady will doom it to political extinction. Stay locked in with the man who slayed the Woking dead. This is Dangerous Laughter with AJ Rice on the Publius Media Network. [00:44:34] Speaker B: Back on dangerous laughter. I'm A.J. rice. We're speaking to my former neighbor Nick Freitas, who decided. Virginia. He'd had enough of Virginia. I mean, Nick's been in Virginia almost as long as I have. And he. He moved. He floated away. He floated to another state. And I'm thinking. And I think he might have left before this happened, but this past summer, I'm thinking this video, if this wasn't the last straw, and, And. And why Nick had to write the man book to teach men, you know, who to marry and who not to marry. I think this video here, which will sterilize everybody like Chris. Give me the video here. Give me the. This video right here. This. Let me see. There she is. There she is now. Now she's. She's. Dan. This is Juneteenth. That is Governor Spanberger. We can't play the sound because we don't want naughty. Oh, there it is. We don't want naughty by nature to come after us for a copyright. But she's. She's dancing the hip hop. Hooray. Oh, hey, ho. And that is called the goofy white woman dance. Nick, what do you think? No, I just. [00:45:45] Speaker A: I'm one. It's amazing how we. We always see them to, like, change their accents, like the liberal white woman epidemic in. I've joked around before that I actually agree with BLM that white people are the problem. We just disagree on which white people. [00:45:58] Speaker B: That's exactly right. I mean, look, I wrote. I wrote this book behind me, the White Privilege album. It's all about liberal whites. It's all. It's, you know, apology to the Beatles, but it's all. It's. It's all about liberal whites. And. And really, they're pandering. Like you said, Hillary, I ain't no ways tired. Remember Hillary doing that? [00:46:17] Speaker A: You know, and, you know, there was this. I can't remember the name of the study, and I hate it when I can't remember the name of it, but I just saw someone talking about it came out of Yale where they were talking about how people talk to other races or other ethnicities or skin colors or whatever. And what they found was, is that liberals, white liberals overwhelmingly dumbed down their language and change their tone when talking to minorities. And conservatives don't, probably because we see people and. And they see potential constituencies that must be manipulated, saved from, you know, whatever. [00:46:57] Speaker B: But, yeah, yeah, look, and look, I'm. I'm from Philadelphia, so I. I say water W U D D E R. Right? [00:47:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:47:05] Speaker B: And I can step up my egg. My Philadelphia Angles. I can step my accent up more than it is. But what's crazy about this is that even the mixed race politicians do this. Obama does it. Kamala does it. Obama went to some group of Steelers fans in Pittsburgh. He walks in in his Brioni suit, and, you know, he goes, I'm here to talk to the brothers. You know, he's here to talk to the brothers. He goes, he's basically talking down to a bunch of black men. That said, I'm worried that the brothers won't vote for a woman, but she's. She's from the neighborhood. Now, I don't know what neighborhood. Kamala's from McGill University, Marin County. I don't know. I don't know where she's from. From the neighborhood. I don't think she knows where she's from because on one hand, she talks about, you know, being, you know, a certain type of way, and on the other hand, remember when she took out Joe Biden, talking about forced busing that Biden voted for, you know, for forced busing. I was the little girl waiting for the bus. So. So even the mixed race politicians play this card when it fit, when it suits them. But I don't see, like, Tim Scott do it. I never saw. I never saw Mia Love do it or Alan west do it. I don't, you know, I don't. I don't see them do it. Well, Democrats do it regardless of color. [00:48:27] Speaker A: The. Well, I think Democrats. Democrats will take the most superficial thing about people and make that their entire identity. You really want to piss off a college professor? When I was trying to finish my degree, I was doing, like an English class at Northern Virginia Community College. And in this English literature class, this college professor keeps giving us Karl Marx and postmodernist deconstruction. Basically anybody except somebody responsible for actual English literature. And one of the things. And there's one time in class, and this is a diverse class, we had like 25 students in it. You had like five different countries represented. Again, very multi ethnic class. It was a fun class in that respect. And this. This professor keeps bringing up this stuff about how racist America is, and he keeps talking about black culture. And I finally raised my hand. I'm like, I don't know what you mean. What do you mean? And now other people in the classroom are like, who the hell is this dude? [00:49:27] Speaker B: Right? [00:49:28] Speaker A: I don't mean, what do you. And he goes, what do you mean, what do I mean? I said, okay, well, first of all, what do you mean by culture? And he was really good at doing this. Instead of just answering the question. He said, well, what do you think it is? I'll be like, I'll go with Alexander Bell's description of culture as society's attempt to come up with a coherent set of answers to the existential questions we face throughout our lives. And he goes, okay, we can use that. I'm like, okay, so what do you. He goes, well, why are you confused? I'm like, I don't think there is any such thing as a monolithic black culture. Now the other student, now the black students in the classroom are like, what did this dude just say? And I said, let me tell you. Okay, let me. And the professors, now he's getting a little bit riled up too. And I said, let me ask you a question. If you talk to a black man in Mobile, Alabama, Detroit, Michigan, Los Angeles, California, Moscow, Russia, Paris, France and Johannesburg, South Africa, and you ask them a probing question about culture, do you think they all answer the exact same way because of their melanin levels? [00:50:30] Speaker B: That's right. [00:50:30] Speaker A: And he goes, well, well, no. I said, yeah, you're treating black people as if they are a caricature, as if this is what black people believe. And I look, I just don't see people that way. I see people as individuals. They can have corporate experiences. Right, that's perfectly understandable. But to just, to just assign a color, a culture and say, this is who you are, I think that's horribly inappropriate and racist. And then by this time, the black students in the class are like, yeah, right. [00:51:04] Speaker B: But that's what they do though. They organize us like an a la carte sushi menu. Like we're some kind of Benetton ad. Yeah, right. We're still got a Benetton ad with all, you know, all the different cabbage patch kid colors. Right? [00:51:16] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:51:16] Speaker B: And they line us up and we all. And then they dump stereotypes on each of us. Yeah. When in reality. And I've write about, I write about this talk about all the time on the show. I mean, we don't, we're not a multicultural country. We got one culture here. We are a multi ethnic country. Yeah. But we come out of the, the Greco Roman, Judeo, Christian philosophy. And if you want to go out on St. Patrick's Day and drink Guinness, shoot tequila on Cinco de Mayo, you want to go to yoga, eat sushi, whatever, that's fine. But we're not going to get rid of the Magna Carta for that. Yeah, we're not going to get rid of the, the Scientific method for that or, you know, English common law. Those are the reasons we're successful, because not all cultures are created equal, which is why some of them go away. [00:52:00] Speaker A: Well, and again, we, we mistake. We mistake multiculturalism in the sense that you can have a lot of different foods. Like, yeah, I am totally cool. I am totally cool with someone bringing dolma to the, to the potluck. I don't want him bringing sharia to the potluck. There you go. [00:52:18] Speaker B: That's all right. [00:52:19] Speaker A: That's different. [00:52:20] Speaker B: That's right. You're exactly right. And freight test. Yeah, that's like Portuguese or. Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, you know, [00:52:31] Speaker A: country with a checkered path. [00:52:32] Speaker B: Yeah, let me, let me project all your Portuguese stereotypes on you. Well, look, let's get into the book here. So the book is broken down into 53 lessons and the full title is the Man Book. I've got it here. A point by point guide to sucking it up and getting the job done. Nick Freitas, our friends over there at HarperCollins broadside, you know, big shout out to Eric Nelson. I know, I know. The gang over there, Teresa and the. In the marketing department. This was a New York Times bestseller. I had some fun last night going through all the different lessons and I didn't sort of take them in order. I started mixing and matching them. So. So I want to take. I want to take lesson one. And ladies and gentlemen, don't do this at home, okay? I'm just doing it for the purposes of the show. Lesson one, how to argue with your wife. Lesson 12 is how to drink whiskey. And lesson three is how to kick in a door. So, yeah, you don't want to argue with your wife while you're drinking whiskey and have somebody kick in a door. But let's start with the argue with your wife. Now, my wife is Scotch Irish. I use a Fabian strategy usually when I'm dealing with her. So tell me, how do I. How do I. How should I argue with my wife? [00:53:47] Speaker A: Well, I think the most important thing to remember is there's a lot of older men that will give. There's a lot of older, unhappy married men that will give really crappy advice to young men. And one of the big things they'll say is, happy wife, happy life. I'm going to give you two words to learn. Yes, dear. No, that's garbage. That's absolute trash. No, you want to be. If you, if you're going to lead your household, if you're going to be the sort of man that your wife can respect. And if you're going to demonstrate respect for her, then you need to be able to talk about difficult issues and you need to be able to resolve them. So if you're not married, this is the first thing I recommend before we get it before you. If you're not married, if you've never had, like, a serious argument with your girlfriend or the girl that you're thinking about marrying, you have not talked about enough things together of importance. You have not discussed enough controversial issues or topics. And you need to have that because you need to figure out how both of you contend with difficult issues. So one of the rules I say is when I talk to my wife, and this is something she taught me, I always talk to her like she's the woman I love. Now, that doesn't mean I say, yes, dear. If I think she's wrong, well, then I have an obligation to explain my position in two ways. One, to make sure that she knows that I love her and that our marriage is secure. I never want to, say, behave or act in a way where she could reasonably interpret my behavior as I don't love you or I might leave you. So that's number one. Your tone matters. But I'm also going to lay out. I'm also going to lay out what I think and why I think a particular course of action is correct. I'm going to take into account the emotions associated with the issue. But the emotions don't trump reality. They don't trump facts and logic. They can inform facts and logic. They don't replace them. And so I'm going to insist on that. And then I'm also going to do something that's really important. I'm going to let her talk and I'm actually going to listen without assuming that I already know what's bugging her. Because one of the things that you learn about the way women think is that they assign an emotion to a particular event and it actually gives them incredibly good recall, which is very frustrating for men when we're like, why are you bringing up old crap? Right? It's because the way you're making her feel right now is reminding her of all the other times you've made her wait her feel that way. And so when you take these things into account, when you're respectful to one another, when you love one another, when you make sure that they know that you're not trying to defeat them in an argument, what you're trying to do is create a situation where both of you feel good about what the answer is. And how to move forward. And if. And if you can do those things successfully, and if you establish that early on in your marriage, it becomes a pattern where all of a sudden having a. Having a vigorous conversation about a problem, Neither side is worried about the marriage. Neither side is engaging in emotional manipulation. [00:56:26] Speaker B: Right. [00:56:26] Speaker A: Women tend to engage in emotional manipulation by, you know, playing the victim, like, oh, I can't believe you talked to me that way. Why are you yelling? Men emotionally manipulate by getting angry or overly sarcastic because we don't want to appear weak. And if we think we're wrong, sometimes we retreat to raising our voice or engaging in sarcasm and condescension, talking trash. [00:56:46] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:56:46] Speaker A: Yeah. So if you've. So if you've got a commitment to the truth. And my wife and I both were dedicated Christians, so the Bible was the truth. Well, now what we also have is that we have a standard outside of each other that both of us can appeal to. So when my wife and I are about to argue, I talk to her like she's the woman I love. She talks to me like she's the man she respects. We hear each other out. We work through various things. We ensure that either. Both sides know we're not trying to defeat the other one. We want. We want the marriage to win in whatever this discussion is. And then we talk about it. We discuss it. To the extent that a compromise might be necessary in order to get to a decision, we do it. But as a man, your job is to contend with your wife when necessary in order to get to the right conclusion. And that means standing your ground when you truly believe you're right, but doing lovingly and respectingly, but also being willing to admit. When you admit you're wrong, when you're actually wrong. And if you can set that pattern, both the husband and wife, if you can set that pattern, it's miraculous for your marriage. [00:57:49] Speaker B: I think that's great. I think that's great. I always tell my wife, we need to have no sunlight between us. These kids are after us, okay? We got to fight. Back to back, shield to shield, like the Spartans, okay? They're trying to divide and conquer us. We do. No sunlight. Even if I'm an idiot. No sunlight. Yeah. [00:58:05] Speaker A: Husband. Husband and wife should. Husband and wife should exercise radical loyalty and radical appreciation for one another. If you do those two things, it's amazing how your. Your debates function much better. [00:58:18] Speaker B: Now, after your wife checkmates you, Nick and you go over to the. You go over to the whiskey bar. [00:58:25] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:58:25] Speaker B: And you're gonna drink whiskey. So I am an enthusiast. I've got different sections of a room in here. I'm an Irish stereotype. So I've got. I tell people, probably drunk right now. People. Yeah. People ask me how you know, why I don't age like Benjamin Button. And I always tell them, the liver never forgets. And always remember that. Never forget. So you're going to drink whiskey, first of all, where are you going? You going with bourbon? Irish, Japanese Scotch? Where are you going? [00:58:55] Speaker A: I, I am a bourbon guy. I'm a bourbon guy. And, and, and technically a Tennessee sour mash guy. So I, I like Uncle Nearest. I like Jack Daniels. Again, a lot of times when you, when you, when you write a chapter on, on whiskey or whatnot, people have this idea that your, your shelf is full of, you know, thousand dollar bottles of, or $10,000 of Happy Van Weekl or something like that. No, I just, I like what I like. And I've always really appreciated kind of the Tennessee sour mash and the Kentucky bourbon. I do like Irish whiskey. I'm being honest. I don't like scotch very much. [00:59:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's a little harder to take down. I mean, the thing about Irish whiskey is it's triple distilled. That's why. [00:59:33] Speaker A: Yes. [00:59:34] Speaker B: Smooth. [00:59:34] Speaker A: Yeah, I like Irish whiskeys. There are scotches I like. But here's the problem that I have every time I find a scotch and I'm like, oh, you know what? That was pretty smooth. I like that it's over $100 a bottle. [00:59:48] Speaker B: Or, or it was aging. It's funny. Yeah. The scotches I drink, you know, and I went through them all years ago, but now I only keep a couple. They're all either aged in a sherry cast or Madeira cast or bourbon cast. [01:00:01] Speaker A: Sherry casks are good. [01:00:03] Speaker B: Yeah. Glenn Morangie makes a bunch of them. [01:00:05] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:06] Speaker B: So. So if, but if you were gonna head to the gallows and have one last sip of something, what would it be? [01:00:12] Speaker A: It would probably. It would. [01:00:13] Speaker B: Ooh. [01:00:16] Speaker A: It. Now, the, the tough guy answer would be something neat. But the actual answer for me is it would be a smoked Old Fashioned with Uncle Nearest. [01:00:25] Speaker B: Okay. All right. [01:00:28] Speaker A: It'd be a smoked Old Fashioned with walnut wood, [01:00:32] Speaker B: the walnut bitters. You know, Jack. Jack Daniels makes something called the Sinatra Select. [01:00:38] Speaker A: Yes. [01:00:39] Speaker B: And I'm a huge fan of that. Old Blue Eyes was too. Yeah. You know, I'm a Sinatra guy more than an Elvis guy. And I'm an Elvis guy more than a Beatles guy. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:47] Speaker B: But I think, I think I might take. Was that Pacino calls him John Daniels instead of a woman. Because they know each other so well [01:00:55] Speaker A: right now, then make sure they fill it up with John Daniels. Not when you've known it as long as I have. [01:01:01] Speaker B: Well, he was a Marine. Exactly. So, all right, so we have a drink, we lose. We, we, we, you know, we have a Pyrrhic victory with our wife, we have a drink. So. How to kick in a door. So, yeah, all right, the audience, especially this audience. Dangerous laughter. You know, anything goes here. We try to stay dangerous. You know, we're unfit for polite company here. So tell me how to kick in a door the right way. I mean, you're a Green Beret. [01:01:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:01:29] Speaker B: How do you do it? [01:01:30] Speaker A: So the, the, the most important thing that you got to do up front is make sure that the door swings inward because you will look very, very stupid trying to kick a door. So the basic answer here is if you're looking at the hinges, you know, that should tell you something. [01:01:46] Speaker B: That's right. [01:01:47] Speaker A: So you want to make sure the door goes indoor. Most of your, most of your internal doors do that. And then it's about where you want to kick it. If you haul off and kick that thing in the center of the door, especially if you got a hollow core door, you were probably getting your foot right through that thing. And now you look super dumb. So in best case scenario, you look dumb. Worst case scenario, now someone is shooting you through the door and you just feel, you feel silly, right? We don't want to feel silly. So the thing that you want to do is you want to get to a point where you're about a good couple steps away from the door. We got enough to where you can actually kick into that thing. And you're not so close that you can't extend your leg enough to get force. But you're also not far enough away to where your leg is fully extended. By the time it hits it, you kind of want to be at that good little medium range, and then you want to kick it about as close to the lock plate as you can. So where. That's, that's the part that's, that's fixing the door. So you're usually a little bit under the knob and you're kicking it right there, right on that side and letting that thing fly open when you do it. Right. It looks super cool. [01:02:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. So you don't need. Look, take Nick's advice. That way you don't have to invest in a Chinese battering ram that you can buy on Amazon, right? You don't need to do that. We're talking with Nick Freitas, the Man Book. We're almost out of time here. Something I want to address with you. So you've. You've been. You're 82nd Airborne, right? And Green Beret. You were in the Virginia House of Delegates. You know, you've got a huge following online. You're father of, I think, three. And, you know, I, I come from a. And I think you're born in California, so I come out of this sort of, you know. Yeah, that's fine. That's fine. [01:03:29] Speaker A: I'm in Tennessee now. Don't be telling people regular Nixon. [01:03:32] Speaker B: I mean, look, hey, you know, it's a shame. So, so, so here's the thing. I, I come out of a different tradition. I've talked. I've interviewed some cowboys, and they're talking about being the old guy at the end of the bar and being the sort of sage giving sage advice to people. And, you know, the way I grew up, it was an Italian guy with a fedora on that'll, you know, he'll, he'll, he'll take care of you the same way a cowboy would if you, if you got a wise mouth. I feel like generations, especially after the millennials, there's been the older millennials, younger Gen X guys, that, that we, we are losing something that I, that, that I guess would be called a rite of passage, because for most of human history, boys in particular became men through some kind of either military service, apprenticeship, marriage, hard labor, religious ceremony. But I, I feel like in America, the right. The rights of passages are, Are vanishing. They're being replaced by devices and stupid. And gaming and this and that, and everyone wants to watch me open up a box on YouTube and all kinds of stupid stuff. Yeah. So. So, you know, what is your thought on that? And how do we, you know, because this is a civilizational struggle going on in the country, and we spend a lot of time on enemies without and enemies within. And you and I agree on a lot of stuff that's going on even in the conservative media space, you know, but as it relates to the man book, you know, what kind of advice for fathers about trying to recreate rites of passage for not just sons, but daughters too. How do we get back to that where there's sort of some communal belonging taking place? [01:05:19] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, first. [01:05:21] Speaker B: Go ahead. [01:05:21] Speaker A: First thing you need to understand as a father is you'll be your son's hero until you prove him that you shouldn't be. And so you're already starting off with this incredible advantage. But you also need to take a hard look in the mirror and say, am I the sort of man that I would want my son to grow into? Because if you're not, well, then get to work. Right? There is no pinnacle that you achieve with respect to manhood. There's just things that you go through and experiences that you develop and character that you develop that help shape you and turn you into the sort of a godly man that other men want to follow and look up to and that your son can follow and look up to. So you need to do difficult things. Like you said, it builds character. It used to be that the world just required a lot more difficult things out of us. And the easier it's become, the less we've seen those things as being necessary. The problem is, is that when you get to a critical mass where there's enough men that don't know how to do the difficult things, you end up in a society where you remember very quickly on why you needed men that could do difficult things. So to the extent that they don't exist naturally, which is to say you don't need your 7 year old to come out and work the fields with you for the family to survive or something like that, you need to create rites of passage. Rites of passage. One of the things I tell young men is you need to have a violent hobby. It's a good idea for you to learn how to shoot. It's a good idea for you to learn how to fight. You should stay in shape. But the other thing that a dad needs to be is wise. And I think a dad needs to be wise spiritually. He needs to understand what he believes. He needs to get his identity in God. And he needs to understand what that identity and that relationship with God actually looks like so he can convey it. Because it's going to be the source, it's going to be the foundation for objective truth and objective morality. And without those things, it's much more difficult to make sense of what you see and what you go through in this life. So to be spiritually mature as a father is important. And when you are wise, when your son can watch you deal with things and just intuitively know that that's a good way to handle it, that mom is happy, that we feel safe, that we feel secure, those things are all indicators to your son and to your daughter about what genuine biblical masculinity looks like. What? There's a. There's a great program out. John Lovell, the author of Warrior Poet Way. Former Ranger back guy, pastor. Great dude. We have this little online rivalry because we think it's funny, but he has a program called Strong Boy Way. And what he does in that program. And it almost looks like merit badges, right? But it's not the Boy Scouts. It's different tasks that fathers can give to their sons to give them capabilities and confidence, to teach them how to deal with failure. And when they complete these tasks, right, they get a patch. Now, it's funny because a lot of older men will look at that and be like, oh, it's like merit badges. And then I look at my uniform in the military, I'm like, yeah, I spent my entire young adult life chasing after adult merit badges in the form of Ranger tabs and sniper qualifications. It's the same thing. But you're giving your kid practical skill sets. And one of the most practical skill sets they develop in the process is learning that part of being a man is doing hard things that hurt, that may make you tired, that may make you frustrated, and developing the emotional and intellectual maturity and the intestinal fortitude to push through in order to keep your word and take care of the people that you love. And when you start that young and they start to both deal with that and they start to earn your respect, that's where they really start to develop this desire to. And it's not manipulative, it's training. They're starting to understand that, okay, a man behaves in an honorable fashion, does difficult things, is capable and confident, but not arrogant. And so they get on this path where they are craving good character. And the craving of good character and the craving of good capability will naturally put them in a situation to have to accomplish worthwhile yet difficult things. So I would highly encourage people to look at the. If you're a father, your kids are younger, Strong Boy Way with John Lovell is an outstanding program. But like, yeah, taking your kids hunting, you will never understand how important it is to your. To your little boy to be included on projects dad is doing. And, yeah, it might take you a little bit longer to do it, or the trip at Lowe's might be delayed because you're answering 37 questions about lumber. Do it right. Take the time you're developing something there that's really important. And then with your girls, understand that your girls, you are the first vision to your daughters of what a good man looks like, and it imprints on them, and they start to look forward in other areas of society. And so if you're the sort of what I Tell dads is the biggest life hack you have with your little girl, with your girls. Because every dad is terrified of the teenage years. And I always tell them like, you want to have good teenage years, you need to start having the little tea parties and all that when they're 2 and 3 years old and dads will look at me and say, you're telling me my 16 year old daughter cares that I had a, even remembers that I had a tea party with her when she was 2. I said, Brother, here's how it works. Your 4 year old remembers what you did when they were 2. Your 6 year old remembers what they did when you were 4. Your 10 year old remembers what they did when YOU were 6. And by the time they get to be teenagers, you have established this pattern with your daughter where you are strong and you are honest and you love her and you may be one of the few people in her life that are willing to give her hard truths, but you always do so because you love her and you want her to succeed. And when she looks at you as that pillar of strength and wisdom, she naturally comes to you with questions. And there is no greater feeling, there is no greater feeling in life than where you don't have to threaten the young man that is now dating your daughter. You don't have to threaten them. And the reason why is because your daughter will insist that they receive your approval because you did a good job as a dad and she saw you do a good job as a husband and so she trusts you absolutely. [01:11:28] Speaker B: And, and in case you do have to threaten them, lesson 38 in the man book is, which I didn't get to, is how to intimidate your daughter's [01:11:36] Speaker A: d. [01:11:39] Speaker B: You're exactly right. Well, Nick, look, tell people, obviously you can get the man book everywhere books are sold, but tell, tell people where else they can find you. I mean it's, it's not hard. Nick is like the upturned stone in the river. There. [01:11:52] Speaker A: We, we've made it easy. It's just Nick J. Freitas. If you even get close to my name, it'll pop up on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, X. So Nick J. Freitas is the best way to find us on social media. [01:12:03] Speaker B: And you got the show. And how often do you do the show? We do make the Argument. [01:12:08] Speaker A: We do Making the Argument five times a week. We also do other content out there. We do live episodes. We also have some mainline stuff that we do where we talk a lot about just family, fatherhood, being a husband, things like that. As well. [01:12:21] Speaker B: I love it. It's sage advice. The book is great. Nick weighs in on everything. You know, he weighs in on some of the insanity in the conservative media right now. He's been weighing in on some of the military actions that the government is taking around the globe. Everyone should look to Nick for some advice. I mean, the guy has been. I mean, the resume is unbelievable. But the life resume and the different types of things Nick has done really informs his perspective. Everybody go get a copy of the man book. Nick, really, I appreciate you coming on, brother. Really. [01:12:54] Speaker A: No, thanks, aj. It's my pleasure. [01:12:56] Speaker B: Nick and I shook hands and spoke briefly at a Orange county event for Cameron Hamilton years ago. Yeah. Still think the Congress would have been better off with Cam, But I think Congress is going to get a little Cam injection soon. You know, if, you know, all things being equal. So. So, guys, go get the man book. Always Remember. Go to dangerouslaughter.com. go to dangerouslaughter.com Remember, we watch the Watchers and we watch them with jokes. There's no substitute for perfectly timed derision. Go out and grab a copy of the Curse of the Bearded lady. If you want to know the opposite of the man book. That is the total opposite of the man book. And who the who the women in dresses are walking through Target. We love Nick. And always remember, ladies and gentlemen, stay dangerous. [01:13:45] Speaker A: Dangerous left. [01:13:48] Speaker B: Lefter. [01:13:50] Speaker A: Dangerous. Danger. Laughter. Dangerous laughter. [01:14:04] Speaker B: Danger. [01:14:09] Speaker A: Left. Here.

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