In Defense Of White Men

The cultural zeitgeist of the last decade shifted and made an enemy of the very people who created our culture. Instead of being proud of what our ancestors built, we’re told, often with fury, to be suspect and to feel ashamed of our forefathers. The men who built institutions, brought peace and security to our nations, and ensured our material comfort today are no longer remembered as great contributors, but as enemies of progress. We enjoy the benefits of a civilization we’re encouraged to distrust, relying daily on its technology, order, and abundance while being taught to view its origins with moral unease. Can a society survive if it teaches its sons to hate themselves and their inheritance?

A Culture That Only Remembers Its Sins

There has been a concerted effort by those in the media and positions of power to revolutionize how the history of Western nations is taught and remembered. This became glaringly obvious during the Black Lives Matter era of 2020, when calls to decolonize education and to decenter and interrogate whiteness became widespread, carrying the implicit message that white people themselves, especially white men, are something to be viewed with suspicion. It became clear that the mainstream narrative about the West is propagated through selective memory and presented as something uniquely condemnable.

The mainstream narrative about the West is propagated through selective memory and presented as something uniquely condemnable.

However, if we open the door to the past and examine the history of every country, we would find aspects of wrongdoing unimaginable in today’s world. Slavery is often presented as something unique to Western nations, but in reality, the existence of slaves can be traced as far back as the Code of Hammurabi in ancient Mesopotamia, as well as in Egyptian society, where slaves were used for domestic and agricultural labor. Even African kingdoms such as Ashanti or Dahomey practiced the enslavement of rival tribes long before European contact. None of this is meant to excuse white people in the past for slavery in a Western context, but rather to highlight the imbalance in how historical guilt is assigned and remembered.

What happens to a society, and to its men, when they’re taught that their very nature and where they come from are sinful? If our accomplishments are diminished and moralized away, how can we take pride in ourselves and approach the future with confidence? If our children are taught about the accomplishments and superiority of other nations while being discouraged from appreciating their own, we risk breeding a population that apologizes for its very existence, while the great efforts of the men before us wither away into distant relics of the past, remembered only for their supposed failures rather than their enduring contributions.

From Contribution to Condemnation

White men are not a monolith, despite how they are often portrayed by the media and in academic discourse. The mainstream narrative has shifted how we view human roles in order to make villains out of everyday men. Men who built are now labeled oppressors; farmers feeding a population are now land grabbers or exploiters; artists are reframed as colonizers; explorers as conquerors; and institutions meant to preserve order are reduced to instruments of domination. As analysts like Jeremy Carl have documented, this narrative shift was top-down and did not emerge spontaneously from the public, but rather from ideas sponsored by universities, HR and DEI bureaucracies, the media, and NGOs. Carl also argues that modern DEI frameworks intentionally moralize language, turning race and identity into categories of guilt and virtue rather than neutral tools for understanding history.

When history is approached from this perspective, our ancestors are not remembered as people acting within a specific context, but rather as moral offenders. This black-and-white view of men in the West doesn’t take into account how, until recent times, the world was extremely harsh and most human behavior was shaped by survival. While white men, as a group, are of course not free from wrongdoing, why aren’t they afforded the same grace as other people, whose failures are often moralized away or excused? The reality is that men worked, created, protected, failed, and tried again, shaping the world we live in today through effort, sacrifice, and persistence. Their motivation to rise at 5 a.m. to herd sheep or work on dangerous building sites was not about an instinct to rule over others, but a love of family, community, and country.

The reality is that men worked, created, protected, failed, and tried again, shaping the world we live in today through effort, sacrifice, and persistence.

While some people may diminish the effects this moral reframing has on the lives of white men, one doesn’t have to look far to see how it shapes the way men experience their place in society. This isn’t just rhetoric, but a cultural shift with measurable consequences, as explored in a recent article describing what has been called a “lost generation” of men increasingly pushed to the margins of cultural and professional life. In the piece, writer Jacob Savage reflects on his own experience with DEI practices, describing how, despite early promise in Hollywood, he lost opportunities as hiring decisions became increasingly tied to race or identity rather than merit. Beyond individual stories, broader trends show that white men have declined as a share of law school entrants, medical students, tech employees, and other professions over the last decade. Taken together, these patterns reveal that the consequences of this shift are not abstract, but visible in the growing number of men who quietly withdraw from institutions that no longer seem to want them.

Abolition and the Myth of Permanent Guilt

Without framing Western history as uniquely harmful, the moral urgency of “anti-racism” collapses. The reality about the West and white men is that while mistakes were made, they placed themselves at the forefront of the fight against slavery and helped establish a world that increasingly respects human dignity. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery itself in 1833 after a sustained moral, religious, and political campaign largely driven from within British society. Following abolition, the British Royal Navy established the West Africa Squadron, deploying ships for decades to intercept slave traders and pressure other nations to abandon the practice, often at significant financial and human cost.

There is such a focus on division and resentment that, despite great efforts to correct the wrongs of slavery, some today are still calling for people in the present to apologize and pay reparations for the wrongs of the past. If abolition, sacrifice, and reform do not resolve moral debt, then the goal is no longer justice; it is perpetual accusation. And if reform is never enough, what, then, is the end goal of racial justice? So far, this approach has achieved not harmony among races, but the alienation and radicalization of large segments of the population, leading to anti-white racism excused on the basis of perpetual victimhood. This is proof that false narratives about Western history cannot be allowed to persist any longer.

The Cost of Inherited Shame

We are now all familiar with discussions about the crisis among men, especially young men. From addiction, inceldom, and meaningless relationships to declining testosterone levels and poor physical and mental health, the signs are difficult to ignore. Life has always been a struggle, but compared with men a hundred years ago, many today are worse off by nearly every metric. The vilification of masculinity and white men has increasingly pushed them to the margins of society, discouraging them from taking up space simply for being men. Young men have grown up facing a barrage of criticism about their race from the media, institutions, and education system, an environment that has fostered resentment across an entire generation.

A civilization that teaches its people to despise their inheritance cannot expect confidence, cohesion, or responsibility to flourish.

The term blackpilled may have started as a meme, but it now resonates with men who feel apathetic about their lives and futures. Men today are often told to pick themselves up by their bootstraps, to work harder and take responsibility, even as the cultural and institutional ladders that once rewarded effort have been removed. Opportunities are increasingly filtered through ideological and identity-based frameworks that leave many men feeling excluded, a shift often enforced not only by younger activists but by older leaders, including white men, who align themselves with the prevailing moral consensus to maintain status or relevance. The result is a generation being asked to carry the burdens of responsibility without being granted the dignity, trust, or fair pathways that responsibility traditionally requires.

A civilization that teaches its people to despise their inheritance cannot expect confidence, cohesion, or responsibility to flourish. If we want a future built on dignity rather than resentment, we must be willing to remember the past with honesty, proportion, and gratitude instead of perpetual accusation. A return to patriotic values ensures that we look forward to the future while carrying the good from the past with us.