How do you make a man?

Contrary to the views of a lot of people the world has a marked shortage of men. I am not talking about a bipedal lifeform called Homo Sapiens with a penis. I am talking MEN.

Young men for several generations have received a mixed signal as to what constitutes being a man. The generation just before mine grew up with the image of the man of the house going off to work and being gone all day and half the night while the woman stayed at home and did all the hard work.

My generation grew up in the shadow of feminism and how that men are brutes and they smell funny and that male urges and desires are all bad.

Of course, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Not all men are brutes who beat their wives in drunken rages and of course we need to participate around the house. Rather than being cold calculating machines who bring home the bacon we do need to be in touch with our emotions and we learn how to respond to the women in our lives.

Any man who has a successful marriage knows, or should know, that the Bible verse just before the famous “wives submit to your husbands” verse the Bible says that we should submit to one another and a few verses down from the famous verse The Bible says we should love our wives and nurture her. A real man realizes that his wife is running the show anyway.

But what does it take to be a man? My navy father is fond of saying that the Morgan family motto is “Honor, Dignity and Pride.” I add for future generations of Morgan men the word “Courage.”

You know I had a rough outline for this post in my head and had a few salient points to make but I think I would rather just give a few quotes from John Wayne.

John T. Chance (Rio Bravo):
“Sorry don’t get it done, Dude.”

Sergeant John M. Stryker (Sands of Iwo Jima):
“A lot of guys make mistakes, I guess, but every one we make, a whole stack of chips goes with it. We make a mistake, and some guy don’t walk away – forevermore, he don’t walk away.”

John Bernard Books (The Shootist):
“I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, and I won’t be laid a hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I expect the same from them.” (This is my favorite John Wayne quote.)

Ringo Kid (Stagecoach):
“Well, there are some things a man just can’t run away from.”

Hondo Lane (Hondo):
“I don’t guess people’s hearts got anything to do with a calendar.”

Capt. Rockwell Torrey (In Harm’s Way):
“All battles are fought by scared men who’d rather be some place else.”

Colonel Madden (Back to Bataan):
“This kind of war, you’ve gotta believe in what you’re fighting for.”

Tom Doniphon (The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance):
“Out here a man settles his own problems.”

Duke Gifford (Operation Pacific):
“He was a good man. Make sure that it says so on the patrol report.”

Marshall J.D. Cahill (Cahill, U.S. Marshall):
“Cause even grown men need understanding.”

Col. Michael Kirby (The Green Berets):
“Out here, due process is a bullet.”

Col. David Crockett (The Alamo):
“Republic. I like the sound of the word.”

Big Jake

“Well, son, since you haven”t learned to respect your elders, it’s time you learned to respect your betters.”

Chisum

“Well, we do exactly what we started out to do.”

“Courage is being scared to death – and saddling up anyway.”

“Talk low, talk slow, and don’t say too much.”

Inscription on Mr. Wayne’s headstone:
“Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It’s perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we’ve learnt something from yesterday.”