Many people all over the country have been involved with the “No Kings” movement and rallies. We had more than 1,000 participate in our small town of Willits, California. I have been a rebel with a cause my whole life. My parents were active in the human rights and labor movements in the 1950s and my father was one of the black-listed writers in Hollywood who stood up against McCarthism. My causes have involved love, compassion, and dignity for all people and true partnership with the communities of life on planet Earth.
Timothy Snyder is a widely respected professor and author of numerous books including On Freedom and On Tyranny. He says,
“The Founding Fathers tried to protect us from the threat they knew, the tyranny that overcame ancient democracy. Today, our political order faces new threats, not unlike the totalitarianism of the twentieth century. We are no wiser than the Europeans who saw democracy yield to fascism, Nazism, or communism. Our one advantage is that we might learn from their experience.”
Snyder goes on to ask,
“What does it mean to be commemorating 250 years of the American republic? To an uncanny degree, what the Trump people in this 250th year are doing is repeating the abuses that the American founders complained about: arbitrary taxation; taxation without representation; imperial attitudes; wars without consent.”
He calls us to fight for democracy in the same way our founding fathers did.
“To honor the origins of our republic, says Snyder, “doesn’t mean going back to the eighteenth century. It means being rebels in our own time. It means demanding freedom, aiming for something radically better in the future.”
Certainly men are not the only ones who can fall under the spell of fascism, but there is a reason historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat said in her prescient book Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present published in 2020,
“Ours is the age of authoritarian rulers: self-proclaimed saviors of the nation who evade accountability while robbing their people of truth, treasure, and the protections of democracy. They use masculinity as a symbol of strength and a political weapon. Taking what you want, and getting away with it, becomes proof of male authority. They use propaganda, corruption, and violence to stay in power.”
In her book she described seventeen examples of authoritarian leaders, all of them men including:
- Benito Mussolini, Prime minister of Italy
- Adolph Hitler, Chancellor of Germany
- Saddam Hussein, Prime minister of Iraq
- Victor Orban, Hungarian prime minister
- Vladimir Putin, President of Russia
- Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America
Ben-Ghiat concludes saying,
“They promise law and order then legitimize law-breaking by financial, sexual, and other predators.”
MenAlive: A Community of Rebels For Men and Their Families
Another step in my own “rebellion” occurred during the birth of our first child on November 21, 1969. After coaching my wife through the pre-birth Lamaze breathing methods we had learned, I was told she was ready to move into the delivery room.
“Your job is done, now Mr. Diamond,” the nurse told me. “You can go out to the waiting room, and we’ll let you know when you can see your wife and child.”
The hospital rules had been explained to us both: Fathers were not allowed in the delivery room. That was OK with me. Although I felt I was able to coach my wife during the first stages of birth, I was afraid I might pass out or otherwise be more of a hindrance than a help during the actual delivery.
I hugged my wife and wished her luck as she was wheeled one way toward the delivery room and I went the other direction toward the waiting room. But I never made it through the waiting room doors. I felt a calling from my unborn child: I don’t want a waiting-room father. Your place is here with us.
I turned around and walked back the way I had come and found the delivery room. I walked through the doors and took my place at the head of the table. There was no question of leaving, if asked. My child needed me and my response was more important than following the rules. Amid tears of relief and joy our son, Jemal, came into the world and he was handed to me.
Holding him for the first time I made a vow that I would be a different kind of father than my father was able to be for me and to do everything I could to create a world where fathers were fully healed and involved with their families throughout their lives.
When we met and fell in love in college, my future wife and I talked about our desire for children. We decided we would have one child then adopt a child. Even in 1964 we felt the world was becoming overcrowded. Three years after Jemal was born, we adopted a 2 ½ month old African American little girl we named Angela.
My website MenAlive was launched in 1972 as my window to the world. The purpose of MenAlive is to share ways we can come together to create a world of true partnership. I want everyone to live fully authentic lives, to love deeply and well, and to make a positive difference in the world.
My first book, Inside Out: Becoming My Own Man, was published in 1983. I have now written 17 books including international best-sellers, Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places, Surviving Male Menopause, and The Irritable Male Syndrome: Understanding and Managing the 4 Key Causes of Depression and Aggression.
I write articles and interview experts on various aspects of men’s mental, emotional, and relational health. One of my recent articles, “Father Time: How Dad’s Are Being Called to Change the World for Good,” featured one of my colleagues, Dr. Sarah Hrdy. Dr. Hrdy is an anthropologist and primatologist and one of the world’s leading experts on the evolutionary basis of female behavior in both nonhuman and human primates. She has recently turned her attention to men.
After seeing how her own sons were connected to children in ways she had previously assumed was what came naturally only to women, she researched and eventually wrote a book called Father Time: A Natural History of Men and Babies. She found that fathers are as biologically capable of nurturing small children as mothers are.
She said, “My unexpected finding is that inside every man there lurk ancient caretaking tendencies that render a man every bit as protective and nurturing as the most committed mother. It is a journey that has forced me to rethink long held assumptions about man’s innately selfish, competitive, and violent nature, what Darwin described as his ‘natural and unfortunate birthright.”
At MenAlive we have always known that men and women may be different in many ways, but when it comes to loving and nurturing children, we are as biologically programmed and capable of developing the same skills that mothers learn to develop. I will soon be introducing our MenAlive community to other expert colleagues. I describe what is coming in my recent article: “The Future of MenAlive: From Men’s Health to Relational Healing and Transformation.”
Come join us. You can read my latest blog posts here. If you feel called to change the world for good, I invite you to join us.
The post Becoming Rebels in Our Own Time: Calling on Men To Change the World for Good appeared first on MenAlive.