I can see a real cowboy any day of the week if I like. I just have to walk a couple blocks to the Lander Bar, and I find a man with real cow dung on his boots sipping a local beer (perhaps it’s a pint of Atlantic City Gold). Wyoming, Texas, Montana. States like these are still home to men and women who live on the land, multi-generational ranchers, some on properties continuously cultivated since 18-something.
The cowboy spirit of John Wayne movies is still incarnate in these remote corners of America. But, for most, these men are a legend only. The majority of Americans will never meet a real cowboy and even if they did, probably wouldn’t learn much from these men famous for tough terseness.
Wherever you live, Bear Woznick’s new book 12 Rules for Manliness: Where Have All the Cowboys Gone brings some of their wisdom right to you. “The world needs more real men. The world needs more cowboys.”
Woznick’s sentiment is echoed by Catholic men’s guides of various stripes, but few authors have the credentials he has: real time in the saddle, in the waves, on the road.
“Men,” Woznick says, “we need to fan into flame the hidden embers in the ashes of traditional virtues to put a fire in our belly that will make us strong and maybe even a little dangerous.” Woznick looks to the Wild West for similar virtues I’ve discussed looking across the centuries to Beowulf’s time. Christian men don’t need to be nice, but rather “good men with a good name.” The sort that makes “demons cower and think, ‘Oh no, he’s up’” in the morning.
Woznick isn’t trying to recreate role-players. He doesn’t literally want you to start wearing spurs and chewing dip. Rather, it’s meant to give examples of manly virtues, “inspired by the manliest of men” and backed up by the insights of Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, and St. Paul.
Woznick rightly notes that “as long as there are cattle, there will be cowboys riding the range.” It’s funny, but one of the most extended experiences of a real cowboy character in my own life was actually a cowgirl, the wife of a local.
So much of what Woznick writes reminds me of her. I often went riding at their place during high school. I’ve never known someone so service-oriented, so calm and kind, so patient with other’s needs. Outside all day, her weather-wrinkled face was always smiling. She was the sort of person who would rub the same salve on your cuts that that she rubbed on her horse’s wounds. She wasn’t worried about germs like someone from suburbia; she had too much experience of real dirt for that.
This book takes an explicitly Catholic and Christian approach to virtue building, acknowledging that building real virtue is impossible without divine assistance. Woznick sees that today the devil “sissifies and castrates men” because he hates fatherhood. He knows that “your highest calling” is “to love others responsibly” not in a feel-good way but in a “blood and gusts” laying down your life sort of way.
The book makes its way down the trail of its subtitular 12 virtues: “Know your Creed, Live by your Code,” “Bridle Your Passion: Let Good Things Run Wild,” “Come Hell or High Water, Get the Job Done” being some examples.
Woznick makes it clear that it is not a “self-help book” but an outward-oriented virtue toolbox. It’s a book that doesn’t make room for “trying” because, as John Wayne says, “Trying don’t get the job done, son.” With lots of real-life anecdotes, scripture quotes, and even some neat references to the classics.
You can’t really become a cowboy from reading a book. You don’t build virtues by reading but by doing (just like you can’t sky-dive by “kinda-sorta” jumping out of a plane, as Woznick recounts in one of his stories). But reading is a place to start. And it’s certainly in the cowboy spirit to learn what you can when and where you can.
It’s a good book. Woznick calls his shots with potent words. They’ve got spice to them—seasoned with dirt and coffee and smoke. It’s a book for putting fire in your belly. We could all use some more fire.
12 Rules for Manliness: Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?
By Bear Woznick
Sophia Institute Press, 2023
Hardcover, 216 pages
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Cowboys? Well, John Wayne was not a real cowboy, nor was he a real Marine. He was an actor. Masculinity comes from within, not from silly cowboy boots or pickup trucks. Those of us who were real Marines are amused by the faux cowboys.
Well yes, the article talks about the spirit of masculinity in films and real life . Not every man works cattle or fights in a war, nor does every man have the talent like John Wayne to portray those roles in movies.
Cowboy boots and trucks are pretty useful. It’s challenging hauling hay and feed home minus a pickup.
Pickup trucks are indeed great for hauling, hay, sacks of feed, etc. very useful for the farm. I do see a lot of young men in suburbia who work in offices and never haul anything, driving around in huge pickups, perhaps to create some faux cowboy image.
Speaking from experience, a very macho thing to do is to rock a sick baby in the middle of the night, giving your wife a much needed break. Just as macho as leading a company of Marines on a 4 mile run at 0600, having done that too. I don’t need a big pickup truck.
I think there’s a difference between manliness & macho, at least from a Christian perspective. It seems like the book encourages virtue & manliness. Caring for a sick child is certainly virtuous.
I don’t have large pickup truck ambitions either. My little one suits me fine & saves gas.
🙂
Will, you’ve missed the point, and you’ve tarred all Julian’s excellent points with a misunderstanding. Note: “Woznick isn’t trying to recreate role-players.” All authors have used names, mythical figures, historical settings and such to bring a reader into the arena of focus – striking a chord, resonating with understood references.
All this to engage the reader. From what Julian writes, it seems to me that there is much in the Wozick book that might awaken the conscience and stir the spirit of many modern men. Maybe even some of our priests.
I watched a John Wayne movie last night from 1952 with Maureen O’Hara. He slapped her and forced her into bed against her wishes. Helping men become more gentler, sensitive, and egalitarian strengthens their masculinity. Such nonsense about making men tougher will make America great again. Ask any woman, black, brown, or Asian person if they would rather be living in the 1950’s or now and hear what they have to say. Men had their chance to run (ruin) America, it’s time now to give women a chance to lead our country with strength and the support and collaboration of masculine men who understand what it truly means to be male.
You didn’t ask me but if I could take some medical advances back with me I’d surely rather raise a family in the 1950’s. Not every single thing was perfect & goodness knows, civil rights was in its infancy but at least we knew that men were men & women were women. If we don’t have that truth we won’t have much else.
thank you for saying that! the family model has gone the wrong way since no fault divorce and women being forced to work to have healthcare and necessities for the family; it’s no wonder so many young couples are shacking up – the male esp is afraid of a divorce
Bishop Sheen said in one of his talks men used to run the world and women ran society
I agree. Women were not aborting their children like they did starting in the 1970’s (and please don’t cite the rare cases where women were getting “back alley abortions”). It doesnt say much for American women that since the 1970s, they’ve managed to abort over 60 million of their children (in many cases, with the support of their sperm donor husbands and boyfriends).
To be pro male does not being anti-woman.
Correction: …does not mean being….
Hmmm, I think you missed the author’s very good message. Maybe reread.
From another Marine, sincerely, sorta.
If there is any mention on how such men treat women, I missed it. The example of a woman being a cowboy does not address that question. Do the author of the book and the author of the article share Timothy Gordan’s position on women?
Responding to Will’s comment: Thank you for your service (truly. My father was a sergeant in WWII and died two decades later, directly due to injuries sustained in the war). But I want to note that the author was not holding up John Wayne as a role model – Wayne was so peripheral to this beautiful column that his name could have been left off entirely. He was merely quoting a great line, one that, as I read it, made me smile and say “I’m saving that one!.”
John Wayne actually owned a huge cattle ranch in AZ & was involved with its operations.
I love John Wayne movies, True Grit’s my favorite. John Wayne converted to Catholicism before he died & was very courageous in his battle with cancer.
Two of my children made a trek to John Wayne’s birthplace in Iowa several years ago & visited the museum. The little birthplace home was tiny.
yes, I believe his grandson was a priest
Isn’t he the one who came up with “I’ve got the big C”? (cancer)
Thank you for the reminder. Yes, his grandson was ordained a Catholic priest. I’m not sure about the “Big C” invention but it sounds like something John Wayne might come up with.
🙂