Bring Me Men

Introduction

Etched once upon an arch at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs were the words, “Bring Me Men”—a summons to the nation’s best and brightest to dedicate their strength and wisdom to defending America’s skies.

The phrase was borrowed in 1964 from Samuel Foss’s late-19th-century poem “The Coming American,” whose refrain the Academy adopted as its official motto at the Base of the Ramp. Written initially to mark Independence Day, the poem celebrated the rugged, masculine exertions of warfare that secured the Star-Spangled Banner’s place in triumph.

Poetry and Warfare

The poem’s assumptions about just and faithful warfare are hard to miss. War, it insists, is a man’s business. It demands discomfort and difficulty, adaptability and courage, mental fortitude and physical strength. It calls for men unflinching in their duty to wield violence for good; men who know the past, think critically, and hate lies as fiercely as they love truth. It demands discernment, wisdom, and the will to build—to bring order out of chaos. It demands discernment regarding the consequences of ideas and philosophies. It asks for men who recognize and defend what is beautiful, who cherish liberty and peace, and who stand undaunted before evil, convinced that victory belongs to the virtuous.

The kinship between these martial demands and the purposes of the Christian liberal arts is not accidental. Both aim to form free men—trained to resist evil and to build what is true, beautiful, and good. The martial tone of Christian rhetoric is no metaphorical flourish: warfare is its mandate (Eph. 6:10–20). The Christian is summoned to honor the King, resist sabotage, shoulder responsibility, exercise dominion, pursue fruitfulness, protect liberty, and trample serpents underfoot. In a world where evil persists, masculinity and combat are not luxuries. They are necessities.

Education is Warfare

In the cosmic war between truth and lies, good and evil, education is a decisive battleground. Whoever commands it shapes not only the thoughts of its adherents, but their affections and actions too. Though often dismissed as a genteel pursuit of abstraction, education is, in fact, the substance from which a society’s deepest beliefs, values, and practices are forged. Put plainly: education forms culture. He who controls education, controls the culture. Which is why this field cannot be ceded or compromised.

America’s founders grasped this point. Several of its war heroes recognized that the principles of military excellence were nourished by education. George Washington, though never formally schooled in higher learning, was a devoted student of the classics, captivated by figures such as Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. His voracious reading of history and philosophy honed his strategic brilliance.

Modern sentiment often reduces academia to a playground for the soft-handed, designed more for comfort than for strenuous labor. New Saint Andrews College takes a different view. Its expectation is that students embrace the mantle of cultural leadership under the lordship of Christ by preparing for war. Through the rigors of scholarship, the discipline of thought, speech, and language, and the relentless pursuit of virtue in every domain of life, students are equipped to fight and win the cultural battles that lie ahead.

Few poisons corrode masculine virtue, patriotism, and military strength more swiftly than the death of beauty.

Feminism and the Death of Beauty

One of today’s fiercest cultural battles is the push toward sexual androgyny, in which men grow less masculine and women less feminine. As masculinity is recast as oppressive and harmful, culture itself softens, dissolves into androgyny, and decays. Evil follows swiftly when men abdicate their posts as leaders, providers, and protectors.

Feminist activism has further stoked this decline, fanning a natural proclivity toward embitterment and urging women to see themselves as perpetual victims, entitled to occupy masculine spaces in the name of justice. In turn, many women abandon their highest glory: to be graceful and beautiful, to nurture and adorn their households and communities. Instead, they trade this for a lesser glory—a poor imitation of manhood. The result is a world drained of color, where beauty is distorted and even despised. And few poisons corrode masculine virtue, patriotism, and military strength more swiftly than the death of beauty.

Summons to War

In the early 2000s the United States Air Force Academy embraced the currents of progressivism and decided to replace its iconic slogan with something more inclusive. Today that slogan reads, “Integrity First, Service Before Self, Excellence in All We Do.” While there is nothing inherently wrong with this new motto—and it does communicate truth—it makes for a weaker summons for men to stand up and fight. The new slogan works well for a decent family-friendly store or restaurant, but when evil rears its ugly head and the enemy is at the gate, the manly summons to war are far more important than the polite slogans of corporate marketing.

New Saint Andrews College refuses to play such silly games. Its mission is to build and to fight. Its commitment is to take the world for the Sovereign King and His eternal Kingdom. Its anthem is a summons to battle and victory—a call to march through the chaos with song, sword, and shovel, for the building of great and lasting Christian civilizations.

So, as the hour demands masculine courage, the call is clear: bring us men.

The Coming American

by Samuel Foss

Bring me men to match my mountains,

Bring me men to match my plains,

Men with empires in their purpose,

And new eras in their brains.

Bring me men to match my prairies,

Men to match my inland seas,

Men whose thoughts shall pave a highway

Up to ampler destinies,

Pioneers to cleanse thought’s marshlands,

And to cleanse old error’s fen;

Bring me men to match my mountains—

Bring me men!

Bring me men to match my forests,

Strong to fight the storm and beast,

Branching toward the skyey future,

Rooted on the futile past.

Bring me men to match my valleys,

Tolerant of rain and snow,

Men within whose fruitful purpose

Time’s consummate blooms shall grow,

Men to tame the tigerish instincts

Of the lair and cave and den,

Cleanse the dragon slime of nature—

Bring me men!

Bring me men to match my rivers,

Continent cleansers, flowing free,

Drawn by eternal madness,

To be mingled with the sea—

Men of oceanic impulse,

Men whose moral currents sweep

Toward the wide, unfolding ocean

Of an undiscovered deep—

Men who feel the strong pulsation

Of the central sea, and then

Time their currents by its earth-throbs—

Bring me men!