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Notes -
Apparently Josh Hawley wrote a book called Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs. According to AI, in this book Hawley extols more conservative path for men, rejecting "epicurean liberalism" and embracing masculine roles and archetypes such as builder, warrior, father etc. So I think it is a lament that liberals reject men and masculinity, and thus shove men toward more conservative path in order to succeed.
Semi off-topic (but CW):
The word 'warrior' to refer to a member of the armed forces of a democratic state is, as kids say these days, Problematic.
ACOUP:
Angry staff officer:
The closest we have to a separate warrior class -- people who see themselves as permanently apart from the broader society, for whom to engage in violence is a fundamental part of their identity -- these days are probably criminal gangs (or especially corrupt police departments, if there is a difference).
Agreed, which kind of makes the point. You may aspire to be let's say a warrior of Christ despite degenerate "epicurean liberal" consensus. I think it captures the ethos of masculinity - to be disagreeable toward degenerate ideas despite it being unpopular to an extent, where you are willing to be martyred for it. It does not mean that you will commit violent acts of terrorism of course, but some bravery and confidence in righteousness of your worldview is commendable. You can maybe start with unabashedly saying blessings before eating your lunch in Google canteen. Very warrior like behavior.
Priests and warriors are not the same thing. Both are traditionally masculine roles, particularly in the Christian West, and both are supposed to cultivate the kind of moral and religious basedness you are talking about here. But the warrior isn't supposed to be martyred - he's supposed to send the infidel to his "martyrdom". From a warrior's perspective, saying blessings unabashedly while undercover in enemy territory doesn't make you badass, it makes you an idiot.
In the context of this sub-thread, "warrior" isn't a metaphor for someone who tries to achieve something against determined opposition - it is a reference to people who make actual, real-world physical violence a way of life. Warrior-elites in this strict sense are a key feature of most societies. The taming of warrior elites into aristocracies who only fight the enemy, not among themselves, is part of the transition from barbarism into civilisation.
I don't really get quibbling over definitions, Warrior isn't bad because it's fascist, it's bad because it's cringe. "I'm a warrior because I pray in the company cafeteria" is cringey, dude no one cares.
Erasing the warrior-soldier distinction is bad because it makes it harder to talk accurately and precisely about violence professionals, and in particular to call out certain failure modes in civil-military relations.
Erasing the warrior-curmudgeon distinction is bad for the same reasons.
Welcome the euphemism treadmill. Erasing the moron-retard distinction is bad because it makes it harder to talk accurately and precisely about intellectual capabilities.
Warrior euphemism talk started, as I recall seeing it, with the cringey Wounded Warrior Project stuff, though I'm sure it has earlier roots.
Was "retarded" or "retard" ever used as a specific technical term allowing fine distinctions in the way "moron", "imbecile" and "idiot" (in increasing order of retardation) were? I am not an expert, but I think "retarded" was the first turn of the euphemism treadmill after idiot/imbecile/moron became un-PC, and "retard" has never been anything except a schoolboy insult derived from "retarded".
I don't think the euphemism treadmill applies to warrior/soldier though - the people talking about "warriors" think that both "warrior" and "soldier" are both strongly positive descriptions that you wouldn't want to euphemise.
Mentally Retarded was the standard terminology from roughly the 40s through the early 2000s. I don't know that the shortened retard was ever formally used, but it was a simple shorthand so I'm sure that it was used by professionals informally.
It's the same dynamic, though with a different valence. The normal way we talk about the euphemism treadmill is that you have a perfectly good word for something (retard, negro, sodomite, secretary, rape victim) that acquires negative connotations over time because of the thing described, and a new euphemism is introduced to shed those negative connotations while still describing the thing (special needs, african american, homosexual, administrative assistant, rape survivor). In this case, it's not that soldier had negative connotations, it's that it had insufficiently positive connotations. Soldier was never a negative term, but chickenhawks needed an even more aggressively positive word. "Heroes" is often used for maximal positive connotations, but everyone knows it's stupid.
Warrior gets traction with these types because it pushes the positive connotations of soldier further, but eventually it will just take on the same connotations as soldier, and they'll need a new euphemism.
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