Men on the margins.

If I were some powerful super villain whose goal it was to kill off America, to render it impotent and meaningless on the world stage, one of things I would do is marginalize men. I would convince as many people as I could that when it comes to men, the bad outweighs the good and that the world would be better off if men played a significantly reduced role.

If I wanted to destroy America, I’d deal pre-emptively with the fact that about half of the children born are going to be boys. I’d make sure that boys are taught that their natural aggressiveness is bad. I’m not talking just about civilizing the natural mischief out of boys, I’m talking about emasculating boys to the point that they quit trying to win games, run faster than one another, climb trees faster, get dirty or stand up for themselves. I’d protect America’s boys from even the most minor injuries, teaching them that there is no activity sufficiently worthwhile as to warrant the risk of even a skinned knee or a sprained wrist.

I’d convince mothers to hover over their sons and protect them from every little thing, no matter how inconsequential. I’d make sure that young boys in America never learned to deal with pain and injury.

If I wanted to make sure America was never again a world power, I’d pound the natural competitiveness out of boys. I’d insist that school activities be structured so that everyone can be called a “winner” no matter how meaningless it rendered the word. I would never let America’s boys taste either the sweetness of victory nor the bitterness of defeat, preferring instead a risk-free mediocrity in which there was little worth striving for.

As boys began to grow up and start becoming men, I’d use popular culture to put them in their rightful place. I’d be sure that most of the television shows and movies depict men as clueless, malicious or absent. The most popular television shows would include offerings such as the “Gilmore Girls,” in which the mother and daughter bravely persevere despite the fact that the mother became pregnant at age 16 and refused to marry the father. Or I’d create a TV and movie franchise called “Sex and the City” in which four extremely fashionable women use men solely for the purpose of sexual release all the while mocking them and decrying their ineptitude and shallowness. I’d make sure the male characters in that show displayed no evidence to the contrary. To help bring about the destruction of America, I’d make sure that neither young men nor young women were ever exposed to movies or TV shows depicting men as heroes or as decent and faithful husbands and fathers.

To the extent that any man accomplished anything worthwhile, I’d look for a way to diminish the accomplishment. For example, instead of showcasing the founders of the country as principled and visionary, I’d make sure that the text books dwelt more heavily on their shortcomings such as owning slaves or being unfaithful to their wives.

Most important, in my quest to destroy America, I would try to convince as many women as possible that aside from the basic biology, they don’t need a man in order to have children. I’d convince women that not only is it OK, it is in fact enlightened and liberated to have children and raise them without making a lifetime commitment to the father. In books and magazine articles and in as much of the culture as possible, I would dismiss as passé the idea that boys need a father in order to learn to be men and that girls need a father in order to learn how a man should treat them.

In order to take away from America an essential ingredient that helped make it great, I’d take the sperm from men and then turn them loose to an otherwise untethered life free from responsibility or respect.

From such degeneration of the role of men in American society, I’d sit back and watch America slowly succumb to poverty, dependence, addiction, crime, suicide, urban decay, chronic unemployment, creeping hopelessness and social unrest.

As I said in this space two days after President Obama’s inauguration, the one thing I can say I admire about him is that he is a faithful husband and father. For my money, that’s the one thing he gets right.

We are one day going to pay for the fact that it’s the one good thing about him that his liberal acolytes never talk about.