Splitting the Uprights

Last week, three-time Super Champion, Kansas City Chiefs placekicker, Harrison Butker, gave a 20-minute commencement speech at a Catholic college in Kansas, Benedictine, in which he promoted Catholic values. The people on the left have been apoplectic ever since. They cannot understand why a Catholic gave a speech that is consistent with Catholic values at a Catholic college. I guess he should have given a pro-abortion, pro-promiscuity and anti-Pope speech to the Catholic audience. According to the left, everything he said was absolutely wrong. 

The NFL even chose to release a statement saying, “Harrison Butker gave a speech in his personal capacity. His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger.” This is the same organization that completely embraced the BLM movement which rioted and tore apart our country for 6 months in 2020, burning buildings, attacking police officers, firebombing a federal courthouse, and yet it feels the need to distance itself from a pro-family speech. Make no mistake, the NFL’s commitment to inclusion is only to make the league more money.

There is a petition going around trying to force the Kansas City Chiefs to cut Butker from the team because of the content of his speech, but last month when Kansas City Chiefs wide receiver Rasheed Rice was drag racing at speed in excess of 120 mph on I-75 in Dallas and caused a six-car accident which injured eight people, no one petitioned the Chiefs to cut Rice from the team.

To show how completely out of touch the left is, after his speech, Butker’s jersey became the best-selling jersey at the NFL store on Thursday, and all of his women’s jerseys were completely sold out by Friday. The controversy is solely created because the people who have prioritized career over family want to be validated in their decision, just like everybody on the left wants the entire world to validate everything that they do, which will never happen and that is why the left is perpetually angry.

If Butker's speech was so bad, and everything he said was so wrong, as George Constanza would say, the opposite has to be right. Here is what his speech might have sounded like if he had said the OPPOSITE of what he actually said.

Our own nation is led by a man who publicly and proudly proclaims his Catholic faith, courageous enough to make the Sign of the Cross during a pro-abortion rally. He has been so vocal in his support for the murder of innocent babies that he proves that you can be both Catholic and pro-choice. It is an important reminder that being Catholic in name is all that matters. But if we are going to be men and women for this time in history, we need to understand that the "Church of Nice" is the winning proposition. We must always speak and act in charity, and remember the best charity is cowardice.

As for me, I have ignored my vocation as a husband and father, and as a man. To the gentlemen here today: The best part of our society is the truth that that men are unnecessary in the home or in our communities. As men, we must be absent in the culture, and this absence of men in the home plays a large role in the safety and security of the nation. Men, you must apologize for your masculinity, embrace the cultural emasculation of men. Avoid the hard things. Settle for what is easy.

To the women here today: You have been told the absolute truth that your career is all that matters. Some of you may go on to get married and have children, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about getting a corporate job and languishing at a mid-management position working overtime and weekends to help the billionaire owners get richer for the next 40 years until you are downsized out of your job and are forced to live on $2,000 a month of Social Security.

I can tell you that my wife, Isabelle, would be the first to say that her life actually ended when she began living as a wife and as a mother. I'm on the stage today and able to be the man I am only because of what I have done for myself. My success had nothing to do with my wife.

If Butker had said those words, it would have been one of the most ridiculous speeches ever. But he said the exact opposite, and he is being pilloried by the left. It was one of the rare commencements speeches in which the speaker didn’t stand up and rattle off the series of meaningless platitudes like “change the world” or “you can be anything you want to be”. Remember, he did not say that women should not go to college; he didn’t say that women should not try to be successful in their careers, what he said was, “For the ladies present today, congratulations on an amazing accomplishment. You should be proud of all that you have achieved to this point in your young lives… How many of you are sitting here now about to cross this stage and are thinking about all the promotions and titles you are going to get in your career? Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

Since when is prioritizing your family and loved ones over some job at a soulless corporation a controversial idea? No one on their deathbed has ever said I wish I spent more time at the office. Or my biggest regret is that I did not get that promotion from that corporation that I worked 40 years for, who gave me a gold-plated watch when I retired. On your deathbed, your spouse and your children and your loved ones will be there surrounding you, not the CEO from your company, and not even your coworkers. When you pass away, your family and loved ones will be the ones who are devastated, who will feel your loss for years to come, who will do everything they can to keep your memory alive. The company that you worked for will barely skip a beat when you pass away, they will barely even recognize your passing, and quickly forget you.

But it is now controversial to say prioritize family over work. Hundreds of years ago, people worked solely to support their family. That was before pride and ego got tied to what job you do. When your kids are all raised and out of the house, you’re going to think back fondly on the family dinners, going to the Little League games, going to the recitals, all of the family time you spent together, you’re not going to think back on the board meeting you had 18 years ago, or the presentation you made 12 years ago, or the deal you cut 10 years ago. Those aren’t going to be the loving memories that fill your heart.

Imagine if the CEO of your company sent out a memorandum saying that you must prioritize your job and the company over your family. The employees would burn the building to the ground. Even the cutthroat NFL head coach, Vince Lombardi, said God, family, then the Green Bay Packers, in that order. The same people who want the Federal government to mandate 6 months of paid family leave are the same ones who are ridiculing Butker’s speech and calling him a Neanderthal for advocating that people should prioritize family over work. The CEO who tells his employees to prioritize work over family should be the one painted as the Neanderthal.

In the United States, the percentage of children being raised by a single mother has doubled over the last 50 years. We also have world’s highest rate of children living in single-parent households. Today, 53% of households are dual income in America, compared to 50 years ago, when only 31% of households were dual income. And that trend is driven by our own government who wants the dual income families because it needs as many people working and paying taxes as possible to support our bloated Federal budget, and if that means the destruction of the American family so be it because the government will eventually become the new family. The bigger the government, the smaller the individual and the smaller the family. And that is why a person who advocates for prioritizing family over work must be destroyed.

__________________________________________________________

J Garrett is a graduate of Princeton University. He has been a contributor to the website Real Clear Politics. He has recently published his first novel, No Wind.