The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country (2nd Edition)
By Waller R. Newell.
Independently Published, 2025.
Paperback, 240 pages, $14.99.
Reviewed by Clifford Angell Bates, Jr.
Waller R. Newell’s The Code of Man: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, Country (2nd edition, Independently Published, 2025) is not simply a reissue of a book first published by William Morrow in 2003. It is a renewal, a statement of moral clarity in a culture that has forgotten how to speak about virtue without embarrassment. The timing of this edition could not be more significant. The early 2000s were an era of action; young men proved themselves in service and sacrifice during the Global War on Terror. But the young men of the 2020s and 2030s, the “Zoomer” generation, are seeking guidance of a different kind. They are not on the battlefields of Iraq or Afghanistan; they are on digital battlefields of distraction, isolation, and confusion. Where the earlier generation learned about reclaiming the manly heart, the current one searches for meaning.
For this reason, Newell’s Code of Man speaks to them with rare power. In a world flooded with online influencers, “red pill” rhetoric, and algorithmic posturing, Newell offers something older, wiser, and far superior: a code of manliness rooted in the Western tradition of virtue, character, and service. His message is that true manliness is not a pose or performance; it is the integration of moral and intellectual excellence, what he calls “the manly heart.”
Newell’s thesis is simple and profound: modern society has forgotten what manliness truly means. We now associate masculinity with either brutality or weakness, what he famously calls “the Wimp versus the Beast.” Both extremes, he argues, are false. The “Wimp,” molded by the culture of sensitivity and self-doubt, denies his natural drive for excellence and strength. The “Beast,” reacting to that denial, indulges in aggression and selfishness. Between these two caricatures lies the genuine man, courageous, disciplined, loving, proud, devoted to family and country. He writes, “The virtues of character required of us by Love, Courage, Pride, Family and Country work together to infuse the souls of men with a coherent path to self-respect, satisfaction and happiness.” True manliness, in Newell’s view, is not dominance but direction—not conquering others, but mastering oneself.
This classical vision of manhood rests on what he calls integritas, from the Latin for wholeness: “A man’s life should be a whole comprised of the sum of its parts … honesty, rectitude, probity, trustworthiness, faithfulness and self-control.” These qualities, Newell argues, have been mocked as outdated but remain the foundation of human dignity. The manly life is one of unity—of mind and heart, passion and reason, love and duty.
At the heart of Newell’s book is a vision that reaches back to Plato’s Phaedrus: the soul as a chariot pulled by two powerful steeds, passion and courage, guided by the reins of reason. “Without the power provided by the two horses guided by the charioteer, the chariot will not be able to move … the image teaches, there has to be a symbiotic cooperation between the mind and the passions led by reason.” This image becomes the moral architecture of The Code of Man. Reason alone is sterile; passion alone is chaos. Together, disciplined by virtue, they produce greatness. The man who learns to govern himself, Newell insists, becomes capable of governing in every other sense, as father, citizen, soldier, or leader.
Such men are not born but made, through moral education, the shaping of character, and the cultivation of the five cardinal virtues that structure the book: Love, Courage, Pride, Family, and Country. Each represents a dimension of the soul that must be trained and integrated. Love perfects courage; courage sustains love; pride guards both. Family and country give those virtues direction and purpose.
Newell’s analysis of modern culture is unsparing. He argues that the West has entered an era of “historical amnesia,” in which it has forgotten that manly virtue was never synonymous with macho aggression. “For most of our past tradition, ‘macho’ behavior—coarse, belligerent, brutish—was considered unmanly, the very opposite of true masculinity.”
In his view, both radical feminism and the self-styled “men’s movements” of the late-twentieth century distorted masculinity in opposite ways. Feminism, especially in its “difference” form, romanticized women as bearers of all virtue and men as sources of all vice. Meanwhile, the men’s movement, from Iron John to drum circles, offered a sentimental parody of virility that “ran the risk of reacting to feminism’s balkanization of the sexes by embracing it.” Both, Newell says, abandoned the true code—a union of reason, courage, and moral purpose.
He writes bluntly: “It is essential to recognize that the answer to men’s perplexities about the meaning of manly behavior is not the further extension of the feminist project … Before boyish excesses can be curbed, they must be allowed to reveal themselves, otherwise they will be driven underground only to explode later in toxic form.” In other words, suppressing masculinity creates the very pathology we now call “toxic.” For Newell, the solution is not to tame men but to educate them, to restore the link between strength and virtue.
The 2025 edition of The Code of Man arrives at a cultural moment Newell could not have anticipated in 2003. Then, the crisis of manliness was overshadowed by real wars and real heroes. The millennial generation, coming of age during the Global War on Terror, sought manly purpose not in libraries but in service, military, civic, and physical. Those who read about virtue were a minority; those who lived it wore uniforms.
Today’s young men, the Zoomer generation, inhabit a different battlefield. Their world is digital, fragmented, and disorienting. They face a constant stream of “manhood content” from influencers, podcasters, and algorithmic gurus offering quick formulas for dominance or success. What they rarely encounter is a serious moral and philosophical guide, a vision of manliness that connects strength to honor and desire to duty. In that sense, the new Code of Man is precisely what this generation needs. Newell’s voice offers what the internet cannot: depth, dignity, and continuity with a civilization that once knew what it meant to form men of character. His emphasis on love, courage, and civic pride speaks directly to young men weary of cynicism and irony—those who sense, as Newell writes, that “the history of all civilizations and countries shows that war can spark a period of soul-searching, stocktaking, and moral regeneration.”
The new foreword explicitly situates the book in the contemporary debate about “toxic masculinity” and “gender fluidity.” Newell is not dismissive, but he is firm: “What is now called ‘toxic masculinity’ is a perverse and destructive force that is the direct opposite of the traditional Western understanding of true manliness.” For Zoomer men trying to reconcile masculine identity with moral integrity, such clarity is not reactionary, it is liberating.
The power of The Code of Man lies in its fusion of erudition and accessibility. Newell is a scholar, but he writes like a man who has taught and listened. His examples range from Plato and Aristotle to Fight Club and Casablanca, showing that even modern pop culture, in its confusion, still longs for ancient virtues. He writes, “Through pop culture, we often experience the guilty pleasure of vicariously enjoying ways of life that are forbidden to us by our prevailing social orthodoxies.” The task, he says, is to redeem that longing, to direct it toward truth rather than nihilism.
Newell’s style is moral without moralizing. He does not plead for understanding; he commands respect. “Manliness,” he writes, “is not mere aggression or conquest but the energy of the soul rightly ordered toward the good.” In this way, he restores dignity to a word that modern culture has made suspect. Newell’s vision is not for weak men trying to appear strong but for strong men who wish to be good. That distinction—between strength and virtue, gives the book its authority. He reminds readers that “the only possible antidote to distortions of manliness lies in recollecting its history and true original meaning.”
Code inevitably invites comparison to Harvey Mansfield’s Manliness (2006), the other great modern treatise on the subject. Mansfield, a Harvard political philosopher, defines manliness as “confidence in the face of risk.” His analysis is brilliant, but it is also detached, a philosophical anatomy of manliness rather than an education in it. Mansfield’s tone is ironic, urbane, and at times elusive. His book challenges the intellect but does not move the heart.
Newell’s Code, by contrast, is the manual Mansfield’s theory needs. It brings manliness down from the lecture hall into the world of love, work, and duty. Mansfield speaks to scholars; Newell speaks to men. He writes for the reader who senses that masculinity has been cheapened and wants to recover its meaning through action, virtue, and culture. Where Mansfield analyzes, Newell inspires. His book, grounded in the Great Books but written in living language, carries the fire of a teacher rather than the detachment of a theorist. If Mansfield’s Manliness is the intellectual blueprint, Newell’s Code is the architectural design, vivid, moral, and inhabitable. For readers seeking not just understanding but transformation, Newell’s work is superior in reach, tone, and relevance.
Newell closes his foreword with the words of Jefferson: “Happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed them … it is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.” That, for Newell, is the true pursuit of happiness, not pleasure, but purpose. His book is not nostalgic; it is restorative. He does not call men back to the past but forward to the virtues that have always made civilization possible. To be a man, in his code, is not to dominate but to serve, to master oneself in order to be worthy of others’ trust.
In an age of confusion, that message cuts through noise with the clarity of a trumpet. The Code of Man is not another online sermon or lifestyle manifesto. It is a return to first principles, the idea that courage, reason, love, and honor form the core of a man’s soul, and that civilization depends on cultivating them.
In this new edition, The Code of Man stands as a definitive guide for a generation searching for meaning amid moral drift. It offers something the internet cannot: a coherent tradition, a moral vocabulary, and a spiritual direction. For Zoomer men, it is the antidote to confusion, a reminder that being a man is not about asserting power but about earning it through service, integrity, and courage. Newell writes, “The false identification of manliness per se with macho crudeness shuts the door on this entire pedagogical project.” He reopens that door and invites modern men to walk through it.
If Mansfield gave manliness a philosophy, Newell gives it a code, a path to walk, a set of virtues to live by. His book is the rare synthesis of wisdom and vitality, teaching that the highest form of strength is the strength to be good. For a generation searching the web for answers, The Code of Man offers something better: the wisdom of civilization itself.
Clifford Angell Bates, Jr. is University Professor in the American Studies Center at Warsaw University in Warsaw, Poland, and an instructor in the MA Diplomacy and International Relations program at Norwich University. He is the author of Aristotle’s Best Regime (2003) and The Centrality of the Regime for Political Science (2016). X: @CliffordBates12 YouTube: @cliffordbates Substack: https://cliffordangellbatesjr240849.substack.com/
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