All parents of teens or even older young men and women, parents who are struggling to pay for college and/or wondering what the future holds for their children, should run, children in tow, to see three films: In the Heart of the Sea, 13 Hours, and The Finest Hours.

For at least two generations, our young people have been sorely abused by progressive tenets – the alleged insidiousness of patriarchy, the conviction that misogyny has undermined women for centuries and still does.  This is the nonsense that gave birth to militant feminism, to silly notions like "gender as a social construct."  Then there is the academic, educational, and cultural mandating of tolerance and acceptance of every social/cultural/gender fad, real or imagined, that has done terrible damage to at least two generations of young men and women.  

They have been, in calculated fashion, disabused of the glory and wonder of old-fashioned masculinity.  Our young people, unless they are from a military family, know nothing of the type of man who is brave, selfless, protective of his family and of strangers if need be.  They have been indoctrinated to believe all men are cads, that male college students are all potential rapists, that men in general are to be feared, not to be respected, let alone loved.

This is why these three new films are so necessary for all young people to see.  Each is based on a true story.  In the Heart of the Sea is based on the shipwreck of the Essex, a whaling ship that was destroyed in 1820 by a huge white whale.  Herman Melville based  his extraordinary novel Moby Dick on this real event in 1851.  13 Hours is based on the terrorist attack in 2012 on the diplomatic outpost where Ambassador Christopher Stevens was stationed in Benghazi and on the CIA facility a few miles away.  Stevens and three others were killed.  Four incredibly brave men saved the lives of their colleagues despite a stand-down order, abandonment by the State Department, and the denial of the awesome power of the American military that was not allowed to rescue them.

The Finest Hours is the phenomenal tale of the greatest small-boat rescue in American history.  Against all odds, a Coast Guard crew of four men saved the lives of 32 men after their tanker split in half in a ferocious storm off the coast of Massachusetts in 1952.

The common denominator of all three films is the wonder and talent of men; very smart men, brave men.  In each story, an unlikely leader arose to lead.  Each of those men was an expert on navigating the slice of the world he knew so, so well.  The men who followed their lead knew a leader when they saw one.  They were all as one with their chosen life's work. 

The complexity of a whale ship in the early 19th century is a wonder to behold.  The youngest member of the crew of the Essex was 14, an orphan and the only survivor still alive for Melville to interview many years later.  The obstacles the heroes of 13 Hours overcame are nothing short of miraculous.  The same is true of the rescue of the men of the Pendleton in The Finest Hours.  

But while these glorious tales of heroism abound, our children are being taught outrageous things in school.  Our girls are being taught to fear men.  Our young men are being taught to fear women.  Universities are requiring new students to answer extremely personal questions about their sexual history when most of them do not have one.  Academia is intent upon driving another nail in the coffin of traditional families, a longtime progressive goal.  A professor of mine once said in a women's studies class: "The nuclear family is the most destructive institution in the Western world."  Wrong.  It is the rock of Western civilization, the basis of all that is good in the world. 

Men have taken care of women for centuries.  Women have taken care of men for centuries.  But it is not a zero-sum game; men and women are profoundly different.  That is life as a human on this planet.  For decades, though, the progressive left has been submarining the whole notion of traditional family, of men as protective of women and children and of women as homemakers.  Traditional family life is like holy water sprinkled on the devil to the left.  It undermines their totalitarian instinct, their drive to control how people live.

Women and girls, pay attention!  Most men are good men.  They want a woman to love who will love them.  They want a family for whom to strive and care.  College men, most of them, are not rapists.  Watch these films and learn what good men are made of.  Then watch Mamet's The Edge and Spielberg's Bridge of Spies.  Learn what "the edge" is – character – and what a "standing man" is.  Learn and remember.