Merle Haggard’s “The Fightin’ Side of Me” came up the other day on my Apple Music something-or-other playlist. So, sticking to the music theme for yet another day …

This Haggard tune—that Toby Keith called “the original Angry American song” —I’ve heard dozens, if not hundreds, of times in the past. But it hit differently this time around. Not because the song changed, but because we are now living in the world “the Hag” warned us about.

“When they’re runnin’ down my country, man, they’re walkin’ on the fightin’ side of me.”

Those weren’t just lyrics in 1970. This was a battle cry from forgotten America. An America that built things, grew things, and fixed things, all the while getting lectured to by people who wouldn’t last ten minutes doing real work.

Sound familiar?

Today’s young men are watching as the achievements of their grandfathers are mocked, the values of their fathers dismissed, and as their own futures are continually called into question by the same elites who have never missed a meal or worried about a mortgage payment.

These boys notice the contempt and they feel the condescension.

What about that righteous anger brewing inside them? Well, it is not a problem to be medicated away, that’s for sure.

It is better served as a force that can be harnessed and used against the elite crowd.

See, the establishment wants to pathologize male anger and turn it into therapy sessions & participation trophies. They want our sons to be apologetic, diminished, and ashamed of the very instincts that built this nation.

But righteous anger—the kind that says “enough is enough” when someone attacks everything you hold sacred—that’s not toxic masculinity.

That’s the fire that forged America.

Merle Haggard understood something our cultural commissars refuse to acknowledge today. When you spend decades telling hardworking Americans they’re backwards, ignorant, and irrelevant, and when you celebrate every culture except their own, you make their sons feel guilty for existing.

Eventually, you’re going to meet their fightin’ side.

The question isn’t whether this anger exists. Walk into any high school, any small town, any working-class neighborhood … It’s there. It simmers beneath forced smiles and careful words.

The question is: What do we do with it?

Do we let the system channel that kind of energy into resentment and paralysis? Or do we forge it into something powerful, purposeful, unstoppable?

Your son may feel this disconnect, probably more than on occasion. He sees the hypocrisy, the double standards, and the open hostility toward everything his family represents.

What he is experiencing isn’t pathology, but recognition. He knows something’s broken, and his instincts tell him to fight.

The Foundry exists because righteous anger without direction becomes destructive.

But righteous anger with purpose, with brotherhood, with skills & vision? That can become revolutionary.

We’re not teaching boys to suppress their fire. We’re teaching them to wield it. To transform frustration into leadership and anger & isolation into action.

Because when the next wave hits—and it will hit—we need the people who won’t apologize for defending what matters. Those who won’t back down when the mob comes calling. Those who understand that, sometimes, the most patriotic thing you can do is refuse to shut up.

Merle had it right: “if you don’t love it, leave it…”

But for those of us staying to fight, we better raise sons who know which side they’re on.

Join The Foundry and give your son the tools to channel his righteous anger into unstoppable purpose.

The fire’s already lit. Now let’s teach him how to harness it.

As always,
Brian