No man of the Saints can watch this without choking up a little. Those boys are godly men.

The most important thing, and the second most important thing, and the third most important thing about this video are the gospel messages and the nobility of these boys. This is not a political video at all.

But it may help some to understand the passions of some of us on the right if I tell you that one of my reactions to this video is political. What I see in this video is a group of valiant young men who may not all of them be potential doctors and lawyers. Some of them may not even be able to, say, join the military. The bell curve has sons of God on the left hand as well as the right.

Whether some of these particular sons of God are on the left hand isn’t the point. I could be misjudging the inarticulate ones as cognitively limited when they are just nervous on camera and coming from a different subculture than I am used to. That’s possible, but that’s not the point. If not them, then other brothers of ours, some of them people that I know. Some of them youth that I know.

I look at my own young men and I look at these young men in the video and I worry. What happens when they turn 18 or 19 or get back from a mission and decide they are ready to be a man? What jobs can they get? Blue collar work is every year more depreciated and less well-paid. Who will marry them? Women every year grow less likely to marry a man who doesn’t have a good income and some status. Where will they get their self-respect? Subsidies and unemployment checks and endless training programs don’t give you self-respect.

And that’s a problem for all of us. The decent poor, the ones who soldier on without the big rewards, are the core of any society. We’re doing all we can to lose ours.

My answers are to some extent political and conservative. Your answers and your politics may vary, but that’s where I’m coming from.