America’s culture is more civilized than most in history, but it’s still downright barbaric.Males — assuming you’re a statistic in the national trend — when you were born, your parents wrapped you in a warm embrace, kissed you on the forehead and welcomed you into the world.Then they lopped off the top of your cock.Full disclosure — like the majority of my peers, my soldier was welcomed with a painful buzz cut.I’m not bitter — I’m perplexed.The most commonly performed surgery in America is the deliberate mutilation of genitalia. By my estimates, a doctor in America pulls his scalpel through the penis of a screaming, non-anesthetized infant every four and a half minutes.Ask why, and you’ll be thrown into a quagmire of post hoc rationalizations.Modern circumcision proponents say the practice is justified because of potential hygiene and health benefits.Sure, it’s easier to wash the tent-pole when the fabric is out of the way, but this seems like a shaky foundation for painful surgery.It’s inconvenient to have to wash behind babies’ earlobes, but I don’t think circumcision advocates support cutting them off.And besides, what boy wouldn’t want an extra excuse to scrub his penis?And while it is true uncircumcised males can more easily contract HIV and some other STDs through small tears in the foreskin, a condom is still a necessary precaution whenever there’s a chance of contraction.Circumcision is just a barbaric redundancy — an unsightly bit of cultural scar tissue.Don’t take my word for it. The American Medical Association says, “Virtually all current policy statements from specialty societies and medical organizations do not recommend routine neonatal circumcision.”Circumcision was supported in the past by an entirely different set of rationalizations.For Abraham, it was a sign of his commitment to God.For some of his spiritual successors, it was a way to avoid sin.Christian stalwarts like Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and Dr. Sylvester Graham advocated circumcision as a way to decrease masturbation.Graham and his cohorts believed bland food would cut down on un-Christian “carnal desires.” The U.S. Army used corn flakes suppositories to test his theory.It didn’t work.They also believed removing the foreskin — and its thousands of pleasurable nerve endings — would strip young boys of the urge to pleasure themselves.Don’t take my word for it.As Kellogg himself wrote, “A remedy which is almost always successful in small boys is circumcision … The operation should be performed by a surgeon without administering an anesthetic, as the brief pain attending the operation will have a salutary effect upon the mind.”As you may have noticed, it didn’t work either.But — like corn flakes and graham crackers — circumcision was remarketed as a health choice, and it’s still sold to this day.Kellogg and Graham’s futile attempts to stop masturbation are weird, but arguably they aren’t as weird as what is currently done with male foreskins.Some companies — like the Oprah Winfrey-promoted SkinMedica — turn infant foreskins into wrinkle-fighting creams.Foreskin facials are weird. There’s not much to say about that.Other common justifications for the non-elective surgery include a desire to have sons look like their fathers and a wish to conform to America’s status quo.Preparing children for father-son cock-comparing conventions doesn’t seem like an argument worth confronting, but there might be something to say for conforming to America’s status quo.Though uncircumcised penises are the norm across most of the non-African foreign world, many Americans only like what they are used to.We live in a society that puts a lot of value on conformity and blending in with the crowd. Many might choose a culture-friendly penis instead of a penis with more nerve endings. I think they should have a right to make that choice.Most would think it’s wrong for parents to give their child a piercing before he reaches the age of reason. Parents making another cosmetic choice — circumcision — should be all the more reviled.But maybe I’m just making a big deal about this because I’m jealous.Four thousand years ago, some shepherd ordered his family to cut up their dicks, and people are still trying to find reasons to do it today.No matter what I do, I’ll never wield that kind of influence.Daniel Morgan is a 21-year-old  economics senior from Baton Rouge. Follow him on Twitter@TDR_dmorgan.—-Contact Daniel Morgan at [email protected]