The Aaron Renn Show

In my previous podcast series on American conservatism, I observed that they have a pattern of jumping into the breach to try to defend their opponents from the consequences of those opponents' own ideology. For example, they defended the school administrators against the student radicals of the 60s when the administrators themselves were liberals implacable hostile to conservatism. In fact, some of those university leaders had previously trashed William F. Buckley over God and Man at Yale.

We see this pattern persist into the present, most recently on display last week when New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would eliminate gifted and talented programs in the city's public schools. Conservatives were outraged. I discuss this reaction and what it reveals about conservative patterns of behavior.

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The upper class and the intellectuals have always particularly loathed the middle class. The novels of Sinclair Lewis or the essays of H. L. Mencken exhibit this mindset. Conservatives, whose social base and principal character is middle class, have pushed back against this, celebrating middle class values.  It's worth considering, however, whether there is something to the critique of the middle class. Middle class values too often revolve around small pleasures and respectability that fatally compromise their ability to politically or culturally engage with the world.

My article on Grand Rapids: https://www.city-journal.org/html/manufacturing-comeback-15833.html

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American conservatives rarely read or engage with leftist thought outside of the mass media. This is a weakness because if they did do so, they'd find that serious thinkers on the left are often very smart and have important insights about our world. This includes people often stigmatized as bogeymen (by people who have never read them) like the postmodernists or the Frankfurt School.

This podcast talks briefly about a couple of insights from Herbert Marcuse's book One Dimensional Man.  Although an extremely difficult read, this 1950s work makes many observations about Western society that remain as relevant as ever and must be confronted by anyone seeking to change the system.

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This week's podcast is the audio of a presentation I gave at a conference on Christian localism called County Before Country. It discusses my positive/neutral/negative world framework for understanding the church's current situation. It then covers a strategy for achieving owned spaces as a possible response to this. The material is largely derived from Masc #13 and Masc #43, but in an accessible, presentation style format.

A video of this presentation can be seen at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0knvBZ5FlgI

Masc #13: The Lost World of American Evangelicalism: https://themasculinist.com/the-masculinist-13-the-lost-world-of-american-evangelicalism/

Masc #43: The Importance of Owned Space: https://themasculinist.com/the-masculinist-43-the-importance-of-owned-space/

Social capital is the relationships, identities, etc. we can draw on in building a life. This issue discusses social capital and provided a diagnostic you can use to assess the amounts of social capital you can draw on across the dimensions of family, friendships, location, and church.

If you made a list of what a right wing fantasy utopia would look like for someone with localist leanings, you'll discover that the only people who have successfully produced those environments are on the left.  In this podcast I examine the cultural contradictions of conservative values, showing how in practice the values of conservatives themselves have produced some - not all, but some - of the dysfunction in which they live.

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Americans are relocating, for economic, political, religious, or lifestyle reasons. But what should we think about when we think about moving? This podcast examines a number of factors to consider: whether you having a historic connection to or family in a place, economic prospects, costs and whether you can really afford to live there, whether you actually like it (not just think you'll like it), and whether you can find a church you like there.

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Mars Hill Church collapsed suddenly. The American backed Afghan regime collapsed almost instantly as America withdrew. The Berlin Wall fell unexpectedly in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed at a time when few expected it.

Sudden collapse of organizations and countries does happen. Could it happen to the United States? In this episode I examine both sides of the question and how to think about the dynamics of collapse.

Dietrich Dörner: The Logic of Failure - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201479486/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20

Lionel Shriver: The Mandibles - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006232828X/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20

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This week I weigh in with some initial thoughts on the Christianity Today podcast The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill. Although there are some legitimate critiques of the way CT has positioned the materials, complementarians need to accept that Mark Driscoll legitimately does reflect poorly on the movement as a whole.

Freddie deBoer: Who Tells Them Things They Don't Want to Hear? - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/who-tells-them-what-they-dont-want

Newsletter #7: Accountability for Failure - https://www.aaronrenn.com/p/newsletter-7-accountability-for-failure

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This month concluded a three part series on the Dissident Right, the mostly online world of right wing politics that has attracted millions of followers. It describes the Dissident Right's views on race. At least some people in the Dissident Right argue for a genetic basis of race differences. In addition to discussing their views, it covers the state of science on genetics (with a skeptical take on genetic explanations for human outcomes), four societal forces pushing people in a Dissident Right direction, and how the church should respond to the challenges of race relations.