On Monday, a Catholic writer, the Social Pathologist (TSP), wrote about how Western Christianity became infected with Buddhist ideas. This essay has been getting a great response and lots of interaction, some agreeing and some opposing. Something I appreciate about TSP is that rather than asking what’s wrong with the world, he has focused a lot of his work on asking what’s wrong with the church. As he’s noted several times, when the trend lines are so bad and the track record of conservative Christianity so poor, that should prompt significant self-reflection and self-examination. That’s somet ..read more

This is a guest essay by the Australian Catholic blogger The Social Pathologist - Aaron. You are My friends if you do what I command you. No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, because all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you. You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you that you would go and bear fruit - John 15:14-16 And God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day - Genesis 1:31 No Christian, looking ..read more

This week is a first for me in the podcast. I’m reposting an old episode from three years ago. One of my early podcast series was a look at the American postwar political movement. One of the things that struck me about it when reading George Nash’s canonical history of the of movement was how the early conservatives had responded to the campus uprisings of the 1960s. Since campus unrest is back in the news, I wanted to share my thoughts on the matter from three years ago. This episode was originally recorded in March 2021. This podcast does not have video. Free subscribers can listen to the e ..read more

In a followup to my essay on Emmanuel Todd’s book The Defeat of the West, I wanted to highlight three other English languages pieces about it, by Christopher Caldwell in the NYT, Scott McConnell in the American Conservative, and Rob Lownie in UnHerd. These folks take a broader look at the book than I did. Civic Capacity Matters My latest column in Governing magazine is on civic capacity, the ability communities to actually get thing done. This is something that’s in all too short a supply in America. I highlight three factors that go into this, though others could certainly list more. I prefe ..read more

People frequently ask me to put together a list of recommended books, something I’ve found difficult to do. Many of the books that have influenced me aren’t suitable for a list like that. Either they are too long, have a lot that I disagree with in them, or otherwise titles I don’t feel I can recommend with confidence. However, I did put together this list of 17 books across six categories - three for every category except one. These are books I found compelling, educational, or which have influenced how I think about the world. I hope you find them valuable too. Changing the World Influence ..read more

French historian and demographer Emmanuel Todd was the first person to have predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. He noted that, unusually, its infant mortality rate was rising, and that they had even ceased publishing that statistic. Based on this and other data, he concluded that the Soviet Union had entered “the final fall.” In something of a parallel to that work, his new book, La défaite de l’Occident (The Defeat of the West), published in January, says that the West is on track to lose the conflict in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, this was received poorly by critics who accused him of repea ..read more

As promised, I’m making an attempt to send out this week’s podcast with the video for everyone, but the transcript only for paid subscribers. Unfortunately, while Substack allows audio only podcasts in which you can make the audio available to paid and free subscribers while paywalling the post text, it doesn’t let you easily do the same for video podcasts. So I have configured this as an audio podcast, but am also embedding the video here above the paywall. This is a first attempt, so hopefully this works. Transcript follows for paid subscribers. If you are not already a paid subscriber, ple ..read more

A head’s up that next week I’m going to try to start sending out podcasts on Monday. I already post the transcripts here for paid subscribers, but I’m going to try - if Substack allows - to send out the video version to everyone. If you don’t want to receive these, go to your account settings and turn off notifications for podcasts. This week’s podcast was a discussion with Luke Robson about his interesting project to revitalize the downtown of Hillsdale, Michigan. He’s already bought about 20% of the buildings downtown, with plans to renovate them and bring in businesses, residents and progra ..read more

Aaron Renn: Hello, it's Aaron. Welcome back to the podcast. I have a special guest today, Luke Robson. He is the man behind Hillsdale Renaissance, which is a plan to revitalize the downtown of Hillsd… Read more ..read more

A reminder, I’ll be speaking at this year’s Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, April 26-28. Age Gaps in Marriage Flowing Data is a great data visualization site. It put together some great charts about age gaps in marriage. Click over to read this piece. Subscribe now Declining Possibilities Janan Ganesh wrote an interesting column in the Financial Times about the myth of the second chance. The surprise of middle age, and the terror of it, is how much of a person’s fate can boil down to one misjudgement. Such as? What in particular should the young know? If you marry badly — or ..read more