“Is the decline of reading making American politics dumber?” The opening piece is so tragic; and it bodes very ill for America if things are not reversed. Christians, you who are “salt and light,” resist the great dumbing down! Take up and read!
Archive for the ‘Culture’ Category
The dumbification of America
Posted in Contemporary Issues, Culture on October 12, 2025| Leave a Comment »
“Employable men are marryable and marryable men are employable”
Posted in Christian Conduct, Culture, Family & Family Issues, Natural Law, Social Issues on September 29, 2025| Leave a Comment »
I often listen to the Christian news podcast, The World and Everything in It. It’s basically a reformed-ish version of NPR, and produced by the same folks who publish World magazine. I highly commend it (my only quibble being the quasi-benediction at the end of each episode).
There was a really great segment this morning with their regular “Monday Moneybeat” with David Bahnsen. It was an excellent treatment of the masculine malaise of younger men in the U.S.A. and their economic underperformance. Perhaps the most impactful quote for me was “employable men are marryable and marryable men are employable.” Standing ovation! Listen to the episode here; the segment begins at 22:10, and the transcript is below.
* * * * *
MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: The Monday Moneybeat.
NICK EICHER, HOST: It’s time now to talk business, markets and the economy with financial analyst and advisor David Bahnsen. David heads up the wealth management firm the Bahnsen Group, and he is here now. Good morning to you.
DAVID BAHNSEN: Good morning, Nick, good to be with you.
(more…)Recent reading: strong gods and black rednecks
Posted in Audio Resources, Culture, Postwar Consensus, Nationalism, Race, Kinism, "Race Realism", Recent Reading (Book Recommendations), Social Issues on May 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »
In the last few months, I finished a couple of really insightful non-fiction titles. The first was R. R. Reno’s The Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West. This was the most helpful overview of what the “post-war consensus” (PWC) actually is and why it is on life support if not in its death pangs. Basically, the PWC was birthed in the aftermath of World War II and the horrors both on the battlefield and in the concentration camps. “Never again!” was the motto in Europe and the U.S., and the modus operandi of the elites was to tamp down on all discourse—religious, political, or social—that could elevate the blood pressure of the nations and so risk a reprise of the world wars. Liberalism in the broader sense of tolerance, acceptance, and openness, was the prevailing doctrine. But what it ended up doing was fueling the populisms and nationalisms we have witnessed in the last decade or so. In the end, we are humans who need “strong loves.” Something to be passionate about—and even die for!
(more…)Reversing the baby bust
Posted in Culture, Family & Family Issues, Motherhood & Childbearing, Secularization on January 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »
Birth rates are plummeting in the United States and globally, forecasting a political and financial crisis. The most recent estimate predicts the average American woman will have 1.6 children in her lifetime, far below the rate of 2.1 required to maintain a steady population and even further below the 2.5 rate observed in the United States as recently as 1970.
Many cultural and technological factors have contributed to this dramatic decline, and public policies play a role in shaping people’s decisions about whether to have children and how many. Finding the right policy levers for influencing fertility rates, however, has proven very difficult.
Against Spangler’s “Race Realism”
Posted in Cults, Cultishness, Heresy, Culture, Postwar Consensus, Nationalism, Race, Kinism, "Race Realism" on December 29, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I found this an able and persuasive rejoinder to Michael Spangler’s extreme kinism. Vogel is responding to a series of articles originally posted here. In my armchair studies of Christian nationalism, kinism, and the postwar consensus critique, there is quite a range of opinion: the good (or at least, acceptable), the bad, and the ugly. One thing is for sure: Spangler doesn’t fall within the first. Mark him, and avoid him.
Motherly work, a Faustian bargain, and masculine Protestantism
Posted in Culture, Family & Family Issues, Motherhood & Childbearing, Natural Law, Protestantism & Romanism, Transgenerational Faith on December 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »
A couple of good articles here and here, promoting biblical and natural-law views of women, motherhood, and childbearing contra feminism. I have tremendously little knowledge of Taylor Swift or her music; but the analysis from someone who does only confirms my suspicions and that Swift is a tragic symbol of feminism’s Faustian bargain.
On the other side of the gender coin is this article. I’ve never read this author before, but he definitely strikes a chord with me about a prescription for solid, biblical masculinity with a healthy, and distinctly Protestant embrace of church tradition:
And as usual, standard caveats (Rom. 12:9).
“Martin Luther and National Socialism”
Posted in Culture, Israel; Calling of & Mission to the Jews on November 10, 2024| Leave a Comment »
This was very, very good. Especially in light of a resurgent antisemitism in the West, and even in the Church. Remember, Satan’s grand conspiracy is multi-front. And the Jews, while “enemies for our sakes,” are yet “beloved for the fathers’ sakes.”
“The Humanity of Hospitality”
Posted in Common Grace, Culture, Hospitality on October 22, 2024| Leave a Comment »
Silence the critics . . . have them over for dinner! A good article by Carl Trueman:
Princeton professor Robert P. George recently drew my attention to a trivial but emblematic incident in which a flight attendant wished a passenger a “blessed” night. Unfortunately, the recipient of these kind words was a member of America’s progressive officer class who responded with predictable outrage. Clara Jeffery, editor of the progressive magazine Mother Jones, was so traumatized by this verbal assault, she took to X to express her splenetic indignation at the “creeping Christian nationalism” this unwanted benediction displayed.
She has since deleted the post and been both derided and defended online. While Prof. George saw in the tantrum yet more evidence of progressive condescension and scorn for the working class, others have resorted to the incantatory clichés of critical theory that magically render superfluous the need for thoughtful engagement with anything outside of the acceptable progressive frame of reference. One simply cannot dialogue with such people because any attempt to do so is regarded as a manipulative (even if unwitting) attempt to reinforce the values of an intrinsically unjust system. “Shut up and listen!” is the progressive default response.
Recent reading: toxic men, alien invasions, and the ‘errand into the wilderness’
Posted in Audio Resources, Culture, New England Puritanism, Recent Reading (Book Recommendations) on September 14, 2024| Leave a Comment »
I thought I might share what I’ve been reading recently. In addition to my devotional and theological recordings, here are some books I’ve finished in recent days of personal interest. In our extremely digital age, we need to stay reading. Let us read good books; and if we read books that are not explicitly Christian, let us do so critically with an eye to Scripture as our absolute authority.
First, Nancy R. Pearcey’s The Toxic War on Masculinity: How Christianity Reconciles the Sexes. In a similar fashion to Carl Trueman’s The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Nancy Pearce frames her book of cultural commentary around a “how did we get here?” question. For Trueman, it was “how did we ever get to the place where a man thinks he is a woman?” For Pearcey, it is “how did masculinity ever become ‘toxic?'” She engages in a historical and sociological inquiry that is quite insightful, from a thoughtful, Christian perspective. I especially found her explanation of the shift of men from cottage-industry and family-integrated work patterns to working outside the home in factories, etc., at the Industrial Revolution, and its negative impact on father-son relationships and family life in general. For a kind of teaser, listen to this interview on Issues, etc.
(more…)Kinism & the City of God
Posted in Articles, Catholicity, Christendom, Culture, Medieval Church, The Church in America, WPE Editor on July 4, 2024| Leave a Comment »
[I thought I’d blogify a short FB post.]
My daughter, Geneva, and I were discussing this recent chatter (bilge) of kinism among confessional Presbyterian types. She rather perceptively observed that there is a total confusion of race and culture here.
It is claimed that as the swarms of immigrants who pour through our porous border, “our people” are threatened. So does “our people” include Gavin Newsom and Joe Biden? I’m the first to bewail the dreadful non-enforcement of the U.S. border. But I share much more culture with many blacks and Latinos and find them more my people than many a white liberal. What is this supposed pristine white culture that is in jeopardy? And let’s not forget that the Vandals and Visigoths who toppled the Roman Empire became the genesis of Medieval Christendom. The “City of God” is my people.