The Aaron Renn Show

The Gospel Coalition is the flagship organization of the New Calvinism movement. They hold their major conference every two years in Indianapolis. Since I'm now back in Indy and they were meeting in person here despite Covid-19, I decided to attend and check it out.This podcast was recorded in the middle of the conference to share a few observations about it, and the New Calvinism movement generally. The conference showcases two of the great strengths of the movement: its intellectual orientation (serious people talking seriously about serious things) and their excellence in public speaking.  For further reference:Noah Smith on experts who lie: https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/yes-experts-will-lie-to-you-sometimesMy interview with sociologist Brad Vermurlen on New Calvinism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNA0ic1asbwSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

In their book Metaphors We Live By, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson noted how our language, and very way of perceiving the world, is saturated with metaphor. We use the metaphor "Love is war," for example, when describing someone as a relational "conquest."Metaphors, analogies, etc. are a helpful and essential way of making sense of the world.  But the metaphors we live by can, as with "love is war," import ways of thinking about issues that may not be entirely healthy.In this podcast we examine metaphors used for understanding race relations in America, and how we might be able to positively reframe our challenges using a different metaphor for thinking about them.Buy Metaphors We Live By: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226468011/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

In our 24x7 media and social media saturated world, it's very easy for us to spend too much time engaging in the controversies of the day and not focusing on what's important to our own long term agenda. It's said that the media can't tell you what to think, but they can tell you what to think about. Merely focusing on something elevates its importance in our mind. We need to be careful where we are putting our focus so that we don't end up letting the media subtly rewire our agenda without us even noticing it.Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Our relationships in life can often be characterized as organic or inorganic, as naturally occurring or as artificial, consciously chosen or constructed. Organic relationship tends to represent strong ties, inorganic relationship weak ties. Inorganic relationships are very powerful, but often can't be relied on when we need them. Organic relationships are the foundational base of social capital.More on community: https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Book%3A_Sociology_(Boundless)/17%3A_Population_and_Urbanization/17.04%3A_Urban_Life/17.4G%3A_CommunityStudies from the JEC Social Capital Project: https://www.jec.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/republicans/socialcapitalprojectAlan Ehrenhalt's The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues of Community in America: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465041930/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

People tend to look at the compositions of bodies like legislatures or boards of directors based on attributes like party affiliation or race and gender.  But there are other characteristics like professional background, geographic origin, and educational experience that are often even more revealing of how people think about the world. This can give important insights into organizational dynamics.Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Our perception of time and relation to it radically shifts over the course of our lives. Our perception of the flow of time accelerates as we age, for example. It's not until around age 35 that we get the ability to intellectually and emotionally relate to the future story arc of our lives.  That's when we start being able to realize that not only have we changed in the past, we will continue to change in the future. This has profound consequences for our lives, including helping to drive the onset of the midlife crisis. Also, our perception of events is heavily dependent on whether or not they are within our living memory. Any event within our living memory seems like it happened just yesterday, while any that happened before that seems like the distant past.Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Conservatives have long rushed to the defense of institutions and people who are threatened, even when those people and institutions were hostile to Christianity. This was true even when conservatives were a minority movement despised by all the major organs of society. They defended the university administrators during the campus unrest of the 1960s, for example, at a time when the universities were very hostile to conservatism. Christians also behave this way. It's rooted in an identification with the mainstream of society and its institutions. But Christianity today is socially marginalized and seen as a threat to the social order and the new public morality.  In that environment, American Christians need to reconcile themselves to being a minority, and start acting like it.  That means letting nature take it course with many of the problems of our society. Christians need to be willing to suffer for their beliefs. Now they have to be willing to let other people suffer for theirs.Geoffrey Kabaservice, The Guardians - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00LRXCF66/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

In this episode I wrap up my series on conservatism, summarizing the previous installments and encouraging conservative Evangelicals to rethink their deal with the Republican Party. Evangelicals have been the largest and most loyal voting block of the Republican Party, but have not received a return commensurate with what they've brought to the table. While the Democratic Party may not be a viable alternative, conservative Evangelicals need to force the Republican Party to reformulate itself to better align with Evangelical priorities. And to insist on having a genuine seat at the table in defining the conservative agenda.NBER Paper" Does Private Equity Investment in Healthcare Benefit Patients? - https://www.nber.org/papers/w28474Brian Alexander, Glass House - https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250165776/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Continuing with my series on conservatism, I note again that far from standing firm on timeless principles, conservatives have in fact changed their mind on many of the most basic elements of society. This includes civil rights and the nature of gender and the family.If they themselves say that they were wrong about such fundamental things, why would anyone believe they are right about anything else? Certainly, we should be open to rethinking many other conservative dogmas, including free trade.Economists have long argued that free trade is close to a free lunch, an unambiguous win-win in which any negative disruptions it causes will be modest and short lived.  In this podcast I look at those arguments, going back in time to the era in which NAFTA and the Uruguay Round of global trade talks were taking place, and China was preparing for entry into the global trading framework. The economic predictions of the free traders were wrong and the critics completely vindicated. The future course of events was accurately predicted by critics of dogmatic free trade, something it look nearly two decades for the economists to admit was true.Global Squeeze: The Coming Crisis for First World Nations (1998): https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0809229749/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20 The China Shock: https://www.nber.org/papers/w21906Vox interview with an author of the China Shock study: https://www.vox.com/new-money/2017/3/29/15035498/autor-trump-china-trade-electionSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Are conservative pundits just shills for donors? We'll look a bit at the role of money in the conservative intellectual world. While money plays an important role in boundary setting, the cynical view that conservative intellectuals are just shills for donors is not true. This podcast will give multiple examples of where money did matter, where there are potential conflicts of interests, and questions to ask about organizational structures to help understand where people who work there are coming from. NYT: Foreign Powers Buy Influence at Think Tanks: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/us/politics/foreign-powers-buy-influence-at-think-tanks.html Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/