The Aaron Renn Show

For some critics of conservatism, the neoconservatives are a sort of bogeyman to which they often attribute conservatisms' flaws and failings. This portrait is often unfair, despite neoconservatism emerging as the dominant strain with conservatism.  This episode provides a basic overview of neoconservatism's origin and debunks certain myths about them. It explains that domestic policy, not foreign policy was its original main concern, for example.  And how neoconservative foreign policy today is largely a bipartisan, mainstream consensus view in many cases.The neoconservatives had a number of consequential wins, such as their intellectual underpinning of Mayor Giuliani's turnaround of New York City.  However, there are fair critiques that can be leveled at them, including their disproportionate secularism and a weak sense of America as a historic nation that underpinned failures in Iraq and elsewhere.Arguing the World documentary: https://www.kanopy.com/product/arguing-worldThe Neoconservative Persuasion by Irving Kristol: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465022235/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=theurban-20Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Who financed the rise of conservatism? A large amount of funding came from independent oil producers who were keen to avoid government regulation of their industry. They were at war with the major oil companies that descended from the Rockefeller Standard Oil monopoly, and were rightly concerned that the government might de facto cartelize oil again at their expense.Christianity, both liberal and fundamentalist, was also heavily funded by oil money. The overlaps between the economic interest of the different camps of the oil industry with theology and politics raises profound, and frankly troubling questions that we should ponder more deeply today.Bryan Burrough, The Big Rich: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0143116827/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?tag=theurban-20Darren Dochuk, Anointed With Oil: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465060862/ref=as_li_qf_asin_il_tl?tag=theurban-20On HL Hunt supporting Barry Goldwater in 1964: https://www.nytimes.com/1964/11/01/archives/goldwater-gets-h-l-huntbacking-but-texas-rightist-wont-criticize.htmlThe Kennedys and Sen. Joseph McCarthy: https://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/progjfk2.htm Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

The American conservative movement was founded by people who were largely socially outside the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (WASP) establishment of America at the time. William F. Buckely's book God and Man and Yale and the reaction to it cannot be understood without looking at this social dimension. He was an Irish Catholic criticizing the citadel of the Protestant Establishment that had graciously allowed him in the door.  At the same time, the conservative movement was also unrepresentative of its current voting base of Evangelicals.The Christian side of conservative intellectualism has always been heavily Catholic dominated, from William F. Buckley at its founding to people like Ross Douthat today. The large number of people within conservative intellectual circles that are Catholic converts (both historically and today) attests to the normative status of Catholicism within the conservative movement. Evangelicals, while constituting perhaps the largest and most loyal voting block within conservatism, have never played a material role in its leadership, particularly at the intellectual level. When Evangelical leaders or voters have asserted themselves (as in the person of Pat Robertson in the 1980s or by supporting Trump today), the incumbent conservative establishment has frequently been appalled. Conservatism's social origins and continued existence on the social margins helps explain its lack of cultural success in the country. And the social difference between the Catholic dominated intellectual leadership class and the Protestant dominated voting base with different preferences is a key fault line that enabled Trump's victory. The fact that the conservative elite are a leadership group without a natural constituency in the country is a big challenge for them in a post-Trump world.  For Evangelicals, their lack of input at the leadership level of conservative intellectualism is a key reason they need to rewrite their relationship with the conservative movement and Republican Party.Links:First Things on  Samuel Francis: https://www.firstthings.com/article/2019/10/the-outsider Michael Lind's "resignation letter" from conservatism: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/pdfs/lind.pdfHow the WASPs betrayed the country to communism: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/10/18/weekinreview/witching-hour-rethinking-mccarthyism-if-not-mccarthy.htmlSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Many if not most conservatives in the United States have very little idea where the conservative movement originated and how it developed. This episode provides an extremely condensed summary of the founding of conservatism in the wake of World War II, as well as a bit about its history since then. Key points include:·      American conservatism is a modern political movement with postwar origins. It does not extend back to the founding, Edmund Burke, etc.·      Contrary to its stated commitment to timeless principles, the beliefs of conservatism have continuously and even radically changed over time. ·      Conservatism was originally a tiny movement of people on the margins who achieved successes that were probably inconceivable to their founders. ·      Conservatism was originally separate from the Republican Party, then one faction within, and now today has become indistinguishable from it. The Republican Party is monolithically conservative today.·      Social conservatives, as we understand the term today, were not originally part of the conservative movement and joined it much later in the 1970s and 80s. Further reading for those interested in the history of conservatism:George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (considered the canonical history of the movement up through the mid-1970s)George Hawley, Right Wing Critics of American Conservatism  (written by a University of Alabama professor)Paul Gottfried, Conservatism in America (the "loser's history" from a paleoconservative, written on an academic press).Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Evangelical Protestants and socially conservative Catholics have been among the most loyal voting blocks for the Republican Party. The electoral base of the Republican Party is increasingly non-college educated, middle to working class whites.  Yet it does very little for either of these constituencies in terms of delivering on their policy preferences. Instead, the Republican Party, its donor class, and its movement conservative intellectuals largely have their own set of preferences. These are not necessarily bad or nefarious preferences, but they are out of sync with the preferences of the voting base of the Republican Party. They utilize that voting base to achieve political power but predominantly for the purpose of implementing their own agenda.  Quite frequently, they actually betray their voters. A few even seem to hate the actual people who vote for their party.This episode kicks off a series examining conservatism and the Republican Party, its history, and dynamics that  few Christians actually understand. Bill Kristol on Immigrants Being Better than Americans: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zks6WK1HsokRoss Douthat on conservative manipulation of populism: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/opinion/campaign-stops/what-the-rights-intellectuals-did-wrong.htmlNYT on racial slurs and the University of Tennessee: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/26/us/mimi-groves-jimmy-galligan-racial-slurs.htmlHorrific Indianapolis rental housing: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2019/06/27/ex-fox-friends-host-clayton-morris-partner-bert-whalen-got-rich-tenants-lived-horrible/1351737001/Findings from nursing home investigation: https://www.indystar.com/story/news/investigations/2020/12/31/indiana-nursing-homes-takeaways-indystars-investigation/6545944002/Subscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Too many Christians today evince an attitude of hopelessness and despair. Such attitudes can drain your morale and make it likely that you will preemptively surrender or sell out your posterity without a fight. It's very important that the Christian avoid hopelessness and not give in to the counsels of despair. While we should be realistic in our diagnostics, we should also understand that expected help or even victory can come from quarters we never expected.The Last Christian Generation: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/final-christian-generation-jeremiah/Westminster Larger Catechism Q129: https://www.opc.org/lc.htmlTweet regarding Nick Kristof and porn: https://twitter.com/aaron_renn/status/1337191256431144965The superiority of the tit for tat strategy: https://cs.stanford.edu/people/eroberts/courses/soco/projects/1998-99/game-theory/axelrod.htmlSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Liberal groups have always treated non-incumbent conservative positions as illegitimate. Thus they do not substantively engage with them, debate or engage with their practitioners, provide platforms or space in their publications, etc. Conservatives, by contrast, frequently give respectful hearings to liberal views, engage in substantive debates, etc. They fail to appreciate that even engaging with heterodox views in order to refute them bestows a kind of legitimacy on them. If those ideas ever achieve supremacy, however, conservatives will soon find that their own long held views will be deemed illegitimate. All debate and engagement will be ended.We should be very thoughtful about how we engage with opponents and situations in order to avoid accidentally legitimizing the illegitimate.John Piper, "Prayers Cause Things": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krzwmhDMvv8Rod Dreher on Dialogue: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-orthodox-left-wails-schmemann-lecture-orthodoxy-rod-dreher/On Sam Nunberg's drunk TV interviews: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/zoetillman/former-trump-adviser-says-screw-mueller-subpoena-in-intense

The most consequential conservative Protestant victory of the last 100 years was likely the battle to expel liberal theology from the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod's Concordia Seminary in St. Louis. Concordia Seminary was the center of modernist theology in the LCMS, and its faculty ignored numerous denominational resolutions against their position. When a newly elected conservative leadership in the denomination suspended Concordia Seminary's president, 90% of the faculty and most of the students walked out. The LCMS let them go and rebuilt the seminary from nearly nothing. The liberals created their own institution, the Concordia Seminary in Exile, or Seminex, which failed after only about a decade. Also, 200 liberal congregations left the LCMS and created a new, liberal denomination that ultimately merged with today's Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.In this battle, the opposite of every similar episode to date, the conservatives won and the liberals departed, leaving the LCMS the conservative denomination we know today. This battle was a key inspiration for the similar conservative resurgence effort in the SBC.Rather than studying institutional losers like Gresham Machen, today's conservative Christians would be better served to study examples like Seminex where conservatives actually won.The Concordia-Seminex Affair: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SeminexSubscribe to my newsletter: https://www.aaronrenn.com/

Conservatives have long tended to underestimate the value of institutions, and to get out maneuvered by liberals in institutional battles. As a result, it's usually conservatives who exit from institutions in order to form new ones. But because nothing has changed with them, their new institutions frequently undergo a reprise of the same problems that plagued the original ones they left.The proposed United Methodist Church split is a good example of conservative thinking on institutions. Although the conservatives won the previous rounds of denominational votes, it is they are who are heading for the exists and leaving all the denominational infrastructure in the hands of the liberals.Their split protocol is also a terrible deal for conservatives. It establishes the liberal position by default, and sets possible supermajority thresholds at every level to get out. This suggests many fundamentally conservative congregations will end up trapped in a now officially liberal denomination with no way out.United Methodist Split Protocol: https://www.umnews.org/en/news/diverse-leaders-group-offers-separation-planIndianapolis Plan for Separation: https://indyplanumc.org/

This week's episode is a look at how major coastal elite cities have created an economic model that depends on the exploitation of a largely immigrant labor class who serve the wants and needs of the upper middle class in these cities. Urban dwellers heavily rely on minority or immigrant nannies, nail technicians, maids, Uber drivers, food delivery workers, laundry people, etc.  Rarely are these people paid a living wage. Many of them are not even employees, with zero benefits, and who are illegally paid cash under the table. And unlike with the Ellis Island generation of immigrants, many, perhaps even a majority, of their children and grandchildren will not experience upward economic mobility. The growth of this model with an upscale class at one end and an exploited labor class at the other has fueled political discontent, with rising left-wing populist politics and the election of people like NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio who explicitly campaigned on a theme of "two New Yorks," one rich, one poor.Members of upscale churches in these cities often depend on and profit from this system of labor exploitation. And their pastors talking about justice do not often speak against this system.