Weekly Digest: Loneliness and Suicide
Record high suicides, two parent families, the best small city in America and more in this week's roundup.
Welcome to my weekly digest for December 1, 2023, with the best articles from around the web and a roundup of my recent writings and appearances.
I hope those of you in America had a very happy Thanksgiving last week.
I have a very special Thank You this week. Tom Owens and two of his associates provided financial support to help me get this newsletter launched. In fact, this was the first money I ever raised for this project. Without their help, I never would have been able to do this work more publicly and full time. This funding was always intended to be temporary, and it is ending this month. So I want to give them a very special shout out and Thank You for what they did to help get this off the ground.
While their support helped get this launched, your subscriptions have made it possible to keep going. So thanks to those of you who have subscribed. If you have not yet become a paid subscriber here on Substack, this is how you can support my work. For just $10/month you also get exclusive posts, podcast transcripts, and commenting privileges.
Why You Should Move to Carmel, Indiana
I live in Carmel, Indiana, a suburb just north of Indianapolis. I’ve written about Carmel here before. It’s a super high quality city with moderate Republican governance in a solid red state. The Republicans just convincingly won the recent municipal elections.
Carmel has gotten a lot of national press, and it just landed on the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal real estate section.
This is paywalled, but read my long piece on Carmel to learn more.
Carmel might be the best city in the country in terms of the combination of quality of life, amenities, housing prices, low taxes, moderate politics, and red state governance.
I’d like to keep it that way, which means attracting solid people to live here. So yes, I’m recruiting! I can’t think of a better group of people than my readers that I’d like to have as neighbors. So if you are thinking about relocating and trying to decide where to move, give Carmel a look.
I can send the Journal piece to anyone who is interested.
Best of the Web
American Compass: Men’s Realism - The masculinity crisis is serious but most solutions on offer are not
Here’s a nice thread on X of 33 things every father much teach his son.
Scott Yenor: Does feminism promote stable family life? - Two cheers for Melissa Kearney’s Two-Parent Privilege.
ABC News: America reaches record high number of suicides
The Guardian: Anti-loneliness club offers friendship for $200 a month – and thousands have signed up
Stephen Wolfe: No Christian nation, no Christian family
Professor Ryan Burge just had a tweet showing that America is still a plurality Protestant nation.
New Content and Media Mentions
Jamie Bambrick from Northern Ireland made a nice video about my three worlds of evangelicalism model.
I should say that while there are elements of the Doug Wilson “Moscow model” like ownership that are very oriented to the negative world, I classify Wilson as a culture warrior. He very much operates in that mode.
Dissident right writer and podcaster Scott Greer wrote a response to my American Mind piece on Christian nationalism. Greer is a former Daily Caller writer who was fired after being doxxed for having moonlighted for a site run by alt-right pioneer Richard Spencer. If any of you are interested in seeing what the dissident right is saying first hand, Greer is one of the best follows. Unlike many figures such as the Bronze Age Pervert, he writes in plain English and does not affect a bizarre style. Even though people here will disagree with his positions, he does have interesting takes, such as on the implications of Andrew Tate for the multiracial working class.
Hillsdale professor Miles Smith also posted a reply to my piece at the American Mind.
I was also mentioned by The Diff, Real Clear Politics, Mark Galli, Arnold Kling, Josh Robinson, Ari Armstrong, and Christ Over All.
If you aren’t familiar with The Diff, it’s a finance and technology newsletter run by Byrne Hobart that’s read by a who’s who of investors and others. If those are your fields, it’s definitely worth a subscription. I have one.
New this week:
I have an article in the Liberal Patriot on seven themes about the future of US infrastructure.
My latest column in Governing is about some of the possible implications of a labor force shortage from weak birth rates and other factors.
The Draw of Eastern Orthodoxy - A summary of your comments on men converting to Orthodoxy and re-enchantment.
Dressing the Man - A Christmas gift suggestion of a classic book on men’s tailored clothing. It’s material every man should know.
Why Can’t We Have a Populism That Builds? - El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, a darling of the American right, markets himself very differently from American populists.
As I read all the uproar of what is wrong with men and how many are trying to fix them (particularly women) I have come to the conclusion that the solution lies with fixing the women. I know this is not the current thought.
Starting in Genesis, the woman’s curse beyond difficulty in child birth was for her desiring her husband’s place. That’s what is going on now. With the so-called liberation of women, they now pursue careers instead of marriage and family competing and defeating men in the new business environment. Legalized infanticide is their holy grail because it allows both women and men to escape marriage and continue their careers.
Men by nature want to protect and take care of women, not compete with them. And today’s churches are deathly afraid of preaching about the Titus 2 woman. “…the older women likewise be reverent in behavior, not slanders, not given to much wine, teachers of good things- that they admonish the young women to love their husbands, love their children, to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be blasphemed.”
(Just as an aside, note how many women talk about they need wine to make it through the day.)
Men’s role in this is they need to be more picky in choosing their wives. Beyond being a Christian they should look for women who seek to be Titus 2 women instead of Genesis 3 women.
This will take a sea change.
That American Compass article is very good. Thank you for sharing.