22 Comments

Off-topic: Peter Leithart has an excellent review of Nancy Pearcey's book THE TOXIC WAR ON MASCULINITY. I hope Aaron will review it if he hasn't already:

https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2023/08/man-up

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Aug 7·edited Aug 7

In good Econ fashion, Rob writes, "Assuming a spectrum of goods ranging from cheap and low-quality to expensive and high-quality..." But of course this simple linear relationship doesn't hold in all arenas.

It is my observation that in national politics we are paying a fairly high price and getting extremely poor quality in return. The same holds true in California, in my own state of Washington, and a similar inverse relationship occurs to some degree in quite a few of our political and civic functions

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I know Aaron doesn't want to do it, but maybe he's the hero the under-30 dissident right crowd needs right now. A Christian young men's guru who will not lead them to hedonism, nihilism, or simpism.

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I'm old enough to remember when "Barstool Conservatives" were known as "South Park Conservatives" https://manhattan.institute/book/south-park-conservatives

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“This is part of the social context for why a number of younger evangelical men are feistier than they used to be”

I completely agree with this and your preceding statements about the social context… but how do you square that insight with your prior essay that when it comes to young conservative radicals, there is nothing new under the sun, that they think they’re reinventing the wheel when the 80s conservatives were saying the same stuff, etc? Which is it: feistier or equally feisty? ; )

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Apologies for the 2nd post...but would be curious on the middle-aged Americans not going back to church: You mention Gen X. I'd love to see a breakdown. Many (maybe most) in their 40's are older Millennials. Unless the data says otherwise, I would suggest it would breakdown lopsided towards the Millennials in this grouping. My own anecdotal observations and the word from many of my GenX pastor friends is that it is nearly all Millenials that are gone from their churches. Not so with X, Boomers and Z. I believe I've seen some other data that supports this as well.

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So... who wins? If it becomes boys vs girls, instead of boys laying down and taking it from feminism, who wins?

If the answer is boys, then the new question is how does the establishment switch horses? The real elites are pretty crafty. They're probably working on this contingency right now.

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Aug 4Liked by Aaron M. Renn

Regarding the political split of high school boys. There are so many fascinating issues that this will create. My son is the demo that just graduated this past May. He confirmed that his experience matches this. He further says that the divide is mainly white girls that skew heavily liberal. The Latinas and other ethnic girls are more normative and even conservative in many cases. His conclusion? He'll likely marry a non-white girl because they are normal.

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