Aaron M. Renn

5 days ago | touchstonemag.com | Aaron M. Renn

Principles for Living in the Negative World by Aaron Renn Unlike Europe, America never had a state church. But for most of its history it had a sort of softly institutionalized generic Protestantism as its default national religion. This was still true as recently as the 1950s, though it had shifted towards being more of a generic Judeo-Christianity by that point. During that decade, about half of all adults attended church each week. There were still prayers and Bible reading in public schools.

1 week ago | aaronrenn.com | Aaron M. Renn

Note: Next week there will be no digest due to travel, and likewise the following week in honor of the 4th of July holiday. Nate Silver posted an interesting graphic showing that conservatives are happier than liberals across the board. It doesn’t matter what demographic you look at. This chart also shows how happiness does vary by demographic factor as well. More educated people are happier than less educated, and older people are happier than younger ones.

2 weeks ago | aaronrenn.com | Aaron M. Renn

The Democrats realize they have a man problem, namely that they are losing men’s votes. Their efforts to diagnose and address this problem to date have been cringey to say the least. But it would be a big mistake to think that it’s impossible for Democrats to lure men back. While that party has internal dynamics that make it difficult to appeal to men, traditional Republicans also hate men, and often openly and harshly criticize them.

2 weeks ago | theaquilareport.com | Aaron M. Renn

The loss of all-male spaces has made male friendship enormously difficult to create and sustain because it destroyed the milieux of that friendship. If you want to be friends with other men, it’s now something you have to do outside of everything else in life. No wonder so few men have the time or energy for that. The lack of male friendships was the subject of a great article in the NYT Magazine (that link should bypass the paywall). The piece, by Sam Graham-Felsen, doesn’t just have great content.

2 weeks ago | aaronrenn.com | Aaron M. Renn

Managerialism refers to a society in which managers - bureaucrats and technocrats - become the de facto ruling class of a society. In today’s political discussions, managerialism is typically associated with the work of James Burnham, who wrote the book The Managerial Revolution in 1942. But an even earlier conception was presented in Bruno Rizzi’s 1939 book The Bureaucratization of the World. I summarized the managerial revolution in a previous deep read.