Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West
After the staggering slaughter of back-to-back world wars, the West embraced the ideal of the "open society." The promise: By liberating ourselves from the old attachments to nation, clan, and religion that had fueled centuries of violence, we could build a prosperous world without borders, freed from dogmas and managed by experts. But the populism and nationalism that are upending politics in America and Europe are a sign that after three generations, the postwar consensus is breaking down. With compelling insight, R. R. Reno argues that we are witnessing the return of the "strong gods"--the powerful loyalties that bind men to their homeland and to one another.
Reacting to the calamitous first half of the twentieth century, our political, cultural, and financial elites promoted open borders, open markets, and open minds. But this never-ending project of openness has hardened into a set of anti-dogmatic dogmas which destroy the social solidarity rooted in family, faith, and nation. While they worry about the return of fascism, our societies are dissolving. But man will not tolerate social dissolution indefinitely. He longs to be part of a "we"--the fruit of shared loves--which gives his life meaning. The strong gods will return, Reno warns, in one form or another. Our task is to attend to those that, appealing to our reason as well as our hearts, inspire the best of our traditions. Otherwise, we shall invite the darker gods whose return our open society was intended to forestall.
Full interview the clip above is from;
The Gods of the West: A review of Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West by R.R. Reno - Document
FOR DECADES, AMERICANS HAVE lamented about national decline. As stagflation gripped the economy in 1979, President Jimmy Carter stated that "all the legislation in the world can't fix what's wrong with America. What is lacking is confidence and a sense of community." What came to be known as the great malaise speech was used as fodder by Ronald Reagan who exulted in 1984 that "it's morning again in America." A renewed sense of patriotism emerged during the Reagan era, but it nevertheless seemed superficial and fleeting. Even the triumph of the United States in the Cold War was anti-climactic, as the country adjusted to the new realities of the global market. Structural changes occasioned painful dislocations, as manufacturing jobs, and later even white-collar jobs, were lost in America as the country opened up more and more to free trade.
Candidate Donald Trump capitalized on this angst in 2016, when he vowed if elected he would "Make America Great Again." Indeed, the nation's economic performance was impressive during the first three years of his administration. Still, many Americans felt that the growing prosperity notwithstanding, something was just not right or had been lost. The urban protests that ensued after the muchpublicized death of George Floyd seems to confirm that something is deeply broken not only in the United States, but the entire Western world. What is the source of this civilizational pessimism?
In Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, R.R. Reno, who serves on the board of the Edmund Burke Foundation and the editor of First Things, argues that many of the maladies that afflict our civilization are rooted in a worldview that has ossified over the past several decades. Perhaps the numerous problems that bedevil our society today--including opioid addiction, alcoholism, divorce, broken families, suicide, morbid obesity, loneliness, and the popularity of online porn--are not isolated phenomena but stem from something more fundamental.
Reno's book begins with him recounting a letter he received from a 27-year old friend in Australia who expressed his hope to someday "live to see the end of the twentieth century." In many ways, 1999 did not feel much different than 2019, for the guiding ethos remained the same. The so-called postwar consensus, which commenced after 1945, combined moral freedom with cultural and economic deregulation. These features were seen as the natural extension of an anti-authoritarian imperative that crystallized during World War II. According to Reno, the violence that convulsed the West from 1914 to 1945, spurred an American-led response that was "anti-fascist, anti-totalitarian, anti-colonialist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist." As he explains, it is these "anti" imperatives that define the essence of the postwar era. Nor did the collapse of the Soviet bloc in 1989-1991 bring the postwar consensus to a close; instead, victory in the Cold War actually intensified these anti imperatives, elevating them to unassailable verities...
In Return of the Strong Gods Dr. Reno explains our present crisis in society, the academy, and the church. The roots are in what he calls “the post-war consensus.” After 1945—suffering from a major societal case of post-traumatic stress disorder, Western thinkers, politicians, philosophers, economists, and internationalists all ended up feeling the same feelings and thinking the same thoughts.
Put simply, the reason we human beings end up killing one another on an industrial scale with industrial efficiency is due to dogma. By “dogma” I do not mean only de fide religious doctrines, but any belief or ideological principle which is held to be irreversibly, obviously, intrinsically, and uncompromisingly true.
We then kill our enemies because they are wrong.
The solution to the problem is obvious. If dogma causes Auschwitz and Hiroshima—get rid of dogma.
Dr. Reno takes the first half of the book to prove his point. Drawing from a range of philosophers, economists, social theorists, politicians, planners, theologians, sociologists, and journalists, Dr. Reno shows how, across various disciplines, a consensus emerged that called for relativism rather than revealed truth, situational ethics rather than the dictates of moral theology, multiculturalism instead of nationalism, and toleration rather than bigotry. The economic version was open markets and the spiritual vision was the sentimental, pastoral, ecumenically minded, interfaith religion that provides an accompanying spirituality to the liberal dream.
Followers of this philosophy endorse a soft, weakened approach to everything. One must listen more than preach. One must accept, not judge. One must identify with the victim, not the perpetrator. One must always take the side of the underdog, the refugee, the poor, and the downtrodden . . . and we will impose this philosophy of weakness with brute force if necessary.
While this has led to the free, non-judgmental, affluent, technological society we all enjoy, Dr. Reno argues that it has also led to the worrying backlash of nationalism and populism. The “deplorables” who “cling to their guns and their religion” don’t much like the principles of the liberal elite. So they vote for Trump who promises to build walls and make America great again.
The postwar consensus has become so orthodox among the American costal elite that they cannot comprehend Americans who do not share their relativistic creed. Not only are the Trump voters deplorable. They must all be angry white men who are racists and fascists at heart.
Dr. Reno uncovers the roots, therefore of the present division and crisis in every aspect of Western society. His solution is not the whiplash reaction of unthinking nationalism and populism. To go too far in that direction may indeed lead to an uber-patriotic totalitarianism. When I see the Trump rallies I shudder at the memory of reading somewhere a long time ago the prophecy, “When fascism comes to America it will be clutching a Bible, waving an American flag and singing God Bless America.”
Instead of such a fulfillment, Dr. Reno says we need a return to the “strong gods” that represent classic human values. The home, the country, and the religion are the three strong gods that have been destroyed in the push for a free, non-judgmental, and tolerant society. He calls for true patriotism rather than nationalism, marriage and family instead of a sexual free-for-all, and historic Christianity instead of do-it-yourself “spirituality.”
I was enlightened by Dr. Reno’s exposition of the sources and delighted by his proposed solution. However, I wish he had gone on to suggest how the “strong gods” might effectively return to their temples. It is one thing calling for their return. Envisioning how that might happen is more difficult. Wishing for the “strong gods” to strengthen our weakening culture is all well and good. Figuring out how to get them to respond to the summons is another matter that Dr. Reno leaves (I hope) for the sequel.
If headlines are any indication, there does seem to be a mounting fear in our society that we are well on our way toward repeating the era of Hitler and Stalin.
In his recent book, Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West, R.R. Reno argues that such movements are not the harbinger of a return to fascism, as their critics fear. Rather, western elites are now tasting the bitter fruit of their own policies and agendas. In effect, Reno argues, we are living amid the ruins of a culture led by people whose “never again” mindset has morphed into a socio-political wrecking ball that frantically demolishes any effort to construct a positive basis for civic life. The present upheavals represent a desperate cry of “Enough!”
Reno devotes most of the book to developing an account of what he calls the “postwar consensus,” which arose out of the west’s revulsion at the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century. In the wake of two massive global conflicts driven by nationalist ideology, the cultural elites and leadership class of the west sought to define principles of social order that would make the world secure from any resurgence of totalitarianism and world-consuming violence. In their eyes, this demanded that we cleanse political and public life of strong loyalties to those traditional sources of solidarity that have united societies in the past, such as nation, class, traditional morality, or religion. These Reno refers to as the “strong gods,” realities that transcend the human individual, lay claim to his assent and allegiance, and (according to these figures) thereby lay the foundation on which totalitarianism is built.
In their stead, elites asserted that the autonomy of the individual is to be prized above all else. Rather than looking to the strong gods to provide social cohesion, maximizing the liberties of self-interested individuals would ensure the diffusion of power necessary to organize society while also preventing the return of dictators and death camps. Meanwhile, the influence of the strong gods must be fiercely opposed wherever it begins to re-assert itself. Empirically verifiable “facts,” rather than value-laden and non-empirical “truths,” should determine the shape of the social contract, and attempts to ground public discourse or policy in the latter rather than the former should be censured. In this way, the postwar consensus is anti-metaphysical and procedural in its approach to social order: just as prioritizing the nation or the state over the autonomous individual funds totalitarianism, so does positing any “truth” that purports to stand over and above the self and demand its assent. In the place of solidarity around strong transcendent claims, we need an “open” society in which minimal restraint is placed on the individual’s pursuit of his or her own aims, and in which attempts to impose external limitations on this effort are deconstructed and unmasked as the naked aggression of an “authoritarian personality.”
According to Reno, “his basic pattern of analysis—the source of totalitarianism is found in the impulse to reach for something greater, and the remedy lies in ‘going small’ and adopting a weakening discourse—has been recapitulated countless times in the postwar era” (89). It is advanced in the philosophy of Albert Camus and Jacques Derrida, in Joseph Fletcher’s “situation ethics,” in the work of postwar theologians such as Harvey Cox and Karl Rahner. At the popular level, and more recently, it appears in the celebration of anything transgressive or ambiguous, the dissolution of all “binaries” as oppressive, and the policing of “microaggressions.” The present regime of political correctness is the definitive widespread expression of this cultural-political project. And yet, with no small irony, its role in this project displays markedly totalitarian tendencies: the “openness” that it advocates it is “a managed, orchestrated, and finally compelled openness” (91, emph. mine).
According to Reno, this consensus is well-established, at least in practice, among liberals and conservatives alike. Whether through interventionist economics and the ministrations of “social technologists” (e.g. Karl Popper, Arthur Schlesinger) or through the autonomous self-regulation of the free market itself (e.g. Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman), western elites promote a metaphysically void, non-transcendent means of sustaining the west’s liberal democratic project. Even the would-be detractors from this consensus (here Reno devotes particular attention to William F. Buckley) have in effect made peace with it, in that they pragmatically uphold and defend the system’s requisite pluralism in the name of winning and keeping “a place at the table” for themselves.
The effect of the postwar cultural project, in the end, has been to deprive western society of any positive basis for the social contract. The only acceptable solidarity is to be found in sharing the project of dissolving objective bonds of solidarity. In the cheerfully self-contradictory words of the 1968 Paris student revolt, “It is forbidden to forbid!” But humans cannot live forever on a specious solidarity of this sort: “A society lives on answers, not merely questions; convictions, not simply opinions” (95). Human nature itself abhors this vacuum and craves an authority beyond itself to provide it with meaning and guidance.
We are by nature “eccentric” beings, oriented ultimately toward that which is beyond ourselves, and attempting to deny or eradicate this eccentricity represents the most profound defection from nature imaginable. It leaves us “homeless” in a world with no meaning for us beyond the caprice of our own desires. Throughout history, human societies have made a home for themselves within a shared sense of collective identity and solidarity rooted in transcendent realities whose influence is preserved by tradition. But now we have responded to this history’s excesses by celebrating its opposite and refusing “to settle into stable convictions or common loves.” Accordingly, Reno concludes, the present crisis amounts to “a disquietude born of homelessness” (103).
This, Reno argues, is what lies at the roots of the populism and nationalism now gaining traction throughout the western world. These movements do not amount to a resurgence of the kind of totalitarian spirit that western elites fear. Rather, they reflect a desperation to fill the very vacuum that the western world’s leaders themselves have created and actively defend. It is society’s response to an unfulfilled hunger for a solidarity rooted in something more ultimate than the individual self. The metaphysical vacuum that the “open society” deliberately creates is ultimately responsible for phenomena such as Donald Trump’s election, Brexit, and so forth. “For,” Reno says, “deprived of true and ennobling loves, of which the patriotic ardor is surely one, people will turn to demagogues and charlatans who offer them false and debasing loves” (162).
Engaging with these movements fruitfully therefore cannot be a matter of re-asserting and defending the tenets of the postwar consensus. Rather, “he essential task of political leadership is to help men shelter together within traditions and communities of shared loves” (106). Thus Reno concludes the book:
Our task, therefore, is to restore public life in the West by developing a language of love and a vision of the “we” that befits our dignity and appeals to our reason as well as to our hearts. We must attend to the strong gods who come from above and animate the best of our traditions. Only that kind of leadership will forestall the return of the dark gods who rise up from below. (162)
https://inallthings.org/western-society-and-cultural-elites-a-review-of-return-of-the-strong-gods/
