Return of the Strong Gods

Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

By: R.R. Reno

Narrated by: Rick Adamson

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 20th 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 that destroy the social solidarity rooted in family, faith, and nation. While they worry about the return of fascism, our societies are dissolving.

©2019 R. R. Reno (P)2020 Tantor

A much needed reflexion

The book is well argued, well written, and important reflection on the history of recent political ideas. It introduced a fundamental concept that summarizes the political atitudes of Western elites and makes a case for their long overdue retirement.

A Piercing Critique of the Post WW2 Consensus

RR Reno accurately describes how the horrors of WW2 helped launch the West into a self-destructive campaign against any of the “Strong Gods”, namely Truth, Faith, Patriotism, Family, Tribalism, and Love. However, he underplays how much of this campaign was already well underway before WW2- the ideals of “Open-ness” had entered America far before 1945. Universal male suffrage, women’s suffrage, abolishment of slavery, disestablishment of state churches, etc had long since been done in America. Reno is dead-on that WW2 gave liberalism a specific postwar-flavored nitrous boost and a moral imperative against the Strong Gods, but he does not enough to recognize the strain of thought inherent in Liberalism that made the PostWar Consensus.

Great listen.

Clearly highlights the biggest forces at play shaping our world. Lots of people who can't comprehend them feel insecure from them

A decent Boomer Get-off-my-lawn Polemic

Reno’s book is firmly in the mid-2020s tradition of the aging academic/journalist who, culturally bewildered or enraged, pulls out the trope of protecting “Western Civilization”, and specifically their definition of what that means

To Reno and his fellow travelers, Cancel Culture and trans issues represent the loss of western values and cultural disintegration. His critique of the creaky, tired post-war Liberal consensus is very well argued. However, like each and every Boomer author who picks up this thread, Reno loses himself simultaneously arguing for the return of the Western Liberal Tradition but against modern Western Liberals. In essence, “why can’t it just be like it was!?!” Is the undertone of this and many other books like it popular at the moment.

Demands your full attention

This is not a book to listen to while you’re driving, making dinner, etc. It demands the listener be fully present, and savor what they are hearing. It’s challenging, and in that I think it is worthwhile.

It was a book that made me think, and has made me want to get the hardcopy, so I can read it and annotate as I go. As I stop and think about it now, it made me wonder where the “Golden Mean of America” is today. People who are not at either of the poles that seem to divide us so much today. It is as if neither side can see anything good in points raised by the other.

And that is not something we can sustain.

I wonder what the answer to the question of What it is we love about our country? would be for each of us, And if each of us has even bothered to ask that question.

This book makes me believe that we should, and work to preserve what it is we love about our nation, and what it is we need to do to improve where we feel we fall short.