By james art 
In the last few years, there has been no shortage of books that argue that liberalism has been confused over the last few generations in the broad sense. From time to time I read one of these books to see what I could learn or win. As Edmund Burke said, “the one who struggles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our assistant. “The Liberalism Antagonist I most recently read is RR Reno and his book Return to Strong Gods: nationalism, populism and the future of the WestS
In the next few publications, I will go through his book and unpack his comprehensive argument. As always, when I make these extended reviews, the original publications will simply be my attempts to outline and explain its argument as clearly as possible, as my own views on the matter have remained away. Any points of approval or criticism I have will be reserved for the end of the series. Insofar as readers have questions or comments about Renault’s ideas, I will do my best in the comments to answer them, as I believe he would do it, not with my own point of view.
With this preamble off the road, let’s see what Renault says.
Renault’s book is strongly based on a metaphorical idea of strong and weak gods. This concept is not in the actual deities – as Renault says:
By “strong gods” I do not mean Thor and the other inhabitants of the old Norwegian Valhalla. Strong gods are objects of love and devotion of men, sources of passions and loyalty that unite societies. They can be eternal. The truth is a strong God who attracts us to the marriage of consent. They can be traditional. King and country, insofar as they still awaken the Patriotic Planet of Men, are strong gods. Strong gods can take the form of modern ideologies and charismatic leaders. Strong gods can be helpful. Our constitutional piety treats the American ground as a strong God worthy of our devotion. And they can be destructive. In the twentieth century, militarism, fascism, communism, racism and anti -Semitism brought destruction.
This last point is a key element in Renault’s argument. The many gods of the Greek and Norwegian mythology had wild different characters. Some of these gods were kind and compassionate, some were powerful, but aside, and some were capricious or honest antagonistic to mortals. Renault’s metaphorical strong gods can also be similar in their social influence. The strong gods of Renault’s work can be socially unifying and useful, but they can also be dangerous and destructive. Not everything that “unites societies” with the help of “passions and loyalty” will be calm or virtuous. Strong gods can be wicked gods.
But, says Reno, there are also weak gods. Weak gods are ideas that are intended to make society more open and constantly soften any rough edges. The modern mind, Renault says, “seeks the ministry of weak gods or better, the gods of weight loss that open things.” He continues to say,
Today, one of our leading imperatives is the inclusion, a god who mitigates the differences. The transgression is valued to break the boundaries – opening things. Diversity and multiculturalism do not suggest an authoritative center.
One of the main characteristics of “weak gods” is that weak gods tend to simply be focused on negation – the vices we strive to avoid, not the virtues we strive to cultivate. Those who are most adhered to in their service to weak gods would describe themselves as engaged in anti -rocism, anti -fakism, antidiscimation and the like:
Those anti The imperatives determine the post -war era. Their goal is to dissolve the strong beliefs and powerful loyalty that is thought to have nourished the conflicts that have confused the twentieth century.
What exactly is the result of the long -term plan of these “anti” imperatives? Renault puts it this way,
In the pages you need to follow, I will show how anti -racing and antitotalitarianism inspire a common theory of society. This theory has many forms, some explicit, others silent. But it is characterized by a fundamental judgment: whatever strong – strong love and strong truths – leads to oppression, while freedom and prosperity require the reign of weak love and weak truths.
Strong national loyalty risks leading to the appearance of the aggressive, imperialist conquests of Nazi Germany. Weakening a sense of national identity and national loyalty thus mitigates this risk. Strong beliefs in moral rules and truths can lead to marginalization and omostracism of those sitting outside the strong social consensus. The weakening of public morality – or, equivalent, doing public morality increasingly opened and avoiding the casting of moral judgment – prevents persecution.
Here is an example that I think Renault would agree, illustrates his claim. In American culture, the importance, even the memory of a traditional household with two parents, was a strong god. People were expected to get married and get married before they had children. After they got married, families were expected to stay together. When a traditional marriage was a strong God, the people who remained unmarried for too long or who had children before they married were looked down. The divorce was diverted and the lonely parents could be money. The strong god of traditional marriage can be said to have been replaced by the weak god of the incompared acceptance of all forms of family life as equally valid.
The truth is a strong God and the truth is in its essence is exceptional. The truth, in order to be maintained, holds us within the barriers and if you are in line with the truth, it is a failure of you, you are responsible to correct. The strong god of the “truth”, on the other hand, can be replaced by the weak God of the “personal truth”, where everything opens, where people can say solely as a primer against the “culture of white supremacy” recently placed, “Something can be true, but not my truth.” The weak God of “personal truth” would also confirm the opposite – something can be valid “my truth”, even if it is not true.
And this, according to Reno, is the true source of the woes that modern society faces. Society cannot be behaved together simply through the values of denial or through infinitely open. The real problem is not liberalism, by itselfAnd more recently the rule of weak gods over society. As Reno says,
The West is directed to a crisis not because of a defect, deep within the present day. Our troubles do not stem from William from Okam, Reformation, John Locke, Capitalism or Modern Science and Technology … The fall of man leaves every civilization, every era under the entry law, which is why the renewal of shared love and the unification of loyalty is one of the loyalty The main leadership arts. We miss this today. Schools affecting public life today reflect a crisis of post -war consensus, weak gods of openness and weakening, not the crisis of liberalism, modernity or west … Our time – this century – begs the policy of loyalty and solidarity, not, but not, but Not openness and economy. We do not need more variety and innovation. We need a home. And for this we will require the return of strong gods.
But who kicked the strong gods out of society and why? This will be the topic of the next post.