Weekly Digest: Near Summer's End
Welcome to my weekly digest for August 26, 2022.
For new subscribers, this contains a roundup of my recent writings and podcasts, as well as links to the best articles from around the web this week. You can control what emails you get from me by visiting your account page.
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New Content and Media Mentions
An article in Christian Post and Timon Cline’s Substack both mentioned my three worlds of evangelicalism model.
Also, someone sent me a link to a sermon in which my three worlds model was used (starts at 1:04:00). I’ve had a number of people send these to me. It’s a honor that so many pastors not only found my model of us in helping them understand what they are seeing around them, but also something they want to share with their congregations. But it’s also a reminder of the weight of responsibility that comes with influence. I will continue prayerfully attempting to live up to that responsibility.
Paul Vanderklay also featured newsletter #63 on managerialism in a recent video.
New this week:
Silent Exit (Subscriber Only) - People are moving - from city to suburb, or state to state - but often remaining silent about why they moved out of fear.
Staring Into the Abyss With Andrew Tate (Subscriber Only) - A look at yet another men’s influencer with millions of followers, but one with a message considerably more toxic than someone like Jordan Peterson.
My podcast this week looks at the way pastors talk about violence today. Paid subscribers can read the transcript.
American Reformer published a mostly positive review of George Yancey’s book Beyond Racial Division, as well as a look back at the St. Bartholomew’s Day Massacre on its 450th anniversary.
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Comments of the Week
I wanted to share a couple of particularly good reader comments this week.
The first is from Kevin on my Silent Exit piece:
Aaron - no doubt this is happening, just look at the numbers. And people are moving in some interesting ways. Rural migration is up substantially. Some states, like MO and IA, saw internal net migration up for the first time in many years. Many resort areas in red states have been bustling. Lake of the Ozarks blew out their typical visitor numbers in 2020 and 2021. Florida has been raking it in financially because tourism has been so strong.
I think you're right that a whole lot of people don't want to talk about this. Polite society doesn't want to acknowledge what is happening. The woke backlash is certainly a part of it, especially for parents of small children. But I think we shouldn't minimize the COVID aspect of this. Many, many people don't agree with the policies of the last 2+years, but are loathe to say so publicly. Along with speaking out against the woke ideology, it seems impolite and heartless to say what many think - the Covid policies have all been idiotic and very harmful for society. In certain deep blue places, it's been hopeless to speak out. You'll get shamed, ostracized, and nothing will change anyway. So it's easier just for people to decamp somewhere else, and hope society regains its sanity in a few years. My own experience is there's still a very big gulf between how a lot of normies feel about the last 2+ years and what they will admit in any kind of public setting. But just watch what they do.
And Barnard had this to say in my piece about Andrew Tate:
There is a subset of people in both Christianity and on the right who are so desperate for being seen as cool in the cultural they will embrace anything and anyone that can be labeled as not left wing.
In the George W. Bush years, lots of conservatives embraced the show South Park and Brian Anderson wrote a book called "South Park Conservatives" which was a prime example. The book was mostly about liberal media bias, but the idea that the profane, nihilistic cartoon show was conservative in any way because it occasionally mocked liberals was embarrassingly dumb. The creators of the show went on to intentionally mock and distance themselves from conservatives. It is the same thing with Portnoy and Tate, who I also had not heard of until this week.
That’s a good comparison. I’m not sure about Tate, but Portnoy seems destined to pivot left - to protect himself if nothing else, similar to Howard Stern. In fact, he already seems to be doing that.
Best of the Web
WaPo: Glennon Doyle chose honesty. Now fans are following her lead - when female influencers recommend toxic ways of living, it is treated as legitimate
WSJ: How the Sexual Revolution Has Hurt Women
NYT: The Constitution Is Broken and Should Not Be Reclaimed - to people on the left, the real constitution and their ideology are identical. “Our democracy” indeed.
Richard Hanania: How I Overcame Anxiety
To put it in stark terms, if you are a single male, every time you see a woman that you might be interested in dating and you don’t at least talk to her, you have failed on a moral, intellectual, and spiritual level. There’s no nice way to put this, and realizing it will make you better off. The same is true more generally in any circumstance in which you have limited time to pursue a relationship that can be beneficial and you don’t do so out of fear.