Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West

by R.R. Reno

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.

Genres: Politics, History, Philosophy, Nonfiction, Cultural, Religion, Christianity

208 pages, Hardcover

First published October 15, 2019

About the author

Russell Ronald Reno III is the editor of First Things magazine. He was formerly a professor of theology and ethics at Creighton University.

A theological and political conservative, Reno was baptized into the Episcopal Church as an infant and grew up as a member of the Church of the Redeemer in Baltimore, Maryland. As an adult he was an active participant in the Episcopal Church, serving as Senior Warden of the Church of the Resurrection in Omaha, Nebraska from 1991–1995, as deputy to the General Convention of the Episcopal Church in 1993, 1996, and 1999, and as a member of the Theology Committee of the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops from 2001-2003. On September 18, 2004, he was received into the Roman Catholic Church.

Reviews

[Murtaza · Rating 4 out of 5]

The early-20th century is a nightmare from which Europe and the United States have never fully recovered. Immediately after World War II, to stall away nightmares of death camps and nuclear bombs, a programmatic effort was undertaken by sociologists and economists to disenchant the West of its strong beliefs. The goal was defined by Karl Popper as the "Open Society," and it is towards this goal that the postwar consensus has oriented itself. On the cultural front it means openness as a default, along with a relentless critique of ones own cultural and religious tradition until it is disenchanted of anything that could be described as seriously as Truth. Economically it has meant a parallel openness to unhindered international trade and a society of individualized economic competition, with the "closed" backstop of a welfare state increasingly described as a precursor to tyranny. Metaphysics have theoretically been banished today in favor of a minimalist anthropology focused on therapy, economics, and rational social organization. This is the disenchanted world most people inhabit today, where perhaps the only acceptable strong belief is that nothing should be believed too strongly.

As Reno argues, such a way of thinking about the world, which has indeed become hegemonic by now, is not conducive to human flourishing. It may work for an elite that benefits from globalization economically enough to offset its other social costs, but for those left behind by liquid modernity the experience is destructive indeed. The critique and reduction of all traditional social institutions has left people adrift in the face of market forces and enervating cultural instability. Moreover any protest against these changes is pathologized as the first step towards reopening death camps and empowering the paradigmatic authoritarian personality. With their metaphysical convictions critiqued into oblivion people have become either disoriented or spiritually weakened to the point that they're unable to stand up for any conviction other than openness.

All this has created a debilitating weakness of "Being" in modern Westerners. True, they may not have any world wars, fascism, or communism, but this is because a cultural wound has been inflicted that drains anyone of the ability to care or sacrifice on the level required for even such ill-endeavours. More pressingly, it also makes positive collective action impossible. People are bound together in collectives based on what they love. Whether that is love for Hazrat Isa (Jesus Christ), the ancient nation of Israel, or the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ, it is able to turn a group of people into a community oriented towards a collective goal in the present and vision for the future. If the highest love is simply for ones individual self and the principle of not loving anything else too much, people risk becoming like "flies in the summer" who live aimlessly and die out within a generation. People are homeless, culturally and spiritually, and this homelessness is becoming a political force in our time.

This book is good at documenting the problems in our status quo, though it doesn't fully grapple with the risk that reawakening the strong gods of solidarity wouldn't indeed result in some new terrible catastrophe. Perhaps that would be better? It's hard to say that (I wouldn't) and Reno does not venture such an opinion himself. The call to a renewed nationalism seems in line with the convictions expressed by other conservative intellectuals today but seems unlikely of achieving its goals, at least not in the dignified manner that its stronger proponents desire. The old conservatism of Burke, which, say what people will, had something to recommend it, is perishing in a blaze of Q-Anonism, technological disorientation, celebrity culture. What's left today is unclear.

[Charles Haywood · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rusty Reno, editor of the prominent religious conservative journal First Things, here couples an original diagnosis of how we got to the vicious decay of now with very muted prescriptions. This is a good enough book, earnest and intent, but it is cramped. Reno offers as an alternative not strong gods, nor even coherent positive visions of the nationalism and populism of the title, but only the tired and repeatedly failed call to return, though some unspecified mechanism, to vaguely conceived virtue. I’m all for virtue, but Reno refuses to acknowledge that, more likely, and more desirable, the strong gods are those who will inevitably, as Kipling said, with fever and slaughter return, to scour the Earth in preparation for the rebirth of actual, living virtue.

In brief, this book is an extended attack on the so-called open society, created by the so-called postwar consensus of how the West should believe. We are all indoctrinated that the open society, never really defined, is wonderful, so Reno’s attacking it at first seems like attacking Nutella. This is true for liberals, for whom unlimited openness has been the goal since John Stuart Mill, and for twentieth-century conservatives, who were long taught to associate openness with anti-Communism, and thus saw no reason to question it, until its poisoned fruits came to full ripeness. I don’t disagree with any of Reno’s extended history and analysis of the open society; I just think it’s too limited. As with Reno’s 2017 book, "Resurrecting the Idea of a Christian Society," he is too abstract, and will not grapple with what can be, and with what must be, done.

I am much exercised, as regular readers know, with the very recent split among conservatives, between those who have come to reject the whole of the Enlightenment as a dead end, broadly speaking characterized as post-liberals, and those who accept Enlightenment principles, and thus the premises of their enemies, and merely want to dial back some excesses, or if denied that by their masters, reach Left goals a little slower. No points for guessing which group has been in charge while conservatives have gone down to crushing defeat again and again. Reno does not fall clearly into either group, which I think is meant as a compromise among ever-louder competing voices, but is really an unstable balancing act, in which Reno finally falls between two chairs. He starts by acknowledging post-liberals such as Patrick Deneen and (an early voice) Alasdair MacIntyre, and if I had not read this book, I would have guessed that Reno mostly agrees with them. Yet, after some wavering, he comes down on the side of the Enlightenment—that is, of liberalism, of atomized freedom, and the destruction of all unchosen bonds in a desperate quest for total emancipation. For Reno, we find, it was not 1789, but 1945, which was the year that it all went wrong.

As Reno sums his view up, in his own italics, “The distempers afflicting public life today reflect a crisis of the postwar consensus, the weak gods of openness and weakening, not a crisis of liberalism, modernity, or the West.” Reno’s argument is that after the horrors of the first half of the twentieth century, the ruling classes of the West chose to create societies of “openness, weakening, and disenchantment,” in an explicit attempt to prevent the “return of the strong gods”—“the objects of men’s love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that united societies.” Rather than simply trying to wall out only the terrible strong gods, the ruling classes chose to wall them all out: truth along with fascism; loyalty along with Communism.

At least Reno openly rejects any need for pre-emptive apologies, wherein as a conservative he would, in the past, have been expected to first talk at length about the evils of Nazism and fascism, and dissociate himself from them. He refuses, since he knows this is a propaganda trick used to make conservatives behave and look weak. Instead, he begins with something unexpected, but apt—a lengthy attack on Karl Popper, whose The Open Society and Its Enemies he identifies as the first philosophical attempt to create the postwar consensus under which openness was the first and only commandment. Popper rejected claims of metaphysical truth and insisted we must each seek, and create, our own meaning—not truth, merely meaning, a small and ambiguous word. Reno then draws a straight line from Popper to George H. W. Bush’s infamous 1990 address to the United Nations, where he demanded that we create “a new and different world . . . of open borders, open trade, and, most importantly, open minds.”

With the Left, all words have special meanings, and here it is no different. “Open” here means not actually open, but closed against the strong gods and minatory toward their adherents. “Open” does not mean free, but coercive—Ryszard Legutko’s “coercion to freedom,” where “democracy” only happens when votes are for the Left, and “liberalism” is where Left social goals are realized. It is no coincidence that that evil little troll George Soros was a student of Popper, and named his left-wing pressure group, most famous recently for losing the vicious battle it waged against the Hungarian people, “The Open Society Institute.” But none of this is acknowledged by Reno, who does mention Soros, but fails to draw the obvious conclusion: that calls for the “open society” have, and always had, a double purpose—to avoid totalitarianism of the Right, and, just as importantly, to enthrone totalitarianism of the Left. He is so busy being thoughtful that, as in the Edgar Allan Poe tale “The Cask of Amontillado,” he is walled in by his enemies by the time the talking is done.

In Reno’s analysis, Popper was followed and reinforced by many others: men such as Arthur Schlesinger and Theodor Adorno, avatar of the Frankfurt School and author of The Authoritarian Personality. Critically, though, it is not only from such obvious leftists that Reno derives the “postwar consensus.” He also identifies conservatives equally responsible. For example, he draws a tight connection between Popper and Friedrich Hayek. Hayek’s main target was central economic planning as leading to totalitarianism, but in so doing, Hayek exalted individual choice and rejected any concept of the common good, except as arising through individual choice. Government regulation was permitted, to be sure, but only to effectuate individual choices in achieving maximum freedom of play. Social consensus for Hayek was a threat, if it was anything but hortatory, unless it was directed to achieving freedom of individual action. During the Cold War, this was a powerful anti-Communist vision, which conservatives endorsed, not seeing the sting buried within. Reno points out that “Like those in the 1990s who predicted that capitalism would bring democracy and freedom to China, Hayek believed that the market mechanism is intrinsically anti-totalitarian.” Hayek was wrong, as we can see both from China, and from our own budding totalitarian combination of the Lords of Tech and woke capitalism.

And, compounding his sin in the eyes of elderly conservatives who, for some reason, still burn incense at the altar of William F. Buckley, Reno analyzes how Buckley, starting with God and Man at Yale, similarly rejected in practice any focus on the common good and himself exalted atomized individual choice—probably helped along by being called a racist and fascist for even the modest endorsement of public virtue in his first book, combined with his keen desire to continue to be socially accepted by Left circles in New York, which the name-calling threatened to prevent. As we all know, Buckley spent much of his energy for decades thereafter policing the Right, throwing out anyone who was anathema to the Left, and ended his life having accomplished nothing. He didn’t fight Tolkein’s Long Defeat, he fought his very own Short Defeat, and took us down with him. Reno attributes Buckley’s insipid approach to that “he intuited, at least in part, that he could engage in public life only if he adapted his arguments to the growing postwar consensus in favor of the open society. That meant no strong gods—no large truths, no common loves, and no commanding loyalties.” (This is the closest Reno gets to actually defining the “strong gods.”) Hewing to this line was the only way to “give conservatives a place at the table,” but over time, “the tactic became a strategy.” Maybe so, but more likely Buckley was simply not the right man for the job. That doesn’t mean there was a right man for the job—Reno endorses Yuval Levin’s thesis in The Fractured Republic that postwar America was doomed to follow this path. At this point, though, who knows?

In any case, that’s all in the first chapter; it’s mostly history. Unfortunately, three-quarters of the book is mostly history, and repetitive history at that, viewing the creation of the open society from slightly different angles. Reno, for example, ties the initial impulse to avoid totalitarianism to the growth of multiculturalism, a “therapy of disenchantment” that denies any role for the strong gods of one’s own society. In another thread, Reno describes how, for a time, the Great Books were emphasized, not to teach truth, but to allow each reader to draw his own conclusions. Reno does not engage Patrick Deneen’s argument that the Great Books themselves are, mostly, part of the problem rather than the solution, since most of them are works of the Enlightenment. Since Reno denies that there was any societal problem prior to 1945, that is no surprise, but again, it makes Reno’s argument neither fish nor fowl among contemporary conservative debates, and it feels like whistling past the graveyard.

Thus, Reno attributes the decay that began in the 1960s and accelerated thereafter to an excessive attachment to the open society, not to Enlightenment principles. For him, it is a problem of disenchantment, and he seems in some places to think that we could have held the center if not for that obsession. The truth is that the open society is, of course, merely a later manifestation of John Stuart Mill and his kind. While Reno mentions Mill in passing, he insists that all this is a postwar phenomenon. This is unconvincing. The open society is merely the latest guise of the Enlightenment project, protean as usual, able to pretend in one decade that it is the antidote to fascism and in another to fascistically force bakers to bake cakes for perverts. Reno simply skates on by these crucial matters. Regardless, we are taken on a long ride, through Milton Friedman through Jacques Derrida and, oddly, repeated references to the lightweight economics blogger Tyler Cowen, along with a long discussion of Italian writer Gianni Vattimo. We also touch on modernist architecture as emblematic of the open society, identity politics as the Caliban of the open society, and, citing Douglas Murray, how the open society results in leaders who hate their own people, something even more on display in Europe than here, though Hillary Clinton certainly gave Angela Merkel a run for her money.

Finally, we get to solutions. Well, not really. We instead get Émile Durkheim, who first pointed out, in 1912, that the Enlightenment had destroyed the old gods, and new ones were yet to be born. (Reno does not seem aware that his endorsing Durkheim suggests that he is wrong that the problems arose primarily after 1945.) We get a Durkheimian definition of the strong gods: “whatever has the power to inspire love.” We get talk of “we” and of the res publica, and a note that “the open-society therapies of weakening” cannot overcome the bad strong gods, “the perverse gods of blood, soil, and identity.” Then we get a petering out, ten pages of rambling about “us” and recovering virtue, recommending mild nationalism and highly limited populism, “new metaphysical dreams,” concluding “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 reason as well as our hearts.” What this would look like or how to get there we are not told. Weirdly, Reno is even aware that this is totally unsatisfactory, noting in his Acknowledgements that all his readers “warned me that I come up short in my final chapter.” If I were told that, I would rewrite my book, but Reno seems to think this is some kind of virtue.

Throughout the book, Reno is unwilling to follow his own thoughts, shrinking time after time from the obvious conclusions because he is afraid of being seen as too devoted to the wrong strong gods. For example, after noting the deficiencies of mass democracy, he maintains that it is a “blessing,” because, you see, it “encourages [the populace] to transcend their me-centered existence,” a thesis for which he gives no evidence and which is contrary to all historical fact. He even points out that “the freedom Romans loved was not individual freedom but the freedom of the city, the liberty of a people to make its own laws and embark on its own projects.” Yet he cannot see that exalting autonomic individuality is fatal, and its origin has nothing to do with 1945. Self-hobbled, therefore, Reno offers not strong gods, but merely what remains of the strong gods after being emasculated by the Enlightenment, and he has no plan for releasing even them from the pen in which our rulers have confined them.

But you are in luck today. I’ll do what Reno fails to do—I’ll tell you what should be done with the strong gods, or rather, what will happen with the strong gods, who, after all, exist whether we want them to or not. . . . .

[Review completes as first comment.]

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 3 out of 5]

6/10

Good for a mild wakeup call to the center-right/center-left, but still far too centrist. Made me want to say 'okay' to a boomer a couple of times.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Strong gods are "objects of men's love and devotion, the sources of the passions and loyalties that unite societies" (xxiv). These loyalties bind groups together and provide a sense of meaning and purpose to life. Examples include one's nation, family, religion, objective truth, ideologies and charismatic leaders, etc. The postwar (WWII) consensus was that we must exile the strong gods of nationalism, etc.—exchanging closed societies for open ones to avoid another Holocaust. A major problem with our new open societies (ruled by weak gods, which often negate, such as multiculturalism, inclusion, tolerance, acceptance, personal/subjective truth, borderlessness, etc.), besides the obvious paradox of totalitarian enforcement, is our current crisis of homelessness, which has led to the rise of populism and the return of other strong gods.

In his focus on "the politics of the imagination" (xxv), his project is similar to Charles Taylor's exploration of the "social imaginary," asking questions such as "What changed in our thinking—the way we imagine the world to be—to get us where we are today?"

Reno explains the postwar consensus (PWC) in the first chapter. Here's Reno's First Things essay from 2017. In it, Reno points to Hittinger's "three great covenants [three necessary societies] that anchor life and provide us with a place to stand": domestic, political, and ecclesial.

Wilson reviews the book here and interviews Reno here. This review by Charles Haywood (who popularized NEOTR) is thorough.

So far, the clearest sections have been the Preface, Introduction, ch. 1 (on the postwar consensus) and the second half of ch. 4 (on homelessness).

[Jared Mcnabb · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was one of those books that helps put words and descriptions to things that you’ve known or sensed intuitively.

[Alan Tomkins · Rating 3 out of 5]

This one was a bit of a chore. Thank God it was short, 166 pages; it felt longer. The first two thirds of the book were particularly weighty and rather dry. I do, though, feel it is an extremely well argued and important work of political philosophy and sociology by one of the most intelligent authors I've ever read. Think of William F. Buckley on steroids...but less engaging and not humorous at all. In hindsight, you could probably read the final two chapters and get the gist well enough. A more readable treatise on conservative nationalism is Colin Dueck's "Age of Iron."

[Jake McAtee]

7/5 stars

[Walter Shaw - · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reno truly understands the cultural moment in the US. We have been atomized and our shared loves for religion, country, and family have all been weakened. For many of us, they have been totally atrophied. The way forward is to strengthen those shared loves. I'd add that for the Christian, making disciples is a primary way to accomplish this! Faith in Christ is upstream of healthy patriotism & family culture.

[Bakunin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting perspective on how the elites thought about themselves after WW2.
The author writes about the postwar consensus of antifascism, anti-totalitarianism, anti-authoritarianism. It is this paradigm which is beginning to crack today. He takes Karl Poppers work "The Open Society and Its Enemies" as a starting off point. Karl Popper (1902-1994) is perhaps most known for his scientific theory of falsification, that is to say that something is never proved; it is just yet to be falsified. Scientists should actively try to falsify their theories rather than prove them. If a hypothesis is not falsifiable, then it is not a scientific one (this being the demarcation between say culture and science). Popper then proceeded to expand his sociological expanded into into the cultural sphere: one should not blindly follow authority figures or tradition, instead one should use reason and facts to guide which way society should develop. Metaphysical notions deeply inbedded into tradition are not facts; thus they can be discarded. One should carefully analyze notions in order to see whether or not they are facts and only then can one make rational decisions.
This - the author believes - is also what Sartre meant when he wrote "il faut choisir". You create a value judgement based on facts alone.

Existential questions such as "what is man?" and "who are we?" are too lofty to answer. Instead one should look to the small world and try to live as best one can there. This point of view is not limited to either the right or left but is accepted by both sides. Reno takes as an example how the Catholic church responded in the 60s but modernizing. The strong Gods of old have proved to create havoc in the world. Both sides of the political isle align with the ideas of open borders, open markets and globilization. The new political movements spring up as a result of these thoughts where woke is just a recent example of continuing trend. The West continues to deconstruct concepts and tradition only to find that there is little left. Little common ground on which to stand.

I found the book to provide a fresh take on the Wests political heritage. My view is of course that political ideologies are just maps of the world; not the world itself. Problems arise when people align themselves too much with one view and get radicalized. I do wonder what the author thinks of the late Hayek who was more prone to see the individual as part of a larger tradition and not as myopic as he was in perhaps in "The road to serfdom". Indeed many of the thinkers cited have a point but perhaps miss peoples need of meaning.

I also kept thinking of Iain McGilchrists book "The master and its emissary" about how the left hemisphere of the brain (i.e. the analytical part) has taken over the culture more and more. Everything needs to be analyzed to the smallest particle; everything needs to be reduced. But in doing so one loses a more holistic picture (which according to McGilchrist can only be provided by the right hemisphere). The postwar conensus seemed to be to be saying: there is no ultimate meaning in life; there are no larger projects to do and there is only individual consumers trying to maximize their own utility. That picture of the world seems to me to have lost certain ingredients which tradition used to provide.

[Pavol Hardos · Rating 2 out of 5]

A far-right intellectual tries to diagnose the fault of liberalism, fails. He is obsessed with the harmful effects of openness, "weakening", and disenchantment that liberal consensus allegedly brought after WW2.

His language betrays fascist fears straight out of Littell (and Theleweit) - "weakenings" and openness are his horror but fascinate him endlessly.

My favorite bits are when he complains about disenchantment - like, what's the alternative, R.R.? Believing fake shit? Strong gods indeed.

Abandoned 50% in, but I might have to come back in the future, this shit has serious intellectual pretensions (he spends 75% of the text paraphrasing liberal theorists with pearl-clutching disbelief of what horrors their theories imply and what were the consequences) that are likely to impress intellectually malnourished conservatives.

[Scipio Africanus · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book clearly defines and describes the illness infecting Western Civilization that is quickly bringing us to our knees socially politically economically and spiritually. It describes the post World War II consensus which we have grown up under as unsustainable and on its way out as the foundational mythology is increasingly questioned and doubted. The weak gods of multiculturalism, globalism, inclusivity, and revolutionary narratives have no defense against the rising strong gods of national identity, religious identity, and the less healthy other identifiers that people are creating for their various tribes as their fatigue grows from constantly watching their homelands, institutions, histories, and. cultures get denigrated and invaded and called evil at every turn.

I appreciate the author's Catholic outlook although I don't know if I agree with all of his prescriptions for the coming turmoils. I feel like he is still a little too amiable towards the cancerous ideas he is describing and in turn the cancerous people we are dealing with. I am not sure he grasps the full reality of what's coming.

[Ben Garrett · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very good!

[Drew Tschirki · Rating 2 out of 5]

A better title would be “The Occasionally Coherent Ramblings of a Conservative Man Who is Angry the World is Changing as He Waves His Fist at the Sky.”

Essentially Reno’s argument is centered on a mythical “postwar consensus” that decided after WW2 on openness and relativity. This consensus is uprooting the moral fabric of society. Openness refers to open borders, open mindsets, and so on. It is a reaction to totalitarianism, and the West’s postwar mindset has evolved to be anti anything perceived to perpetuate totalitarianism or any racist or negative institutions that were upheld by western society. They reject any metaphysical claims to authority (religious, political) and accept relativity and tolerance as their weak god. Open borders refers to both national borders and also the blurred boundaries between men and women (transgenderism and anything LGBT+) and our social roles. Universities may still use authoritative classics (Plato, the Bible) but instead of teaching authoritative truth, teaches students to critically analyze the texts.

God forbid we use our own minds to critically analyze texts claiming moral authority without blindly accepting them as truth!

It was a struggle to read this. I forced myself to finish as I don’t want any completely unread books books on my shelf.

I should be fair. I do think he makes an intriguing argument, albeit a flawed one. I do believe his conclusions in believing that we need to turn back to God, religious morals, patriotism (maybe), and doing what is best for our nations isn’t necessarily wrong. I think there would be many benefits to our society to do so. I do not think Reno’s arguments he made to get to the conclusion were necessarily correct nor logical. He speaks about Trump often in the introduction but his conclusion is a call to return to God. His thesis and and conclusion hardly are hardly aligned.

Also he believes that white supremacy is a result of biological advancements and is perpetuated by the left. I literally laughed out loud.

[Dan Sasi · Rating 3 out of 5]

R.R. Reno’s Return of the Strong Gods: Nationalism, Populism, and the Future of the West (2019) is a forceful critique of the postwar liberal consensus that, in his view, has left the Western world adrift. Reno argues that after the devastation of World War II, Western elites embraced an ideology of openness—rejecting nationalism, strong cultural identities, and traditional religious values—in favor of globalism, atheism, moral relativism and cosmopolitanism. He believes this “anti fascist” consensus may have been necessary post war but has now become an oppressive orthodoxy that undermines social cohesion, national identity, and spiritual meaning.

At the heart of Reno’s book is the idea that postwar intellectuals—ranging from Karl Popper (The Open Society and Its Enemies) to the architects of European integration—embraced what he terms the “weak gods” of openness and relativism. These ideas were meant to prevent a return of authoritarianism and totalitarianism, but Reno believes they have instead created a spiritually and socially impoverished West and an anti authoritarian authoritarianism. The antidote, he argues, is a return to the “strong gods”—national loyalty, religious faith, and deep cultural roots—that once bound societies together.

The rate of change resulting from the post war consensus accelerated post 1989, once the West could no longer unite behind a common enemy in communism. Since then, the West has attempted to spread its new global hegemony and liberal world order across the globe.

[Bryan Hieser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting read. Reno explains the current landscape and tensions in the West result from the post-war consensus, which itself is a shifting away from national and personal loyalties to people, place, and Truth to diversity, openness and meaning (and is hypocritical in these commitments) for the sake of avoiding future world-encompassing calamity. Why does it feel like both post-war (establishment) liberals and conservatives in the West’s leadership class hate you? Because they fundamentally agree that strong loyalties and loves, including (especially?) towards their own citizens, will guarantee the return of the “authoritarian personality.”

Reno spends much time examining the details of several thinkers/philosophers; most of this was difficult to follow, though he does well in summarizing the main points of each of these figures’ contributions to the post-war consensus. I was especially intrigued by the observations regarding economists F.A. Hayek and Milton Friedman, having previously read “The Road To Serfdom” and “Capitalism And Freedom,” both cited here as influencing the post-war conservatives in their seeking of national order not through the state (because that would incite the “authoritarian personality”), but rather by free market outcomes and atomized, consumerist individualism.

[Alex Kearney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reminds me of Carl Trueman’s Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self. As another reviewer pointed out, this won’t be anything new for those who’ve been attuned to the rise of nationalism and threat of multiculturalism, but it’s a good place to start for those wondering why the right wing is increasingly radical.

Summary: don’t expect the erosion of your culture in the name of diversity to come without a “return of the strong gods,” a counter-balancing revolt of ethnocentrism and defense of strong hegemony.

So much conservativism falls short in resisting the DEI woke anti-white Marxist liberal LGBT etc madness. And we don’t realize how woefully we fall short. Because we’ve given up so much ground, things are going to get interesting in the coming decades.

[Josh Danzeisen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well thought out overview on the post war concensus and how it has affected (and infected) our modern era. An important read for anyone wanting to better understand the underpinnings of modern liberal ideological disease.

[CK · Rating 5 out of 5]

Down with the Post-War Consensus and long live supernatural morality and ideals. R.R. Reno does a spectacular job at putting the words to the thoughts and ideas that many of us have as we look with distain upon the half rotted carcass of once great culture. Under the guise of an open, liberal society tremendous effort and resources are being directed to disenchant the population, weaken their morals, and isolate them as an individual, and confine them to the tyranny of a law that says there are no laws. Reading this makes me want to wipe my haunches with a document such as the Antioch Declaration, that enforces a worldview utterly incapable of moving past the conflicts of the 20th century. Jesus Christ is the strongest of the strong gods and with their return, so will the glory of Christendom that was lost by forsaking our devotion to Him.

[Jalen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The heart of this book is an effort to explain why so many Americans elected Donald Trump to the highest political office in our nation, why Brexit happened, and why nationalist and populist movements are gaining momentum throughout Europe and the West generally, etc. Although many of our nation's elites remain befuddled and dismiss this phenomena as the "close-minded" behavior of the unwashed, uneducated, god-fearing masses of the "fly-over" territories, Reno suggests that there are more profound, genuine political needs and desires at the root of these movements that have been ignored for far too long.

These desires have arisen as a reaction to what the author calls the "postwar consensus," a philosophical and cultural movement which sought to deliberately weaken and "lighten"--through deconstruction, critique, an emphasis on relativizing doctrines and political correctness--any strong bonds or shared loves (the strong gods) that we hold in common. These strong passions--patriotism, love of one's own, love of God, "traditional" moral values, etc.--were thought to be the sources of conflict and the deeper causes at work underneath the fascist totalitarian regimes that wreaked havoc upon the world in the 20th century. Reno traces a line of thought through an analysis of influential 20th century thinkers of various stripes: philosophical (Popper), economic (Hayek), literary (Derrida). His analysis here of the concerted effort to fashion an "open-society" after WWII is accurate and compelling. This is where the book really shines.

The author honestly admits in the acknowledgments at the end of the book that the second half of the reflections, the "what do we do now?" section, falls a bit short. The expression "shared loves" remains somewhat vague (this may be inevitable to a certain extent since this depends very much on how particular groups of people live), and the author seems reticent to really take a stance here and declare what these strong gods ought to be. In truth, the solution, or the ideas he offers here in the second half of the essay, are never clear or half as compelling as the diagnosis.

This same thing happens in Patrick Deneen's essay "Why Liberalism Failed." His diagnosis is very insightful and accurate as well, but the end of the essay--beyond some references to Wendell Berry--does not offer any real answers about where to go next. Likewise, the second half of Reno's essay, rather than moving forward, becomes very repetitive and restates too many times points that were already well-established in the first half of the essay. Perhaps it would have been better here to just cut things short or pose a question or challenge for others to answer. I think it is important to respect the reader's intelligence and ability to follow the argument and perhaps lead them into areas for deeper consideration rather than cause frustration through redundancy. In fact, I think it's very much worthwhile just to have someone clearly articulate the diagnosis, and I don't see why the same author necessarily needs to attempt to solve the problem or even gesture towards a solution. This may be frustrating to some people, but the solution—if there even is one—is clearly very challenging to discover and maybe its better to just say honestly that you don’t have an answer.

Incidentally, I just finished a book by Richard Lewellyn called “How Green was My Valley” about a small Welsh coal-mining community set in the early 1900’s and I have to say that it seems to embody very closely the kind of community that Reno envisions. It is filled with strong loves: religious devotion, passionate family bonds, national pride, etc. It is also lyrical and profoundly moving in many places. Could a community like this be possible again, would such a thing even be desirable enough, and to enough people?

My only other quibble is that in the beginning of the book, at the end of the introduction, the author states emphatically that the current state of the West is NOT due to deeper philosophical and historical causes like the natural consequences of late medieval nominalism, enlightenment liberalism, and the effects of the reformation in the economic and political order, but rather to the "postwar consensus" for which he argues in the book. Isn’t this an unnecessary dichotomy? The loss of truth in favor of meaning does have its roots in nominalism, unbridled self-will, and the so-called “freedom of indifference,” does trace its genesis to liberalism, and modern economic theory was undoubtedly and very strongly influenced by Protestantism. In other words, why can’t we check all of the above?

[Ernst · Rating 3 out of 5]

A maddening book, most of which is intriguing, but the first and last chapters are obnoxious. Begins by saying that the rise of Orban, Trump, and the nativist right are not as threatening to him as the Southern Poverty Law Center and people who interrupt him to demand that he not criticize homosexuals and other people he would like to criticize. Then moves into a worthwhile, if idiosyncratic, reading of Camus, Derrida, Friedman, Hayek, Popper, Rawls and others who, he maintains, ended up creating a twentieth century consensus which he would like to refute. An unusual thesis, but positively argued, well argued, and well worth reading. This is over 100 of the book’s 170 pages.
Then he returns to stuff – we must go back toward the times when men and women knew their place which is the center of society, everyone has to stand up for the national anthem, and on and on. The last pages become surreal – he gives his experience reading James Baldwin, ending with a declaration that James Baldwin is his brother, and then of watching a documentary about the Tuskegee Airmen. These experiences do not lead him to think that maybe he should speak more sensitively to or about homosexuals, but do convince him that the West needs to return to the wisdom of the German writer Ernst Junger (?!), who I think has not been mentioned previously in the book, and is not listed at all in the index (which also omits Victor Orban, who the reader can find on page XVI.) Junger as prophet of the twenty first century is also an unusual thesis, but not as interesting as the author’s ideas about the twentieth century consensus.
Just before the author gets to Victor Orban the author writes, “Perhaps I’m overreacting, responding to the anti-fascist and anti-racist hysteria of the present moment with my own hysteria. One reason I wrote this book was to stem this tendency within myself.” So maybe, having got his thoughts down on paper, he will rethink some of them. I myself have concerns that we are told we must read White Fragility, White Rage, Tears We Cannot Stop, and The Half Has Never Been Told but no one is saying we need to read Strangers In Their Own Land, Down at the Docks, Chesapeake Requiem, or Janesville to learn about other people who have been excluded from the upper class. However as the book was published I give it three stars for those who check it out of the library and read chapters 2 through 4, which I think people will all find provocative and useful, and fewer stars for people who try to read the whole thing.

[priya · Rating 1 out of 5]

Despite the somewhat compelling content/thesis, the delivery was horrible. It was all over the place and very redundant. The book could've been half as long but twice as intentional with its argument.

(I know this to be true because every class period since I started reading this book, my professor has articulated each chapter in exponentially better ways)

[Jon Beadle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent summary of the many problems inherent in the post-war consensus that still dominates left/right anti-politics politics.

[Jonah Twiddy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reno reminded me why I'm proud to to be an American. He also explained to me why I sometimes feel bad about it. Most of us have been taught to fear the "strong gods" (love of country, love of family, love of God) so we can nurture the less-imposing, weak gods that keep us from becoming fascists. So, in the name of unity, patriotism is replaced with "openness" and transcendence with disenchantment. But a culture of openness and disenchantment only dangles the carrot of unity on the ever-lengthening stick of value-less diversity, self-centered materialism, and a quest for "meaning" (a word that now, ironically, has almost no meaning at all). Solidarity is built on strong loves, and strong loves require strong objects: God, Truth, Family, Country. Reno thinks these strong gods are returning. I hope he's right.

(4 stars only because the lengthy biographies of the post-war thought leaders in the beginning chapters felt like they should have been reduced to get to the point).

[Colby Benedict · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are looking for a book that helps explain the how behind Donald Trump getting elected twice, this is the book for you. Reno helpfully traces out the philosophical and metaphysical changes that occurred in the wake of the horrors of World War I and II and leading up to the turn of the 21st century. Eager to ensure that these global wars would never happen again, political thought shifted away from the strong gods of “truth, loyalty, and nation” and towards the weak gods of “meaning, affirmation, and globalism”. While this unified the west as it faced down communism, since then, it has left young people feeling restless, homeless, and yearning for something more. This helps explain the rising populism that characterizes American politics and the deepening polarization of this cultural moment. To make this review specifically relevant, the book helped to explain why Charlie Kirk deeply resonated with some while also being deeply revolting to others.

[Ryan Brady · Rating 4 out of 5]

A comprehensive, reasonable, and well-researched explanation of the current moment, which is a bit redundant, but could be helpful for those who struggle to understand the swing towards the Right. I’m a slightly too-online 20 something man, I’m open to the impassioned polemics of internet anons and Substack writers as they rail against the postwar consensus. Many, however, are not. This book would be a reasonable intro to consensus-critical and post-liberal ideas for many regular people who may be open to dissent in our current cultural worldview but too afraid of the distasteful New Right to really consider it.

[Marcas · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm just finishing R.R. Reno's book now at last and find it very helpful for understanding modern globalised societies.
For me, Return of the Strong Gods is not unlike Christopher Lasch's terrific book that explodes the secularist myth of 'progress', The True and Only Heaven.
As his central concern, Reno calls out the false god of the 'open society' and shows us the rotten fruit that is borne from false worship in the political realm.

You'll probably recognise the contours of the 'open society'. It is easily seen in the manner that many important issues in politics and 'public' life are now framed, with slogans like 'diversity is our strength' and 'we must be inclusive' taking centre stage...
As if these slogans can explain everything of common importance and should be at the heart of all our political and cultural decision-making.
Unfortunately, this amounts to a secularist moralism and I would argue, maps on to Ivan Illich's 'corruption of Christianity'. This is where we take a part of what the Christian faith had brought to the fore, but isolate it from other virtues, and thus create a perversion of the genuine good. G.K. Chesterton called this 'the virtues run amok'.

Our friend, G.K. Chesterton also once said:
'Merely having an open mind is nothing. The object of opening the mind, as of opening the mouth, is to shut it again on something solid.'

I think this is more helpful than the binary system that places us into 'closed' and 'open' camps, as part of an unconstrained political vision. (Thomas Sowell) Man cannot live by slogans alone.
We long for real flesh and blood communities and organic bonds. This is a point that Reno keeps coming back to and he is astute enough to note that our political life is better understood as centrally about our loves.
Simone Weil contrasted this incarnational humanism, whereby we love our neighbour with an abstract love for 'humanity'. I think this syncs nicely with James K.A. Smith's work on liturgy, and his observation that the state and the market are forming us and our loves by way of 'secular liturgies'. I don't suspect Smith would like to be linked to Reno, but I think they both offer some points that can edify Christians and help our communities.

Reno notes that nearly a century after World War 2, many of us are still trapped in a negative political theology summed up in the slogan, 'Never again'.
Why? ... 'Because Nazis'. The historian Tom Holland has pointed this out, in a podcast - Triggernometry.

This partially explains our (rightful) revolt against Nazism and racialist ideologies, but softer approach to the extreme left: Communism and Neo-Marxism.
Even Socialism is better understood in religious terms, as Michael Novak rightly observed.

Again, I think Illich is helpful here. We tolerate this 'universal' vision of 'the left', even though it is an inhumane corruption of the universal Christian faith and has resulted in mass atrocities everywhere it has been tried. And yes, it was real communism.

There is an overly simple picture proffered of us 'the good guys' vs the Nazis. We are the 'anti-fascists', the 'anti-racists', et cetera. In practice however, this is often directed at those who won't bend the knee to our secularist moralism, and we collapse anything we don't like into those categories.
This structure of argument has collapsed healthy political differences into paranoia about 'phobias' and psycho-analyses opponents rather than actually engaging with the ideas.
Christpher Lasch also mentions this in his book, and the influence of works like the Authoritarian Personality in transforming political philosophy for the worse.
This black and white picture of the world was also expressed in figures like George W. Bush and Tony Blair, as Reno describes, and should be resisted every bit as much as we should resist the binary thinking of Marx that we can be neatly put into boxes of 'oppressed' and 'oppressors'.

This uncharitable worldview, and its hermeneutic of suspicion (Bishop Barron), has replaced the more honest and comprehensive Christian picture of good and evil in this world.
This is a complex story of Creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. (Nancy Pearcey)

This brings the prophetic Solzhenitsyn to my mind:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts.
This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained”

― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago

But this religion (a central cultural binding agent) of the 'open society' is ultimately a lifeless ideology. It makes a bogey man of 'transcendence' and tries to save us with a dogmatic 'immanentism'. A thoroughly this world affair. Psychology has replaced theology, etc.

Dr Carl Trueman has made a similar point regarding the rise and triumph of the modern self, which intertwines with the rise of ideas about the open society and relevant technological developments.

For the secularist regime, from D.C. to Dublin, to Durban, a central message of 'never again' has de facto replaced Jesus Christ's life, death, and Resurrection as the centre of history & all is seen through that prism.
Even Christian theologians like Metz were captured by this dualism.

We see this also in the suggestion that there can be 'no more poetry after Auschwitz', and so on.
But this is a secularist fatalism that lacks the good news of Christ's resurrection, which offers us not just a new life in the world to come but transfigures the ugliness of the world here and now into something beautiful. This still happens every day.
In his book, Reno notes that Orthodox Jews still say the Shema. And I'd imagine the late great, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks would agree.

We still have poetry.
We still have beauty, goodness, and truth.
We still have hope, and faith, and love.

In my own country, amidst the desolation of 'The Troubles', a great poet named Seamus Heaney arose. A man with a sacramental imagination, amidst carnage.

The Cure at Troy

Human beings suffer,
They torture one another,
They get hurt and get hard.
No poem or play or song
Can fully right a wrong
Inflicted and endured

…

History says, don’t hope
On this side of the grave.
But then, once in a lifetime
The longed-for tidal wave
Of justice can rise up,
And hope and history rhyme.

So hope for a great sea-change
On the far side of revenge.
Believe that further shore
Is reachable from here.
Believe in miracle
And cures and healing wells.

Call miracle self-healing:
The utter, self-revealing
Double-take of feeling.
If there’s fire on the mountain
Or lightning and storm
And a god speaks from the sky

That means someone is hearing
The outcry and the birth-cry
of new life at its term.

We can and often are 'surprised by Hope' (N.T. Wright) even after Auschwitz, even after chattel slavery, even after the crucifixion of the God-Man over 2000 years ago.

As a big picture, and like Christopher Lasch's deconstruction of the secularist myth of 'progress', Reno's book is a most helpful exposé of the cult of 'openness' and 'the open society' which ends in a closed materialist system - which we might discern as part of 'the spirit of the age'.
This is a spirit affecting those across the political spectrum, left to centre, to right. Jacques Ellul called it 'world opinion'.

Reno's book deals with this malevolent spirit in literature, statecraft, the market, and more. We should take this seriously because it affects us all.

Return of the Strong Gods has also helped me to understand why many figures, including secularists, who have rightfully criticised 'wokeism' over the last few years have failed to mature beyond their lament. I think this applies to many of 'The left, left me' people, for example.
These old 'liberals', influenced by Popper's false prophecy still have little or no more than this 'negative theology' to offer. They are left with an unconvincing moralism and a bland classical liberalism that will not inspire the noblest in men and women.

Now, I am not saying there are not good points to this increased openness and agree with many of Jonathan Sacks's points in his book, The Home We Build Together, which argues along the lines of this 'postwar consensus', and even mentions Popper favourably, but I do think Reno fills in some of the holes in the Rabbi's work.

Shilling for the 'free marketplace of ideas' is simply not good enough. The rot is much deeper than what is often called 'wokeism' or the Neo-Marxist cultural revolution (C. Rufo) and we need to offer a realistic and inspiring way of life for our time.
I find much of what Reno says helpful and his work is like a grenade to an often-blind faith in 'openness'.

However, maybe in part because of this, it is indiscriminate.
There is more to Karl Rahner SJ and libertarian philosophy that I believe can help edify Christians and their communities than the elements Reno mentions in his book, having to do with 'openness'. Moreover, the corporatism we see today is not the 'free market'. I think many conservatives get this wrong.
There are social conservatives and political libertarians who offer more integrated perspectives than Friedman or Hayek. As a Christian, I would suggest that their underlying anthropology was wrong because they were secularists, and de fact materialists, but Christian libertarians need not fall into the same traps.
Dr Gerard Casey and the folks at the Libertarian Christian Institute come to mind as refreshing alternatives.

We don't just need to go back to the 'strong gods' of family, nationalism, etc.
We need to return to the true and living God. The personal and loving God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The Man from Galilee.

Overall, I think these 'strong gods' can and should have their place within a Christian hierarchy, like the 'weak gods' in some cases. But they should not become idols, any more than the 'weak gods' of 'inclusion' and 'openness' have become idols.
To be fair, I think Reno would agree and he seems to suggest that at the end of his book.

For an example, I think the 'spiritual nation' of my countryman, Padraig Pearse has its place within a universal Christian faith. But the modern 'nation' state is abhorrent, as many empires and tribal systems, and honour-shame societies were before.
Overall, I think this is an insightful book, a good conversation starter, and well worth a read. Wrestle with it and come out stronger.

[Marks54 · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nice try. While the book is well written and even moving in parts, I am not convinced and I do not think that R.R. Reno has made his case. My rating involves some benefit of the doubt.

I originally thought the book would be concerned with the rise of aggressive nationalist and populist movements in the West in the past few years. That is not on offer, however, and it would have been helpful in clarifying Reno’s arguments had it been on offer. The objectionable side of these movements is more or less brushed to the side while the main agenda of the book is pursued.

OK, but what is the main agenda of the book? The idea seems to be that the current disruptions and controversies in the West stem from the collapse of the 1945 consensus of western elites to fight the evils of totalitarianism by promoting the “open society” and “critical thinking” and all that such promotions entail. This discourages attachments to ideologies and other belief systems and harness human motivations and needs in the service of destructive collective goals (conquest, genocide, exploitation). This consensus has proven powerful and is apparent in a very wide range of intellectual developments that have been adopted by intellectuals since 1945 even supposedly subversive ones including such present concerns as diversity, anti-racism, identity politics, deconstruction, and the like. This is initially presented in terms of an intellectual consensus but it soon becomes clear that this also includes economic doctrines and policies, especially the pro-market and even libertarian doctrines of Hayek, Friedman, Becker, and others. So powerful has this consensus been that it has come to control both left and right - the left in its cultural/pro diversity side and the right in its emphasis on free markets and competition as the source of positive societal growth. (This is only a thumbnail sketch.)

So how do we get to the present day? Well it appears that the key is the economy - which has only continued to benefit elites and has left the remaining 80+% without growth for decades. In addition, the hollowing out of the economy has reduced the possibilities for most to eventually benefit from the economy - they are to remain stuck in economic stagnation. So more than a little unrest follows and the bottom 80% do not have the societal value system to support them - the 1945 consensus leaves them out of the mix and looking for alternatives.

On a critical note, these last points above have been raised in some form by more than a few other commentators and go a long way towards explaining current unrest, malaise, Trump, and the like, without much need to look into the macro intellectual context of Foucault, Derrida, or anyone else.

But what about the 1945 consensus argument? I have a number of issues needing clarification. First - where is the agency? Who is the actor behind this consensus and how does it work? It is not convincing to claim that a small set of Washington bureaucrats in 1945 could control the intellectual course of the West for seven decades. Perhaps the control is a bit looser, so that different variations in different places serve to support the consensus, even without explicit agency? That strikes me as a cop out and an abuse of “functional” analysis. Compare it to critiques of the strength and continuity of systemic racism in contemporary society. While there may be some basis, it is still a way of sneaking agency into the argument and weaponizing it where possible. If one wishes to extend this argument to academia, I will grant the possibilities but will also not that academia is fraught with turmoil and controversies that make the workings of a strong consensus questionable. You would have a better chance of finding unified action in a flock of waterfowl during a thunderstorm.

A second issue is that the argument grossly overstates the influence of academia on the macro culture, especially as it would affect popular movements. Note, for example, that the most credible economic analyses of voters aligned with Trump and other potential populists uses categories like “White working class non-college-educated”. See the work of Caves and Deaton on this. How would the pronouncements of the cultural studies departments influence them? Besides, large numbers of students do not study the humanities and so would not be exposed to theses conflicts. Bottom line: even if I accept the arguments about the consensus, how does it contribute to the societal torpor that Reno is focusing upon in the book.

I could go on but will mention one other issue - why is the Popper’s “The Open Society and Its Enemies” the focal point of villainy here? I actually read that book (both volumes) in my college years (although it was not assigned) and loved it. It is an intelligent, thoughtful, and even moving book and it is hard to describe the effect it had on me in my first encounter. It is difficult to see how a book like this could be the focal point for a global consensus to subvert religion and values. To anyone who doubts this, I would suggest that they actually read the book and see what they think. It is long and complicated. It even requires looking up other ideas that pop up in the text. I would doubt that these are properties of a bestseller, let alone a book that can shape subsequent intellectual history. Agree with Popper or disagree, I do not see how it can fill the role that Reno claims for it in this book.

It also seemed like there was a bit of a “bait and switch” in the book. At the beginning, the 1945 consensus was crafted to fight the reemergence of violent state backed totalitarian mass movements like Nazism or Communism. But by the end of the book, the 1945 consensus has served to subvert any potential transcendent values such as those associated with religion, marriage, families, and the like. But it was never claimed by Reno or others that such restrictions were key to the original consensus. How do they make it into the mix by the end? ...and in looking at the developments in the US and Europe regarding populist movements, it does seem like there are similarities with the mass movements around the World Wars, which are precisely what the consensus was directed towards.

I grant Reno’s good intentions and can accept some of his insights. On the whole, however, I am not convinced and did not find his book helpful in sorting out issues.

[Jason Reese · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book presents an intriguing lens through which to consider Western history for the past 80 years. Surprisingly, it ends on a hopeful note. A thought I will keep with me: the word “we” is very powerful.

[Miles Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was a fair and informative short history of the modern moment. Reno offers some legitimately good thoughts. My chief hesitation in describing it as anything other than fair was that it wandered and the writing was quite clunky.

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 1 out of 5]

A soft shoe critique of liberalism without risking being too critical for fear of cancelation.