A Review and Reflection on R.R. Reno’s Strong Gods.

Writing from a century or even half a century ago contrasts starkly with writing today. Basically a bookish guy would soak in his tub and think, “I’m going to write about the entire history of art in Western Civilization. That sounds fun.” At the opposite end of the spectrum, contemporary writing concentrates on one very narrow topic, filled with citations and academic gobblygook. Modern books are often boring and purposely obtuse.

Rusty Reno's Return of the Strong Gods (2019) attempts to deal with the zeitgeist of our age rather than a narrow topic. It reminds me of Jack Burckhardt, the 19th-century Swiss historian who popularized the idea of the Renaissance. The Renaissance, according to Burckhardt, had been infused with a spirit of creativity and was defined by individuality. Most critics of Jack Burckhardt say that his work would benefit from an editor with access to Google. (He did get some details wrong.) But regardless of its faults, it made me respect historical writing that tries to tell a grand narrative. He made me feel like the Renaissance was a new age with a new geist that distinguished itself from the past.

Reno's is very much a book in the spirit of Jack Burckhardt's older style. It grapples with big ideas and does not get bogged down with details. His main idea is that after Hitler there emerged a fear of anything that claimed definite and metaphysical truth. Capital-T truth, if you will. You can’t claim that this religion is correct or that a particular belief is absolute, nor that one culture is objectively better than another. You can’t even claim someone is a man or a woman.

To quote a passage, “Whatever is strong. Strong loves and strong Truths leads to oppression while liberty and prosperity require the reign of weak loves and weak Truths.” Patriotism, devout religion and ideological fervor of all sorts were distrusted. My political science teacher over a decade ago once summed it up thusly: “Protect us from those who think they are right.” That was the post-war order in a nutshell.





Sadly, R.R. Reno is a Catholic and falls into the usual common weal nonsense. He just doesn’t get freedom and the purpose of a free market. His treatment of Milton Friedman sounds like a Papal spin on socialist claptrap. Friedman wanted a free society to debate what is good and beautiful. He believed that people should be free to use drugs or to be an atheist or Christian and be left alone to do their thing. R.R. Reno misinterprets Friedman’s advocacy of a free society as a distrust of any higher principle than freedom.

Milton Friedman would respond that free inquiry is the means by which we best pursue Truth. Also, the free market doesn’t value any particular higher principle. That’s not what a market is for. That is like complaining that your doctor can’t fix your car. That isn’t the techne of a doctor. A free market exists to generate wealth and protect your rights. Your pastor, your more intelligent friends and your local library are where you should pursue higher principles.

Popery aside, the book explains the ideological origin of weakness everywhere in the West. Without anything to fight for, the West cannot defend itself. In Spain the government cannot protect its citizens from foreign invaders. The French government cannot maintain law and order, in part because of the color of the rioters. The British cannot turn back boats filled with illegals. (In fact the British government is persecuting their people for protesting illegals invading their country on boats.) These problems are the consequence of a weakness of will.

If Nazis didn’t like nonwhites and strictly enforced laws, then indefinite immigration from nonwhite countries must be good. Almost everything in our current zeitgeist is a response to the bad part of Europe from 1914-1945.

This intense Eurocentrism is why modern elites are deeply suspicious of Christianity but not Islam. The strong god of Islam is foreign, and he does not concern them. The post-war consensus is curiously disinterested in foreign gods.

Reno writes about Wokism (which he calls political correctness) as a god of weakening. A god that doubts everything strong and traditional. In my mind, Reno does not fully respect the paradoxical strength of the weak god of Wokism. Because of the weak gods, we cannot put homeless lunatics in mental asylums; under the rule of the weak gods, we cannot police black Americans when they riot or break things; many countries cannot enforce their borders; we cannot deport Muslims who endorse political Islam. He does recognize that the ideology of doubting emboldens activists without doubts. But he does not flesh out this phenomenon. To be fair, I am still trying to piece it together myself.*



Reno has observed that a man who loves his family and his god is more likely to love his country and even die for it. Oddly, it reminds me of the British internet commentator Carl Benjamin, known to followers as Sargon of Akkad, a longtime atheist who has recently come to the conclusion that Christianity is necessary to revive Britain. Even left-wing atheists are beginning to respect Christianity, with Richard Dawkins being the ur-example. 


Though Benjamin doesn’t believe in the truth-claims of Christianity, he wishes that he had been taken to the Anglican Church as a child. Though an atheist, Sargon deeply respects how the Church grounds people in tradition and makes you part of a we. While Sargon still values individual rights, I wonder whether he is serious that there is an ethne (or people) associated with a location that people should feel part of. Before the founding of Rome, city-states and empires told a shared religious story to create a collective identity. It would be foolish to think that pattern has ceased.

R.R. Reno talked about reading Ralph Ellison while he was in Europe. In his The Invisible Man, Ellison mentioned that he wanted to move to France but could not. He was an American. Unchangeably so. Ellison was not a pure individual disconnected from the past, uninhibited from moving anywhere and becoming anything. Reno read this book in Europe and realized that he felt the same. Though he himself was not the same race as Ralph Ellison, he was a fellow American. That sense of identity was not of a particular genetic origin, but it was still very powerful.

As the saying goes, “Most books should be long essays and most long essays should be articles.” You are better off reading Douglass Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe and listening to R.R. Reno’s conversation with Jonathan Pageau. I am still grateful that R.R. Reno is asking big questions and trying to get to the origins of the post-war consensus. But his seven-hour audiobook should have been four hours with more tightly written prose. 


So while I can’t recommend this book, I do recommend grappling with its ideas and the postmodern Zeitgeist. Currently, the Cold War consensus is slipping. The rise of right-wing parties in Europe, the continuing reality of groups belonging to a certain ethne, and the increasing importance of religion harbor the return of the strong gods.

*The evolution of liberalism (even classical liberalism) to Wokism still confuses me. There are parts that just don’t make sense.