Some thoughts about Dreher, from someone who's been reading him for a long time:
1. Like Andrew Sullivan, the object of the mania regularly shifts but the mania is always present and is a big part of the charm.
2. He should be recognized more widely as one of the last of the old Southern writer eccentrics.
3. Relatedly, a great biography can and hopefully will be written about him, though it may need to wait for someone less immersed in the political controversies of the past 25 years.
4. Also related to his tendency to never do anything halfway: his family books make for an ironic comparison to the stories so often published in the Cut & the Atlantic by & about women blowing their lives up. Less sex, more religion, similar effects.
Agree on all fronts. I hadn’t thought of him as a southern writer in that mold, but you’re totally right. And he would make for a good biography, but I don’t think I could do it myself. Too much repetition, too many words. It would destroy me. I’ve long entertained the idea of just doing a good long profile of him, but I don’t even think I can muster that. Thus the podcast.
Good point on the Southern eccentric — Dreher comes to mind as a dynamic Walker Percy character on a Louisiana road who’s almost totally illegible despite the quantities of his monologues. But Linker, too, comes off like a Percy character, with his self-described rationalism as his selected control on an uncontrollable world he wants to find meaningful.
He is too often correct about the arc of events to ignore. In his strange way, he not only feels the pulse of the culture but taps into the brainwaves. I often initially deny his prognostications. But come about they do - undeniably.
Great convo. Dreher is someone I tend to see as living a very extreme version of tendency one sometimes observes in conservative intellectuals, both those like him who grew up in the movement and those who defected from the left. A sensibility like his is simultaneously too bookish and cosmopolitan for the world that produced him, and yet too temperamentally conservative to be happy in the metropole with other intelligentsia.
Totally, although I sometimes wonder if his discomfort with the cosmopolitan worlds is really all that acute or is more about his fear of confirming his family’s worst fears about him.
I hadn't heard of Dreher, but this piqued my interest and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. These post-liberal types are interesting, there's a certain syncretic energy that seems to be bearing fruit. Compact, for example, puts out interesting stuff. One thing they have over the center left is the ability to criticize public libertinism, which really does seem to be socially corrosive. I wish the center left would take a page out of their book on that account.
I’ll have to ponder whether that’s true anymore of the center left. Certainly Ezra Klein is in that space, comfortable with critiquing some aspects of public libertinism, and then if you can include the conservatives like Douthat then the Times is hospitable. Maybe The Atlantic, with Caitlin Flanagan?
I like Ezra Klein and Caitlin Flanagan (and many others on the center left). But I don't think their critique of public libertinism has been loud or effective enough. My perception is that the center left is still scared of being called bigoted or close-minded by people on Twitter (or Bluesky?).
I like some of the things I see in the New York Times and The Atlantic but there are also things I find troubling. There's an unwillingness to criticize polyamory, for example. If people do it in private, fine, but I don't think the newspaper of record should run columns entitled: "I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been."
I'd consider myself center-left, but on this specific issue (libertinism) I wish we'd take a page out of the post-liberal playbook.
It’s interesting to call yourself center left yet feel the urge to police people’s love, sex and marital lives. Of all the live and let live* topics out there, that’s the live and let livest. Next up, telling people how to raise their kids…
I guess I've known enough people hurt by the non-monogamy fad that I don't see it as a victimless lifestyle. We encourage people to go to school and not do heroin and I think in the same vein, encouraging commitment and monogamy would be a good thing.
If someone really wants to be a swinger, it's not against the law, but I don't think it should be celebrated by the media.
1) Maybe four or five people out of a hundred who are in relationships are in something other than a traditionally monogamous one. Even if you concede a higher percentage are younger generations, that age cohort is more likely to experiment early and tend more trad over time. Expending energy on scolding this tiny of subset of the citizenry says far more about you than it does them.
2) The vast majority of people who are in non-traditional relationships state that they are happy. How many of those who aren’t could you possibly have known to say you’ve known “enough?” This reeks of projection.
3) Comparing non-traditional relationships to dropping out of school or using drugs is inane. It does indicate you may indeed have found a kindred spirit in Dreher, who catastrophizes such things in equally absurd terms. Enjoy!
I'd settle for just not endorsing socially destructive lifestyles, I'm not sure scolding is necessary, at least I'd like to hope not. I've seen enough of these arrangements implode to have made up my mind. I'm not catastrophizing anything, but your emotional response speaks volumes.
I read Rod and Damon faithfully. And appreciate both in different ways. Both are honest and earnest and trustworthy. I’d be happy to be friends (and have fascinating dinner conversations) with both.
I happen to share Rod’s apocalyptic dark lens. He connects history’s dots to this moment and shows where this all goes. His insights on Weimar, and the social dynamics that we share, are prescient. I appreciate that he doesn’t whistle past this graveyard. Too many do and don’t tell the truth about where this illiberal energy takes us (on both sides).
Some thoughts about Dreher, from someone who's been reading him for a long time:
1. Like Andrew Sullivan, the object of the mania regularly shifts but the mania is always present and is a big part of the charm.
2. He should be recognized more widely as one of the last of the old Southern writer eccentrics.
3. Relatedly, a great biography can and hopefully will be written about him, though it may need to wait for someone less immersed in the political controversies of the past 25 years.
4. Also related to his tendency to never do anything halfway: his family books make for an ironic comparison to the stories so often published in the Cut & the Atlantic by & about women blowing their lives up. Less sex, more religion, similar effects.
Agree on all fronts. I hadn’t thought of him as a southern writer in that mold, but you’re totally right. And he would make for a good biography, but I don’t think I could do it myself. Too much repetition, too many words. It would destroy me. I’ve long entertained the idea of just doing a good long profile of him, but I don’t even think I can muster that. Thus the podcast.
Good point on the Southern eccentric — Dreher comes to mind as a dynamic Walker Percy character on a Louisiana road who’s almost totally illegible despite the quantities of his monologues. But Linker, too, comes off like a Percy character, with his self-described rationalism as his selected control on an uncontrollable world he wants to find meaningful.
He is too often correct about the arc of events to ignore. In his strange way, he not only feels the pulse of the culture but taps into the brainwaves. I often initially deny his prognostications. But come about they do - undeniably.
Exactly
Great convo. Dreher is someone I tend to see as living a very extreme version of tendency one sometimes observes in conservative intellectuals, both those like him who grew up in the movement and those who defected from the left. A sensibility like his is simultaneously too bookish and cosmopolitan for the world that produced him, and yet too temperamentally conservative to be happy in the metropole with other intelligentsia.
Totally, although I sometimes wonder if his discomfort with the cosmopolitan worlds is really all that acute or is more about his fear of confirming his family’s worst fears about him.
Stoked to have you back in the feed and exciting news about the forthcoming guests and mysterious patron!!
I hadn't heard of Dreher, but this piqued my interest and I went down a bit of a rabbit hole. These post-liberal types are interesting, there's a certain syncretic energy that seems to be bearing fruit. Compact, for example, puts out interesting stuff. One thing they have over the center left is the ability to criticize public libertinism, which really does seem to be socially corrosive. I wish the center left would take a page out of their book on that account.
I’ll have to ponder whether that’s true anymore of the center left. Certainly Ezra Klein is in that space, comfortable with critiquing some aspects of public libertinism, and then if you can include the conservatives like Douthat then the Times is hospitable. Maybe The Atlantic, with Caitlin Flanagan?
Or is there a nuance I’m missing?
I like Ezra Klein and Caitlin Flanagan (and many others on the center left). But I don't think their critique of public libertinism has been loud or effective enough. My perception is that the center left is still scared of being called bigoted or close-minded by people on Twitter (or Bluesky?).
I like some of the things I see in the New York Times and The Atlantic but there are also things I find troubling. There's an unwillingness to criticize polyamory, for example. If people do it in private, fine, but I don't think the newspaper of record should run columns entitled: "I Was Content With Monogamy. I Shouldn’t Have Been."
I'd consider myself center-left, but on this specific issue (libertinism) I wish we'd take a page out of the post-liberal playbook.
It’s interesting to call yourself center left yet feel the urge to police people’s love, sex and marital lives. Of all the live and let live* topics out there, that’s the live and let livest. Next up, telling people how to raise their kids…
*Love and let love?
I guess I've known enough people hurt by the non-monogamy fad that I don't see it as a victimless lifestyle. We encourage people to go to school and not do heroin and I think in the same vein, encouraging commitment and monogamy would be a good thing.
If someone really wants to be a swinger, it's not against the law, but I don't think it should be celebrated by the media.
1) Maybe four or five people out of a hundred who are in relationships are in something other than a traditionally monogamous one. Even if you concede a higher percentage are younger generations, that age cohort is more likely to experiment early and tend more trad over time. Expending energy on scolding this tiny of subset of the citizenry says far more about you than it does them.
2) The vast majority of people who are in non-traditional relationships state that they are happy. How many of those who aren’t could you possibly have known to say you’ve known “enough?” This reeks of projection.
3) Comparing non-traditional relationships to dropping out of school or using drugs is inane. It does indicate you may indeed have found a kindred spirit in Dreher, who catastrophizes such things in equally absurd terms. Enjoy!
I'd settle for just not endorsing socially destructive lifestyles, I'm not sure scolding is necessary, at least I'd like to hope not. I've seen enough of these arrangements implode to have made up my mind. I'm not catastrophizing anything, but your emotional response speaks volumes.
I read Rod and Damon faithfully. And appreciate both in different ways. Both are honest and earnest and trustworthy. I’d be happy to be friends (and have fascinating dinner conversations) with both.
I happen to share Rod’s apocalyptic dark lens. He connects history’s dots to this moment and shows where this all goes. His insights on Weimar, and the social dynamics that we share, are prescient. I appreciate that he doesn’t whistle past this graveyard. Too many do and don’t tell the truth about where this illiberal energy takes us (on both sides).