New York Times op/ed columnist Ross Douthat joined Paul on Monday, March 2 for an engaging conversation about his compelling analysis of Western culture in his new book, The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success.
The audio is below:
Guest: New York Times Columnist Ross Douthat on The Decadent Society
Ross Douthat is a columnist for the New York Times op-ed page. He is the author of To Change the Church, Bad Religion, and Privilege, and coauthor of Grand New Party. Before joining the New York Times, he was a senior editor for the Atlantic. He is the film critic for National Review, and he cohosts the New York Times’s weekly op-ed podcast, The Argument. He lives in New Haven with his wife and three children.
Ross’s latest book is The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success. Today the Western world seems to be in crisis. But beneath our social media frenzy and reality television politics, the deeper reality is one of drift, repetition, and dead ends. The Decadent Society explains what happens when a rich and powerful society ceases advancing—how the combination of wealth and technological proficiency with economic stagnation, political stalemates, cultural exhaustion, and demographic decline creates a strange kind of “sustainable decadence,” a civilizational languor that could endure for longer than we think.
Reviews of The Decadent Society
- ALBERT MOHLER: The Decadent and the Damned? Ross Douthat’s Timely Vision of Western Civilization
- PETER THIEL: Back to the Future
- NYT: Ross Douthat Has a Vision of America. It’s Grim
- WP: How success ruined the West
- NATIONAL REVIEW: Ross Douthat Foresees the Same Old ‘Same Old Same-Old’
- WASHINGTON EXAMINER: Decline and Fall
- MERE ORTHODOXY: Book Review: The Decadent Society by Ross Douthat
- THE WASHINGTON FREE BEACON: Review: Ross Douthat’s ‘The Decadent Society’
- THE NEW REPUBLIC: The Modern World Disappoints Ross Douthat
- CITY JOURNAL: Decadence As Alienation
- PUBLIC DISCOURSE: The Long Autumn of Our Content