faith

Feudal Future Podcast — Faith in Flux

Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky — Tue, 09 Dec 2025 11:24:13 -0500

The ground beneath American religion is shifting, but not in a straight line. We dig into why the country’s casual middle is shrinking while conviction grows at the edges—among communities that ask more, not less. With Charles Murray and Terry Mattingley, we trace the data on mainline decline, the plateau of the “nones,” and the surprising surge in tradition-forward spaces where authority, discipline, and community still shape everyday life.

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This show is presented by the Chapman Center for Demographics and Policy, which focuses on research and analysis of global, national and regional demographic trends and explores policies that might produce favorable demographic results over time.

Springsteen's Right: Unity Can Only Begin in the Middle

Dale Buss — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 18:38:18 -0500

Bruce Springsteen’s name may be on the marquee of the Jeep Super Bowl ad featuring The Boss, which is titled “The Middle.” But Lebanon, Kansas -- the real middle -- is the star.

And while the message of the rock-and-roll icon from New Jersey is an appeal for national healing, using a chapel in the geographic center of the nation as a backdrop, out here in Flyover Country we may experience the two-minute commercial differently than other Americans. That’s not just because many in the heartland dislike The Boss’s politics.

It’s really because we know that if the true healing of America ever is going to begin, on a universally edifying basis, it’s going to begin in The Middle. Our middle.

Springsteen knew that. So did Olivier Francois, the chief marketing officer for Jeep and the other brands owned by what used to be Fiat Chrysler and now part of Stellantis. Springsteen has been legendarily shy about making commercial endorsements, but Francois finally was able to draw him into a Big Game ad with an invitation to apply some salve to the national wound.

And the way that Francois – a Frenchman who worked for an Italian company but a very shrewd reader of American moods and culture – drew in The Boss was with a script for an ad that focused on the U.S. Center Chapel in the middle.

“It’s no secret,” Springsteen begins the spot. “The middle has been a hard place to get to lately, between red and blue, between servant and citizen, between our freedom and our fear,” The Boss intones, in a script he helped pen himself, over a new musical score he also assisted in writing.

“Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. And as for freedom, it’s not just the property of the fortunate few; it belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from. It’s what connects us. We need that connection. We need the middle. We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground.”

Springsteen finishes by urging Americans to come together to “cross this divide,” before Jeep ends the ad by putting on screen, “The ReUnited States of America.” A star on a U.S. map where Lebanon is located sits between “ReUnited” and “States.”

The images carrying the narrative are a virtual paean to the raw simplicity of the Great Plains in the winter, to its rolling hills, rolling stock on the rails, rugged rock outcroppings, icy sunsets and slush-strewn city streets.

There’s even a baldly spiritual statement encompassed by the cross on top of the chapel, and the three crosses stuck in a field outside – all of which are embraced by the ad. Springsteen sits in the tiny chapel and lights a votive candle toward the end.

Read the rest of this piece at flyovercoalition.org.

Dale Buss is founder and executive director of The Flyover Coalition, a not-for-profit organization aimed at helping revitalize and promote the economy, companies and people of the region between the Appalachians and Rockies, the Gulf Coast and the Great Lakes. He is a long-time author, journalist, and magazine and newspaper editor, and contributor to Chief Executive, Forbes, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times and many other publications. Buss is a Wisconsin native who lives in Michigan and has also lived in Texas, Pennsylvania and Florida.

Feudal Future Podcast — Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All with Mike Shellenberger

Charlie Stephens — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 18:52:55 -0400

In this episode of the Feudal Future podcast, hosts Joel Kotkin and Marshall Toplansky interview Mike Shellenberger, author of Apocalypse Never. Many of Mike’s views overlap with those of Joel and Marshall, and his role as an influential writer of social critique make him an insightful contributor to this conversation about issues in California, the media, and beyond.

The first topic of the conversation is Mike’s work, which will soon include a book dealing with the homeless crisis in San Francisco. This segues into broader conversation about problems in the social and political fabric of California, and Mike comments on the need to understand values and a vision for California, ways in which such things as environmentalism and housing are mishandled, the objectionable morality of how mental illness and drug addiction are managed in the state, and his vision of the sort of governor and political revolution necessary to effect the change California requires.

Next, the group turns to the subject of the mainstream media, which attempts to control popular thought and at times operates dishonestly. Mike explains his experiences with censorship, which testify to regulation of speech and information in ways that uphold political agendas at the expense of truth. Being censored is a trying experience, but Mike has noticed that his persistence in truth-telling has actually bolstered his following. Mike and his hosts consider dealing with bullies, the project of “de-civilization,” and Maoist ideology in the US.

The ideology behind the ruling social and political trends in the US is pushed by the oligarchs of the day. The group considers the rationale behind this phenomenon, the reality of an “apocalyptic mindset,” the need for love to combat hate, and the value of an ad absurdum suggestion to force people to face reality. Finally, Joel and Marshall ask Mike about what he imagines the beginning of a Biden presidential administration to look like. His answer, put simply? Chaos. But a chaos presenting hope and opportunity.

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faith

Feudal Future Podcast — Faith in Flux

Springsteen's Right: Unity Can Only Begin in the Middle

Feudal Future Podcast — Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All with Mike Shellenberger

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