More "Crunchy" Frustration
[NRO Staff  02/21 02:58 PM]

Another e-mail:

Crunchies,
With all due respect, someone needs to explain to me why someone can't shop at Wal-Mart, eat at McDonald's, live in the suburbs, and still be devoted to the "Permanent Things." I know many people who live what I would consider to be spiritually significant lives, and who do these things - heck, MOST of them do. To maintain that organic food and the Grateful Dead (a multi-million dollar corporation if ever there was one) are somehow more "authentic" and spiritual than Wendy's and Garth Brooks is simply absurd.
If eating organic food can be "sacramental" then so can eating a Big Mac - it all depends on the attitude with which it is consumed. I'm afraid that I have to agree with Goldberg on this one- that those parts of "Crunchy Conservatism" that are true are simply Conservatism, while the crunchy portion is simply an attempt to graft Counterculture concerns such as "authenticity" ( originally a concern of that paragon of "sacramental living" Nietzsche, by the way) on to conservative roots. There is much to criticize in modern American life, and in modern conservatism, but "crunchiness" is a symptom, not a cure.

Yours (traditionally, but non-crunchily)

Tom

P.S. Point #3 in the Manifesto is radically wrong. Big Government was responsible for well over 100 million deaths in the last century, not including wartime casualties. Big Business certainly has done its share of wrong, being operated by human beings with a full complement of Original Sin, but it has done nothing like this. Only Government has a monopoly of armed force, and can carry out such massacres. Most of the conservatives in the "Crunchy-Con's sagging bookshelf" knew this. All human institutions should be treated with skepticism, but Government particularly so - our margin for error is so much smaller...