Costco Conservatives
[Ross Douthat  02/23 01:13 PM]

I'm all for supporting Evangelical free-range chicken farmers, Rod, but I'm not so sure that there really is a "false choice" between big-box store shopping and crunchier alternatives, at least for a lot of the people who fall (or who we want to fall) into the "traditionalist" camp. Sure, the three dollars extra for the free-range chicken isn't a lot, but over time the cost of a Whole Foods (or "Whole Paycheck," as a friend calls it) lifestyle tends to add up, especially when you're talking about the kind of working-class families that are most likely to have the kind of traditional instincts we're interested in cultivating. There's a reason that birkenstocks and free-range chickens and rambling old Victorian houses and energy-efficient cars tend to be associated with the lifestyle of upper-middle-class liberals, and it's that somewhere in the last half-century, the "crunchy" lifestyle got really expensive. And I think this is one of the dangers hidden in the whole "crunchy" meme (if I'm allowed to use a Richard Dawkins-coined word on a "crunchy" website), which is that it runs the risk of being assimilated too easily into the culture of consumer capitalism, as just another "lifestyle choice" for upper-middle-class people who like that sort of thing, and can afford to choose it. It's important for conservatives ("crunchy" or otherwise), I think, to not only praise people who have found ways to live outside the grip of consumer culture — and these people should be praised — but also find a way to speak to the needs of would-be traditionalists for whom places like Wal-Mart (or Sam's Club perhaps?) are a necessary part of getting by in America. This the challenge for any Right that isn't just libertarian and techno-utopian — to not only celebrate more tradition-minded lifestyles, but to make them available to people for whom microwave dinners and big-box stores are the price of keeping their families above water.