Which brings me to Rod.

Since some folks — starting with Rod — don't understand where I am coming from let me explain (though I have a gargantuan piece going up tomorrow which will explain in more detail).

I don't believe Crunchy Conservatism exists. I think it is Rod's invention. I don't think there is any body of thought, serious or otherwise, that is "crunchy conservative." I think Rod points to things he agrees with or likes and calls it crunchy and conservative when often they are one or the other. I think Rod's taxonomy is entirely artificial. And I think the word "crunchy" and the props used to support it are not only superficial, but they smack of precisely the kind of branding and marketing outlook Rod decries. Yes, yes, yes: There are people out there worried about the ravages of the free market and modernity who are conservative. Some of them dig organic food and open-toed-shoes. Some of them do not. I do not see what is to be gained by dividing people who agree on important things by concentrating on unimportant things.

Just one small example of what I'm getting at. In his book Rod reveals that conservatism didn't begin with Barry Goldwater (not news to anyone around here). He says there's actually an older form of conservatism which predates Goldwater and his libertarian ways. What is this more ancient true faith? Well, it turns out, it doesn't stretch back to Middle Earth, but to Russell Kirk whose Conservative Mind came out little more than a decade prior to Goldwater's run for the White House, hardly a grand epoch timewise. More importantly, there is no great schism between Kirk and Goldwater. Or at least there wasn't. Kirk supported and defended Goldwater often in the pages of National Review. The split Rod asserts never existed.

Rod, you can dismiss this as mere small talk about tribalism. But, I do think somebody should defend actual existing conservatism from the fundamentally unfair and invidious assumptions in your book. Not to do so would be a form of "no enemies on the right" thinking.

Moreover, I think much of your argument is really a Trojan horse for the incorporation of leftwing and liberal sensibilities and arguments flying under the false flag of "conservatism." You people are quoting and defending Marxist perspectives to attack materialism, which is in effect like quoting various Klansmen to attack racism. You claim Russell Kirk as your "patron saint" but everywhere I look I see Jacques Rousseau.

I want every success in the world for Rod. But I really do want this whole thing to fail. I don't want to be going to conservative panel discussions for the next thirty years with people arguing about, say, the "crunchy" versus "neocon" perspective on this or that. I don't want to meet college kids who think they represent some new rebellious strain or tribe because they listen to the Grateful Dead but like reading John Dos Passos or Russell Kirk. I don't want a new generation of conservatives to don crunchy uniforms because wearing a jacket and tie is seen as the uniform of free market idolators.

That is where I am coming from. I'd be happy to debate technology and the like. I think I've written 20 columns ( starting here, I think)addressing the destabilizing effect of technology on communities and the like. My reluctance to do so here stems from the fact I don't want to grant the assumptions behind Crunchy Conservatism.

That is where I am coming from.