FROM THE ARCHIVES
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Was Archie Bunker Crunchy?
[Angelo Matera 03/07 04:39 PM]Caleb, the Homer Simpson debate well-illustrates the slipperiness of the Crunchy label, and the difference between the un-self-conscious “vernacular” conservatism championed by Christopher Lasch in “The True and Only Heaven: Progress and Its Critics”: “Lower middle-class culture, now as in the past, is organized around the family, church and neighborhood. It values the community’s continuity more highly than individual advancement, solidarity more highly than social mobility. Conventional ideals of success play a less important part in lower middle-class life than the maintenance of existing ways. Parents want their children to get ahead, but they also want them to respect their elders, resist the temptation to lie and cheat, willingly shoulder the responsibilities that fall to them, and bear adversity with fortitude.” …and a more self-conscious, explicitly countercultural Crunchy Conservatism.
While many of the latter probably protested the Vietnam war, many of the former were probably bashing their heads in. From what I remember, Lasch blamed ‘working class authoritarianism” on the demise of the old left and the rise of sixties radicalism. But still, the “wisdom of ordinary people” would probably include a deep-seated skepticism towards Whole Foods, free-range chickens, the anti-vaccine movement, and other countercultural stances.
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