FROM THE ARCHIVES
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Learning from critics
[Rod Dreher 03/17 09:38 AM]Frederica asked me to say what I’ve learned from the CC critics. I think the main thing is that I should have made it more clear in the book that what I’m really getting at with this project is not vegetables, or housing styles, but fundamental cultural, moral and metaphysical concerns about the way we live today. Pope Benedict has a new book out, “Without Roots”, which you can bet that I’ll be quoting from next week when we discuss religion. In the introduction, George Weigel writes: What drives history? Politics? Economics? Some combination of politics and economics? Or should we look elsewhere to find the engine of history – to the realm of the human spirit, perhaps? Might it be that culture – what men and women honor, cherish, and worship – is the most dynamic element in human affairs, at least over the long haul? Crunchy Cons is meant to be a book about culture, and how our most basic ideas about what people are for dictate the way we choose to live in a number of areas. T.S. Eliot wrote about how the shock of 1938 forced Britons to reconsider their confidence in their “unexamined premises,” and to wonder if there was more to their civilization than an aimless group of people interested in nothing much more than advancing prosperity and its fruits. September 11 forced me to do this kind of thinking, and still does. If I made a mistake with the book, it was in not making this theme more explicit. The thing is, I didn’t want the book to be grim and heavy, because that’s not how I am, and that’s not the spirit in which I live out my convictions. The people I know who call themselves crunchy cons are among the most joyful and confident people you’ll ever meet. It was my hope that Crunchy Cons would provide a genial entry point into a discussion of the way we live today, and how it reflects deeper convictions we have — and in particular, how we conservatives can and should change our lives so that we can better honor what we say we believe in. To the extent that the way I wrote the book leads people to think I’m just trying to baptize organic broccoli and Birkenstocks as right-wing, I regret it.
Funny, but the other night in North Carolina, I told a friend that I see the book as one big opportunity for people who don’t know me to find me out as a fraud. “Ah-ha! You have Chee-to residue on your fingers! Junk food junkie! Hypocrite! I bet you shop at big-box stores!” Guilty as charged. Every day, I struggle to live up to my ideals, and often fail. But that doesn’t mean the ideals are invalid, nor does it mean the struggle is in vain.
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