Chris Weinkopf
[Rod Dreher  03/27 11:39 AM]

Chris Weinkopf, editorial page editor of the LA Daily News, comes out as pretty much a crunchy con in his (generous) column Sunday. Excerpt:

The evidence is compelling: My family watches no TV. We recycle. We choose to pay more for our milk instead of buying the cheaper, hormone-injected and antibiotic-loaded kind. We've accepted a more modest lifestyle than we could otherwise afford if I were willing to work 80-hour weeks or my wife were pursuing her career instead of staying home to raise our children full-time. We realize this kind of life isn't for everyone, but to us, these decisions don't feel like sacrifices they're liberating secrets to a richer life, handed down by wise families we admire.

Some of these choices are "crunchy," some are conservative, and some defy labels altogether. But we try and quite often fail to gradually focus more on our faith and ideals, and less on our appetites or the latest trend, in making household decisions.

Ultimately, "Crunchy Cons" isn't about Birkenstocks or bungalows, but about trying to better orient one's life around the Permanent Things, caps ok and becoming more mindful of our ethical blind spots. Dreher encourages some much-needed, and sometimes unsettling soul-searching for those of us on the right. He reminds conservatives that we have no monopoly on virtue, and that the free market is, like democracy, only as good as the people who participate in it.