February 25, 2006

Post by Chris at Three Hierarchies. I disagree with some of what he says (and I'd offer fewer cheers for Bill Kaufman he's a brilliant and interesting guy, but way-off on a number of fronts including his isolationism and his fondness for Gore Vidal), but it's a worthwhile read.

I've been busy today with my family (even though I'm not a Crunchy Con! I must be rarer than a unicorn!).

Anyway, interesting responses from Caleb and Rod. Let me just say I don't think I'm doing nearly the question-begging that Caleb insists I am. I think I am actually dealing with the subject at hand, i.e. Crunchy Conservatism and the things said in its support. He says I'm committing the No True Scotsman's fallacy, by which he seems to be suggesting I'm making trivial or irrelevent criticisms. I say I'm dealing with Crunchy Conservatism on precisely the terms Rod lays out for us. I don't think anyone here is really doing justice to how categorical Rod is in his book in his distinction between Crunchy Conservatism and Mainstream Conservatism. If I point to evidence which contradicts Rod's caricature of Mainstream Conservatives it is not a trivial thing because Rod, and not I, is the one who starts from absolutist premises. But more about that later.

Also, it is not a trivial point for me to say that no conservative defends promiscuity nor has any conservative I know of ever taken anything like the position Berry ascribes to conservatives in that post. We are a movement of arguments and ideas, right? This blog is dedicated to dealing with those arguments and ideas, at least as they pertain to Crunchy Conservatism. Well, the position Berry takes has no spokesman on the right anywhere as far as I know. That is hardly a trivial point.

Meanwhile, it is flatly not true that conservatives do not denounce promiscuity or try to tackle it. This administration puts real dollars behind its advocacy of abstinence, here and abroad. Christian conservative Churches speak out against promiscuity. Right wing groups launch boycotts, letter writing campaigns and propose legislation for things like the V-Chip. They oppose distributing condoms in schools, precisely because they think doing so will promote promiscuity. Conservatives criticize the popular culture. And so on. Now, they may not do it enough. That's a legitimate argument to make. But it's patent nonsense to say they don't do it. That is not a trivial point.

Oh, and if we're going by the composite of a "crunchy conservative" as drawn by Rod's book and this blog, I see no evidence that crunchy conservatives have been any more active or important to the above efforts than "mainstream Republicans." Indeed, going by superficial impressions alone, it seems to me that Crunchy Cons have been much less involved in these fights than those Rod refers to in his book as Republican women with big hair. That is not a trivial point either.

I agree with Caleb that Rupert Murdoch is an illuminating example on many levels. I often refer to him when trying to rebut what I believe is the myth that corporations are "rightwing." Corporations are opportunists and little more.

But let me be clear: I don't think Caleb is making bad points. I think he's making excellent ones. But I'm increasingly very sympathetic to what I think I will henceforth call Caleb's Dilemma: He wants to argue about conservatism qua conservatism but he recognizes that the crunchy part of Rod's analysis gets in the way.

But as I said, more later.

I published it in the section I edit, but the (much longer) original ran in the magazine Salmagundi.

I was in a bookstore last night and picked up the latest issue of Foreign Policy magazine, one of the very best publications on the newsstand (Ross will want to see the cover story, in which Philip Longman predicts a return to patriarchy worldwide, as patriarchal cultures have an evolutionary advantage that helps them survive). Flipping through it, I ran across a short interview with Bernard-Henri
Levy, the French philosopher and author of American Vertigo, his US travelogue. BHL made an arresting observation in his FP interview, which is not (yet) available online, so I paraphrase. The mag asked him if there was anywhere on earth where the Left is a strong and vibrant force. BHL, a man of the Left, said he doesn't know the answer, but that he's sure the Left is kaput in America. He said that nothing on the Left can compare with the vitality of the Right, which has won the war of ideas; he said the Left here still thinks all it has to do is raise enough money to return to power. I wish BHL would have come right out and said it: "Ideas have consequences."

As it happens, I'm in American Vertigo. BHL stopped in Dallas during his tour, and we spoke for a couple of pleasant hours on the back patio of a neighborhood cafe around the corner from my place. He was fair to me in his report, though I can't imagine where he got the idea (as he reports in the book) that I never vote; I always vote. Anyway, though I didn't label it "crunchy conservatism" to the French philosopher, I laid out my ideas about reviving a religious-based conservative traditionalism. He didn't seem to know what to make of it, at least on evidence of the book. And I guess it's hard to blame him: he'd just come from spending time with suburban megachurch Evangelicals, whose ideas about their faith and how to live it out in society were different from mine, and of course far more mainstream.

But I'm wondering what might happen if the traditionalist vision explored in Crunchy Cons should catch on with Evangelicals, who really are the most energetic cultural segment of the Right. There's no reason why it couldn't. In fact, a couple of months ago I received an e-mail from an Evangelical seminarian who said he was looking forward to reading the book when it came out. He said that Jim Wallis had come through the seminary not long ago to talk about his Jesus-is-a-liberal book, and all the young men of the seminary found themselves agreeing with much of what Wallis said about society and the role of Christians to transform it for the better.

"But his conclusion -- that we should all be Democrats -- we couldn't accept," the seminarian said. "We're conservatives." He went on to tell me that he hoped Crunchy Cons could spur fresh thinking among conservative Evangelicals about how to address the hunger many of the younger generation of rising church leaders have to rebuild bonds of community and rethink the Church's mission as a conservative cultural and political force.

I hope the book does what this seminarian hopes it will. BHL is right about the Right, how the innovative and dynamic debates, the exchanges of ideas that stand actually to change things, are happening on our side. I have a hunch that conservative Evangelicals over the next few years will prove this in ways that surprise a lot of folks.

Martha from Dallas writes:

I just read your post from earlier today talking about parents and teachers. You know, I think your answer lies in ... dum dum dum ... smaller community! (and somewhat in it being ok to express faith publicly.) Most of the people I know who grew up in small-town Louisiana could tell you who their teachers were and where they went to church. Even where I lived, where your parents probably didn't know the teachers outside of school, you could assume that in Dallas, TX, 90% of the teachers were Christian. Knowing something about the teacher as a person, and what you share (& don't share) in common, makes it much easier to trust them when there is an issue at school.

Come on, surely you can imagine a scenario where you would always first take Matthew's side. Imagine you had sent him to the public school, there were 24 other kids in his class, he was way ahead of most of them and you knew *nothing* about the teacher's spirituality (cause of course we can't talk about that in the public schools) or even general philosophy of teaching. Your wife, like me, would go in there trying to be neutral but really ready to defend her son.

I think about when I sent Michael to school after a year of homeschooling. I was apprehensive, but quickly became comfortable, to the point where my first instinct would be to always back up his teacher. I think that is in large part because I know his teacher in some essentials pretty well. I mean, I can point to what she believes about God, (being the pastor's wife, that's not too hard, and in any case, she's pretty up front about it); I don't trust her any less because there are some differences in our beliefs. I can tell you what she thinks about educating children, at least as far as it has to do with elementary age kids; I can even tell you that she has raised her own 7 kids and they seem to have turned out well. That's because this is a small community where there is plenty of time to talk to the teachers and everyone is free to speak about their faith. If I sent him to the neighborhood public school, I would know practically nothing about his teacher -- none of them live in the neighborhood -- and I would probably know nothing about their faith or philosophy. That would make it a lot harder to trust them if a problem came up with my son. Not saying it couldn't be done, but it would be harder.

Jonah is right, in a sense: what serious person defends promiscuity? But by reducing the argument to such a trivial level, the bigger questions are all begged. Perhaps this is by design.

Of course, the first two words that might pop into your head upon hearing Jonah’s plea for “even a serious anecdote that makes this even the slightest bit credible” are: Rupert Murdoch. But maybe the corporate cons are really libertarians. Or just good business men. It’s all so complicated. Maybe a better approach would be to simply say that everyone swimming in the swamp (cons included) is really confused on the point of promiscuity and lasciviousness. What cool con wants to be a boy scout and side with church ladies against immodesty and in favor of real propriety which today seems too strict even for the most earnest cons? Who could articulate a coherent reason for doing so?

But that is a sidetrack. The real problem with Jonah’s response is that it amounts to a version of the “No True Scotsman” fallacy. By repeatedly falling back to “that doesn’t apply to any conservative I know, mainstream or otherwise!” Jonah really begs the central question being asked, which is what makes one a “conservative” in the context of the specific issue being discussed? A better way to approach this is to go back to my original comment which prompted Rod to quote the Berry in the first place. Is it true that “our hyper-materialist post WWII economy of creative destruction made common cause with the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movements to create the political/economic/cultural order we now inhabit—and that Rod critiques”? Or as Bruce said that: “Most of society, from the local library to the museum and even the school, used to be largely in the hands of so-called "homemakers." In fact, women were more ‘community makers’ in that they ran all the civil institutions that literally civilized our lives. Now we demand a specialized degree and a salary (pathetically small though it be) for every job. This hasn't made our libraries, etc. better or more respected, far from it. But it has destroyed the fabric of familiarity, friendship and, yes, social pressure that once helped us civilize our kids (and ourselves).” Or as I remarked even earlier: “Nanny-state leftists and corporate-state rightists have long been in bed together promoting the wage-and-entitlement economy and 100% out-of-the-home servitude.” Is that true? These are the real truth claims that need to be either admitted or contested.

And once they are admitted (as they must be), then the question that drives the analysis to the bedrock is: How ought the conservative to respond to this reality? Then we will be getting somewhere. Then we may reach some clarity on the overall point about there being such a thing as “mainstream conservatives” (for lack of a better term) who vote Republican, pay lip service to a culture of life, etc. etc., but who do not actually live, act, or think in a manner consistent with conservatism.

Let me illustrate this another way by asking a different question. Who was the truer conservative, Dorothy Day or Henry Kissinger? This is how John Lukacs—one of the conservatives Jonah most wants to meet—answered the question after attending NR’s 25th anniversary dinner:

During the introduction of the celebrities a shower of applause greeted Henry Kissinger. I was sufficiently irritated to ejaculate a fairly loud Boo! ... A day or so before that evening Dorothy Day had died. She was the founder and saintly heroine of the Catholic Worker movement. During that glamorous evening I thought: who was a truer conservative, Dorothy Day or Henry Kissinger? Surely it was Dorothy Day, whose respect for what was old and valid, whose dedication to the plain decencies and duties of human life rested on the traditions of two millennia of Christianity, and who was a radical only in the truthful sense of attempting to get to the roots of the human predicament. Despite its pro-Catholic tendency, and despite its commendable custom of commemorating the passing of worthy people even when some of these did not belong to the conservatives, National Review paid neither respect nor attention to the passing of Dorothy Day, while around the same time it published a respectful R.I.P. column in honor of Oswald Mosley, the onetime leader of the British Fascist Party.

Reader Dan has a theory about why the “eyes on the street” society disappeared:

It went [away] with the kids. On my block in a very, VERY lower-class suburb of Seattle, there were 5 families with 5 or more kids, 3 with 7 or more. On how many blocks will you see that kind of family size now?

Mom turns the kids outside because they’ll drive her crazy if they stay in the house. Even so, she has to keep an eye on them, and on their friends, because nothing will get a kid in trouble faster than bad friends. Being with the kids and keeping eye on them teaches her that little Buster will lie, cheat, steal, fight, set fires or whatever other crazy thing at the drop of a hat and with no regard for consequences. So when it comes to a dispute between her kid and another adult, she knows who’s likely telling the truth. Smaller families mean that mom and dad don’t have to keep track of all the kids in the neighborhood. They can keep Buster and Marianne in the house or busy so they don’t have an opportunity to interact with the older or younger kids in the neighborhood. Paying other people to raise your kids results in not knowing them, and idealizing them, so that you can’t conceive of them doing anything wrong. And, finally, when the kids grow up, there’s no need to interact with the neighbors at all.

Rod, a piece you commissioned? Cheap example!

You’re right, Jonah: divorced from the context of the long essay, Berry’s quote doesn’t stand up so well. But his basic point is that there has been no serious and sustained conservative critique of the role the free market and business interests take in tearing down traditional sexual virtue. Jim Sleeper makes a similar point in this essay from the Dallas Morning News Sunday commentary section the other day (LRR). Sleeper, a thoughtful liberal (you might remember his book from the 1990s, Liberal Racism), blames the “pornification” of the public square on the fact that liberals are too locked in to their views on sexuality and free speech to bring themselves to oppose any restrictions, even voluntary, on obscenity, and that conservatives are similarly paralyzed by our side’s own rhetoric about the free market, as well as to business interests. Sleeper writes:

In fact, conservative moralists won't begin to seriously address what is happening in our society until they take on the very market capitalism and consumerist culture they uphold and promote. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism 30 years ago, Daniel Bell, no liberal, warned that free markets no longer make free men because "economic liberalism has become ... corporate oligopoly, and, in the pursuit of private wants, a hedonism that is destructive of social needs."

Mr. Bell warned against both conservatives' and liberals' emphasis on material consumption as the engine and measure of social health.

Even economist John Maynard Keynes, who designed government-driven economic growth to increase material abundance, equality and social felicity, wrote later in life that he'd been wrong to "believe in a continuing moral progress by virtue of which the human race already consists of reliable, rational, decent people, ... who can be safely released from the outward restraints of convention and traditional standards and inflexible rules of conduct."

Hoping to lift humanity by removing "outward restraints" of poverty and its attendant repressions, Mr. Keynes and colleagues had "completely misunderstood human nature, including our own. ... It did not occur to us to respect the extraordinary accomplishment of our predecessors in the ordering of life ... or the elaborate framework which they had devised to protect this order."

Mr. Keynes' belated recognition that social life is too complicated to be redeemed through material progress alone is a rebuke not just to liberals or Marxists but also to a capitalist materialism that rationalizes the most disruptive and degrading effects of mass marketing and production.

While conservatives ignore criticism of corporate mass marketing – or, indeed, while they rationalize pumping its offerings into the national bloodstream – young people's love and libido are indeed "melting into air" as markets deliver us from censors to sensors.

By defending business at all costs, today's conservatives are tearing up the social contract they claim to defend. Corporate minions and shareholders who are busy hollowing out our children's sense of themselves as rational citizens and even as sexual beings are among the real traitors to the civic-republican society our parents and grandparents struggled with, loved and served.

Now, I know what you are going to say, “Show me the conservative who will say that business should be defended at all costs!” And when I am unable to turn up someone to make the argument that crudely, you will respond by saying that such conservatives don’t exist. But things aren’t that simple. You won’t find many liberals either who will say flatly, “I am indifferent to the way the mainstreaming of sluttiness through the mass media affects young people.” But it’s funny how the only time the Left seems to raise its voice on the matter of sexual degradation it’s to critique conservative bluenoses. And it’s also funny how the Right – with the notable exception of Bill Bennett and the late C. Delores Tucker, on the matter of rap music, and also some religious conservatives – tends to criticize artists pretty heavily, but we’re hit-and-miss about taking on the corporate interests that make money off the pornification of the public square. Or so it seems to me.

February 24, 2006

Rod -- I'm no close student of Wendell Berry's. He may be brilliant and he may not be. I only know him by reputation and scattered bits and pieces. That you put so much stock in him inclines me to give him the benefit of the doubt. Also, perhaps there is a larger context that makes the passage below into something more sensible than it appears to me now. That is as charitable as I will be. Now, look at this passage:

The “conservatives” more or less attack homosexuality, abortion and pornography, and the “liberals” more or less defend them. Neither party will oppose sexual promiscuity. The “liberals” will not oppose promiscuity because they do not wish to appear intolerant of “individual liberty.” The “conservatives” will not oppose promiscuity because sexual discipline would reduce the profits of corporations, which in their advertisements and entertainments encourage sexual self-indulgence as a way of selling merchandise.[Emphasis mine]

Me: If this is a sign Berry's brilliance and if this is what passes for "terrific" analysis, I'm sorry but you need to walk around the block and clear your head. This strikes me as juvenile pseudo-Marxist claptrap and I'm actually quite embarrassed by it. Have you ever met a conservative in your travels who won't attack promiscuity because to do so threatens corporate profits? Have you ever read an article by someone making the positive case for this? Is there poll data or even a serious anecdote that makes this even the slightest bit credible? Or is there some vast conspiracy among conservatives -- that no one we know is actually a member of or has any knowledge about -- to censor or curtail attacks on promiscuity because it would hurt the corporate bottom line?

Again, maybe in my mainstream conservatism I don't "get it" and maybe there's some larger context that makes this defenisble. But on its face it is sophomoric nonsense, in my book.

One more thought in response to those who would object to this discussion as certain people “imposing” their view of conservatism on the rest. First, regarding the word “conservative” itself and whether all this spilled ink can be justified by what is, after all, “just a word,” the answer is, yes, it is justified. The word conservative, like few others in the American lexicon, has an immensely powerful purchase on the American political/cultural/religious mind in a way that words like Tory, Whig, Mugwump, or Bull Moose just don’t. So long as that is true, debates like this will and should occur. Second, none should know this better than Buckley’s crew and their readers. As the premiere intellectual outlet of movement conservatism over the last fifty years, NR periodically engaged in these kinds of discussions exorcising first the John Birchers, then the Randians, and recently the Buchananites from the respectably conservative fold. That’s an observation, not necessarily a criticism. The point is just that the content of “conservatism” matters, and to suggest otherwise, or to pretend that no one can “impose” their version of what is conservative, is, shall we say, disingenuous.

Just got this in:

As a husband to a homeschooling wife, father of 7, and lastly a Marine, I cannot believe you let that 'joining the military' comment go without a comment of your own…what an insult to so many. It shows her lack of knowledge of the fighting heritage of American Catholics. Perhaps to bring her out of the 60's, please post the Medal of Honor Citation of Father Vincent Capodanno, a hero of mine……maybe she can take a moment to teach a quick history lesson to her children. I haven't read your book, but I am sure 'selfless service' should be a trait of 'Crunchy Cons' as it is for so many of the brave Americans of all political stripes and 'sensibilities' that I know.

You got that right. As I later posted, I strongly disagree with that homeschooling mom on the military question, and should have said so in the first instance. I’m not going to post Father Capodanno’s citation, because it’s too long, but I would draw interested readers’ attention to an NRODT cover story on military chaplains I did a few years back. Father Capodanno’s amazing story of heroism is told in the piece.

Fascinating letter from a reader named Denise:

You said that you could perhaps understand the absence of true neighbors and "eyes on the street" in neighborhoods with mobile people. My own experience contrasts sharply with this.

I am nearly twenty-five years old, and I grew up, for the most part, on Air Force bases. My father, and everyone's father (and the occasional mother) was transferred every 2-4 years. And these neighborhoods were the best I've ever known. After school, everyone's Mom (or Dad, in the case of one of my friends) was home. We ran all over the neighborhood, yelling, playing, and feeling pretty darn safe, because we knew someone was watching us. We behaved (for the most part) because we knew that someone's Mom was watching us to make sure that no one got hurt or was mean or crude. We played hard-- I don't remember there being a single obese kid in my neighborhoods. There was none of this, "Don't let the precious dears climb trees, they might hurt themselves"-- it was a military base, and this attitude was generally scorned by girls and boys alike. Girls might not climb trees because they didn't want to, but never because of prohibition.
In fact, the only neighborhood tree ban I can remember was an ornamental olive in my front yard-- dead birds kept falling out of it, so we figured we'd best stay out of it.

I'm sorry, I know this is long, but I wanted to say that the neighborhoods everybody on this blog are longing for still exist, or at least they did 15 years ago, in the most transient of places-- military bases. We all took care of each other BECAUSE we knew that no one would be there for long. Military people are forced to learn the value of community eaerly on, because we know we'd best cherish our neighbors while we've got them. They or we will be gone in a year or so. Often civilians move into a neighborhood temporarily, and don't bother to get to know each other. But in the military, this transience is a permanent state-- so we meet each other and party while we can. Some of the most treasured memories of my life are running all over the neighborhood with my friends that I knew I would never see again. The friendships are thus that much more cherished, as are the memories.

Readers rave: [Rod Dreher] Couple of emails that just flopped over the transom:

1.

As a disillusioned Democrat and a born again Christian, I have been devouring the "Crunchy Con" blog and can't wait to read your book.

Just want to say, the blog contains the kind of thought provoking debate you won't find at the "Daily Kos"!

2.

This blog at NRO is great if for no other reason than to inject some much needed LIFE into the conservative discussion. Holy cow! Long quotes from Wendell Berry, communitarian values, talk about agrarianism, anarchy … on NRO? This is great!

That’s great – exactly what we want to hear. When Kathryn first proposed this Crunchy Con blog to me, she said it would be a good way to expand the conversation among conservatives and fellow travelers about what conservatism is, was and can be. We’ve been talking about grand themes this week, but just to remind readers (and bloggers), next week we’ll narrow the discussion to consumerism and technology, the subject of Chapter 2.

Kendall Cons: Conservatives who won’t let anyone talk about what it means to be a conservative.

Kendall’s argument about the word “conservative” is almost entirely semantic. But his larger point that esoteric debates among men of letters are pointless in the face of actual on the ground politically disputed issues has merit. And actually, Rod’s book is more Kendallesque than Kirk’s writing ever was in that Rod hits the streets in an attempt to uncover what he perceives to be an emerging (recovering?) political “sensibility” (to pick a term).

The more difficult questions in this regard are those asserted here.

Interesting email:

Dear Mr. Goldberg:

Is this “Crunchy Con” thing exactly what Willmoore Kendall wrote against in his “Conservative Affirmation in America”? All of this “dim-viewing” and “yearning-away-from” the life most Americans actually lead, with the assumption that just because the fantasy that fits their sectarian ideology is nostalgic, and not futuristic, it owns the concept of “conservatism” lock stock and barrel.

I’ve cited Kendall’s book on my blog here.

You may find it interesting,

Yours,

CPA

Bruce Frohnen writes, "What today is called a busybody (or worse) used to be a decent neighbor."

Well, maybe. Part of being a decent neighbor is knowing not just when to intervene but when not to intervene. The word "busybody" has existed since long before the '50s, and it describes a person who oversteps the boundaries of a community's informal social contract. Needless to say, what is busybodyism in one community might be an acceptable intrusion in another. Furthermore, an intrusion that's acceptable from one neighbor might not be acceptable from someone else. In The Death and Life of Great American Cities -- the same book where she talked about "eyes on the street" -- Jane Jacobs pointed out that in a living neighborhood there are many intermediary zones between the purely public and private spheres: areas of only moderate intimacy, of conviviality without intimacy, of friendly familiarity, and of respectful distance. "Cities are full of people with whom...a certain degree of contact is useful; but you do not want them in your hair," she wrote. "And they do not want you in theirs either."

I do agree about the ill effects of professionalization. A crunchy conservative movement that challenged the dictatorship of the degreed would warm this Pringles-eating libertarian's heart.

To read a terrific explication of a closely related point, turn to the title essay of Wendell Berry’s 1992 book Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community: Eight Essays. Excerpt:

The conventional public opposition of “liberal” and “conservatives” is, here as elsewhere, perfectly useless. The “conservatives” promote the family as a sort of public icon, but they will not promote the economic integrity of the household or the community, which are the mainstays of family life. Under the sponsorship of “conservative” presidencies, the economy of the modern household, which once required the father to work away from home – a development that was bad enough – now requires the mother to work away from home, as well. And this development has the wholehearted endorsement of “liberals,” who see the mother thus forced to spend her days away from her home and children as “liberated” – though nobody has yet sent he fathers thus forced away as “liberated.” Some feminists are thus in the curious position of opposing the mistreatment of women and yet advocating their participation in an economy in which everything is mistreated.

The “conservatives” more or less attack homosexuality, abortion and pornography, and the “liberals” more or less defend them. Neither party will oppose sexual promiscuity. The “liberals” will not oppose promiscuity because they do not wish to appear intolerant of “individual liberty.” The “conservatives” will not oppose promiscuity because sexual discipline would reduce the profits of corporations, which in their advertisements and entertainments encourage sexual self-indulgence as a way of selling merchandise.

The public discussion of sexual issues has thus degenerated into a poor attempt to equivocate between private lusts and public emergencies. Nowhere in public life (that is, in the public life that counts: the discussions of political and corporate leaders) is there an attempt to respond to community needs in the language of community interest.

Good points, Jonah. Our discussion on consumerism should be interesting. It may emerge that we are, as Hadley Arkes puts it, “in heated agreement” on some points.

I think what has struck me about some of the reaction to the CC thesis is that, as Bruce points out, every challenge, no matter how mild, seems to be regarded as an intrusion. I don’t like being challenged, but I don’t consider it a violation, so I’m curious about this reaction. (I don’t think you were suggesting this, but I’ll just say I don’t think I’ve made invidious comparisons between CCs and “mainstream” conservatives.)

I suppose I’m thinking of Crunchy Conservatism in the same terms in which Mark Henrie has described “traditionalist conservatism”: “It might be said that traditionalist conservatism is not yet a political theory but rather a tradition of social criticism that is working its way to a political philosophy adequate to its deepest moral intuitions.” Mark points out that just as liberalism doesn’t seem to have a satisfactory account of the moral life, traditionalist conservatism doesn’t seem to have an adequate account of politics, so there is, in a real sense, no traditionalist political program.

There are, of course, debatable ideas and principles behind Rod’s arguments, but I don’t know that they amount to a philosophy. That’s why I assent to the use of the term “sensibility”, though perhaps it’s not quite accurate. I’m reminded of V.S. Naipaul’s (insulting, granted) description of one of his characters: she had a lot of opinions that didn’t add up to a point of view. In the same way, I think one can have a coherent point of view that isn’t its own philosophy.

A great email with serious questions and lots of grist for our mill from my friend and colleague Dan Knauss:

Early on, I found myself wondering if this very academic (and certainly brilliant) discussion can get any traction, or even a hearing, with the red-state rank and file. Who exactly is this book and discussion for?

I live in a Midwestern city that was dominated, built and deconstructed by socialists for most of the twentieth century. (Rather crunchy and substantially conservative, religious and natalist socialists, many of whom were co-opted by the New Deal.) The city's history since the 60s is the familiar rustbelt story: post-industrial economic collapse; the turn to irresponsible and violent radicalism in the civil rights and countercultural movements; the flight of the white and black middle class; the proliferation of guns, drugs, and despair in the broken underclass communities left behind; the pathetic dance of cajoling and bribery between "protest-identity" minority demagogues and white liberals. Apart from a steady, bipartisan voting-with-one's-feet withdrawal movement, the general response to these events has been inchoate libertarianish reaction driven by cynicism and resentment on the right alongside denial and nostalgic statist dreaming on the left. Each feeds the other in the paralysis of a short-sighted politics of reaction.

Generally political disputes reduce to taxation, and this is indeed one of the most highly taxed states. On one side are those who want to pay as little as possible to perceived (and often real) sources of dysfunction and corruption. On the other side are those who think social spending is the only answer to every problem. Politics on the right focus on an understandable but profoundly unhealthy, deep-seated, and highly racialized fear and loathing of the city (our state's economic hub) that they've all but abandoned. The left ignores the material realities of the inner city and economic infrastructure to sermonize about tolerance and diversity.

As witnessed by an extensive network of conservative bloggers in my region, the primary discontent with the GOP at the national level is that it is not serious about small government. Aside from city-suburb conflicts, the most beloved regional conservative political initiatives center on downsizing and tax cuts at the county and state level, including initiatives that actually increase spending and bureaucracy in order to legislate taxing and spending constraints on legislators! Now it may be clear to crunchy cons of an urbanist stripe that this rust-belt world of sub/exurban conservatism has a drunken incoherence all its own, but it's far from clear to conservatives who are not already in the crunchy choir. Ideas of community and common good are not in the political discourse because of our culturally balkanized situation. I have a hard time seeing how "crunchy cons" can even begin to penetrate these kind of on-the-ground realities.

Tim Lamer writes:

I noticed your blog comment that the country would suffer economic hardship if we stopped our current consumptive binge. I think you can rest easier on that point. Consuming less would mean saving more, which would simply shift resources from consumer goods to capital investment. This would cause some short-term dislocations, especially for retailers, but it would increase the productive capacity of the economy over the longer term. Americans today consume more than they produce, which simply cannot go on indefinitely.

I probably have a more favorable view of economic growth and divisions of labor than you have, although I agree that economic growth is not "the supreme good." But even strictly in terms of economic growth, consuming less than we do today would be a net positive.

Thanks Tim. In today’s WaPo, David Ignatius, who thinks the outrage over the Dubai Ports deal is insane, writes in his column:

The real absurdity here is that Congress doesn't seem to realize that an Arab-owned company's management of America's ports is just a taste of what is coming. Greater foreign ownership of U.S. assets is an inevitable consequence of the reckless tax-cutting, deficit-ballooning fiscal policies that Congress and the White House have pursued. By encouraging the United States to consume more than it produces, these fiscal policies have sucked in imports so fast that the nation is nearing a trillion-dollar annual trade deficit. Those are IOUs on America's future, issued by a spendthrift Congress.

I was wondering when someone would be brave enough to grab crunchy’s third rail. And Bruce has done it. There is simply no getting around the fact that our hyper-materialist post WWII economy of creative destruction made common cause with the sexual revolution and women’s liberation movements to create the political/economic/cultural order we now inhabit—and that Rod critiques.

Bruce, you’re right, this is strange and new. You perhaps could understand it for people who are mobile. But I’ve seen it happen in the rural community in which I grew up. When I was a kid in the 1970s, we always had fish-fries, barbecues and communal social events. But for some reason I find hard to explain, it all fell away to nothing after we kids grew up and either went to college or to work. Most of the kids I grew up playing with moved away. And our parents all drifted apart. Everybody seems to have a satellite dish on their house now. It’s not TV’s “fault,” but it’s all too easy to sit at home being passively entertained than to go visit your friends and neighbors. Is that it? We don’t seek out each other because we are entertained sufficiently by TV, or the computer?

A few years back, I was talking to a NYC cop friend about his life growing up in a working-class neighborhood not far from Harlem. He said that everybody’s mom was at home, and that meant many pairs of eyes on every block, watching what the kids were up to. There was mom solidarity then, and you knew that if Joey’s mom yelled at you, your own mom would back her up. That was society. That kept order. That’s now gone. A teacher friend, explaining to me the difference from when she and I were in school, and today, says that nowadays, if the teacher calls in the parents for a conference over Little Johnny’s grades or behavior, the teacher knows that nine times out of 10, the parent is going to view the teacher adversarially from the beginning. I found this very hard to grasp; as far as my parents were concerned, if they had to have a conference with the teacher, I was guilty until proven innocent. They backed each other up in terms of authority. Now that appears to be gone as well as the “eyes on the street” phenomenon on which so much depended.

How’d it go? Can it ever return? If so … how?

Mitch - I'm saving my thoughts on this mostly for next week. But you might at least leave some room for the possibility that people read Rod as proposing a philosophy, or a political or religious program not because they misunderstand Rod, but because Rod often wants to have it both ways. He cites these grand intellectual traditions and thinkers, constructs intellectual cathedrals and when people try to critique Crunchy Conservatism on the merits, Rod -- and you -- retreat into this "Hey, it's just a sensibility" defense.

Well, the relentless invidious comparisons between "mainstream conservatives" and Crunchy Conservatives in which the CCs come out as noble and good while mainstreamers fit Rod's strawman stereotypes certainly amount to something more than a "sensibility." Or at least they must be read that way if we're going to have an argument about any of this. Otherwise, the entire enterprise boils down to a debate about Rod's feelings and whether or not they are the yardstick of political and moral virtue. And I can tell you right now, they aren't.

Perhaps we have another, small, point of agreement: people today are very uncomfortable with "social pressure." We used to call it "the neighbors."
But, of course, few Americans want anything to do with the neighbors any longer.

I'd just like to point out how new this really is. Right up through the 50's kids, for example, were rarely alone. They didn't need to be carted from organized activity to organized activity, instead running out into the neighborhood. And their parents were not afraid for them, in part because they were certain other adults in the neighborhood would keep an eye on them, correct them if need be, and be obeyed. What today is called a busybody (or worse) used to be a decent neighbor. Sound creepy? Not if you actually KNEW the person; they were, to pick up on one of Caleb's points, friends of a sort, even if not your closest friends.

And Americans didn't suddenly decide this was creepy and do away with it.
Instead, we allowed it to die, by sending all the moms to work (making them feel useless if they didn't go) and by "professionalizing" all the other work moms used to do. Most of society, from the local library to the museum and even the school, used to be largely in the hands of so-called "homemakers." In fact, women were more "community makers" in that they ran all the civil institutions that literally civilized our lives. Now we demand a specialized degree and a salary (pathetically small though it be) for every job. This hasn't made our libraries, etc. better or more respected, far from it. But it has destroyed the fabric of familiarity, friendship and, yes, social pressure that once helped us civilize our kids (and ourselves). We once, not so long ago, knew one another well enough to be able to point out our foibles, now we can't even live differently without it being taken for an insult and an intrusion. Sad is what it is.

Of course, the picture we have of this old society is one of nasty old people beating anyone who got out of line. But it needn't be that way. For example, my wife and I send our oldest (6 year-old) to an independent Catholic school. We rejected the other schools in the area as either too corrupting or too punitive. But our school believes in joy--limits, yes, but also joy. And I think a big reason for this is the fact that it is run and staffed by people dedicated specifically to this school, which they started out of a desire to bring joy back into an orthodox learning environment--and to the fact that volunteering is a key part of the parental commitment.

This brings social pressure with it, but isn't that much of what community, any real life lived in common with anybody at all, is about?

A reader writes:

I couldn't help but notice that your last correspondent, with whom you agreed so much, just (perhaps unconsciously) equated joining the military with getting pregnant and getting drunk. I suspect that you would not agree with this, being a strong supporter of our War on Terror, but is this a common attitude? Are most "crunchies" pacifists, or neo-isloationists? What would a "crunchy" foreign policy look like? I have feeling that your own answer would be significantly different from most of your crunchy correspondents. Or maybe not, but at any rate, we are in a war right now, and questions of foreign policy are not irrelevant. How about it?

All together now: Crunchy Conservatism is a sensibility, perhaps even a critique, not a philosophy or a political or religious program. I wonder how many times over the next year Rod is going to have to say this.

Perhaps a topic worthy of discussion is why the distinction between a proposal that we cultivate certain dispositions and a desire to impose an ideology on the unwilling seems difficult to establish. Perhaps it has something to do with the distaste for “social pressure” (or, to borrow a phrase, the “appearance of social pressure”) that Jeremy’s correspondent mentioned earlier.

Be that as it may, I agree with Rod’s second point, but not so much with his first. What some Crunchy Cons identify as the free market run amok looks to me more like factions using the government to pervert the free market. I wonder if Crunchy Conservatism wouldn’t flourish under a market even freer than the one we have. But perhaps we’ll get into that next week.

“See” everyone on Monday.

Lots of good stuff this morning. And thanks, Jeremy, for the kind words. I’m with you on the use of soft social policy changes to mitigate against the destructive aspects of hyper-mobility, not on any statist principle, but as a concession to the reality Bruce and Mitch touched on earlier: that the state is never neutral and its policies for a long time have been actively hostile to local communities and families. Nanny-state leftists and corporate-state rightists have long been in bed together promoting the wage-entitlement economy and 100% out-of-the-home servitude. Didn’t I see Victor David Hanson making just that argument in NRO a while back?

Jeremy, your emailer also hits on an excellent point about Americans understanding the individual and the state, but not society. The kind of “libertarian/communitarianism” I would advocate for is premised almost entirely on his mode #2 with a dash of #1 thrown in. What it requires is a renewed appreciation for society; for what Wendell Berry calls “membership”—a network of social interconnectedness and shared obligation. It’s what the old English jurist Fletcher Moulton called “obedience to the unenforceable.” It is tradition in this sense, in the societal sense, that is required for order. Social context and membership within it is not something which can be simply valued or appropriated. Tradition must be inheritable, or always-already inherited, to be wholly itself. It is a gift of givenness, given to the point of being so formative of the order of man’s soul that it is ineradicable even from those who turn against it. So, yes, the individual remains free to choose, but in the choosing he is always choosing against an important part of himself. Or, as Voegelin put it: “One can throw out a tradition only by throwing oneself out of it.”

There is a political, not just social, point to be made in all this regarding the health of the republic. That point is made excellently by Jeremy in his article on agrarianism where, following Cato, Vergil, Jefferson, and John Taylor, among others, he says that “the practices associated with the agricultural life are particularly—and in some cases uniquely—well-suited to yield important personal, social, and political goods.” Among them, “the personal and civic virtues associated with farming—economic independence, willingness to engage in hard work, rural sturdiness, hatred of tyranny.”

Along those lines, I am headed outside to my woodlot from my home office with my boys, my chainsaw, and my axe, to chop some wood for the woodstove. We have a warm spell here just now, but being Kansas, it’s sure to turn cold again before spring. There are many virtues in this, I think, and among them is a political virtue, one I do not practice enough.

Jonah, I’m talking about a society that places material comfort and sensual pleasure as the summum bonum of existence, or at least cares about these things inordinately.

Jonah asks:

So: I wonder, is there any good thing which contradicts Crunchy Conservatism or any bad thing which supports it?

Bad thing which supports it: The first thing that comes to mind is what the reader in Connecticut identifies as a tendency for some people who identify with this sensibility to get really cranky and dour moralistic and hung up on non-essentials. And possibly even a sense of separation motivated by an unhealthy fear, and lack of charity. Reader Michael DiResto has written to say he loves the book and agrees with most everything in it … but that he thinks the book is too focused on separating from society, and not enough on the obligation we have to serve the community. There’s a point there.

Rod writes:

Crunchy Cons is a fairly folksy book, but it takes seriously the warnings delivered to the West by both Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II: that the threat to our civilization from allowing market values to rule our culture, at the expense of spiritual values, is potentially as great as the threat from the ugly and brutal materialism forced on people by the Marxists. Put another way, they warned that the feel-good dystopia of Brave New World was just as devastating as the totalitarian misery in 1984.

Me: Rod, Huxley's Brave New World was hardly a free market nirvana. And you're stealing a lot of bases if you're going to say that a free market society is the equivalent of Huxley's world state.

A great post from a Catholic homeschooling mom in Connecticut. Hey, I wrote the book, but I think I’m an HACC like her:

You have no idea how many of us there are out here. Half-assed crunchy cons. Trying to look at the teachings of the Church and asking ourselves, "Where is this all leading?" "How can we get ourselves back, not to the garden, but to villages with gardens?" A lot of the problem has to do with so-called orthodox Catholics who set up these "communities" where all the gals are wearing dresses and the menfolk are making all the gals wear dresses. And you know what? Everyone is so busy pissing and moaning about how bad the government is and how bad vaccinations are and how bad the whole world is that they aren't even noticing that their teenagers are joining the armed forces, getting pregnant and getting drunk. Then there are shotgun weddings, war casualties and traffic accidents. And these people look crunchy. A lot of them are trying to do the family farm thing. But the judgmentalism, the fussiness with non-essentials, the lack of charity--it's disconcerting, to say the least. But, my chickens are dead and we have never grown enough for the winter, so this is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. The question is, how do we go about transforming the communities we find ourselves in, how do we perform the works of mercy, how do we live our lives both in and out of the public square?

As a Catholic wife and mother, my ideal has become Chestertonian: "The shortest way of summarizing the position is to say that woman stands for the ideal of Sanity; that intellectual home to which the mind must return after every excursion or extravagance. The mind that finds it's way to wild places is the poet's; but the mind that never finds its' way back is the lunatic's. There must, in every machine, be a part that moves and a part that stands still; there must be in everything that changes a part that is unchangeabale. And many of the the phenomena which moderns hastily condemn are really parts of this position of the woman as the center and pillar of health." My husband does not have time to learn Latin or a musical instrument, but I do, and I have been studying both. I have introduced my children to the Greeks and the Romans and the great minds of the Middle Ages. They know about the Guilds. They know about the Saints. And in American History, they are learning about the economic impact of slavery and the effect that Reconstruction and later, the robber barons had on our economy. They are learning about the Constitution and about the lives of the Founders. …

I look forward to reading your book. Our homeschooling group is full of mothers very much like me .... crunchy cons.

Rod, I've seen a great deal in this blog from you and others pointing to all sorts of good things and how they confirm the thesis of Crunchy Conservatism. I've also seen mention of many bad things which confirm the thesis of Crunchy Conservatism. I now see that Crunchy Conservatism explains the travails of Europe and provides a pathway to social regeneration as well. So: I wonder, is there any good thing which contradicts Crunchy Conservatism or any bad thing which supports it? Or is Crunchy Conservatism that great and elusive grail: the total philosophy of life? Because that's the way it's coming across to me.

Crunchies just finishing Rod’s book and looking for their next fix may want to mark their calendars for Look Homeward, America by former Reason editor and self-described “Reactionary Radical and Front-Porch Anarchist” Bill Kauffman, due out from ISI Books in May. Closer to the release date The New Pantagruel will feature a lengthy excerpt, but in the mean time, here’s a taste to whet the crunchy appetite:

I am an American patriot. A Jeffersonian decentralist. A fanatical localist. And I am an anarchist. Not a sallow garret-rat translating Proudhon by pirated kilowatt, nor a militiaman catechized by the Classic Comics version of The Turner Diaries; rather, I am the love child of Henry Thoreau and Dorothy Day, conceived amidst the asters and goldenrod of an Upstate New York autumn.

Like so many of the subjects of this book, I am also a reactionary radical, which is to say I believe in peace and justice but I do not believe in smart bombs, daycare centers, Wal-Mart, television, or Melissa Etheridge’s test-tube baby.

“Reactionary radicals” are those Americans whose political radicalism (often inspired by the principles of 1776 and the culture of the early America) is combined with—in fact, flows from—a deep-set social "conservatism.” These are not radicals who wish to raze venerable institutions and make them anew: they are, in fact, at antipodes from the warhead-clutching egghead described by (the reactionary radical) Robert Lee Frost:

With him the love of country means
Blowing it all to smithereens
And having it all made over new

These reactionary radicals—a capacious category in which I include Dorothy Day, Carolyn Chute, Grant Wood, Eugene McCarthy, Wendell Berry, and a host of other cultural and political figures—have sought to tear down what is artificial, factitious, imposed by remote and often coercive forces and instead cultivate what is local, organic, natural, and family-centered.

In our almost useless political taxonomy, some are labeled “right wing” and others are tucked away on the left, but in fact they are kin: embodiments of an American cultural-political tendency that is wholesome, rooted, and based in love of family, community, local self-rule, and a respect for permanent truths. We find them not at the clichéd “bloody crossroads” but at thrillingly fruitful conjunctions: think Robert Nisbet by way of Christopher Lasch, or Russell Kirk by way of Paul Goodman. Think, always, of things tending homeward.

Prof. Fox write me again:

Leave aside for the moment that Jonah is completely dismissing the possibility that the articulation of a "common good"--on any level--might actually involve some democratic participation and representation, thus resulting in something more than just an arbitrary "picking." (Though that's a pretty revealing glimpse into his very estimation of human ordering in the first place.) Let's just address his libertarian-communitarian distinction. There is some good sense to his argument, but finding it requires a lot more thought than this comment of his betrays.

Is communitarianism—in this case, meaning a concern for consensus, identity, authority, and the pursuit of a common good—good or bad? If it's good, then why do you want libertarianism on the federal level; wouldn't you rather try to bring forth whatever kind of communtarian feeling is possible on any level of government? Obviously a national body can't be communitarian or republican or concerned with a common good in the same way a small locality can--that's an understanding and an argument which goes all the way back to the Federalists and Anti-Federalists. But why does that mean such language should be wholly abandoned once one leaves the local level, save only for matters of "general welfare"? (Was fighting a war to end slave power in the South a matter of the "general welfare"?) Or maybe because Jonah actually thinks communitarianism is bad? That it infringes upon his bedrock individualism? If so, why would he want localities to be communitarian at all? Sure, national governments can oppress people terribly, but it's not like local communities can't be pretty oppressive as well. Maybe Jonah thinks communitarianism is a necessary evil, that we need it to form the sort of civic virtues and habits of the heart that make a libertarian society sustainable? In which case, we would want communitarian communities, so as to provide citizens like Jonah the opportunity to escape from such when they grow up, so they can enjoy "real" freedom. But that, of course, raises the question of how to keep said local communities going from generation to generation, if the real pay-off of American society is to be able to escape into a wider, more libertarian polity. And moreover, if that's the way he thinks, then shouldn't he have reluctantly written that local communities should only be as communitarian "as necessary," rather than saying they should be as communitarian "as feasible"?

Basically, Jonah here seems to be tossing the crunchy cons, the philosophical conservatives, the communitarians, some sort of bone, praising what they make possible locally, but insisting that if the common good ever aspires beyond that level (and wait--what about all the intermediate levels in between: states, regions, etc.?), then it should be actively discouraged; when it comes to the nation, we want libertarianism. The only way to make this coherent is to argue that the very meaning of "community" and "the common good" fundamentally alters when it is expanded beyond a particular level, such that the harms associated with it start dramatically outweighing the benefits. That's a valid argument to make. But it needs to be made, rather than simply asserted as Jonah does here as if it's some sort of obvious, prudent truism.

A concept that may be useful to introduce into the discussion in this regard may be that of philia politike (political friendship) which Aristotle considered the most basic public virtue.

Paul's observations cut to the heart of the Crunchy Cons thesis, which has less to do with the pedigree of one's vegetables or the one's favored style of footwear, and more to do with the core strength of our civilization. Crunchy Cons is a fairly folksy book, but it takes seriously the warnings delivered to the West by both Alexander Solzhenitsyn and Pope John Paul II: that the threat to our civilization from allowing market values to rule our culture, at the expense of spiritual values, is potentially as great as the threat from the ugly and brutal materialism forced on people by the Marxists. Put another way, they warned that the feel-good dystopia of Brave New World was just as devastating as the totalitarian misery in 1984.

Kirk and other traditionalist conservatives, while certainly supporting the free market, warned that we dare not let the spiritual and moral core of our civilization erode, because if we do, the market won't be enough to save us. Theirs was not a call to abandon the market by any means, but only to realize that commercial interests must not be allowed to dominate us. If we lose our religion--whether literally, as in Europe, or whether we lose it by degree by hollowing it out such that it doesn't do anything to restrain our materialist impulses, as is happening in much of America--we put the survival of our culture in grave danger. Mind you, I am second only to Derb in cultural pessimism, and I freely admit that I could be seeing our current condition in the US as much worse than it actually is. But other voices--I'm thinking of George Weigel's at the moment--have also warned that the kind of secular-materialist values that rule Europe now, and which predominate in Blue State America (a term I've grown to dislike, but anyway...), could lead to the same sterility and despair now overtaking Europe.

Weigel told me last year that Europe is now living out an experiment to see if a civilization can survive luxury. So, I'd say, are we, though we still have enough cultural reserves to form a resistance. In Crunchy Cons, I suggest how little things like how we educate our kids, where we buy our goods, etc., has something to do with the survival of our culture. But mostly Crunchy Cons is about the need to figure out how to hold fast to our cultural traditions in a fast-moving, globalizing, commercially-dominated world in which doing so is harder than ever.

Maybe if Europeans are interested in Crunchy Cons, it's because they're now living through where a loss of cult, and with it culture, will do. Western civilization was built on three cities: Rome, Athens and Jerusalem. And the greatest of these was Jerusalem. That's not a religious statement; that's a sociological one.

Paul Belien at the indispensable Brussels Journal suggests (inadvertently) why the themes in Crunchy Cons may resonate in contemporary Europe. Here's an excerpt from a must-read post, with my commentary to follow:

Europe's current problems are entirely self-inflicted. This does not mean, however, that the result will be less catastrophic. By subverting the roots of its own Judeo-Christian culture - a process that started with the French Enlightenment (as opposed to the Scottish Enlightenment, which was not anti-religious) - a religious and cultural vacuum was created at the heart of European civilization. The collapse of faith in its own values has, not surprisingly, led to a demographic collapse because a civilization that no longer believes in its own future also rejects procreation. Today, a new religion and culture is supplanting the old one. There is little one can do about it, but hope for a miracle.

America's immigration problems pale in comparison with what confronts Europe. America's major ethnic minorities - Blacks as well as Hispanics
- are Christian, while the meanstream culture is also rooted in Christianity. In Europe a secularized post-Christian culture is facing a Muslim one. The secularized culture is hedonist and values only its present life, because it does not believe in an afterlife. This is why it will surrender when threatened with death because life is the only thing it has to lose. This is why it will accept submission without fighting for its freedom. Nobody fights for the flag of hedonism, not even the hedonists themselves.

One could also put it in a slightly different way: Europe lacks what America still has, namely the so-called "conservative reserves," or as the German sociologist Arnold Gehlen explained over 30 years ago, "the reserves in national energy and self-confidence, primitiveness and generosity, wealth and potential of every kind." Every so often I travel to the U.S. to recharge my batteries, and I am not the only European Conservative to do so. From time to time one needs to breathe the air of freedom before submerging again in the stifling atmosphere of Europe.

America's "conservative reserves" are far stronger than Europe's, because America, unlike secular Europe, has remained rooted to a larger extent in traditional Christian values. I do not doubt that if these values continue to decline in the U.S., American culture will collapse as European culture and civilisation have collapsed. However, America can learn from the impending European catastrophe, and avoid a similar fate.

Thanks for that, Joao. You come from one of the world's most beautiful cities. Mrs. Crunch and I honeymooned in Lisbon, and thought the place sublime. If ever there arises a need for a speaker to come rally the crunchy Lisboans, I'll be on the first plane out. I continue to be fascinated by the early interest in Crunchy Cons from Europe. I've mentioned the January essay that the Sunday Times (London) commissioned from me on the topic. The other day, Corriere della Sera in Milan published in its glossy magazine an excerpt of the book. At first I am left scratching my head as to why a book by an American written for an American audience has resonance with Europeans. But it does--when I was visiting Fred Gion in Paris in December, he told me (after he finished the galley copy) that the call to political renewal through cultural recommitment was a powerful theme in Europe. If there are any European readers of the Crunchy Con blog who can explain this, let us hear from you.

That reader to whom I responded in my last post, still pestering me, now writes the following, which fleshes out his critique of the call to homecoming and merits consideration:

In promoting the genuine goods of tradition, community, public beauty, local variety and family integrity on which most conservatives agree, it's important to disentangle three modes of promoting the perceived Good:
1) Personal suasion, religious teaching, conversion, appeals to beauty and justice;
2) Social pressure, the threat of ostracism, moralistic disapproval;
3) Governmental diktat.
Most of us as Americans are comfortable (as I'll admit I am) with modes 1) and, oddly enough, mode 3), and deeply resistant to mode 2). As a nation of frontiers, where one may always "light out for the territories," we have little patience with the intrusive force of the Gemeinshaft; in Switzerland, a former U.S. ambassador to that country informs me, if you litter or jaywalk, little old ladies really will come up and reprimand you. As an anecdote, this is charming; I don't recommend trying it in New York City.
While we might be annoyed at mode 1), for instance, when someone tries to convince us of the virtues of some course of action (to pick an almost random list: regular exercise, breast-feeding, organic food, vegetarianism, racial tolerance, regular church-going), we might also be attracted or persuaded.
Conversely, when a social problem (such as, for instance, racial discrimination in the 1950s) is brought sufficiently to public attention--by means of personal and public witness (mode 1), we do not pause to permit the evil to melt away under the pressure of disapproval (mode 2), but leap immediately to mode 3), legislation. Conservatives disapprove of this rush to legislate, but it has its reasons--namely, the weakness of social pressure, the resistance most Americans feel towards such pressure, the rebelliousness which it provokes. Of the four English groups which settled America (David Hackett Fisher), the Scots-Irish type is surely the one which left the deepest mark upon us, for better and worse. Because of this, we (probably rightly) do not trust that social consensus will arise to promote what we believe is a crucial societal good. People who really believe abortion is evil don't just want to discourage it; we want to ban it, and put its medical practitioners in prison for a very long time. Of those who vote pro-life, a much smaller fraction get involved in the (wonderful,
admirable) efforts of pregnancy centers to offer abortion alternatives. This is not just because it's more work; in our distrust of social power, we perceive the need to invoke the state.
All of which means, in terms of this debate: Crunchy-cons will work to convince their friends and neighbors to embrace the particular traditionalist values which they consider important. They may never conceive that they intend to promote these by means of law. But should the number of people who agreed with them ever reach a critical mass, I believe that they would shift quickly, and in a classically American fashion, towards imposing them by means of the state. Think of how the Temperance movement went from a religious revival to legislative machine imposing Prohibition on the entire country. That's what happens to ideas in this country--they either remain the preserve of a funky subculture, or they get enacted into law. There is a middle ground, but no American wants to live there. We understand the individual, and we understand the state. We don't understand society. And perhaps we never will.

Hello all--Sorry to enter the (good) conversation so late, but I figured that I ought not to follow the model of Rod's Amazon readers by commenting on a book I hadn't even yet seen, much yet read. It finally arrived in good order on Wednesday, so now I can, in good blogging fashion, start voicing my ill-considered opinions as a piece of performance art. How fun!

I was surprised by the reader's reaction (quoted by Angelo) to Caleb's remark about the desirability of remaining at or returning to hailing distance of one's home (especially since I know that reader personally, and know that he lives a few hundred steps from his childhood home). I don't think it was quite fair to leap to the conclusion that Caleb, or anyone here, is chomping at the bit to build a barbed-wire fence around the county line, with County Mounties posted at checkpoints to inquire why folks were leaving. That would be an odd thing for Caleb to do, at least, who has published the following article on anarchism on tNP, and who has written beautifully about community as well.

The point, I think, was that it would behoove us to at least consider, if only as individuals, that hanging around the farm--or even the ol' suburb--is a mighty good and noble thing to do often, if not always. Further, Caleb might be willing--I certainly would be--to use social policy, at least in a soft way, to encourage a certain amount of immobility, or at least stop discouraging it. E.g., I've long thought that it would be good policy for localities experiencing brain drain (we might refer to these localities as "every small town in the Midwest") to offer to pay off a certain portion of student loans for those of its own who come back to the community after school. I can't see what's "statist" about this.

Anyway, can't wait to start talking 'bout Rod's political hero and his famous, and famously underrated, speech....

I'd like to echo Mitch's excellent point. In Catholic social thought they talk about the service function of the state--we aren't here for the state, it must be here for us. But what does it serve? Traditional conservatism said it was here to serve us as social beings. That is, it's primary purpose is to protect families, churches, and local associations--the groups in which we live, the only places in which we can lead decent lives. Liberals, libertarians, and too many conservatives believe it is there only to serve individuals--protecting them from, among other things and perhaps especially, their families, churches, and local associations.

The charge I'm now expecting is that I'm in favor of some kind of local fascism. Someone no doubt will bring up some horror story about a local tyranny, whether in a town, a church, or a family, so let me be clear: injustice is injustice, no matter who's in charge or at what level. The question is, who do you trust, on the whole, to protect a decent life? Today's individualism (as Tocqueville predicted) leaves each of us pretty much alone to fight it out with the government which, frankly, is run by a few powerful interests. And that's precisely because the central government has all but stomped out a wide variety of local communities that used to have power--rights, responsibilities, and yes, real political power.

Liberalism and its variants are about liberating individuals from the ties that bind. Unfortunately, this not only leaves those individuals lonely, it also leaves them alone when the chips are down and the central government decides it would rather spy on them, put them out of business, or worse.

Real, crunchy, liberty means what Robert Nisbet referred to as a multiplicity of authorities--a variety of possible protectors (and possible oppressors, too), and with them real, substantive choices concerning ways of life and protections against the state.

From the mailbox:

All this Crunchy Con business reminded me of Gertrude Himmelfarb's "One Nation, Two Cultures". She even mentions the very crunchy concept of "selective separatism":
"...selective separatists: people who vote, pay taxes, have ordinary jobs, and do community service, but who choose...not to participate in those parts ot the culture that do not bring glory to God...

...the strategies that might be thought of as countercultural - homeschooling, building up a self-contained pop culture are flourishing....parents attempt to shelter (but not isolate) their children from what they regard as an un-Christian and immoral culture...

...a great many people who, to varying degrees, have exempted themselves from the worlds ot Disney, network TV, videogames, movies, fashion, People magazine, and the other cathedrals of pop culture. They have done so...because they are offended by one or another aspect of the culture ...The quiet rebellion against the arrogance of pop culture will continue..." (pp. 154-155).

Best Regards,

João Noronha
Lisbon, Portugal


P.S. Look forward to reading the book - it's still flying over the atlantic. Things would be much easier for us clients of gigantic online book shops if the manufacturer of the big, global atlantic would have instead produced a small pond.

February 23, 2006

Would I live in an HOA? Not if its chief concerns were making sure my house didn't display any signs of character and that I didn't park my car by the curb. Would I live under another voluntary local authority?

Sure. My neighborhood in Baltimore has a community association, and while I don't always agree with the stances it ends up taking, I'd be very happy if the city were to devolve substantial power to it.

Even without that, there's plenty of local activity that I'm pleased to support and sometimes to take part in, from organized weekly crimewalks and park cleanups to less formal sorts of mutual engagement, like the neighborhood moms' groups that sometimes meets in our home. I don't consider myself a model local citizen by any means, but I do think it's much more important to engage in such neighborly give-and-take than to, say, vote.

Your original message declared that "the libertarian fears not only government telling him what to do but also all other institutions like family, church, community standards, neighbors, role models, etc." I wouldn't dream of speaking for all libertarians, but in my experience that simply isn't true. I seek out some intermediary institutions, I avoid others, and some I just learn to live with. (You can choose where you live, but you can't choose your relatives.) There's a complicated relationship between mobility and rootedness, one that libertarians are if anything more likely to appreciate.

If there's a truth buried in that generalization, it has to do with a distaste for busybodyism, which I share with most libertarians. There are choices that have an impact on other people's lives (say, if I habitually get drunk and stagger noisily through the local playground), and there are choices that just aren't my neighbors' business (say, if I quietly enjoy a beer at home). Of course, everyone draws that line in a different place -- some people people think it affects their lives terribly if the guy next door paints his house the wrong color or if two men kiss in public, and they'll do all they can to make life miserable for the offenders. I don't want to live in a community like that, but that doesn't mean I don't want to live in a community.

Jonah writes: “A government which believes that neutrality is a myth, and that everything is a power struggle between champions of ‘what's good for you’ and what isn't has in effect been granted a warrant for totalitarianism.”

Perhaps a distinction between neutrality and impartiality is in order. Every form of government, every piece of legislation, is based, unavoidably, on a certain view of man and his place in the social order. By definition, laws and policies assert that things are to be done one way rather than another, or perhaps not done at all. But to answer the question why we should have a particular policy (or not), one would at some point have to explain the good promoted or the evil avoided. I’ve never heard a policy justified with the argument, “Well, it’s different, anyway.”

This is the sense in which neutrality is a myth. But I don’t think this makes politics into a power struggle, because laws should be impartial, that is, not favoring any interest or faction over the common good. I’m not saying, of course, that everyone will agree on what the common good is, but that doesn’t mean there is no common good that reason can discover. In any case, some notion of the common good will be adopted by default. Indeed, you can only define “interest” and “faction” with respect to some idea of the common good. Are families an “interest”, a lifestyle choice seeking a tax break, or are they part of the common good?

Prudence is always a limiting factor. Not every good must be pursued or every evil avoided. It’s likely, too, that different pieces of legislation and different policies within (especially) a democratic regime will be based on different, and sometimes mutually exclusive, understandings of the human person. But this is why we have free government: to sort these things out.

Well, rats, my radio interview in DC got cancelled this afternoon, so I won’t be able to go to the Danish Embassy to show my solidarity at the Christopher Hitchens event. But I also found out this afternoon that C-SPAN will be at my Crunchy Cons reading here in Dallas this coming Tuesday night, taping the talk and the Q&A for Book TV. I have it on good authority that someone planning to show up is going to bring me some organic oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal cookies are the Queen of All Cookies! Not for me those vulgar chocolate-chip biscuits. Anyway, if you live in Dallas, the fun gets underway at 7pm on Feb. 28 at the Borders store on the corner of Preston and Royal. And despite the fact that it’ll be Mardi Gras, I want to discourage young distaff crunchies from doing that French Quarter thing to get the guys to toss them beads. Or organic oatmeal cookies. You know what I’m saying.

More Rich Shipe:

In response to Jesse Walker: You are right, I should have used the word "practice" rather than "concept." You are right, as a concept libertarians like HOAs, but in practice do they? Would they live there and if not why? Would you live in one? If not, why?

That would be Jimmy Carter, whose energy portion of the dreaded Malaise Speech I praise as prescient. Why? Because in it, he spoke of breaking our dependence on Middle Eastern oil as a national security priority, and to that end conserving oil as a patriotic act. Nobody bought it, in large part, I think, because Carter was such a weak and confused figure in most respects. As the conservative military historian (and sometime NR contributor) Andy Bacevich has noted, the Carter Doctrine, the post-Soviet invasion of Afghanistan policy committing the US will intervene to protect the Middle Eastern oil fields from attack, has been reaffirmed by every president since then--in part, Bacevich argues, because they knew from Carter’s experience that asking the American people to cut back seriously on their energy consumption was a losing proposition. Bacevich has said that we shouldn’t scapegoat Carter, Reagan, George W. Bush or the neocons for our Mideast military policy, because the fault is largely our own. This from an interview:

Part of the reason that I try to argue against the notion of identifying a scapegoat like President Bush, or even the neo-conservatives, is because I do believe that we're all kind of complicit here. I have no doubt that we as a people are devoted to freedom, but it's chiefly our own freedom and it's a freedom as we design it for ourselves. You have your notion of freedom and I have my notion of freedom, but in many respects, what pays for this freedom is the material abundance of the United States. It's the political economy as it plays itself out, which allows us to, as individuals, pursue our own definitions of freedom.

There are a lot of explanations for where that affluence comes from, but one very important one in the post-war era is the availability of cheap energy. So, when these pesidents are tripping down this path of militarizing U.S. policy in the Persian Gulf, they are in a sense doing what we want them to do, because we want cheap gas. We've not really been willing to face up to what the total cost might end up being. We just want cheap gas.

From an e-friend:

Jg,

I'm going to help you out here. (To which you're delighted, I'm sure.)

If I may leap into your brain for a moment, I think your initial garlicky reaction to the crunchy stuff may be because it lacks at it's base, robust humor and embracing joy.

There is an ineffable stiffness to the whole treatise, that seems to leave little room for the true God-given grace that enables a diverse enjoyment of mankind.

I have some major Biblical objections to the whole thing, namely, Jesus told us not to worry about what we were to wear - or eat tomorrow - for that matter.

Hence, my topsy-turvy objection to CC's superfluous qualifiers. It is an attempt to define an "authentic" spiritual life which in certain ways, is in direct opposition to what The Handbook says.

Angelo Matera asks:

"Before we move on, can we agree that Bruce is right, and societies and governments are never neutral? Can we agree to get past the coercion issue? If so, can we couch our arguments in the language of the common good? Might that be a good definition of a conservative?"

A federal government which considers neutrality a dogmatic first principle will still violate that principle out of necessity (and error) from time to time. But a government which believes that neutrality is a myth, and that everything is a power struggle between champions of "what's good for you" and what isn't has in effect been granted a warrant for totalitarianism. As I've said many times paraphrasing Buckley and Chesterton, a society that argues seriously over whether it is a good idea to privatize lighthouses will not argue about whether to socialize medicine.

One of the flaws of the Crunch paradigm as I understand it is that it rejects libertarianism (and hence fusionism) as a useful standard. I'm no libertarian but I think no major government decision should ever be made unless there's a libertarian in the room explaining to people why he thinks it's a bad idea. The libertarian won't always be right, but he'll be right often enough that he should always be listened to.

The issue on HOAs, it seems to me, is one of purpose. My neighborhood has a pretty intrusive HOA, which imposes a lot of rules. In some ways I'm unhappy about that because people should know not to leave their trash out all week and the like. Unfortunately, common courtesy being all but dead, it actually may be best to start out with everyone knowing the rules; my hope is that good customs will come to displace those rules, and I'm satisfied that I live in as true a neighborhood as I could find around here, that is, one in which we all recognize to some reasonable degree our need to be decent to one another and try to promote our local, common good. To this extent HOAs are a good thing. But when, as in every gated community I know of, the whole purpose of the "community" is to keep "different," generally less affluent people out, or more generally to replace the public square with the private neighborhood board (in essence seceding from the town, county, etc.) then we have, to my mind, something destructive of any true community--and by the way generally populated by people who are there only during the few hours each day they can spare from work, commuting, and vacation.

"Ok, that's it! If Europe is now being held up as a moral exemplar, I'm through with this discussion."

Wait until he sees what John Podhoretz in The Corner today called the crunchy "cliffhanger" earlier today--the politician whose wisdom Rod praises in the last chapter of the book!

Jesse Walker from Reason chimes in on homeowners associations:

Rich Shipe writes: "I have never met a self-declared libertarian who likes the concept of an HOA."

Mr. Shipe needs to get out more. Some of the most interesting writing about HOAs and similar associations has been done by libertarians:

Robert Nelson (*Private Neighborhoods and the Transformation of Local Government*), Fred Foldvary (*Public Goods and Private Communities*), etc. Many libs do criticize HOAs, of course, but their criticism generally takes the form of "I wouldn't want to live in one" -- or "I don't have a problem with the idea of living in one, but I wouldn't want to live in one with those particular rules" -- not "I hate the very concept." Others -- Spencer MacCullum, for example -- explicitly like the idea of a local, non-governmental authority; they just have trouble with the HOA as an organizational model.

More broadly, there's a long history of libertarians discussing whether non-governmental "social coercion" (a problematic phrase, but I'll use it anyway) is a good, bad, or neutral thing, with most libs (or at least the most sensible libs) coming to the conclusion that it can be any of the above, depending on the content and context of the pressure. Since most people, even us libertarians, value more things than just liberty, you really don't have to travel far into libertydom to find these conversations.

Anyway, I haven't read *Crunchy Cons* yet, but I'm looking forward to it -- I suspect I'll agree strongly with some parts and disagree strongly with others, as I usually do when reading essays in a traditionalist or distributist vein. Even if I end up disagreeing with everything, I figure anything that undermines those noxious Red America/Blue America stereotypes is doing at least some good.

Before we move on, can we agree that Bruce is right, and societies and governments are never neutral? Can we agree to get past the coercion issue? If so, can we couch our arguments in the language of the common good? Might that be a good definition of a conservative?

I think that feels strange to some because both political parties are about “what’s in it for me.” Neither one has a sense of the common good that transcends the individual (which obviously reflects our Protestant heritage).

For instance, Pres. Bush based his embryonic stem cell speech not on transcendent values, but on utilitarianism, on whether or not the benefits are worth it. Europe, on the other hand, can be more restrictive on abortion, and Italy has imposed restrictions on in-vitro fertilization that are unthinkable here, because they can at least speak the language of the common good, they at least have some residual sense of metaphysics--what is the nature of reality?--left in their systems. We don’t.

Justice David Souter has triumphed: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, the universe, and of the mystery of human life.”

In the end, though, we still get a public philosophy that favors some and not others, but one that’s stitched together via Karl Rove-style constituent group pandering, not public debate. So let’s all come clean. If you agree with Souter, you’re a liberal. If not, you’re a conservative, and you agree we can talk about reconstructing a public philosophy, and base your arguments on the common good, not “leave me alone.” It may very well be that on a particular issue “leave me alone” is best for the common good. But can we at least agree to argue on conservative terms?

A lawyer pal in New Orleans (who sent in a bawdy crunchy-con light bulb joke that didn’t make it through the fascist censors) writes:

Aren’t all conscious choices at least potentially political? I hate to paraphrase from my organic dish soap bottle, but isn’t it foolish not to consider the effect of our choices on future generations? Choices won’t always be political in a conventional sense (and maybe that’s your point), but they can be. Random example:

My orthodox Jewish buddy won’t buy a new car until he can get a hybrid, because he doesn’t want to buy more oil than necessary and thereby fund the nuts who are dedicated to killing his fellow Jews. Looks like a fashionable yuppie consumer choice, but is actually a political statement.

I don’t know the answers to this, but did Jonah buy a lot of French products in the spring of 2003 because his lifestyle choices are irrelevant to his politics? Is he neutral on the purchase of Danish items now? Has he seen Sean Penn’s recent films? Aren’t those political decisions expressed through lifestyle choices?

That said, I do believe that Lawyer Guy is correct about the unavoidable consequences, pro and con, of even small choices. And that is why we are now eating Lurpak butter from Denmark in my house, even though our usual butter tastes better. Buy Danish early and often.

There’s an interesting article on Leo Strauss and “neoconservatism”, in the March 2006 Prospect. The author’s description of Strauss’ view of democratic society sounds familiar:

Strauss was not the "profoundly tribal and fascistic thinker" described by [critics]. But neither is he a figure with whom liberal democrats can feel entirely comfortable. His support for them is at best pragmatic and provisional; it amounts to little more than the recognition that "at present democracy is the only practicable alternative to various forms of tyranny." Nowhere does Strauss acknowledge freedom or equality as intrinsic goods. Their value, for him, is instrumental; they create a space in which excellence can flourish. "We cannot forget… that by giving freedom to all, democracy also gives freedom to those who care for human excellence. No one prevents us from cultivating our garden or from setting up outposts which may come to be regarded by many citizens as salutary to the republic and as deserving of giving to it its tone."

Strauss, in short, is an unashamed elitist, in the best tradition of the German professoriat. This in itself is enough to mark him as a fascist in the eyes of some commentators.

A reader writes:

Whenever someone criticizes the speech of a leftist or liberal -- say, Ward Churchill or the Dixie Chicks -- the immediate response is often, "But they have a right to free speech." It's been pointed out on National Review many times that this response is silly: No one is proposing to use the force of law to throw Ward Churchill in jail, and if free speech means anything, it means that I too have the right to use speech to express my disagreement with his speech.

It strikes me that a lot of your correspondents and critics are making exactly the same error. Rod and his compatriots put forward various suggestions as to how people should structure their personal lives, the moral decisions that they should make, etc., and the visceral reaction from some people is, "But I have a right to live that way," or "how dare you tell me what to do."

Well, you may be legally entitled to let your kids watch television in their bedrooms all day long, but that's irrelevant. It's still a horrible way to raise children, and the rest of us have the right to say so.

The stuff I’m getting from readers is way more interesting than anything I have to say today. Let me point out again that this week we’re talking crunchy-ism in general, but that next week we’re going to try to focus on Consumerism (while still including general commentary). Here’s something from a conservative reader named Steve:

Have you read Ian Angus? He is a far-leftist (anarchist) who makes a point that is in many way parallel to yours. He makes the simple point that experiences produce identity. These identities then have long-term political consequences. For instance, spending a summer at an ecology camp might be a one-shot deal but will produce an identity as an "environmentalist" that brings with it a whole set of political expectations. On our side, participating in a pro-life march or regular family attendance at church does the same thing.

While serious ideologues like Jonah (a compliment) may reject this as shallow, it is in fact how most people in most places have always determined their political affiliation. Having an intentional place where people who are exploring these lifestyle and commitment issues creates a more solid basis for creating this "identity." It is difficult for progressives and conservatives to have much of a dialogue because they don't share enough assumptions about what is good. When you have a group of people who do share enough assumptions, they can help each other think and pray through their tactical choices.

Of course, many folks who are less likely to think through these choices will be attracted just because it looks appealing or somehow seems popular. This really bugs lots of serious thinkers but it is probably hard-wired. This is probably why revolutionaries are most unhappy when they are successful.

Sean from Roanoke has not forgotten our attempt to lighten up the blog:

Q. How many Crunchy Cons does it take to screw in a light bulb?

A. By asking the question, the asker shows he doesn't understand what Crunchy Conservatism teaches us about community. The emphasis on the number of individuals is misplaced. We should be asking whether the light bulb is made by the most environmentally friendly process available, sold by a store that is involved in the local community, and casts light on an area that truly needs illumination, not someplace traditionally left dark. Quantifying and categorizing people as mere light-bulb changers is characteristic of a modernistic, big-business/big-government worldview, not crunchy conservatism.

A reader writes:

Here’s a point that may or may not be in your book I have not read: Martial artists tend to be either very liberal or conservative by quite a bit. The conservative ones often are current or prior military. The liberal ones, however, often are really crunchy cons: vegetarians, neo-Buddhists, Taoists, etc, but who have extremely conservative views on moral right and wrong, but see themselves as liberals because they are into tofu or love the Earth, etc., but would personally deliver Armageddon if you tried to hurt some weak or in need. Many of these people are in ultra liberal places: Northern California, Seattle, NYC. There are loads of these people in these places.

The link is the Samurai ethic they have that has very, very conservative values with the veneer of the liberal love the earth stuff.

"Hear, hear" to Bruce's point about the need for a more family-friendly tax code. Let me throw out another family-friendly public policy priority: Making telecommuting easier, with tax breaks for companies that encourage telecommuting, and home-office deductions for people who work from home. (Walter Russell Mead discussed this, amid a grab-bag of other ideas, in a Weekly Standard essay a few weeks back.) This is a place where technology plays into the hands of a pro-family agenda: telecommuting a few days a week gives working parents more time with their kids (if only because it knocks out the time lost in the commute); it also makes it easier for families to live further out from city centers, which not only fosters the "crunchy" virtues that come with rural living, but also drives down the cost of raising one of those large traditionalist families that Philip Longman thinks will own the future. Real estate prices are lower the further you get from urban cores, and so is the cost of basic goods and services--and best of all, a parent who telecommutes two or three days a week is doing his part to drive down America's consumption of foreign oil. What's not to like?

Subject: Sorry to hit libertarianiams again, but...

There has been a lot of discussion in the crunchy blog about coercion and accusations of telling people what to do and so on. I believe it is the libertarian in us that distastes the idea of others telling us what to do irregardless of whether it is government or just your neighbor making a lifestyle suggestion. Libertarians like to say that their philosophy only applies to the relationship between the people and government but that isn't true. You can easily test this by asking them what they think of HOAs. The HOA should be the ideal libertarian model of local government but the reality is they hate HOAs. I have never met a self-declared libertarian who likes the concept of an HOA. Go figure.

Why is it that some people get personally offended and feel personally attacked when they find out my wife and I homeschool our kids and work extra to feed them healthy food? It is not like we are playing John the Baptist of organic food and homeschooling. Even if we go out of our way to make it clear that we do not judge others who make different lifestyle choices they still often feel uncomfortable. Do they feel guilty? If so why?

Rich Shipe
Director of Distance Learning
Patrick Henry College

Bruce is absolutely correct. Just as there are no “neutral” philosophies, there are no “neutral” policies, because both the subject and object of those policies is the human person.

Perhaps, given some of the recent posts, this is a good time to point out how radically unnatural, anti-family and anti-community many of our public policies are today. In defending permanent things, and families and communities in particular, I’m not saying that people should be forced to live “my way.” But I am saying that societies and governments are definitely not neutral. For example, our current tax structure punishes families for having children and for making the choice of relying on a single income, along with a stay at home mom. And I do mean punishes. The tax structure assumes that all of us are atomistic individuals who may happen to choose consumption items, like children, for which we will give them some tax relief, because we claim to like kids. A system based on the family as a fundamental, natural basis of society would start from the presumption that the family is the unit taxed. That means income splitting (lowering taxes for single income families) and far more generous dependent deductions. This would show concern for and valuation of families, make it easier for more people to make family-friendly choices, and encourage employers, neighbors, and others to show more respect for families.

That’s just one example. We also can talk about the many troubles people Rod interviewed have had with tax and regulatory structures that make it all but impossible for small operators to get and stay in business. Libertarians, and too many conservatives, buy into the notion that the government can be “neutral” by pretending only individuals exist. In fact, government is going to serve some set of interests, and if we don’t make those interests clear and specific (and crunchy) they will be, as they are, hostile to our most important institutions and communities.

I hear you, Ross, and I’m beginning to understand better Caleb’s point (and others’) about how some of the terms and concepts associated with CC do complicate, and perhaps obscure, the more important points we’re trying to make. It reminds me of the problem William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement encountered in the 19th century. They were rightly reacting to the loss of spirit and aesthetic greatness in industrial mass society, and produced some extraordinarily beautiful decorative art and design out of this reaction. But they also had to deal with the inconvenient fact that all their wonderful handmade things were very expensive to produce. The kind of “common man” that they hoped to serve with their art and design couldn’t afford what they made!

I know we have the same problem today, and it’s why, quite frankly, my wife and I do most of our grocery-shopping at the standard supermarket, and save Whole Foods (and the farmer’s market) pretty much for meat and dairy. We’re getting by on one paycheck too, and we have to cut corners where we can. I don’t apologize for that, and let me say it again and again, if you have to shop at Sam’s Club to make ends meet so you can do right by your kids, and maybe even afford to let mom stay home with them, you are absolutely doing the right thing, morally and otherwise. My wife and I live comfortably, to be sure, but if she were to go to work, we could have a much bigger house than we do, and newer (nicer) furniture, and so forth. We haven’t taken a family vacation in four years. But we think the material sacrifices we make are worth it in the end for the kind of day-to-day life we are able to give our kids. And if shopping at Target, IKEA and so on is necessary to make that happen, so be it. The family is the institution most necessary to conserve, after all. But as a general rule, I think we should do our best to patronize the little guy down the street instead of the big-box store. I don’t think that’s a bad ethic to live by.

One last point: I think of an acquaintance who once told me that “all this organic stuff” was nonsense, that as a working mother, she couldn’t afford it, etc. And I looked around her kitchen and saw all the junk food--snack cakes, chips, soda, you name it-- and thought, “Hmmm.”

Here’s another question: Why can’t a moral challenge be brought without someone whining about people “trying to dictate personal decisions”, etc., etc.?

First of all, there is simply no such thing as a “personal decision without a moral component”. Acts considered in themselves can be morally neutral (Should men live in NYC or Greenville, Texas?), but a person always has reasons for committing a certain act, otherwise he would not be moved to commit it. The moral coherence of those reasons can be evaluated (I’m moving to NYC to be with my sick mother; I’m moving to NYC to get away from my sick mother).

I don’t like it when people critique my choices, and maybe in any particular instance it’s none of their business, but if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.

In any case, Rod has said about fifty times on this blog alone that he’s proposing the cultivation of a certain sensibility, not a political or religious program. No one has said anything, for instance, about passing laws to make anyone do anything. And as I implied earlier, it is, as one of my acquaintances has put it, “operationally self-contradictory” to assert that challenging certain conduct or ways of thinking is in itself evidence of a lack of respect for others’ freedom, at whatever “level”.

A reader writes:

One of the responses to your book that I've found most frustrating is the accusation that crunchy conservatism is like an ideology in that it imposes a politicized lens on the personal or aesthetic aspects of life, thereby distorting the proper nature of conservatism (a disposition drawn up from local knowledge and affiliations).

Perhaps the critics are not reading closely enough, but you describe the development of the crunchy perspective as very much induced from the real, particular elements of life. As we think about what we eat, the neighborhoods where we live, what we pursue as important, and so on, we find that these ordinary choices reflect our values. Libertarians might have us think that personal choices about things like how we eat are only expressions of autonomy, but we realize that they have moral import. Knowing that the particular parts of our lives are invested with sacramentality, we acknowledge that we are, well, crunchy. Your book isn't a theoretical treatise calling for people to engineer their lives by a utopian standard; it chronicles the maturation of numerous families from the bottom (life experience), up (to synthesized ideas). The organic essence of this process is why you're not calling for state coercion, but for people to personally revive the fundamental institutions in their lives (a distinction conservatives should be familiar with).

Hi everybody.

I agree entirely with Mitch and Kathryn's emailer that all political ideologies try to tell people how to live. But is worth remembering that not all political ideologies are honest about this. Many species of liberal and leftist will insist for hours on end that they telling people how to live is contrary to everything they believe.

And of course libertarians -- an ideologically diverse group truth be told -- will often insist there is nothing coercive in their philosophy. The other week I met a libertarian out of central casting at the University of Wisconsin who insisted that there should be absolutely no legal restrictions on any form of speech. I kept coming up with absurd and sophomoric examples. Kiddie porn on saturday morning television? That's fine, she said, so long as no actual children were "harmed" in the production of it (i.e. if it's digitally simulated kiddie porn, who cares?). Repugnant sado-masochistic depictions on billboards across from a playground? No problem. Shrieking horrible racial insults at people in a public park? Hey, it's free speech. What libertarians like this young woman fail to understand is that this sort of "freedom" is oppressive too. It says that the burden to avoid such indecency should always and everywhere be placed on the parent and the individual. Even if 99.99% of the society agrees that there should be some communal norms and standards, in a "free" society they must be held hostage to the convention-defying whims of a single individual or a tiny minority of people.

This logic, in a much less extreme form, runs through much of liberalism and some of conservatism. It is the liberty of the suicide pact.

Sorry, one more. Jonah making good sense in the Corner:

“I could take almost every quote and author in the supposedly Crunchy Con oeuvre and make what I think would be a much, much stronger case that instead of putting on hippie clothing a true "crunchy con" should put on a tie and jacket. Rod talks in his opening pages about the comfort his birkenstocks provide and makes it sound like a virtue that he donned them. But Rod's whole argument is that the comfort and ease our consumer culture brings is the enemy of The Good Path. Rod talks often and eloquently about the permanent things, of custom and tradition, but when they collide with comfortable open toed shoes and loose fitting shirts, guess which one gets defenestrated?”

“My guess is Russell Kirk would be horrified by public breastfeeding.”As am I.

Fascists!
[Lopez  02/23 01:33 PM]

An e-mail (my subject line was purposely and unfairly over the top):

I believe that what Geraghty was getting at, was that this is why some people think that conservatives are totalitarian, or anti-freedom. When and where one moves is generally considered to be a personal decision, outside of the realm of politics, and hence of normal political judgements. It is also generally considered to be morally neutral, at least most of the time.

Geraghty's point obviously was that "crunchies" were trying to dictate personal decisions with no obvious moral component, and as such were acting as totalitarians. Obviously, all political philosophies try to tell people "how to live", but usually not at this micro level. People may expect this of a religious philosophy, but not a political one. And if the argument is made that there is no real divide between religious and political prescriptions... well, I'm afraid that only increases the validity of Jim's point.

RE: How You Gonna Keep'em Down on the Farm
[Stegall  02/23 01:14 PM]

Great points Angelo. I don’t disagree with any of that. Signing off for the rest of the afternoon …

Costco Conservatives
[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.

Don't tell me what to do!
[Muncy  02/23 01:07 PM]

Is there any philosophy that doesn’t “tell” us how we should live our lives? Jim Geraghty obviously has some opinion of how others should live, otherwise he couldn’t rebuke Caleb for telling others how to live.

Re: stunningly obnoxious
[Stegall  02/23 12:52 PM]

I’ve struck a nerve. Jim Geraghty bristles at my comments on selfish desire. Perhaps he will be mollified by my expanded comments below, I don’t know. What I am trying to articulate is the problem of endless desire; a need for constant movement and the perpetual postponement of satisfaction or end of desire due to a fear of actually living in the human condition (or in Purgatory, as Eliot puts it). Yes, I think if we make an honest analysis, we can say that this is the driving spiritual force behind most acts in our liberalized late modern society. And it simply will not do to ignore its tendency to destroy any kind of sustained social order. I am not saying anything original here. Many conservative luminaries before me have said it all before, and better.

But Geraghty’s comment that “this is why many folks think conservatives want to tell people how to live their lives” puts me in mind of an interesting thought experiment. Can anyone envision a truly conservative philosophy which could honestly say “in no way whatsoever am I trying to tell you how to live your life”? I don’t mean that rhetorically, I’d like to know.

How You Gonna Keep'em Down on the Farm...
[Matera  02/23 12:48 PM]

A point about the Rod vs. Caleb thing about whether we’re obligated to live close to family: The “rootedness” of the past that traditionalists yearn for was mostly involuntary. People stayed close to family, stayed married, etc., mostly because they had no other choice. Now, we’re called to do these things because we want to.

The rootedness of the past was based on a combination of social coercion, limited choices, and psychological/cultural dependency. (About the latter, the Amish, in their wisdom, allow their children to run wild for a few years in their late teens, a rite called Rumspringa, before giving them the choice to re-commit to the community. Do the vast majority re-commit because of free choice, or because of fear of the unknown? I don’t know).

I’m not saying those cultures were bad, of course. As a Crunchy Con, I’d say they were generally better. However, we can’t go home again. Karl Marx was right--the material basis of society goes a long way towards dictating culture. Thanks mostly to capitalism and prosperity (and probably liberal democracy), freedom is a fact of life, and as Francis Fukayama has said, it will continue its march across the globe, despite periodic setbacks caused by backlashes like the current Islamic reaction.

Now and in the future social bonds will be voluntary. Cultural renewal is about adjusting to this reality, primarily by making “sacrifice, self-discipline, putting others before oneself” attractive. That sounds superficial, but it’s not. I can only speak as a Christian, but that’s what the Church, in the ecumenical sense (and the creative communities within the Church) is about--attracting the world into a communal life where we freely choose to lay down our lives for others, where people not only do what they ought to do, but love to do what they ought to do. That’s what the real meaning of “proposing, not imposing” means. Anything else is just moralism, and too often, results in hypocrisy. Let’s face it, we all do what makes us happy.

And as Dostoevsky said, “love in practice is harsh and dreadful compared to love in dreams.”

As a Christian, I believe only the love of God can get me to freely choose to lay down my life for another, or love my enemy. In the end, cultural renewal that doesn’t take into account the new role of freedom is just sentimental. This explains Pope John Paul II’s (and now Pope Benedict XVI’s) relentless emphasis on both faith AND freedom, and why in the end conservative cultural renewal must not fear freedom, but embrace it.

Here’s our problem
[Dreher  02/23 12:47 PM]

Here, in one headline in today’s Wall Street Journal (page B1), with the first paragraph, is the central problem crunchy conservatism tries to address:

New Network Will Showcase Greed, Lust, Sex

News Corp. will launch a new broadcast network called My Network TV in September, a swift and aggressive response to Time Warner Inc. and CBS Corp’s decision last month to form the CW network.

News Corp., of course, being the company owned by ubercapitalist conservative Rupert Murdoch, who has given the world the gifts (I’m not being facetious in the least) of the Fox News Channel and the New York Post (for which I’m proud to say I used to work). You see what I’m getting at. Business conservatism versus cultural conservatism. Discuss.

Crunchy irony or crunchy hunger?
[Muncy  02/23 12:33 PM]

So far, 73% of the bookstore sales of CCs have occurred in the suburbs.

The Real World
[Dreher  02/23 12:26 PM]

Here’s part a long, thoughtful letter from a reader who says he once studied under Kirk, and used to consider himself a “Kirk disciple.” Plenty of grist for our mill in here – though I’ve got to head to an interview at the Dallas NPR station, so I won’t be back for a couple of hours:

But 9/11 changed many of my views. I realized that the same hostility toward modernity that I found in Kirk’s world and in Protestant fundamentalism was very similar to the antimodern hostility found among Muslim radicals, who actually could be called conservatives. ...

I was troubled that there were connections between Islamofascist hatred of American government (Great Satan), conservative hatred of American government (The Meddler), and liberal hatred of American government (The Authoritarian). These are days to speak up for American government, however flawed it is. These are days to speak up for democracy, not repeat the same old anti-modern, anti-democratic mantras we find on both the far left and far right.

I voted for Buchanan whenever he ran. But I departed company after 9/11. I realized isolationism would never protect the nation. We live in a interconnected world, like it or not. ... We are all neoconservatives now. That group understands the Middle East.

They understand the war we are in now. They understand the threat posed by radical Islam. They have been fighting terrorists long before the rest of us, so we better learn from their wisdom and experience.

…As much as I liked Kirk, I realized he did not feel at home in the world. He was a sort of contemporary Henry Adams. He wrote a book called Confessions of a Bohemian Tory. He didn’t even know how to drive. Computers disgusted him. After I left school, I found it difficult to apply his ideas to the world into which I was thrown. I was neither a professor nor a minister. I was not independently wealthy. I had to find my own way in the wilderness of this world. And that meant compromising with the world without giving up my identity.

Today’s right-wing hippies are similar to left-wing hippies. Only without the drugs and the left-wing politics, it’s God and right-wing politics. The converging point is the idea of community (see Nisbet again). Perhaps the model is Little House on the Prairie, Downer’s Grove, Minnesota -- one of the most liberal states in the U.S. I know these people. Some of them are friends of mine. I like them. I tried to embrace their faith, but I never shared their sense of certainty, nor their belief that much of the world was evil. Today’s dropouts are Jesus freaks. Most of them are Protestant fundamentalists who form their own individual splinter churches. They live in small rural communities.

Their children are delivered by midwives. They are hostile to modern medicine (Ritalin, antidepressants, etc.) They home-school. They try to protect their children from a cesspool culture, substituting for it, for example, Christian rock, Christian video stores, and so on. They are dropouts from society.

I understand their reasons. But you can’t drop out. Isn’t it conservative to ask: Is there anything you do that doesn’t affect someone in some way? See It’s a Wonderful Life. George Bailey didn’t realize how many lives he had affected. Same with us. Richard Weaver described society as a symphony in which everyone had a part. You can’t drop out. We need good people to stay with us. If we splinter off, we are no longer United States. What unites us?

I wonder how the second generation of dropouts is going to face the modern world? Will they face the same difficulties as children of left-wing dropouts? Perhaps become yuppies? Perhaps become professors who hate yuppies? Who hate America? Or will they, like the Amish, try to remain in their own communities uncorrupted by society? Ah, but I see the Amish at the mall now and then...

The modern world isn’t going away. Countries are not going to un-industrialize. Globalization will continue whether we like it or not. …I don’t believe capitalism is a religion. But I cannot blame people for shopping at Wal-Mart in order to get cheaper goods. After all, they don’t make the rules. Like everyone, I want a clean environment and healthy food. I wish America were not so dependent on other countries, but reversing that trend is impossible.

"Selfish"?
[Lopez  02/23 12:18 PM]

Jim Geraghty raises a Crunchy Con objection over on TKS.

Re: Vexed and Perturbed
[Dreher  02/23 12:15 PM]

Hurry up and read, Jonah, because we need to mix it up more in this room. I credit somewhat your view, and Caleb’s, that lifestyle issues are in some ways a distraction from what we really should be debating in this whole crunchy-con thing … except that in a liberal consumerist society such as our own, it’s hard to extricate our “lifestyle” and consumption patterns from ideas. Put another way, I use lifestyle issues as a way to introduce the deeper questions. I keep telling people that I don’t think it’s all that important whether you wear Birkenstocks or wing-tips; I use the Birkenstock (and organic produce) examples to point to my own silly judgments made only on the bases of cultural prejudice. That is, I initially wouldn’t think of wearing Birkenstocks, no matter how comfortable and sensible they might have been, because I had it in my head that only a liberal would do such a thing; similar with the organic co-op that Julie and I eventually joined after we tasted the vegetables and realized what we were missing out on because I turned my nose up at organics as “liberal.”

Frankly, if yours is the kind of family that shops exclusively at Costco and big-box stores because that’s the only way you can have a stay-at-home mom, and even more than 2.1 kids, then you are doing conservatism and the culture at large a lot more good than the Bobo who spends extra cash on organic veggies exclusively and on living in a quaint old childless house in an expensive historic preservation district. But I do think that this is often a false choice. For example, if I want to buy a chicken at the farmer’s market here in Dallas from the conservative Evangelical free-range farmers, it will cost me roughly three dollars more per chicken than at the supermarket. But for that money, I get not only a superior quality bird, but the satisfaction of knowing that I’m using my consumer dollars to support traditional agrarian life. And that extra three dollars is pretty easy to make up with savings elsewhere.

About breastfeeding: it can be a really striking point of separation. Lots of traditional Catholics, for example, do it for conservative reasons, but get treated like hippie freaks for doing so. My wife never really had problems with that in NYC, but in Dallas, it’s difficult to do. People think something is wrong with you for wanting to breastfeed in public--as if there were something to be ashamed of, feeding your child in a natural way. Those conservative moms willing to risk the scorn of the mainstream to breastfeed their children do tend to be nonconformists in other ways, and in that way breastfeeding can be--can be--a cultural marker indicating a certain kind of conservatism.

More Crunchy in The Corner
[Lopez  02/23 12:05 PM]

John Podhoretz calls Crunchy Cons "remarkable" but there's a but...and Jonah Goldberg thanks Rod in advance of reading the whole book for thinking of him.

Re: Crunchy Copout
[Stegall  02/23 11:59 AM]

Professor Russell Fox of Western Illinois University writes:

In response to the individual who e-mailed in response to Caleb's commitment to following through on the need to avoid the language of choice, even as it pertains to things that our today considered to be perfectly obvious givens, such as choosing to live a long ways away from our families:

"Perhaps what we need are Regional Spiritual Directors, who will examine our passbooks to see if we have a good enough reason to move to the big city, and make sure we're not trying to skip out on our feudal rents."

The author things he or she is making an absurdist point....but why? What on earth might a parish priest, a local rabbi, or a Mormon bishop be except, well, a kind of "Regional Spiritual Director"? Or how about a family patriarch (or matriarch)? This isn't to say that family and church and state should merge. It is to say that, if you really believe that the sort of livelihood which makes possible "Crunchy" virtues and ways of life is at least in part undermined by the dominant libertarian/contractual/choice ethos of modern America, then the only way to combat such an ethos is to re-introduce, as Caleb insists, a concern for authority and discipline and belonging into one's lifestyle decisions. Maybe there are certain choices that ought to have to be made in the face of authoritative challenges, demanding from us greater levels of justification than "Oh, I can make so much more money living there." If that and that alone is a wholly legitimate reason to pull out of a community, well, then what real hope for community is there in the long-run?

Hell or Purgatory: Take Your Pick
[Stegall  02/23 11:48 AM]

Ok, this is going to take a bit of unpacking, so bear with me (and I thought I was going to get some work done this morning!). First, we have to distinguish between what a conservative philosophy might suggest about living a good life and what it might say about organizing a good state. When I talk about the need for moral rigor and self-discipline, there is no suggestion that the coercive power of the state ought to be brought to bear to force these things.

Let me widen my point about mobility in order not to get bogged down in analyzing when relatives are annoying enough to justify leaving. In his critically important essay “Liberalism and its History,” Eric Voegelin argues that there is no way to understand any modern political movement other than as a mode of reaction against revolution. Liberalism, the dominant movement in the Enlightened west, succeeded by appropriating and taming the symbol of revolution. Voegelin says, “The idea of peaceful change—a policy of timely adaptation to the social situation that in the age of the industrial revolution, changes very quickly—has become today a constant in all shades of liberalism. Form this point of view liberalism becomes a method for carrying on the revolution with other, less destructive means.”

Western liberalism, then, makes revolution a permanent condition, and is therefore inherently unstable (this is essentially the same argument Schumpeter makes about capitalism). Liberalism, says Voegelin, “lives to the extent that it moves.” Many social commentators have observed this quality of “mobility” as being central to modernity’s cultural and political order. The historian Christopher Lasch, for example, insightfully discussed the spiritual symbolization of society as a ladder to be climbed in a system of endless “opportunity.”

In T.S. Eliot’s equally important essay “The Idea of a Christian Society” he says that liberalism is “a movement not so much defined by its end, as by its starting point; away from, rather than towards, something definite. … [I]ts movement is controlled rather by its origin than by any goal, it loses force after a series of rejections, and with nothing to destroy is left with nothing to uphold and with nowhere to go.” Voegelin adds that “revolution in the modern sense has no intention of producing a stable condition; revolution is the mental and spiritual condition of an act that has no rational goal.”

Rod’s points are good ones, and I may have slightly overstated my case. I am not condemning mobility per se. But the point of my earlier comments on this were that the corrosiveness of this spiritual aspect of restless movement--with no real end in sight other than the pursuit of desire which is never satisfied--in a liberalized society cannot be underestimated.

I will conclude with another line from Eliot for those who feel the burden of recovery of meaning may simply be too heavy: “To those who can imagine [a totalitarian democracy], and are therefore repelled by such a prospect, one can assert that the only possibility of control and balance is a religious control and balance …. That prospect involves, at least, discipline, inconvenience, and discomfort: but here as hereafter, the alternative to hell is purgatory.”

RE: Crunchy copout
[Muncy  02/23 11:44 AM]

When I worked at ISI, now some time ago, I met lots of college kids who wanted nothing more than to get a job on Capitol Hill or at a DC policy institute. I used to discourage them, suggesting that they first give serious consideration to returning to their hometowns, where they could, while doing non-“conservative movement” jobs, participate in the renewal of their communities. This, I told them, would be genuinely “conservative.” It was clear that few of them had thought about this.

Having dispensed this pellet of wisdom, I did my best to avoid returning home. What finally (and not after a terribly long time) drew me back to Dallas was that I could see that was where God was leading me. So I ask: Shouldn’t the first consideration for a Crunchy Con be what God wants of him? For many, this could mean returning home, but for others it will not. I don’t think we can presume selfishness even if someone invokes an “economic necessity” argument. Poverty can be one of the ways that God is telling us we need to make a change. Stubborn people like me sometimes have to be reduced to not eating before we’ll think seriously about our vocations.

Mobility and Granpa
[Mathewes-Green  02/23 11:23 AM]

I guess mobility, rather than stability, has always been an American theme--often due to economic reasons (black migration north in the 30s) or ecomonic based in agricultural changes (Dust Bowl), but the majority of us on this list come from stock that, at one time or another, said goodbye to stability in Europe and set off for the New World. For most of history, most people have lived in very entrenched stability, but you could argue that good sometimes comes from mobility; I'm grateful that St. Paul, for example, hit the road.

At our particular moment we're at a very curious generational shift. While Baby Boomers could not wait to shake the dust off their feet, their twentysomething children are closely attached to their parents. Boomers expected their kids to rebel in turn, and are so uncomfortable with authority that ad campaigns have to prompt them to do their job ("Parents: the Anti-Drug," "Talk to your kids about sex; everyone else does.") .

But surveys show that today's newly-adult children admire their parents and want to be near them. Newsweek, a year ago, found that 48% of twentysomethings are in contact with their parents, by phone or email, every day. There is no generation gap. We shouldn't underestimate the role of popular culture in this; everyone, from 16 to 60, is watching the same movies and TV shows, listening to the same music.

That wasn't true in the 50s and 60s. There's was lots wrong with the 50's that goes unremarked. There was a tone of postwar bitterness, alienation, and cynicism that we don't catch in looking back. Adults themselves stressed the separation of the generations. I won't make a list here, but its enough to notice that intense, suburban, sterile, biodome 50's child-rearing resulted in 60's teenagers.

Now it looks like a new stability is arising. Young people want to be near their parents. I socialize more with my twentysomething children than with anyone my own age. We all regularly daydream about finding a plot of land where we could build homes near each other. All three of the kids are married, and--this must be a record--two of them at present live across the street from their spouse's parents.

Time will tell what this new stability means. But I think it's possible that the next crop of granpas will be better cared for than the current one, because the bonds of genuine affection between parent and child are stronger.

The downside to all this closeness is the phenomenon of "Failure to Launch:" twentysomethings move home after college and just stay there, frozen. Artificially-extended adolescents please the economy and spend lots of disposable income, but the experience itself is pretty depressing (see "Garden State"). My crackpot idea is that we should encourage a return to young marriage, around 18 or 20. This is what biology seems to indicate. It's completely unnatural for kids to remain chaste for a decade or more after puberty--an attempt to fight God's design, which is never a wise idea. (A couple of years ago NRO kindly published my essay, "Let's Have More Teen Pregnancy.") While we're thinking of how we can do right by Granpa, let's keep in mind getting kids to complete their childhood and get started on adult life. The two fit together. I'm 53, and already have 7 grandchildren. When I'm 80, I expect somebody is going to be in a position to take care of me.

Not with the program
[Dreher  02/23 11:00 AM]

A reader writes:

No thanks. “Crunchy Cons” seem to me to be one step shy of whacked out liberal tree huggers. I am all in favor of large corporations (in fact I absolutely love Walgreens—you’re local pot smoking food co-op can’t match Walgreens quality and price), McMansions (I wonder why they are so popular-it must be the evil corporations who brainwash people) , and long commutes (it gets me the heck away from the wife and kids)…

Go back to your hippie commune and leave the rest of us alone.

Thanks sir! Drive safely and slowly! If that’s your attitude toward your family and your responsibilities to them, I’m sure your wife and kids are as eager for you to take your time getting home as you are.

Re: Crunchy copout
[Dreher  02/23 10:49 AM]

A traditionalist reader takes up Caleb’s challenge:

“Selfish desires”? What other kind is there? Is it a “selfish” desire to prefer a better climate, educational options, or a good symphony orchestra to spending time with the siblings who don’t really like you, share no interests with you, and roll their eyes through Christmas dinner once a year? I’m all for promoting traditionalist ideas as a lifestyle for those who can manage them. But I don’t think that satisfies Caleb…it’s a “choice,” in the language of “liberalism.” In other words, it seems to me, he’s hankering to have the state (a county, no doubt, in good subsidiary fashion) decide whether or not my reasons for living 100 miles from my sister are “selfish” or not. Perhaps what we need are Regional Spiritual Directors, who will examine our passbooks to see if we have a good enough reason to move to the big city, and make sure we’re not trying to skip out on our feudal rents.

RE: Vexed and Perturbed
[Stegall  02/23 10:47 AM]

I’m sharpening my sword-cane (sorry Frederica, but some people do need holes poked in them).

The bit about mainstream conservatives who gorge their children on Tab and porn is good though, and makes a serious point. I can’t speak for Rod or his intent in the book, but from my perspective, as I’ve been [] saying (see here and here), putting various earth mother lifestyle issues front and center does a real disservice to what could be a beneficial discussion about the fundamental nature of conservatism, what it means, and where it is headed.

Up with patriarchy!
[Dreher  02/23 10:37 AM]

Are natalist crunchy cons destined to take over the world? Heads up, Mr. Douthat! A second ago, I got this press release from Foreign Policy magazine, announcing the lead story in its upcoming issue. Philip Longman has apparently updated his thesis. Here’s the press release:

Get ready for the conservative baby boom. Tomorrow’s children will come from a small, culturally conservative segment of society, writes Phillip Longman in the March/April issue of Foreign Policy. In the cover story, “The Return of Patriarchy,” he argues that this growing population will transform society and usher in a return of old- fashioned family values.

“As has happened many times before in history, it is a transformation that occurs as secular and libertarian elements in society fail to reproduce,” he says. “People adhering to more traditional, patriarchal values inherit society by default.”

Childlessness and small families are the norm today in America , especially for those members of the feminist and countercultural movements of the 1960s and 70s. As a result, an ever increasing portion of the population is from a small segment whose conservative values led them to raise large families. And their children will share their worldview, Longman argues.

“To be sure, some members of the rising generation may reject (patriarchal) values,” he says. “But when they look around for fellow secularists and counterculturalists with whom to make common cause, they will find that most of their would-be fellow travelers were quite literally never born.”

This demographic transformation is already starting to show, Longman says. In the 2004 election, fertility rates in states that voted for President George W. Bush were 12 percent higher than those that voted for Sen. John Kerry.

But the trend is not limited to America , says Longman. Even secular Europe may be poised for a transformation. In France , practicing Catholic and Muslim women will produce nearly half of the next generation. And across the continent, those who find soft drugs, homosexuality, and euthanasia acceptable are far more likely to live alone or have no children.

Like it or not, patriarchy creates higher-quality children by encouraging greater personal investment from parents and keeps birth rates high among the affluent, notes Longman. And societies throughout history that have adopted it have maximized their power over those who did not.

“This cycle in human history may be obnoxious to the enlightened,” he says. “But it is set for a comeback.”

"Vexed and Perturbed"
[Lopez  02/23 10:01 AM]

Jonah Goldberg begins reading Crunchy Cons.

Re: Crunchy copout
[Dreher  02/23 09:49 AM]

Good but difficult points, Caleb. I can’t go as far as you when you say, “I would suggest that moving far away from one’s kin is virtually never a true economic necessity and almost always rooted in selfish desire.” People have all kinds of complicated reasons for moving away. What counts as “selfish” anyway? I am from Louisiana and married a woman from Dallas. One big reason we moved back south out of NYC and a life we loved was because we believed our children would be better off being raised closer to family and in a culture that is more broadly affirmative of our conservative religious and social values. But the time might come when staying here in Dallas is costing our family more than it’s gaining by being here. There are no simple answers, but these are the right questions to ask.

Along these lines, I note, in advance of our religion chapter discussion, that you are the only one of the religious traditionalists I interview in Crunchy Cons who remains in the faith of your youth. The Catholic, the Orthodox, and the Orthodox Jew are all converts, as am I. The rest of us talk about moving from whatever faith we started with to the one we chose as a pilgrimage toward traditionalism. You, however, present a different model: staying put in the tradition you’ve been given, despite its many flaws--and you are tough on Evangelicalism in the book--in keeping faith with one’s forebears. I don’t want to jump to a religion discussion now, but I do find it admirable that you are willing to make real sacrifices to keep faith with your fathers, and with tradition as you see it.

You know, it’s interesting to me to think about what happened to a lot of the better educated people in my hometown. Some moved back to live there, but it’s my impression that most of us moved away, whether to live in the nearest big city, or half the country away. In my dad’s generation and before, nobody thought much about mobility; you moved back to town because that’s what you did. That’s where your people were, and you made your life work there. That doesn’t happen anymore, and I think this social dynamic, of which I am a part, impoverishes smaller places of the kind of cultural diversity (and perhaps even economic diversity) that they need to thrive. I’m wondering to how the Internet can change that. In the past year in my town, a small independent bookstore has opened. Its owner is a young husband and father my age who relocated there to be near his dad, who retired to the town. He doesn’t have enough business locally to sustain the shop, but he does a big mail-order business over the Internet. Just having a guy like Tommy and his family living in this small town will help make it intellectually and culturally more diverse--and frankly, attractive.

Ecumenical crunchiness
[Dreher  02/23 09:35 AM]

A reader writes:

Not that I disagree or want to rain on the old papist parade (convert in progress here), but let's not forget the Judaic source of these ideas. Looking forward to hearing from crunchy Lutherans, Methodists, indie Evangelicals, and Mormons, who are often really crunchy.

Too true! In my book, I interviewed Evangelicals, Catholics and even, in one memorable instance, an Orthodox Jew living in liberal Amherst, Mass., who found that her religious beliefs made a natural crunchy conservative out of her. And I got this e-mail this morning:

I am very excited to go read your book as soon as I am able. In the meantime, my head is positively spinning reading the CC blog; I find myself nodding in agreement with every post, including those that totally disagree with everything CC-ism seems to stand for. I don't know where I'll end up in this debate but one thing is sure: the very fact that you've forced conservatives into this debate is an extremely positive thing.

I thought I should also tell you a little bit about myself. I'm a recent college graduate now studying at an Orthodox Jewish yeshiva. I grew up in a basically secular, culturally Jewish home. During college, I began to reassess my liberal assumptions about the world and found that my values were essentially conservative. In my later college years, I became involved with Chabad (a sect of Hasidic Orthodox Judaism based in Brooklyn that focuses on outreach to secular Jews) and immediately after college, I flew to Israel to study in a yeshiva in Jerusalem. I'm now a Sabbath-observant, kosher-eating Orthodox Jew and a part of the "Ba'al Teshuva" movement (literally: "Master of Repentance" though I've heard the term "born-again Jew" used).

Why am I telling you all this? Much of what you say attracts people to crunchy conservatism is also what attracted me to Orthodox Judaism: living your life dedicated to Permanent Things, the stress placed on the importance of the family, the elevation of eating from something animal to something sacramental (much of kosher laws are for this reason, not "hygiene" as it is so often misunderstood: not "boiling a calf in its mother's milk" is a purely ethical prohibition), etc. The Code of Jewish Law ("Shulchan Aruch") even has an entire chapter titled "Everything Must Be Done for the Sake of Heaven." I want to raise my children in a home where, if I can't make it home for dinner every night, * every* Friday night and Saturday will be sacred time for the family (especially the meals). Oh, and there will be no TV in my house.

In short, thank you for writing this book. May the debate be for the sake of heaven!

Rich's email
[Frohnen  02/23 09:23 AM]

What a terrific, hope-inducing email from Rich Shipe. And I think his point on libertarians is spot on. The claim that trads and crunchy cons are “liberal” for valuing families and local associations is based in the myth (at best) that destructive big business “just happens” because it is “efficient.”

Rod writes about this is a chapter we’ll discuss later, but my point is historical. The government intentionally went after states and localities during the nineteenth century in the name of “national markets.” The state, not some magical creature called “the market” destroyed the ability of families, towns, small companies, and other local, human associations to control their own destinies.

The old liberals/libertarians of the late nineteenth century undermined local associations in the name of freedom of contract; now the new liberals do it in the name of individual choice. But it’s all of a piece--hostility toward any kind of community, any association that gets in the way of the state organizing society to maximize individual (and only individual) choice. One of the serious challenges we face is showing people how markets are no less social artifacts (they are institutions, after all) than towns and families. Markets are created and regulated by laws (what is an enforceable contract? Laws and government define and enforce them). So we should treat them as what they are, merely parts of an overall society made up of many, many institutions and communities, each of which is worthy of respect and protection—but families most of all.

Cheers to Patrick Henry. Give me, and my family, and my community, liberty, or give us death!

Crunchy Copout
[Stegall  02/23 08:52 AM]

Rod said: “I don't have any answers for resolving this tension, except to hope and pray that my sons want to live close to their mom and dad, and have the economic freedom to do so.” I want to lean on that sentiment a little and see if it isn’t something of a crunchy copout. We have all been paying lip service, of one kind or another, to the virtues of sacrifice, self-discipline, putting others before oneself, etc. However, I notice that there is the tendency, always, of always adding the caveats: “If I want to” and “If I have the economic freedom to do so.” This, frankly, is the language of choice; the language of liberalism. It reveals something important to note that even when self-described crunchy cons or their fellow travelers get together, they (we) cannot wholly avoid speaking in the language of liberalism. The effect of this is to undermine any gain in cultural or spiritual order that Rod’s prescriptions might otherwise offer. Because living the crunchy life is just one more option laid out on liberalism’s table of goodies. Do it if you want to. Do it if you can afford it. Crunchy conservatism is in danger of becoming just another political affectation of the rich. It could easily be sucked into the black hole of American public life that exists at the confluence of identity politics and niche marketing.

So if we want to talk about developing real virtue and a life nourished on more than bread alone, we need to stop and critically examine our own desire and the real meaning of economic necessity. I would suggest that moving far away from one’s kin is virtually never a true economic necessity and almost always rooted in selfish desire. Consider the purposes behind the Benedictine “vow of stability,” described this way:

The vow of stability . . . becomes the guarantee of success and permanence. It is only another example of the family idea that pervaded the entire Rule, by means of which the members of the community are bound together by a family tie, and each takes upon himself the obligation of persevering in his monastery until death, unless sent elsewhere by his superiors. It secures to the community as a whole, and to every member of it individually, a share in all the fruits that may arise from the labours of each monk, and it gives to each of them that strength and vitality which necessarily result from being one of a united family, all bound in a similar way and all pursuing the same end. Thus, whatever the monk does, he does it not as an independent individual but as part of a larger organization, and the community itself thus becomes one united whole rather than a mere agglomeration of independent members.

I am not suggesting that everyone must become Benedictine and swear to the Rule. But there is wisdom here for all. I wrote on these themes several years ago in an essay called “Practicing the Discipline of Place” which can be found online here by interested readers.

Crunchy Things People Do
[Dreher  02/23 08:43 AM]

A mom from Roanoke writes:

You asked on your blog what unconventional things we conservatives do.

A few of mine are:

1. Breast fed each of my children for two years.

2. Homeschool

3. Purchase organic when I can, especially meat and dairy

4. Am limiting in junk food i.e. no sodas

5. Take my children, even when young, to museums. Beauty is important.

6. Teach my children Latin and world history. The old things are important.

7. Host Interfaith Hospitality guests as a family when they stay at our church. People are important. They are made in the image of God.

8. Take my children to art and ballet lessons. Again, beauty is important and so is participating in it.

9. When I had extra money, (think before children), I subscribed to both National Review and Mother Earth News.

10. My family attends the Traditional Service at our church. Beauty and Sacredness are more important than emotionality.

Blame the Libertarians!
[Lopez  02/23 07:15 AM]

An e-mail:

Since reading the original discussions on the Crunchy Cons on NRO I've considered myself to be among this group. Yesterday I ordered the book and I eagerly await reading it. Here at Patrick Henry College we are forming a discussion group to go through your book led by one of our faculty, Dr.
Mark Mitchell who also considers himself a crunchy con. As you might know Patrick Henry College was founded by Mike Farris who is a leader in the home school world and close to 80% of our student body was home schooled.
So PHC may have the largest concentration by percentage of Crunchy Cons (whether they know it or not) of any college in the US. :) If you are ever in the area (Purcellville, VA) we'd love to have you speak on campus.

Anyway, I wanted to throw in some basic thoughts on crunchy conservatism in relation to libertarianism and get the feedback from the panel. I'm not totally certain but I think that the explosive growth of libertarianism in our society has contributed to the counter-cultural bent of crunchy cons.
Crunchy cons generally consider themselves to be the true conservatives while it is the mainstream conservatives who have left the philosophical fold. I wonder if it has been the societal creep of libertarianism that has caused this philosophical slippage among conservatives. Libertarians have successfully stolen words that had truly conservative meanings and have redefined them along libertarian lines. For example, "Liberty" was a word used at our nations founding which today has a very different meaning. Today liberty has virtually no limits and it implies no responsibility while it used to have implied responsibilities of self-government and restraint.

Today, our society uses words like liberty and freedom just to talk about selfish rights with no regard for community or others. The libertarian fears not only government telling him what to do but also all other institutions like family, church, community standards, neighbors, role models, etc. Out of libertarianism flows extreme individualistic selfishness. Out of that individualism flows, in my mind, most of the things that crunchy cons revolt against. Our society demands goods and services that serve the instant gratification of the individualist. A crunchy con (or true conservative) thinks first of others and his duty, not rights, in regards to others. Others for the crunchy con would be family, church, and community.

Thanks,
Rich Shipe
Director of Distance Learning
Patrick Henry College

March Through a Liberal Institution
[Dreher  02/23 07:08 AM]

Got this priceless story of subversion from a friend down in the People's Republic of Austin (Texas):

So I bought my copy at BookPeople, this incredibly dense--even for Austin--locus of liberalism that happily converts into a soapbox for wannabe Chomskyites who self-publish all kinds of garbage. Anyway ... I only went there because it was 10 p.m., I hadn't gotten a copy of the book yet, and BookPeople is open until 11 :-). Understand that though the store is "the biggest in Texas," looking for your book here was like trying to find Margaret Cho books--autographed ones--at the RNC convention. Heretofore mentioned ideological reasons just make it economically infeasible for this place, which has made a mint exploiting its clientele's (narrow) mindset, to carry ANYTHING of conservative value.

And, predictably, I couldn't find your book anywhere. I asked a nice liberal store clerk if, through some grotesque perversion of all that was pure and liberal, she'd heard of a new book called "Crunchy Cons." She was nodding as soon as "crunchy" came out of my mouth and added that she'd just RESTOCKED it. Impossible! I thought--until she led me to half a shelf of them. You know where she took me? To the "Liberal Politics" section! Of course! Clearly marked, under a "What's New" banner--in "Liberal Politics"! (And, BTW, there is indeed a brief "Conservative Politics" section.) Ha! Hil-ar-ious!

I asked her if the cover didn't perhaps betray the book's ideology, and she said (I'm not making this up): "Nah, I flipped through it, and it's about how intolerant conservatives and Bush are toward the environment. He [i.e. you] even used to be conservative. The name is, like, sarcastic."

Thought you'd get a laugh out of that. I halfway expected her to point out that the word "con"--what your book's misnomer does to gullible conservatives like me--was emblazoned clearly on the cover. Oh, and do you want to know what you're sandwiched between? Get ready ... a nauseating array of Al Franken and a new book called "Proud to Be a Liberal" by some Clementson lady. "D"--right in between 'em!

I told her (the clerk) that I thought they should move the book to the "proper" section, a statement I honestly think she felt fully prepared to debate, but the good thing is, even in liberal Austin, people are embracing the CC movement!

Ha! I wonder how many of those BookPeople customers will storm back to the store demanding their money back once they realize what they have purchased? Versus how many will develop a Strange New Respect for conservatism when they realize that we don't all live up to their Frankenesque stereotypes, and that in some ways, honorable conservatives and honorable liberals share common interests, and can work together. Anyway, the interesting thing here is the clerk maybe opened up one book, read from the chapter in which I write about how the Right ought to steal the environmental movement back from the Left, and decided, "This book is critical of the conservative response to the environment, therefore the writer must be liberal." And of course I've had some on the Right take the same position. People judging the book not on its actual content, but on the easy, if inaccurate, labels they attach to it.

Misc.
[Matera  02/23 07:01 AM]

Sorry, missed yesterday because of family ski trip--good Crunchy reason. A few catch-up items:

First, a Crunchie confession: This past summer, my family and I ate at a McDonald’s in Bologna, the food capital of Italy (If you ask an Italian where to find the best food in Italy, they’ll cite their hometown. But they’ll all rank Bologna second). Is there a worse Crunchie sin? What can I say—we were in a hurry. I’m glad that’s off my chest.

Second, an amusing tidbit came to mind as I read Rod’s exasperated explanation of official Crunchy Con TV-watching policy —Walker Percy loved to watch ‘Love Boat.” The lesson here, as I think Rod would be the first to say, is that watching TV is not in itself a sin (duh!). If your family can watch TV without losing its soul, great. Maybe you’re raising your kids to be media critics—little Marshall McLuhans. Maybe pop culture just rolls off their backs without any harmful effects. Every family, every child, is different. But woe to you if you know pop culture, TV, the internet, whatever, is damaging the spiritual, cultural, psychological well-being of your family and you do nothing. Crunchie hell for you.

Third, I also agree with Ross. I can imagine a culture of death that’s efficient and well-oiled and endures for a long time—See Brave New World. See The Matrix. See maybe China.

As to Rod’s question about what “it”—Crunchy Conservatism—really means. I think Caleb is right, that the defining principle of the book is that man does not live by bread alone.

Which leads me back to my initial post, and my belief (sorry for the drumbeat here) that for those Crunchies who are Christian, our faith obligates us to extend our principles beyond our families, and our local communities, to the entire body politic (and to the world). For if we are our brother’s keeper, then we are obligated to act at every level within our power to oppose sins against life, and against solidarity. For Catholics, the catechism is clear on this (and for others, see Aristotle). If indeed the Democrats are the party of Lust and the Republicans are the party of Greed, then we need to work politically to change that. I know we’ll be dealing with this later on, but a number of posts seemed to imply the opposite.

re: What Kind of Family
[Dreher  02/23 06:38 AM]

The question of how we care for our elders is one of the big ones upon us today as individuals and as a society. As I note in the book's intro:

In the autumn of 2005, the President's Council on Bioethics reported that our aging society does not have the resources or the mechanisms to care for our elderly. The only way to cope with this problem, the report suggested, is to revive the bonds of family and community care. New York Times columnist David Brooks said the report "is a rebuke to the economic individualism of the right and to the moral individuualism of the left." So is "Crunchy Cons." To conserve the things we care most about, we must strenghten human relationships and move beyond the stale categories laid down by current political discourse.

Which is easily said, but not so easily done. I'm at the age now where this is becoming an issue for me. My dad is in his 70s, and starting to experience lots of health problems typical for the aging. It's not a serious problem yet, but I tell you, I am awfully glad that my sister and her family live across the street. The idea of him or my mom having to go to a nursing home before such was absolutely necessary is intolerable to me--and yet, I don't know how I could move down to Louisiana to care for him if that were necessary, because a) what would I do for gainful employment, given my fairly specialized line of work, and b) how could I justify uprooting my wife and kids from the life we've built for ourselves in Dallas--a life that includes her parents, who will have their own need for our help someday.

I was thinking about this the other day, and about how we all just expect nowadays that our kids will move away--sometimes hundreds, even thousands, of miles away. Can we sustain that kind of ethic? As much as I ballyhoo a sense of place and family obligation in the book, I chose to move away from my hometown to follow my vocation, and can't imagine not having had that freedom. Yet that freedom comes at a cost, as I'm now realizing as I contemplate my own parents' aging, and think about how it's going to feel when my boys are young men, and want to move away. I don't have any answers for resolving this tension, except to hope and pray that my sons want to live close to their mom and dad, and have the economic freedom to do so.

Caelum et Terra Response
[Stegall  02/23 06:34 AM]

Mac Horton, of the now defunct journal Caelum et Terra (which was fundamentally concerned with many of the same issues Rod takes up), responds to the conversation here thus far. Horton is also one of the folks Rod interviews for the book. He says, in part:

Conservatism for me is an attachment to the Western tradition and a very strong suspicion of anyone who has a Big Plan For Fixing Everything. I firmly hold to the sometimes-quoted conservative principle that human nature has no history--that the mostly legendary "modern man" is not fundamentally different from those willful Hebrews quarreling with God in the desert three thousand years ago. Our psychology is delineated with perfect accuracy in the Psalms and Proverbs written by those same Hebrews, and our cosmic situation in their story of Job. I think anyone who has an accurate grasp of what mankind actually is must necessarily have relatively low expectations of how much we can be improved. So I'm always ready to set myself in opposition to social innovations that are based on the assumption that human nature is pretty much ours to mold as we will. The testimony of tradition on a question such as that of private property carries a lot of weight for me.

And I'm lower-case democratic. Of all broad categories of people, I suppose I most dislike those who hold themselves intrinsically superior to the rest of our race. In another age this might have made me a lower-case republican agitating against the aristocracy. But in our time this overbearing superiority is most broadly visible among intellectuals and those who identify with them: the educated and yet ignorant elite who confuse their own glibness and cleverness with wisdom, and their affluence and taste with merit, combining the worst aspects of both the wealthy aristocrat and the deracinated radical. I don't much care for rich conservatives, but I detest limousine liberals.

My conservatism also includes a patriotism which is love of a specific place and people. I cherish my roots in a family that has been known to stand for truth and justice, and a society which was still partly agricultural. I love the USA, especially what the left-wing music critic Greil Marcus memorably called "the old weird America," and I haven't given up hope on the new crazy America. Love of these things makes me want to reform them, not sweep them away in favor of some revolutionary vision, much less turn them into a damnable Brave New World.

And for those interested in learning more about CeT, check out this retrospective by ISI Books editor Jeremy Beer.

Re: Secret Crunchy-Con Teaching
[Dreher  02/23 06:05 AM]

Ah yes, the 10th Bullet Point of the Manifesto, like the Hidden Imam, has been vouchsafed away until the end of time ... or rather, until you open up the front of the book. If the thought occurs to you, "I wonder if they just plumb ran out of room on the back cover," I would not be one to discourage that.

February 22, 2006

Mitch, Mitch, Mitch
[Frohnen  02/22 08:21 PM]

A friendly disagreement with Mitch, who says that a loss of virtue will necessarily produce destructive social disorder. Yes, and no. Ross's point was that a society that lacks virtue can still "work." And I think that's true. As I recall, T.S. Eliot pointed out that societies need not end merely because they've become horribly corrupt; the result is not necessarily death, it could well be boredom. Now, social and cultural boredom is a terrible, awful thing. It leads to all kinds of bad behavior, unhappiness and degradation of the human spirit. But it can go on for an awfully long time--really, until something else comes along to replace it (usually barbarians with a strong, if primitive, culture). Take that, Mitch.

A Question of the Spirit
[Muncy  02/22 08:06 PM]

I think Rod has asked the question. The renewal of culture, beginning with ourselves, rules out certain things: imprudent use of the media, careerism, etc. But I believe it is mostly a matter of going about our ordinary work, fulfilling the duties of each day, but for the right reason. And this is primarily a matter of the spirit.

Are we doing our professional work well because we want to advance in our career, or because we believe God has led us to a particular job as the best way for us to sanctify ourselves and make disciples of all nations? A version of this question could be asked about housework, or even about spending time with our children. Examining ourselves on such points will lead us to the sacramental view of life that Rod speaks of—and help us not to lose sight of it.

This brings me to something that, I confess, annoyed me about some of the people Rod interviewed. Although Rod wants to show that the CC sensibility is wedded fundamentally to a religious commitment, it seems clear that some of these people have no serious interest in the spiritual life. It is hard for me to take them seriously, because it appears to me that the moral challenge they wish to bring to the rest of us is rootless.

The Fifties
[Dreher  02/22 08:05 PM]

A reader extrapolated from my discussion of 1950s magazine propaganda aimed at telling women that big business knew better for housewives than tradition that crunchy cons must somehow despise the 1950s. Nope. I prefer the Fifties in most every way except for the institutionalized racism. The music certainly was better (I’m thinking of jazz). And except for the civil rights revolution, I have the same general distaste for the 1960s that most conservatives do. I invite readers of the blog to read the book, and not make sweeping generalizations about what we believe. It’s a lot more nuanced than what you might think.

In any case, one thing I’ve always had to keep in the front of my mind when thinking about how things went to hell in the 1960s is this: if things were so great in the 1950s, they wouldn’t have collapsed so swiftly. It’s real easy for us on the right – especially on the Catholic right, seeing what happened to the Church in the 1960s and 1970s – to idealize and romanticize the 1950s. Shouldn’t happen.

The Secret Crunchy Con Teaching
[Muncy  02/22 08:02 PM]

I couldn’t help noticing that on the dust jacket of CCs, there are nine points in the manifesto, while in the book there are--ten. And the tenth, “missing” point, is the only one that says we must create things anew. Is there some kind of radical, esoteric teaching here? Deny it if you can, Rod.

What kind of family does it take?
[Frohnen  02/22 08:01 PM]

Frederica's point about the limited horizons of family concern brings to mind the coming challenge for crunchies: will they care for their parents when they can no longer care for themselves? Will their children care for them when the time comes? Will all those granny-flats in the neotraditional neighborhoods be occupied by grannies, or by game rooms? I'm not at this point yet, myself. My parents remain healthy, thank goodness, and more to the point don't want anything to do with being considered "dependent" on anyone.

It was in part rebellion against the comfortable, individualist, and to be honest sterile and boring (sorry, Mom) suburban culture in which I was raised that I became a trad (my somewhat crunchy term for traditionalist). But my parents have lived better than they thought--caring for their kids as a way of life, not as something they could articulate. We don't have that leftover social capital any longer. Now that we all live in the post-apocalyptic world in which both the consumerism of the 50's and the self-indulgence of the 60's are at the center of popular culture, the real question may be, can we reconstitute a way of life in which both young and old are valued? From conception to natural death, perhaps?

I loved Caleb's quotations, which reminded me of the greatest gift I think Pope John Paul II left to the world--his example of a truly, transcendently good death. We're all going to have a death, of one kind or another. Mainstream society wants us to amuse ourselves until it hits us, suddenly, alone, and in a hospital surrounded by professional "caregivers." Conservatism ought to offer something better--an end of life rooted in a decent life, surrounded by people we actually know, with whom we've built real lives.

The Lesson of the Last Decade
[Muncy  02/22 08:01 PM]

I want to go back to something that Ross said earlier:

The lesson of the last decade or so seems to be that virtue and social order aren't, in fact, as closely linked as many conservatives believed — that you can have a reasonably stable, reasonably safe, extremely prosperous society even with a high illegitimacy rate, permissive divorce laws, a coarse popular culture, a million-plus abortions a year, universally-available pornography, and all the other cultural trends that traditionalist conservatives deplore.

I think Ross is correct about this perception, but it is mistaken. We shouldn’t think that the social disorder such trends cause is any less certain or potent because it proceeds so slowly that we are unable to see it (or feel we can ignore it without looking foolish). The last decade? As I suggested earlier, we’re still experiencing the consequences of late medieval ideas. I can’t recall if Rod says this specifically, but surely one of the main problems of the MSR is that it has become short-sighted.

I Was Not a Teenaged Hippie (In Fact, I Was Not a Teenager)
[Muncy  02/22 08:00 PM]

I had to laugh when I read Rod’s question about doing something “hippie-ish.” If there is a less hippie person on this blog, I don’t know who it is, and, as my father likes to say, the only thing that has changed about me since I was a boy is that I’m now taller.

The first time I read The Federalist, I was struck by Madison’s argument that the majority could be a “faction.” I’m not self-consciously countercultural, except in the superficial sense of noting that much about my way of life is contrary to the general population’s. Much of my conversation with those who find, say, homeschooling odd consists in helping them see that it is their attitude that is “odd,” often on their own terms.

Ignatius Reilly, Crunchy Con?
[Dreher  02/22 07:58 PM]

A certain minx now residing in the Carolinas writes of the hero of the Fifth Gospel:

Sirs:

How dare you drag me into this when I've left my power supply behind at my understated yet tastefully appointed bungalow.

Of course our hero was crunchy in his medieval sensibilities, however, his vision for Saving The World Through Degeneracy was, actually, quite libertarian and indicated a willingness to embrace a futuristic one-world society.

M.Minkoff

Chickens, Light Bulbs, Grandpa, etc.
[Mathewes-Green  02/22 06:11 PM]

Boy, I'm really disappointed that question about vaccinating chickens wasn't a joke. It seemed so promising.

And no light bulb joke has actually made me laugh out loud yet. I'm still waiting. Queen Victoria over here.

OK, Rod, I'll see your "shared sense of ironic distance from consumerist mass culture" and I'll raise you: CCs are conservative (that is, honor tradition) when it comes to sexual mores. There's a negative side to that (anti- promiscuity, divorce, abortion) and a positive side (pro- investing lots of resources and energy in family and hearth). Further, it's probably rooted in faith, since merely asserting conservative sexual values has little sticking power alone.

I'm thinking about how, in this conversation, "family" means "my spouse and kids;" it doesn't mean "my parents and grandparents." The older generation is a little tougher to get your arms around; lots more strain and stress, some due to these very identity and values issues.

How many of us, I wonder, are free-floating particles looking for a way to get grounded? In the hippie days, escaping from the homelife orbit was exhilarating. Now, maybe, things have gone too far; there's too much anonymity, too much facelessness. It's scary to be so free and context-less. Maybe the resistance to mass culture, and the yearning for home, have a shared root. Life is like looking through the tiny window of a space capsule. We're trying to rediscover the forces that held people together, that gave them meaning and identity, and held them to a particular place. We crave the local, specific, and the very trendy "authentic." Everybody craves authenticity, and anything that convincingly delivers it quickly gets a bar code.

A Question of the Spirit
[Stegall  02/22 05:58 PM]

Frederica is right to point out the dangers of an adjective driven conservatism in a society hyper-conscious of image and identity. This is why I think that the appellation “crunchy” (and all the crunchy-isms that go with it) is somewhat unfortunate, distracting from what I think lies at the heart of Rod’s book, which is a call to conservatives to return to their first principles. Which might be best summed up by the truth that man cannot live by bread alone. In short, yes Rod, it is a question of the spirit. Consider these therapeutic lines:

“We believe that laborare est orare—to labor is to pray. In that sense, the farm is our witness. It is a witness against the world. By deliberately choosing this life of hardship and immense satisfaction, we say in effect: The modern world has nothing better than this to give us. Its vision of comfort without effort, pleasure without the pain of creation, life sterilized against even the thought of death, rationalized so that every intrusion of mystery is felt as a betrayal of the mind, life mechanized and standardized—that is not for us. We do not believe that it makes for happiness from day to day. We fear that it means catastrophe in the end.”

-- Whittaker Chambers, Witness

---

“As long as we wake up every morning under a peaceful sun, we have to lead an everyday life. There is a disaster, however, which has already been under way for quite some time. I am referring to the calamity of a despiritualized and irreligious humanistic consciousness. To such consciousness, man is the touchstone in judging and evaluating everything on earth. Imperfect man, who is never free of pride, self-interest, envy, vanity, and dozens of other defects. We are now experiencing the consequences of mistakes which had not been noticed at the beginning of the journey. On the way from the Renaissance to our days we have enriched our experience, but we have lost the concept of a Supreme Complete Entity which used to restrain our passions and our irresponsibility. We have placed too much hope in political and social reforms, only to find out that we were being deprived of our most precious possession: our spiritual life. In the East, it is destroyed by the dealings and machinations of the ruling party. In the West, commercial interests tend to suffocate it. This is the real crisis. The split in the world is less terrible than the similarity of the disease plaguing its main sections. If humanism were right in declaring that man is born to be happy, he would not be born to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth evidently must be of a more spiritual nature. It cannot unrestrained enjoyment of everyday life. It cannot be the search for the best ways to obtain material goods and then cheerfully get the most out of them. It has to be the fulfillment of a permanent, earnest duty so that one's life journey may become an experience of moral growth, so that one may leave life a better human being than one started it. It is imperative to review the table of widespread human values. Its present incorrectness is astounding. It is not possible that assessment of the President's performance be reduced to the question of how much money one makes or of unlimited availability of gasoline. Only voluntary, inspired self-restraint can raise man above the world stream of materialism.”

-- Alexander Solzhenitsyn, from his 1978 Harvard Address

---

“The death of the spirit is the price of progress. . . . The more fervently all human energies are thrown into the great enterprise of salvation through world-immanent action, the farther the human beings who engage in this enterprise move away from the life of the spirit. And since the life of the spirit is the source of order in man and society, the very success of [this] civilization is the cause of its decline.”

-- Eric Voegelin, The New Science of Politics

Les chickens
[Dreher  02/22 05:42 PM]

Shoot, I’d vaccinate ‘em. Then I’d eat ‘em! It’s great to hear from Fred, a French pal who read an early galley and decided that he was in fact a crunchy conservative. Fred and I spent a great evening together in a little neighborhood restaurant in Paris in December, eating a fantastic cassoulet, drinking wine and talking about politics, culture, France, America, you name it. It was the least we could do to repair Franco-American relations. Fred told me that crunchy conservatism is a kind of conservatism that makes a lot of intuitive sense to Europeans. Maybe that’s why Corriere della Sera, Italy’s largest daily, excerpted the book in its weekend magazine the other day.

Re: Light bulb
[Dreher  02/22 05:39 PM]

Here’s a good one:

How many crunchy cons does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Only one, because any more than that would get bogged down in an argument over whether or not it was really better to get all light from the sun.

All of them, together (preferably in family units), because community is more important than efficiency.

Forget that. The real question is: did the light bulb come from Wal-Mart?

(I lean towards some of Jonah’s uncertainties with the crunchy con ethos, but the blog is fantastic, jokeless as it might be. Keep it up! )

Another Question
[Lopez  02/22 05:33 PM]

Will Crunchy Cons be ready to vaccinate their free ranging chickens against H5N1 bird flu the day it hits the US of A? This is not a joke, it's a serious scientific question, really, not a joke!..

Fred Gion
Paris, France

Re: Warren Bell
[Dreher  02/22 05:14 PM]

Anyone with that question must read the book! TV is allowed, if you don’t watch it indiscriminately, and don’t let it take over your family life. This is a sensibility we’re talking about, not an ideology or a religion. But if it were a religion, Ignatius Reilly would be a saint of the sort they call “Holy Fool.” No?

Warren Bell Eats Grass-Fed Steak
[Lopez  02/22 04:47 PM]

He told us here. But does he automatically get disqualified for a "crunchy con" card because he writes for a Hollywood sitcom? "Crunchies" evidently aren't allowed to watch TV, as casual reader may have assumed by now....

Stop what?
[Frohnen  02/22 04:24 PM]

I’m afraid I can’t help with the joke; I am to humor what George Bush is to elocution.

It’s good to see, though, that somebody finally has taken umbrage and anathematized the bloggers, here. Thanks, Todd, especially for calling me “worst of all.” I’m afraid, however, that I’m not “anti-vaccine.” What I said was that I won’t simply have my kids shot up with whatever someone in a white smock wants to use on them. Polio? You bet, let’s vaccinate. But Chicken pox??!!! This is a normal childhood illness not helped, but rather made worse by the vaccine, which wears off by the time the child is old enough to get REALLY sick from the virus. Why vaccinate? The nurse told my wife it would keep her from having to miss work. There’s valuing your children. I could go on, but the point is that too much of the public health bureaucracy is concerned only with mass statistics that ignore risk factors (e.g. Hepatitis-B), treating us all like mindless objects they will make “more healthy” with the nostrum of the moment. I’ll make my own judgments on which nostrums to accept for my kids, thank you very much. “Experts” have made far too many deadly mistakes for me to simply suspend judgment and accept their recommendations on faith, whether in regard to health, the environment, economics, or what a decent, livable town looks like.

LIGHT BULB
[Dreher  02/22 04:15 PM]

NR's Jack Fowler, who is apparently back at his desk after milking the NR free-ranging cow, sends this in:

Q: How many crunchy cons does it take to screw in a light bulb?

Answer: 35. Since crunchy cons probably don't use light bulbs: 1 to light the candle, 1 to make the candle, 1 to hold an already-lit candle so the others can see, plus 1 priest to say a Mass, 1 Altar Boy, plus, since this is in the bedroom, 1 wife giving birth, 3 La Leche League officials, 1 midwife, 1 new child, 5 siblings, and stumbling in from outside, 1 guitar lesson teacher, 1 milk man, 15 neighborhood home schoolers, 1 truant officer, 1 delivery man from local free range farm.

Re: Teenaged Hippie
[Dreher  02/22 04:00 PM]

Frederica sure was, too, and not just in her teenage years. I’ve seen photos on the wall in her house of her and Father Gregory’s 1970s hippie wedding. Barefoot, with flowers in her hair. Craziness!

But you raise a good point, Frederica, one that is not easy to answer. I don’t think that “I’m not a regular conservative, I’m cool” is what this is about, because lots of crunchy cons are fairly dorky (I speak from looking in the mirror), and some of the coolest conservatives I know--I’m thinking Rick Brookhiser at the moment--are very far from crunchy, but are way cool. In short, I don’t think this ultimately has to do with style, at least beyond superficially. You should see the hundreds of e-mails I got from people all over the country who identified as crunchy cons, even though from the sound of it they were quite different in terms of style (and I didn’t detect any “cooler than thou” attitude in these letters).

So you reply: if CC can mean anything, does it mean anything? Yes, I think it does. What unites people who identify with the kind of stuff I (we) write about is, I think, a shared sense of ironic distance from consumerist mass culture--but that’s just a start. Even Peter Kreeft intuited it in this great 1996 First Things essay, in which he discovered much to his surprise that he, as a traditionalist, had more in common with a left-wing radical colleague than with his two Democrat and Republican colleagues. Kreeft writes:

It became obvious to all four of us that there was some sort of a serious spiritual division between "us" and "them": with the radical and the traditionalist on the one side, and the liberal and the conservative on the other. It was more than a set of aesthetic preferences. It soon became clear that it unexpectedly flowed over into social and political issues. Dick and I discovered that we shared a preference for "small is beautiful" populism, a suspicion of bigness whether in government or business, a lack of interest in economics, a dislike of suburbs, a love of nature, and a concern for conserving the environment. (I've never understood why "conservatives" aren't in the front rank of conservationism.) We didn't get into moral and religious issues, but I suspect that even there we would have found a psychological kinship beneath our philosophical differences.

Perhaps the key was a willingness to be passionate about something, however different these things were. Or perhaps it was the preference for the concrete and specific over the abstract and general. (Was that why we both dislike computers and the other two love them?) But whatever it was, and whatever political significance it may have, I think it means at least this: that beneath the current political left-right alignments there are fault lines embedded in the crust of human nature that will inevitably open up some day and produce earthquakes that will change the current map of the political landscape.

Even Kreeft wasn’t sure what it was. But he knew it was something. I get that. What do the rest of you think? Is it, in the end, a question of the spirit?

Anyway, I know this is something real, however difficult to define, because I keep getting letters like this one, which came to me just now from a stay-at-home mom in small-town Texas, who read about the book on the CBN website (CBN’s Paul Strand, a great guy, did a fine report on it for yesterday’s 700 Club):

I can't tell you how much I greatly appreciate you bringing this culture to light. I literally sat on my couch in tears as I read the CBN article because you can't imagine the hateful and horrible remarks that I have had to put up with from friends and family over the past two years for giving up the race to be a stay at home mom with my baby and for being one that has developed the same crunchy con views. It has been a tough battle and my husband and I sometimes feel like we're in it alone. Thank you so much for letting me know that I'm not the only one that thinks it is all worth it. I realize it isn't for everyone, but just thanks for the validation.

Unintended Bad Consequences
[Muncy  02/22 03:40 PM]

One of Rod’s themes is the unwelcome consequences of decisions that seemed reasonable at the time, but were made in haste. This blog has been up for little more than a day, and I’ve already received a book proposal because of my participation. Believe it or not, we publishers spend a good bit of our time evading authors. This is what I get for making decisions after two pints of Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale.

AND FROM ON HIGH
[Dreher  02/22 03:28 PM]

…comes an e-mail from a certain Earth Mother Republican who lives in my house, who has just been reading this blog and fairly well screams: “Somebody friggin' tell a joke!”

Q: Umm…how many crunchy cons does it take to screw in a light bulb?

(Send us your answers, but only if they’re funny.)

I Was a Teenaged Hippie
[Mathewes-Green  02/22 03:11 PM]

I confess, it's true. Yes, I am old. But in the early 70's, when I was in college, I was a thoroughgoing mother-earth hippie and the first women's libber in my dorm.

But before that, strangely enough, I grew up in a big old house in the historic district of a grand old southern town. Since many of the adults I knew were status-conscious and comfortably racist, I developed an allergic reaction to privilege. When I became a Christian, Jesus' teachings on humility and love of enemies gave grounding to the more benign of my hippie values. It felt liberating to leave the fancypants world behind and live on a shoestring, and learn how to make things, and do for myself, and try to live with everyone in peace and harmonee.

So, Caleb, the idea of "never going anywhere without your driver and your butler"! Of "action and adventure" and a rather class-conscious black cape--and wielding a sword cane (which, as far as I can tell, is designed to poke a hole in somebody). Horrors! Not at all my definition of Crunch.

See, that's why the "Crunchy Con" identity is so elusive. It can just seem to mean "I'm not your usual Conservative."

I remember when Rod was first collecting responses to his column, and could get in the same batch of emails an evangelical pacifist mom in Alabama, and a pro-war Log Cabin Republican, and both would exclaim, "I'm Crunchy!"

So that's why a first question to examine is this one of identity. Or should we say image? I still suspect that a lot of this is about the rankling feeling that the culture labels us either Red or Blue, where the subtext of Blue is "hip, cool, sophisticated" and that of Red is "crude, hateful, dumb." So is an underlying meaning of Crunchy Con, "I'm not your usual dorky Conservative. I'm different. I'm cool"?

Who Were the Hippies?
[Stegall  02/22 03:09 PM]

Following up on the discussion about “hippie culture,” and especially Ross’s comment that hippies were asking the right questions but getting the wrong answer, a reader emails:

Hippies was not a name we took for ourselves. We preferred to be thought of as countercultural (particularly in relation to the superficial hypocritical culture of the 50s). Hippies I knew had very little interest in recycling, Birkenstocks, eating vegetables, etc. etc. They had a driving concern about two major things—the war in Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement. These were the causes from which they drew their energy. It was the government (and it's alliance with big business) and the military that were the most suspect of all. But in the end, of course, there was no willingness to really sacrifice for what they said they believed in—witness "Ohio"—four dead in Ohio and now we are really on our own. This was the beginning of the end. It was shortly after this that the war in Vietnam began to wind down and at the same time it really became questionable if the "radicals" had the commitment to lay down their lives, now that they were really on their own. It was shortly after this that the "movement" began to degenerate into all the things you described as "hippie." It began an era I used to describe as the 50s with a vengeance.

Re: Stop!
[Dreher  02/22 03:08 PM]

A reader writes:

Apart from Seavey's eminently contestible (and limited) facts about food, farming, and vaccines, all of the possibly "crunchy" choices about them that he abhors are longstanding options due to lack of nanny state regulation and the free market itself, which Seavey claims to value. No one has been saying conservatives or crunchies or whomever must buy organic, support small farms, and avoid some or all vaccines. (Quite to the contrary.) But the implication of Seavey's rant is that these options should be prohibited by either some abstract fidelity to "science" or else "science" attached to the coercive power of the state.

Re: Stop!
[Dreher  02/22 03:05 PM]

OK, let’s unpack this. I’m pro-vaccination, so I’ll let Bruce handle that point on his own. But let me speak to some of Todd’s other remarks. I’ll shorten my quotes of his points in the interest of saving space:

(1) It should not surprise me that the quasi-hippie crunchies are in love with organic food, but it might be worth noting (as we often do at ACSH.org and HealthFactsAndFears.com) that there is no evidence that organic food tends to be healthier than conventional food

As I write in the book, Julie and I opted for organic vegetables from the co-op when we lived in Brooklyn not because we believe the health claims made for organic produce, but because they tasted so much better (probably the result of having been picked fresher than supermarket produce) and because we liked the idea that our consumer dollar was going to support farm families living in rural New York state. We don’t make a priority of eating organic produce today, but we do eat organic meat, in part because of moral issues (against factory farming of livestock), in part because we want to support local farm families, and in part because we trust the meat to be clean.

(2) Similarly, the idea that "sustainable," old-fashioned farming is somehow more "responsible" is nonsense--industrial agriculture may seem less "pretty" to hippies, but its radically increased efficiency means it has a smaller environmental footprint for the amount of food produced--and feeds a helluva lot more people--than the "sustainable" methods that kept humanity on the brink of starvation for most of the past 10,000 years.

Todd won’t find in my book a call to abandon agribusiness wholesale, because I am not convinced that that would be possible, or desirable, and for the reasons he cites. That said, I see nothing wrong and a lot right with those who are financially able buying their meat, dairy and produce from local farmers and farm families, to help build up the local agricultural economy and social bonds between town and country. I am not called to live the agrarian life, but some folks are, and I honor that for a whole host of reasons, and want to support it more than sentimentally. I do not think Archer Daniels Midland is in danger of being overtaken by small family farms.

(4) Of course the "local farmers" resent big-time industrial agriculture--nobody likes competition, whether they're lazy union members or inefficient old-fashioned farmers (picturesque farmers can be selfish, too, you know). That's why, thank goodness, we have a market and most people feel free to shop where they please for the lowest prices and best value instead of trying to prove their allegiance to the Old World or the ghost of Joseph de Maistre.

Some local farmers resent big-time industrial agriculture because the game is rigged via government regulators to keep the little guy out. I wrote about this in NRODT back in 2003. Anyway, all I do in Crunchy Cons is propose that people consider that lower prices don’t always offer the best value, and consider choosing to spend their money elsewhere, to support the work (and the children) of the Hale family of Windy Meadows Farm, in Greenville, Texas, Christian conservatives who raise absolutely the best chickens I have ever eaten. Rather have my money go directly to them than to big chicken producers, many of whom employ illegal aliens to keep the prices low … for taxpayers who have to pay more to educate the children of these illegal workers, and treat these people in the public hospitals. That’s the hidden cost of cheap chicken.

(5) What seems virtue-promotingly quaint in this world--especially in this admirably high-tech and progressive nation--is often just yesterday's innovation. ... A serious conservative movement ought to value the accomplishments and gains of the past, science and global capitalism chief among them, not just the past for its own sake or its imagined greater wholesomeness.

If Todd should pick up a copy of the book, he might not be so alarmed. Eric Brende, a Missouri writer I interview in the book, lived with his wife as an experiment on a Mennonite farm for a year, without technology at all. Eric’s not against technology, but he does say that we shouldn’t accept it uncritically, that we should consider whether using this or that technological innovation serves your ultimate values, or not. I, for example, look forward to the day when I can work fulltime from home via broadband, so I can be more available to my wife and kids. Crunchy conservatism, at least as I think of it, is not a Luddite thing, but it merely encourages us to be more thoughtful about the lives we lead--and that includes technological innovation, not all of which is an advancement.

Re: Stop!
[Stegall  02/22 02:48 PM]

Seavey at least has the virtue of making clear distinctions. As between religion, tradition, and conservatism on the one hand, and science, capitalism, and progress on the other, he leaves no doubt as to where he stands. The question is whether his central premise is right: Have science and capitalism created more human happiness and well-being than any other force in history? The conservative answer to that question is, I think, a firmly established and pretty unequivocal “No.” So yes, let’s be clear. Todd Seavey is not a conservative. He’s a progressive materialist.

Stop!
[Lopez  02/22 01:44 PM]

Todd Seavey from the American Council on Science and Health e-mails:

Dear Kathryn,

I don't know if you'll even have time to read this note, but this
crunchy eruption is beginning to seem like a nightmare to me, not least
because the "sensibility" underlying it all is founded on lots of false
assumptions -- false assumptions of exactly the sort that people never
check if they prefer intuition and aesthetics to empirical fact.

(1) It should not surprise me that the quasi-hippie crunchies are in
love with organic food, but it might be worth noting (as we often do at
ACSH.org and HealthFactsAndFears.com) that there is no evidence that
organic food tends to be healthier than conventional food -- and
indeed, since organic agriculture avoids many chemical fertilizers, it
is actually _more_ likely that one will get a sick-making microbe from
organic food (much the same could be said of hippie-beloved bottled
water vs. chemically purified and fluoride-fortified tap water).

(2) Similarly, the idea that "sustainable," old-fashioned farming is
somehow more "responsible" is nonsense -- industrial agriculture may
seem less "pretty" to hippies, but its radically increased efficiency
means it has a _smaller_ environmental footprint for the amount of food
produced -- and feeds a helluva lot more people -- than the
"sustainable" methods that kept humanity on the brink of starvation for
most of the past 10,000 years.

(3) Worst of all, one commentator on the Crunchy blog has -- not
surprisingly -- come out against vaccines, a position that is common
among these folk (I'm friends with one man interviewed in Rod's book
who now has six unvaccinated kids) and that is based on nothing more
than conspiracy theories and alternative-medicine scaremongering, of a
sort that is leading to lower vaccination rates and thus renewed
outbreaks of whooping cough and polio in a world where (thanks to
modern technology, people!) those things could/should easily be a thing
of the past. People who claim to care about the children should not be
discouraging vaccinations.

(4) _Of course_ the "local farmers" resent big-time industrial
agriculture -- nobody likes competition, whether they're lazy union
members or inefficient old-fashioned farmers (picturesque farmers can
be selfish, too, you know). That's why, thank goodness, we have a
market and most people feel free to shop where they please for the
lowest prices and best value instead of trying to prove their
allegiance to the Old World or the ghost of Joseph de Maistre.

(5) What seems virtue-promotingly quaint in this world -- especially in
this admirably high-tech and progressive nation -- is often just
yesterday's innovation. Have you just purchased a 120-year-old home
out of a desire to be traditional and crunchy? Well, if the stairs
have metal in them instead of rotting, rickety wood, you're walking on
something that was considered a major innovation in the go-go late
1800s, and something that probably saved more than a few precious tots
from bad, family-values-unfriendly tumbles. If virtue is such a good
thing, I think it should be adaptable to shopping malls and
centrally-heated homes, not just Farmer Joe's egg stand and an Amish
hearth.

A serious conservative movement ought to value the _accomplishments and
gains_ of the past, science and global capitalism chief among them, not
just the past for its own sake or its imagined greater wholesomeness.

Indeed, the crunchy eruption is sufficiently alarming and irrational
that I think it ought to call into question not just the value of
crunchiness but the worthiness of _conservatism as a whole_. Put in
perspective, nothing has created more human happiness and well-being --
and allowed more counterculturalists to indulge their agrarian
fantasies -- than industrial capitalism, and if all it takes is an
appeal to religion or tradition for some conservatives to forget that,
I say perhaps it's time to jettison the whole _mainstream conservative_
sensibility, with its overconfidence in the power of tradition and
religion to keep society going, and start far more explicitly defending
instead the capitalism and science that the ingrate crunchies so
eagerly assault.

Yours,

Todd Seavey

Re: My Crunchy Childhood
[Dreher  02/22 12:32 PM]

As for me, I grew up with total and complete disdain for hippie culture. My dad was a state health inspector, and was called in to help police the “Festival of Life” in 1971, a Woodstock Nation concert in rural Louisiana that attracted 60,000 hippies. Daddy had to condemn an entire truckload of food that had spoiled, and that unscrupulous promoters were still planning to sell to the hippies. He had to get armed state police guards to keep the mob from beating him--the promoters told them that, yes, “the Man” was trying to take their food. In fact, he was trying to keep the idiots from being poisoned. Anyway, Daddy took slide images of the festival, which was about what you’d expect--mud, nakedness, horrible sunburns (I was only four at the time, and I well remember how shaken up my dad was over how badly sunburned these drugged-out hippie moms and dads were allowing their toddlers to get). For my family, hippiedom was about as bad as it got.

But: one thing that didn’t occur to me until many years later was how the “straight” culture in which I grew up had its own problems, though certainly of a much different order. For example, it was hard for me to figure out why my mom never was much for cooking, and why she tended to think that food out of a can or from a restaurant was somehow cleaner and better than food made at home (even though we had our own garden, and for a short while raised chickens). I thought it was just her, but then I came to discover as an adult that many of my friends had the same experience with their moms. Julie, my wife, somehow came across a trove of women’s magazine articles from the 1950s, when our moms grew up, and the propaganda the food industry hit postwar homemakers with was simply incredible. Stories and advertisements taught a whole generation of women to distrust cooking at home, and to have faith in giant food processing companies. Suddenly, things started to make a lot more sense to me. The perfectly good food, and food traditions, of my rural hometown were diminished and devalued. We’ll get more into this in future weeks, when we talk about the Food chapter, but I have to laugh nowadays when I go to a natural-foods store or the farmer’s market to buy meat, and think about how when I was a kid and they opened a healthfood store in my hometown, I was terrified to go in there because I thought the hippies who ran it were lacing everything with angel dust.

Count Your Amazon Blessings, Boy
[Lopez  02/22 11:52 AM]

Rod, I have two words for you: Kate O'Beirne.

Crunchy Choices
[Welborn  02/22 11:51 AM]

As to Rod's question about choices I've made that might strike some conservatives as "hippie-ish"...

Well, about seven years ago, I got my naval pierced.
Would that count?

Er...probably not, since it's not particularly "Crunchy" and didn't emerge from any conservative principles, I don't think. But if you give me a few minutes, I can probably think of one.

How about this: I just returned from registering my daughter at the local public high school for next year, rather than the Catholic high school or the chi-chi secular private school. Why? Because it's got an excellent core academic program (my son graduated from there with almost 40 college credits and started college as a sophomore), but also--wait for it--I appreciate its diversity.

There! I said it!

But the fact is, when I see the student body of the Catholic high school, I see a 95% caucasian student body. The public high school is actually one of the more diverse in the nation, filled, not only with African-American students, but Latinos from a number of different countries and Asians--our town has one of the largest concentration of Burmese immigrants in the country, and most of them live in our section of town.

And I like that, it's factored into the decision, and I do think it stems from what I might, if you forced me, call "conservative," primarily religious principles--the same principles that animate a great deal of the joy I find in being a part of the Catholic faith, in its universality.

Now, the decision is made easier by the fact that the "diverse" setting frames an academic program that will challenge my daughter. I'll be honest about that, and about my prioritizing that--if the situation were reversed and the Catholic school were stronger, which would trump? Probably the academics, true. But I can safely say that in this situation the "diversity" adds to the plus side for me.

Is that wrong?

Amazon reviews
[Dreher  02/22 11:38 AM]

Allow me to be petty for a second. There are a couple of reviews up on Amazon.com from readers who take a very dim view of Crunchy Cons. Fair enough--except neither of these readers gives the slightest indication that they’ve read the book. One is a “progressive” who says that CC “seems” to be a sign that conservatism is on its way out, and that the world is moving toward the righteousness of liberalism. Well, that’s one opinion, but shouldn’t it be built on an actual reading of the book, which this reviewer doesn’t seem to have done? The other nasty review is from an curious Catholic crank who doesn’t appear to have read the book, but who condemns it largely on the basis of his personal disregard for me., going back to my three-year-old criticism of the Catholic hierarchy on the Iraq war. I certainly wouldn’t want to discourage anyone from posting negative reactions to my book. But it is irritating that some people use what could be a useful tool for readers genuinely interested in learning about a book, both in its positive and negative aspects, to beat their own personal hobbyhorses.

Re: My Crunchy Childhood
[Dreher  02/22 11:33 AM]

Ross, your background sounds a lot like that of Maclin Horton, a Baby-Boomer Catholic I feature in the book’s Religion chapter. Mac was a countercultural rebel in the 1960s, and is now a conservative Catholic. He says he never stopped protesting against the fakeness of mass-cult, etc., but he finally realized that the countercultural left offered no solutions, only hedonistic and nihilistic dead ends.

Three years ago, I was riding along the Pacific Coast highway with a couple of conservative friends from San Jose. We stopped to admire a stand of trees. My pal Irene said, “I’m afraid we owe those trees’ survival to the lefties.” One more quote comes to mind: my pal Julianne Loesch Wiley, who said that she went from the countercultural Left to the countercultural Right without ever once trusting the government.

My Crunchy Childhood
[Douthat  02/22 11:12 AM]

To answer Rod's question, I've rarely found myself taking up something "hippie-ish . . . not in spite of my conservatism, but because of it," but that's because my childhood was as crunchy as you can possibly get. My mother has multiple chemical sensitivities - read: allergies to everything from "new car smell" to the perfume in most laundry soaps - and so while we were always Christians and never particularly New Age, we dove deep into the world of home births and tofu and public breastfeeding and recycled, earth-friendly products long before any of us even considered voting Republican. For a long time we were the only Christians hanging out at the health food restaurant; now I'm the only guy at the conservative dinner party who knows much about homeopathy.

What all of this meant was that I, like Caleb, cultivated a strong dislike for hippie culture as a kid: I wanted swords and capes and hierarchies too, in part as a way of rebelling against health-food diets and the lame New Age crap that swirled around them. But looking back (from the wizened vantage point of my mid-20s), I think that it's important to recognize that however banal and preening the hippies ended up becoming, their instincts were often closer to traditional conservatism than, say, those of certain D.C. lobbyists in bespoke suits. The hippies weren't rebelling against Allan Quatermain and Rudyard Kipling, remember - they were rebelling against the consumerism and conformity of 1950s upper-middle-class America, whose superficial conservatism, I think, masked a very real spiritual aridity. In their craving for religious experience and "authenticity," the affinity for the natural world, their suspicion of technology and greed, the hippies were asking the right questions - even if the answers they came up with were horribly wrong.

Seeking Coherence in a Chaotic World
[Frohnen  02/22 10:17 AM]

I have a lot of sympathy for Caleb’s view. But I think it shows just how diverse conservative counter-culturalism really is. I don’t like Teddy Roosevelt, recycle only the few things my limited reading convinces me should be and actually are recycled (as opposed to just taking a longer route to the landfill) and send my kids to a (Catholic) school rather than homeschooling. I wouldn’t even call myself “crunchy,” though I have many friends who are. But I live in a neotraditional neighborhood, eat organic when I can, and, to address Rod’s question, made a “hippie-ish” counter-culture move when the doctors tried to bully me and my wife into getting our first-born every vaccination in the book. We rebelled because all are painful, some are silly (Chicken pox? Just get it over with!), several rely on abortion, and some may even be dangerous (Hepatitis-B). Unlike our crunchier friends, we did let them give our kids some of the shots, but only some.

This is too “eclectic” a set of choices for me to condemn everybody else’s. Rather, to me it shows how each of us, as families, mostly, is being put back on our own resources in trying to make a sensible life in a culture that no longer makes sense. Which may simply raise a question: Is there such a thing as a coherent, “crunchy” lifestyle?

Re: Connections
[Stegall  02/22 09:31 AM]

To be honest, I’m a lot closer to Amy than to Rod on this. Perhaps it has something to do with growing up in rural/small-town America where there still existed a fading conservative sensibility that reflected, in an almost completely unarticulated and unselfconscious way, the Kirkean values Rod writes about. I have never experienced what Rod describes as taking up something “hippie-ish … not in spite of your conservatism, but because of it.”

I grew up despising hippie culture. I found, and still find, virtually all of the Boomer cultural affectations to be utterly false and preening; I find the nihilism of their intellectual and popular leaders to be entirely banal and unromantic; their radical egalitarianism was, I thought, an emasculation of all the good things in life. Rather than donning Birks and tie-dye t-shirts, I dreamed about sword-canes and black capes. My image of a conservative hero came from men like Theodore Roosevelt, Andre Malraux, T.E. Lawrence, and Antoine de Saint-Exupery. Men of action and adventure yet also of refined taste and intellect. Men who wore black, fought for the old world, were on intimate terms with both life and death, and who never went anywhere without their driver or their butler. The image is about as far as one can get from John Lennon.

I came to understand, later, that while the romantic age of Malraux and Saint-Exupery was gone (if it had ever truly existed), there was a certain quiet romanticism still to be had in living a life closely rooted to the ground, learning to love the limits of one’s existence; to suffer one’s place and one’s people in service of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. This is the true basis for finding love, friendship, and a meaningful--or decent, as Bruce put it--life: master one’s passions, deny oneself, and love others.

It was this quiet romance that I found, on reflection, in the small-town folks and traditional religious community I grew up with and in which formed a spiritual order--both personal and social--nourished on a veneration of children, work, craft, a sense of honor in commitments, and a common responsibility. Then I found the same thing in the writing and lives of people like Russell Kirk and Wendell Berry.

It was not until later, when I moved into the wider world of business, high-stakes law, and Evangelicalism, that I discovered that all conservatives were not like this. That instead, there existed a kind of upwardly mobile coldblooded rationalizing self-serving conservative mind that struck me, still strikes me, as sterile and not quite human.

WASHINGTON TIMES ON “CRUNCHY”
[Dreher  02/22 08:50 AM]

My old newspaper the Washington Times features today a Robert Stacy McCain interview with yours truly, about Crunchy Cons. Excerpt:

Q: "Crunchy Cons" is very critical of consumerism, individualism and free-market economics. Isn't it possible to have economic freedom without the kind of ostentatious, brand-conscious tackiness that has come to characterize the American consumer lifestyle?

A: Sure it is, but it requires a level of vigilance and thoughtfulness that's hard to pull off consistently. I interviewed a Presbyterian wife and mother who at the time was living with her family in Midland, Texas. ... She told me that it was jarring to her that they lived in the most Christian and Republican place they'd ever been in, and yet she couldn't see how political and religious conservatism made much difference in their everyday lives. They were still buying their kids all the video games, the expensive sneakers and the stuff that everybody else's kids had. ...

The answer is not to pass laws forbidding ostentation, of course, but for us as free individuals and families to choose to limit ourselves, to be sensible about our spending and our consumption, and not let it take over our lives.

RE: CONNECTIONS
[Dreher  02/22 08:47 AM]

While we await the august panel’s rising from its slumber--I, who went to bed at midnight and got up at four to drive to a suburb for a CNBC segment, am envious--here’s an e-mail from a reader:

You asked for things that we did that..."would strike some conservatives as unusual, possibly even hippie-ish, that you took up not in spite of your conservatism, but because of it?"

1. recycling
2. mending clothes
3. composting
4. shopping the thrift store
5. using cloth diapers and using them for rags after the last baby has finished using them
6. canning our home grown tomatoes and the wind-blown apples from the tree at my husband's office
7. buying slightly more expensive gas at the locally owned stations in large part because they do not sell pornography
8. not allowing my children to eat at the school cafeteria and packing a lunch instead

The first six items are familiar to anyone who was raised by true conservatives, who have as a prime guiding principle in life, "We Don't Waste Things."

Connections
[Dreher  02/22 06:33 AM]

In the first chapter of "Crunchy Cons," I write about how Julie and I discovered that certain things we did or believed in that seemed unorthodox, perhaps, from a mainstream conservative perspective in fact flowed naturally from our conservative beliefs. I use as an example our changing our eating habits to take in better food, which came initially from our having to monitor Julie's body temperature closely, which came from using Natural Family Planning (the non-chemical, Church-approved way of fertility regulation), which came from our being conservative/orthodox Roman Catholics committed to obeying Church teaching. I might also have said that co-sleeping with and nursing Baby Matthew in public were part of this, as a commitment to doing what we believed were putting his needs first. Can y'all come up with things like this from your own lives: behaviors that would strike some con servatives as unusual, possibly even hippie-ish, that you took up not in spite of your conservatism, but because of it?

February 21, 2006

Re: Creative Destruction
[Stegall  02/21 10:40 PM]

Remember the old Polish adage: “Under capitalism man exploits man, under socialism the reverse is true.”

I’m glad Bruce brought up Schumpeter, for it is he, rather than Schumacher, who ought to be the patron economist of crunchy conservatism. Not only did Schumpeter argue that capitalism undermined the very social institutions which gave it birth and guarded its existence, leading to socialism, he pointed out that universal rationalization through cost accounting exposed more natural ordering structures—the classically understood “ties that bind”—to a brutal new calculus in which they did not perform well at all. Commitment to kin, community, and place entail making heavy economic sacrifices and provide benefits not easily entered on a balance sheet. For Schumpeter, the key piece of evidence for his theory was declining birth rates in industrialized nations. As a result, he argued, we have created a new species of “homo economicus” which has lost “the only sort of romance and heroism that is left”—the romance and heroism of “working for the future irrespective of whether or not one is going to harvest the crop oneself.”

This, I think, illustrates the primary obstacle traditional conservatism has to overcome, but also its chief draw to an alienated and drifting culture. It requires giving up much that we think we need, but in the process it offers a recovery of that noble “end” (referred to by Mitch) towards which the soul of man yearns.

Jonah's Finger and Homer's Wisdom
[Stegall  02/21 09:43 PM]

On the former, I’m not pulling it.

And Bruce’s defense of theorizing reminds me of this Homerism: “Marge, I agree with you, in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory."

re: It's Only Day One
[Dreher  02/21 08:36 PM]

Yay! Controversy! I ought to be having dinner now, but Kathryn Lopez, I just cain’t quit you. Regarding Abramoff and the GOP culture of spending, I don’t think it’s persuasive to look to those fruits of the conservative movement that we don’t like and pretend that they’re not in some sense our responsibility. Does Jack Abramoff and the spendthrift Congress amount to the sum total of conservatism? Of course not, and I think NR, among others, has been exemplary in calling Republicans back to conservative principle regarding reform and spending restraints. But whether we like it or not, the fiscally irresponsible Republican Congress (and Jack Abramoff) represent the worst of our movement, and in fact a betrayal of some pretty important principles. And that’s the face we represent to many who might be sympathetic to what conservatism has to offer. All I’m saying is that if we as a movement were sufficiently concerned with what we ought to be about, instead of the perks of power, we wouldn’t have this fiscal mess, and Abramoff wouldn’t have become such a power broker. NR is on the right side of these issues. Bully for NR! But NR isn’t the whole of the conservative movement either. Conservatives brought the GOP to power. For better and for worse, they are our responsibility.

Anyway, after all this heaviosity today, I really long for Jonah to come in here and make a Simpsons reference, or to ask Caleb to pull his finger. Something!

Rod's Publisher Must Be Patting Him on the Back! Using Abramoff to Sell Books--And It's Only Day One!
[Lopez  02/21 07:56 PM]

Allow me be to be difficult.

Rod writes: "Modern conservatism is not focused too much on money and power? Jack Abramoff, hello? A president and a Congress that spend out the wazoo to stay in power (and a political culture that lets them get away with it)?"

My superficial objection to this whole Crunchy Con thing has always been the false assumptions it seems to perpetuate: That the Right is some caricature that those who don't know it assume it is. (Hey, I'm Republican but have never been to a country club! Really!!! I exist! In real life!) Here Rod seems to be doing it again. NR, for instance, has been far from excusing Congress in this Abramoff environment. To the contrary, we recommended a Barney Frank reform bill for Pete's sake. Folks like the Republican Study Committee guys in Congress are conservatives there and not for spending out the wazoo.

I like the CC project inasmuch as things that get folks thinking about First Principles and all the rest are good, but be careful about broad-brush damnations and characterizations while you're making you're granola.

What's the Big Deal?
[Welborn  02/21 07:53 PM]

When I read Crunchy Cons, I found myself frequently wondering, “Who’s he arguing with? Who disagrees with this?” Rod’s description of a life in which a priority is given to forming character, seeking meaning and living, for lack of a better word, humbly, didn’t strike me as terrifically radical. I welcomed the book, but I, not being versed in the ins and outs of conservative political philosophy, couldn’t see why it was controversial.

I expect I will in coming weeks, as echoes of the original discussions on NRO will undoubtedly resound here, but I do think that my sense that it isn’t bizarre to be a “conservative” who also eats organics, doesn’t want to have their land backed up by a factory farm and its by-products, homeschools and prefers crafted to manufactured is impacted by my long-term red-state residency in the Midwest and the South and absolutely no interaction with policy wonks, professional ideologues or political operatives, except through the “pages” of spots like this.

I lived in Florida for years--Florida where everyone, no matter what party, has mixed feelings about development, wants to preserve the water table, such as it is at this point, the wetlands, the Everglades and the beaches, and where everyone wonders if the newest stucco-plastered development is really the best thing.

Now I live in Indiana, where new Wal-Marts are often greeted with the same skepticism as they are in California, where small farmers are not wild about factory farming, to say the least, where the Amish thrive as they meet the demand for produce that actually tastes like something.

I’ve given birth assisted by midwives, nursed my babies, known tons of homeschooling parents (I’m not one, unless you count muttering, “Yeah, that’ll teach you” as “homeschooling.”), and many of the people I’ve known through those channels don’t see those choices as particularly compatible or incompatible with any political movement. My last two babysitters have been organic fanatics who would be surprised to learn that because of that, they must be political liberals.

In this part of the country, in my part of town in particular, buying old houses and fixing them up isn’t a bohemian luxury--it’s the most affordable housing in town, and ripping up shag carpet, shining up those hardwood floors and treasuring your crown molding is just what people do.

So part of me has a hard time seeing what the big deal is--partly because I’ve never experienced the choices that Rod describes as particularly characteristic of liberals, not in my house or in the lives of my acquaintances, and partly, I suppose, because…I agree with him.

Shopping for Virtue
[Frohnen  02/21 07:44 PM]

I enjoyed Frederica's post, and certainly agree that there is a danger to over-intellectualizing virtue. However, I would point out that what attracts an old-style traditionalist like me to Crunchy Cons is its overt reliance on the thought and sensibility of Russell Kirk, among others. And Kirk sought to articulate just about everything. Moreover, we have an even greater need to articulate what it is we wish to conserve because the tap-root of our culture--the Western, Judeo-Christian tradition--is being undermined to the point of destruction. We need, I think, to think, write, and talk about where virtue comes from, and toward what it must be oriented, lest we choose to serve yet more false gods.

Which brings me to Rod's point on how to afford "crunchiness." We would make a mistake, I think, in simply trying to lead a different, politically correct, consumerism, and call that virtue. I'm guilty of this myself to a certain extent--I won't shop at Whole Foods because of the multiple piercings and official left-wing activism, for example, but am not sure that isn't simply self-indulgent. My family is countercultural precisely because we don't fit the usual categories, which means we, like a lot of people, have to piece together our lives from the materials at-hand. Some of it is easy--in our area (Ann Arbor) there are produce markets that are cheap, good, and relatively convenient, and the local grocers sell food cheaper, on sale, than the chains. This takes some time, but we've chosen to be a one-income family, so my wife bears the brunt of the work, with grace. But we still go to Costco on occasion and have other faults besides. You do the best you can with the resources (including time and energy as well as money) that you have. The most important question, I think, isn't where you shop (though that isn't irrelevant) but whether you are working on leading a decent life in your profession, in your church, and in the way you raise your kids. I'm struggling on all counts, but am doing what I can. In my case the big decisions were about the job and about where we live--a "cottage home" in a neotraditional neighborhood where my kids actually know their neighbors, and so, to a decent extent, do my wife and I. In discussing Crunchy Cons, I hope we will discuss how people put together decent lives, in where they live, how they educate their kids, and so on. I think that is, in an important sense, what the book is about.

Re: Suspicious Minds
[Dreher  02/21 07:36 PM]

Let me get to Mr. McKinney’s questions. Some of the complaints seem picayune (which might simply be my way of saying: I gotta get home to dinner), so I’ll focus on the main ones:

+ Yes, our family shops at Wal-Mart. It’s not our first choice, but sometimes you need to go there; no need to feel guilty about that. When we can, though, we patronize the mom and pop shop, as a matter of principle.

+ Modern conservatism is not focused too much on money and power? Jack Abramoff, hello? A president and a Congress that spend out the wazoo to stay in power (and a political culture that lets them get away with it)?

+ You can’t easily separate culture from politics and economics, of course, but in the end, the culture of any given society has more to do with whether that society will survive, and/or be a good society, than its political system or economic arrangement. As we are now learning in Iraq. John Adams, in 1798, wrote: “We have no government armed with the power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

+ “Beauty is more important than efficiency.” That’s vague, but again, arbitrary. Pencil factories are ugly as hell, but very efficient. Without them, we would have to pay much higher prices for beautiful handmade ones. Yes, and you can worship God under a tent on the edge of the garbage dump, and he’ll hear your prayers just as sure as he’d hear the prayers of someone sending them up from Chartres cathedral. But wouldn’t you really rather be in Chartres cathedral?

+ How do you know our culture is media-driven? That’s an old chestnut of the left. What’s it doing here? Have you considered that cause and effect are reversed? Maybe those who are culturally, and/or spiritually, dead prefer pop culture. Research hasn’t shown much impact on culture from media; media tends to reflect, not cause, culture. Anyway, what would you do about it? Do you want to repeal the first amendment?

Good grief! Of course the culture is media-driven – that point is so obvious it hardly seems worth commenting on, but if you have any research to the contrary, send it on. If you read the book, you’ll see that all I say is that people should voluntarily limit their consumption of pop culture. I don’t see what the freak-out is for.

+ I would love to rebuild an old house in an established neighborhood, but I can’t afford it; I have two kids in college. I suspect that only wealthy cons can become Crunchy. Yeah, that’s me, living on a newspaperman’s salary, sitting inside my posh pleasure palace, lighting cigars with $100 bills and ordering Little Lord Fauntleroy pants for the boys from Neimanmarcus.com. Actually, the house we bought was pretty cheap, because 10 years ago this neighborhood was filled with drug dealers. Our house is not much bigger than some people’s garages. And we love it because small as it is, it’s beautiful, and it’s close to work so I don’t face a long commute when I’m late getting home at night. Come on, Mr. McKinney, read the book. Wal-Mart sells it.

+ If you want to encourage people to adopt your lifestyle, fine. But if you want to use the power of the government, i.e., the gun, to force people to be like you, that’s scary, and not very Christian or conservative. I only propose, I do not seek to impose. Again, read the book. You’ll see.

Shopping!
[Mathewes-Green  02/21 07:32 PM]

A short footnote (and guys, we need to start keeping these short, as Our Dear KLo instructed us), on the apparent problem of needing $$ to lead a Crunchy life: My suggestion is to search out and buy whatever you can secondhand. It really solves two problems at once--maybe three. First, since there's such a cultural premium on newness rather than quality, you get a steep discount merely for buying something that's not wrapped in plastic. Second, you get a corresponding rise in value; goods are cheaper than at Walmart, yet often nicer in quality. And third, in many cases, your purchase helps a charity (eg, buying furniture at a thrift shop).

When our kids were young, we were poor. The audience shouts: How Poor? Couldn't afford bottled milk, so the kids grew up on powdered. The budget for a weekly playdate at McDonald's was one dollar. I washed and saved ziploc bags. That kind of poor. My husband is a pastor, and back then I was a home-mom, not yet earning a per-movie-review salary in the high two figures.

So I started out shopping at K Mart, but then changed to making a scan of the thrift shop shelves first. It was a habit that stuck. We really began to enjoy living with eclectic old stuff. The kids couldn't damage it; if they did, no big loss. I enjoyed learning how to mend and re-design clothes, and to refinish furniture. Along the way we picked up some real finds--artwork and antiques. But if something doesn't work out, you just donate it back. Its nice, too, to know that no Big Brother marketing computer is keeping track of and analyzing all my purchases.

You'll still have to spend real money on food and computers, but you'd be surprised how much you can save by shopping secondhand.

Identity Issues
[Mathewes-Green  02/21 06:27 PM]

Wow, you guys talk a lot. When I left early this morning, this page was a bright, shining empty slate; I come home in the afternoon, and we've got almost 14 feet of provocative, earnest, complicated argument.

It seems somehow fitting that my morning task was to see a screening of Thank You For Smoking, a film based on Christopher Buckley's clever novel about a wordspinning tobacco lobbyist. He's on the side of Big Business and Freedom, so I guess he must be the conservative. His opponent is a Vermont do-gooder in Birkenstocks with socks, so he must be the liberal. Hmmm. Where do I fit in?

As Rod says, "modern conservatism, in the main, pays lip service to virtue, but is really more wrapped up with economics and libertarian concerns." One reason, of course, is that it's simply easier to wrangle economics than virtue; its hard to think of anything politics can do that would effectively foster virtue. The Nanny State is not just annoying, but disappointing; if you need a Nanny, it's a sign parents aren't doing their job.

And, while it's good to cheer for and encourage the authority of parents (to stick, for a moment, with that one aspect of the CC manifesto), is it really necessary for those who do so to call ourselves a movement? I think Caleb makes a good point about the dangers of over-articulation. We are tempted to take a good, simple thing and forge it into a self-conscious brand, which can thereby complicate it and weight it down. It is better to simply do right, accountable to authentic inner convictions of faith and virtue, than to put on a cumbrous, self-conscious identity as members of a societal subdivision.

Still, I'll support the launch of a Crunchy Con movement. The reason is that we are coping with an environment that is already trying to force us into identity camps. Every news event is scrutinized for slant, or else for partisan usefulness. Children's movies are read for the faintest evidence of liberalism or conservatism. It's like being eternally stuck in the high school cafeteria. We may think we're dealing dispassionately and objectively with ideas, but at a deeper level we're constantly dealing with something much more primitive: peer pressure.

So that's why the question raised by viewing of almost any movie or TV show is, "Where do I fit in?" I don't seem to fit so many elements of the conservative caricature; yet too many liberal tenets (for example, abortion legality) are far more gravely wrong.

All Rod had to do was hoist a flag suggesting a new category, and he roused a horde of "me-too"ers, people frustrated by the existing binary choices. It's interesting that most of them wanted to tell him their stories, as if they felt consistently misrepresented and yearned to set the record straight. Although the establishment of a self-conscious Crunchy Con identity raises negatives that are worth pondering, on the other hand, the reason folks are embracing it so eagerly is because they already feel forced into other identies, ones that don't fit. If that wasn't the case, if there was a greater sense of truly private life, and breathing room for unique identity, things might be otherwise. But at present, the outpouring of gratitude suggests that this is indeed a community of individuals who have been consistently frustrated by existing Procrustean choices, and were just waiting to be called together.

From the Lucianne.com Thread on Rod's Book
[Lopez  02/21 06:14 PM]

"I'll have to get this for my wife. 'See honey, you pray more, less time for shopping'. "

Crunchy on a Budget
[Dreher  02/21 06:11 PM]

A reader from one of my favorite cities, writes:

I’ve enjoyed your Crunchy Con writing in NR and other places for quite some time. My wife and I are overeducated, intentional evangelical Christians who are homeschooling our passel of kids in Austin, TX. I really like much of what you have to say, particularly about the primacy of culture, but I worry that too much of it comes off as speaking exclusively to an income level well above ours.

There’s no way we can afford to shop at Whole Foods. And Slow Food? Shoot, we’re happy if we have the energy to plop down cereal in front of our brood at suppertime some nights. Picking fresh fruit from the local farmers market each week sounds like a wonderful dream, but it’s a luxury that we lack the time and financial resources for.

I agree that “culture is more important than…economics”, but certainly the former depends upon the latter to flourish. So speak to me, brother, as someone who lacks the economics to pursue the high- or at least middlebrow culture heavily-referenced in the book.

Would you consider posting this as an open query on your crunchycon blog: What does your crunchy vision look like for families working to live on a ground-meat and Sam’s Club budget?

Great question, and in the same vein as that earlier do-you-shop-at Wal-Mart question. First of all, please understand that crunchy conservatism is a sensibility, not a rigid ideology. I will confess to the world that I am shamelessly addicted to Swedish meatballs from IKEA, which you can shake out of the bag from the freezer and microwave in a pinch. And I’m not going to apologize for that! Seriously, though, my view is that cc-ism is not about being ritually pure in the vegetables you buy, but about putting your family and your faith first. Julie and I make certain financial sacrifices because we believe it’s more important for her to be at home with the boys instead of working. That means we shop a lot like you do most of the time, except for buying organic meat from our Christian farmer friends (there are moral issues there too, re: cruelty and factory farming). And in terms of free time, I talk in the book about how burned-out I’m feeling from working 10-hour days, and having too little time for my family--more often than not the kids have had dinner by the time I come home--and certainly no time for civic engagement. But I’m doing the best that I can with what I’ve been given to work with, and I think that’s the best that any of us can ask of ourselves.

It doesn’t cost anything to turn off the TV, for example, and that’s one of the most conservative things any of us can do for our families. And all Slow Food asks you to do is to do your best to simplify your life to make time for family meals together, and home cooking instead of fast-food. Not everyone is in an economic position to go all the way--I’m certainly not--but these are ideals to strive for within each family’s means. Although I will say that there’s something wrong with a society in which it becomes impossible, economically, for a family of modest means to do anything other than live the fast-food lifestyle. Dorothy Day, I believe it was, said that a good society is one that makes it easy for folks to choose to do good. There’s something to that. Over to you, Bruce.

Creative Destruction
[Frohnen  02/21 04:45 PM]

I'd like to emphasize Ross's point. Joseph Schumpeter, who coined the phrase "creative destruction," predicted that capitalism would naturally bring about socialism by destroying people's desire to work hard to build legacies for their families. The desire to have a safe job with plenty of leisure, he argued, naturally would lead to a kind of soft, democratic socialism of government-directed markets. Guess what? We're pretty much there already. And why do so many people mock the charge? Because most of us LIKE the kind of soft socialism we have now, in which the "safety net" and the myth of efficient markets relieve us of any pangs of conscience we might have about messing over our employees, co-workers, or the towns our cheap big-box stores destroy. We've been engaged in a decades-long flight from responsibility, and until we recognize that this is a life intrinsically less worthy than the pursuit of virtue, it doesn't matter how often we point to its costs to people trapped in lives of drug use, multi-generational illegitimacy and poverty, crime and violence. We have to believe that life is a gift of which we must strive to be worthy before we can start taking responsibility for others, rather than handing that responsibility over to the government, or the myth of the market, for that matter. Markets should be free, and we should be responsible, including for our brothers.

Where Traditionalists Went Wrong
[Douthat  02/21 04:14 PM]

Caleb Stegall's earlier point--that "American conservatism has . . . developed an instrumentalist and mechanical view of the 'crunchy' virtues"--is well taken, and I think it gets at the the heart of the current traditionalist dilemma. That is, for years social conservatives have defended a politics of virtue, broadly defined, by arguing that virtue is an antidote to social decay, and that no society can long endure if it's devoted to no value higher than choice and no moral standard other than "consenting adults." Capitalism in particular, it's been argued, depends on pre-modern values--the famous "Protestant ethic"--for its success, and will falter and fail if decadence replaces virtue.

This was an effective line of argument so long as post-'60s America seemed to be in a state of rapid social decay, and it's what brought many of the original "neocons" over to the political right in the first place. But it's also placed traditionalists in the weird position of almost rooting for social decay, in the hopes that their point about the link between virtue and social order would be borne out. (You can see this tendency, for instance, in Robert Bork's Slouching Toward Gomorrah, which often seemed to take positive delight in rising crime and drug rates, collapsing inner cities, and so forth, because these trends demonstrated the pernicious effects of the sixties and moral relativism.) And the lesson of the last decade or so seems to be that virtue and social order aren't, in fact, as closely linked as many conservatives believed--that you can have a reasonably stable, reasonably safe, extremely prosperous society even with a high illegitimacy rate, permissive divorce laws, a coarse popular culture, a million-plus abortions a year, universally-available pornography, and all the other cultural trends that traditionalist conservatives deplore.

This explains, I think, why much of mainstream GOP conservatism seems to have abandoned any attempt to critique the excesses of capitalism--because for many people on the right, the lessons of the 1990s are that the famous cultural contradictions of capitalism aren't contradictions after all, and that we don't actually need the "crunchy virtues" to prop up the liberal order. (Tod Lindberg wrote an interesting Policy Review essay making this point a couple years back.) You can overstate this case, since many of the social problems bred by the Sexual Revolution haven't been solved so much as swept under the rug--by imprisoning millions of young black men, for instance. But the fact remains that if traditionalists are to make a case for virtue and the "permanent things," we need to talk less about instrumental concerns--about how gay marriage will supposedly destroy heterosexual marriage (we heterosexuals have done a good job of that ourselves), or pornography will lead to more sexual assault and rape (it hasn't)--and more about why virtue is good, and vice is bad, in and of themselves. We need to be able to argue against Nero's orgies, you might say, without pretending that they will bring about the fall of Rome.

Sacramental Life and the Cult of Efficiency
[Frohnen  02/21 04:10 PM]

It seems to me that Mitch, Angelo, and Caleb all are right in pointing to historical roots of conservatism's current malaise. What is the cause? It's the nominalist myth that we can call "beautiful" something that is ugly, and that makes it so; it's the myth that people who are committed to virtuous lives have something important with empire-builders and libertarians who liken marriage to a contract for purchasing lumber or toilet seats; it's the myth that each of us has a "right" to create our own society and reality, as if we were each either a god or something less than a person, with a soul that needs to be fed through social life.

But perhaps it would help clarify matters, particularly in light of the email question about Wal-Mart and McDonald's, to highlight the way in which Crunchy Cons poses a choice for us, between sacramental life, and the cult of efficiency. Unfortunately, because our society is so fragmented, many who might fall in the "crunchy con" camp actually are old-fashioned "cult of authenticity" liberals. But most of the "crunchies" I know are trying very hard, often at great cost, to approach every aspect of their lives as something important, as part of a good life that has to be lived as a consistent whole. that life is one in which we value our families, our God, and our other important relationships more highly than getting more stuff more cheaply. this can look downright strange in a world in which so many people boast about getting the fanciest gizmo at the cheapest price, or stuffing the most activity into each day, with a stop at the drive-through in between. I don't shop at Wal-mart, but I did recently walk through a Target store. And what did I see? Row after row of plastic storage bins. That's what the cult of efficiency--the drive to make everything as cheap as possible, regardless of the cost to communities and real people who work for a living and might even take pride in their jobs--has gotten us. Today even the poorest American can afford, indeed, can't avoid, so much garbage that he needs half a dozen plastic bins to put it in.

"Crunchies" are needed because conservatives need to be shown, through example, that beauty, compassion and, yes, love, are not just for liberal sissies. They are for anyone with the guts to stand up and admit that we owe our duties and our lives to something higher than ourselves.

Grateful Dead?
[Stegall  02/21 03:42 PM]

There is something to the reader’s complaint about crunchiness being nothing but a hippie gloss on conservative thought. To the extent the discussion gets sidetracked by Birkenstocks, the Grateful Dead, and various countercultural “lifestyle” issues, there will be little profit in it. But as I think anyone who actually picks up Rod’s book will find out, he doesn’t spend much, if any, time on these superficial matters (does he even mention Jerry Garcia?).

On the other hand, the reader’s complaint that what is true about crunchiness is “simply Conservatism” entirely begs the question as to what is conservatism? And what should it be? Those are the questions at the heart of Rod’s book, and it does no good at all to simply say, where he’s right, he’s conservative, and where he’s wrong, he’s nuts. For readers interested in a long but readable defense and explanation of the traditionalist conservative view, I highly recommend Mark Henrie’s article “Understanding Traditionalist Conservatism” in The New Pantagruel.

The traditionalist’s attitude towards being countercultural is best summed up by Chesterton’s comment that “the act of defending any of the cardinal virtues has today all the exhilaration of a vice.”

Hole in the Heart
[Dreher  02/21 03:39 PM]

A reader in Dallas writes:

As regards the consumerism issue, I think it's more insidious than society having simply become hypnotized by the messages of mass marketing. I think of the few silly things I've bought that I don't really need (the big screen TV and the swimming pool being the most notable). It was during moments of emptiness that I attempted to revive my spirit through the excitement of making a big purchase. The big purchase was promoted in my own mind by fantasies of lots of friends coming over and sitting around my pool or watching my TV with me. Had I stopped long enough to think it through, I would have realized that what I wanted was not a big screen or a pool, it was to have company.

I think we've gotten lonely and depressed and have gotten hooked on getting stuff to take off the edge instead of trying to envision what it is we really want that we think that stuff is going to provide. What we really want is what I'm thinking you're writing about, and it can't be bought...

More "Crunchy" Frustration
[Lopez  02/21 02:58 PM]

Another e-mail:

Crunchies,
With all due respect, someone needs to explain to me why someone can't shop at Wal-Mart, eat at McDonald's, live in the suburbs, and still be devoted to the "Permanent Things." I know many people who live what I would consider to be spiritually significant lives, and who do these things - heck, MOST of them do. To maintain that organic food and the Grateful Dead (a multi-million dollar corporation if ever there was one) are somehow more "authentic" and spiritual than Wendy's and Garth Brooks is simply absurd.
If eating organic food can be "sacramental" then so can eating a Big Mac - it all depends on the attitude with which it is consumed. I'm afraid that I have to agree with Goldberg on this one- that those parts of "Crunchy Conservatism" that are true are simply Conservatism, while the crunchy portion is simply an attempt to graft Counterculture concerns such as "authenticity" ( originally a concern of that paragon of "sacramental living" Nietzsche, by the way) on to conservative roots. There is much to criticize in modern American life, and in modern conservatism, but "crunchiness" is a symptom, not a cure.

Yours (traditionally, but non-crunchily)

Tom

P.S. Point #3 in the Manifesto is radically wrong. Big Government was responsible for well over 100 million deaths in the last century, not including wartime casualties. Big Business certainly has done its share of wrong, being operated by human beings with a full complement of Original Sin, but it has done nothing like this. Only Government has a monopoly of armed force, and can carry out such massacres. Most of the conservatives in the "Crunchy-Con's sagging bookshelf" knew this. All human institutions should be treated with skepticism, but Government particularly so - our margin for error is so much smaller...

The Pit of Despair
[Muncy  02/21 02:22 PM]

The Right goes wrong whenever it substitutes means for ends, as Rod suggests in the book. The temptation to make this substitution has become greater the more established the Right has become. You have to be willing to say no to interests that threaten to distract you from your end, and this is harder to do when you have an infrastructure to maintain. I don’t know that one can locate a moment when the Right lost touch, because part of the Right was never truly “in touch” and part of it has never been “out of touch.” As Caleb suggests, there are larger problems here. All this takes place in the context of the loss of the “end” in Western civilization in general.

I locate the intellectual/historical/political roots of this problem in the fourteenth century (going Caleb one better, historically anyway), with the rise of Nominalism, which is, in a certain sense, an “end”-less metaphysics. But really the root is in the human soul. The loss of the end is a kind of despair by which all are tempted at all times. As the theologian R. R. Reno wrote in First Things,

Acedia is a word of Greek origin that means, literally, “without care” . . . . [it] tempts us into a state of spiritual despair and sadness that drains us of our Christian hope. It makes the life of prayer and charity seem pointless and futile.

Crunchy Conservatism is about constantly renewing this “care” for the end, it seems to me. I hope I’m not distracting from the discussion by bringing it down to the personal. But the “personal” quality of Rod’s thinking is one of the things that distinguishes it from the “mainstream Right”, the MSR, if we want to call it that.

Where and Why?
[Matera  02/21 01:24 PM]

“Where and why did the Right lose touch with traditionalism”? Maybe when Trads joined the “Fusionist” alliance--the united front of Defense Hawks, Libertarians, and Traditionalists who came together to oppose Communism in the 1950s. Trads should have looked upon Fusionism as they did the Allied front of WWII--a temporary alliance against a common enemy. When the Berlin wall came down in 1989, it was analogous to the defeat of the Axis powers. That was the time to re-think political alliances, and re-orient the Republican party towards a more culture and family-friendly economics. But by then Russell Kirk conservatism was weak, and traditionalism had taken on a coarse, populist cast (Rush Limbaugh). Add in the individualism and nationalism of Evangelical Christians, and you end up with social conservatism that bears little resemblance to what Russell Kirk had in mind.

RE: Where the Right Went Wrong?
[Stegall  02/21 01:22 PM]

That’s a nearly impossible question to answer, as it begs a number of other important questions, but for the sake of moving the conversation along, I would point to the peculiar Lockean-Puritan synthesis of the American founding, and in particular the importation of the notion of “natural rights” into our political and cultural self-understanding. Possessed of abstract natural rights, the developing 18th Century liberalism (whether in its radical continental form or more restrained English/Lockean incarnation) located the individual and his unconstrained will as the fundamental and universal unit of political and cultural order. Social institutions, traditions, and cultural restraints become at best keepers of the necessary ground-rules for maximum attainment of the free exercise of natural rights, and at worst they become hurdles and obstacles to the individual’s will. Progressive emancipation is the order of the day.

The popular, political, and material success of this ideal of progress made it easy for developing American political philosophies to dismiss early “crunchy cons” like John Ruskin and Orestes Brownnson--who drew attention to the social cost of progress--as irrelevant reactionaries or romantics, or worse. The progressive virtues--efficiency, mobility, uniformity, neutrality, and objectivity in the exercise of political, economic, and social power--took hold of the American mind and haven’t let go. Conservatives concerned with more noble virtues weren’t helped any by routinely backing the losing horse, especially in the realm of social politics. And in certain cases, it was a horse that American society, still robustly moral despite an encroaching nihilistic liberalism, rightly decided ought to lose.

The result of this history has been the gradual eclipse of our religious/moral heritage in the beaker of liberalism’s universal solvent. Conservatives intent on defending the older moral orders of society have, to gain purchase on the essentially progressive American mind, been forced in the main into tracing their cultural or policy prescriptions to some basis in individual or natural rights. American conservatism has thus developed an instrumentalist and mechanical view of the “crunchy” virtues: they exist only as a means to preserve the maximum freedom and efficiency of individual action. Or perhaps, diluting the mix even more, they exist only as one valid expression of the individual will among many other equally valid expressions. So when the putatively conservative David Walsh argues against abortion, for example, he does so on rights-based grounds: abortion weakens the sanctity of all individuals; the sanctity of the individual is the foundation of personal autonomy and freedom; therefore, abortion must be opposed to preserve personal autonomy and freedom.

In the end, however, the underlying philosophical conception of man, society, and God will trump any specific policy goal or cultural norm. I would suggest that this is the reason conservative arguments against the expansion of the marriage license seem to have less and less purchase on the American mind as time wears on. If marriage is simply a contractual arrangement for the mutual fulfillment of two peoples’ desires in a social sanctioned way (which is the prevalent view of marriage in conservative, and even religious circles), then opposition to making this contract more widely available begins to chafe against our sense of fair play.

This is the situation Rod describes so well in the book. A conservatism which, based on the essentially liberal and progressive virtues, has become unrecognizable to an older understanding of reality embodied by such conservative luminaries as Russell Kirk. And as such, incapable of offering a coherent vision of our social order as an alternative to the dominate liberal-progressivism of modernity.

More Crunchy Mail
[Dreher  02/21 12:58 PM]

One of the most interesting aspects of the crunchy con thing is e-mails like this one, which just jumped across the transom:

My girlfriend and I live in liberal Boulder County, just down the road from Boulder Colorado. We're two of about seven conservatives in the county and tend to feel very isolated with our conservative values and crunchy hearts. My girlfriend, a registered Republican, comes from a military family and I come from a permissive, liberal family (I was born in Berkeley, California) with a tie-dye wearing father and a Birkenstock wearing mother. Both of us dream of owning rural property one day, homeschooling our children, and growing our own vegetables. She's more conservative and I'm more liberal (though a registered Independent), but somehow we make it work despite our differences, which as I read your book is beginning not to feel so unusual.

At least now we know we aren't alone in the wilderness!

I got literally over 500 e-mails like this after the first crunchy-con article in NRO four years ago. Each one is a testimony to how diverse our country is, and conservatism is. What I find most interesting is how crunchy-con strikes many people in a “Eureka!” sort of way. Again, it’s not that this is anything new--but traditionalism of this sort has simply been pushed, by intent or by accident, to the margins of American conservatism in recent decades. Bill Bennett and I closed our conversation this morning by talking about how Crunchy Cons is, among other things, an invitation for conservatives to learn more about the depth and breadth of our philosophical tradition, and what it has to teach us today.

RACHEL BALDUCCI WRITES:
[Dreher  02/21 12:56 PM]

Rachel Balducci is one of the Corner readers several years ago who wrote to me after reading my first Crunchy Cons essay. And she ended up being an important part of the book, talking about why she and her husband chose to raise their kids in an unusual part of town, for deeply conservative reasons. On her (wonderfully named) Testosterhome blog--Rachel’s the stay-at-home mom of four boys--she writes:

I remember, after reading the article, feeling so normal. I've long been a conservative Republican, but never really jived with the whole mass-produced-consumerism-is-king mentality. Capitalism is great, of course, but there's a right way and a wrong way to do anything.
I was raised by hippies (the VW-driving variety. But is there any other kind?) and although they had found Jesus by the time I was two, so much of their beliefs about humankind, the environment and a wide variety of other topics was just infused in us. (I am the oldest of eight; and two of my siblings are adopted.) So my siblings and I were raised in a very conservative environment, but with a whole lot of mom and dad's youthful hippiness mixed in.

A few years after the National Review column, I saw that Rod was working on a book based on his concept of The Crunchy Conservative. I ended up being interviewed by Rod for the book, which comes out today, and my husband Paul and I are featured in the chapter on homes. In it, Rod talks about our involvement with a Christian community here in Augusta, Ga. and the fact that we have chosen our neighborhood based not on curb appeal and resale values but on the people who live here and our shared goals of Gospel living -- building the Church by striving for real relationships, simplicity and authenticity.

Suspicious Minds
[Lopez  02/21 12:54 PM]

Inquiring minds want to know, Rod: Do you shop at Wal-Mart? Another e-mail:

I just discovered “Crunchy Cons” and am anxious to read it. And I mean anxious! Some points in the manifesto scare me. “We…who stand outside the mainstream…can see things…more clearly.” Really? What if you’ve just moved to the left and poked yourself in the eye?

“Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power…” I disagree. I don’t think it’s focused on those things at all.

“Culture is more important than politics and economics.” How can you separate them?

“Small, Local, Old and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New and Abstract.” Why did you capitalize them? Are they spirit beings? Anyway, you couldn’t be more arbitrary. Group one may or may not be better than group two; it depends on the circumstances. I could give you a lot of cases where the latter is better.

“Beauty is more important than efficiency.” That’s vague, but again, arbitrary. Pencil factories are ugly as hell, but very efficient. Without them, we would have to pay much higher prices for beautiful handmade ones.

“…media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.” You should have capitalized the last three words because they represent true ideals. How do you know our culture is media-driven? That’s an old chestnut of the left. What’s it doing here? Have you considered that cause and effect are reversed? Maybe those who are culturally, and/or spiritually, dead prefer pop culture. Research hasn’t shown much impact on culture from media; media tends to reflect, not cause, culture. Anyway, what would you do about it? Do you want to repeal the first amendment?

I like #9 on the family.

Do you shop at Wal-Mart? I think your answer is very important. I’ve run into a few “conservatives” who despise Wal-Mart, and all of them are wealthy. Of course you can despise Wal-Mart if you’re wealthy. Wal-Mart stores are ugly and over crowded because a lot of poor people shop there, especially Hispanic immigrants. But conservatives like me (long time member of First Baptist, Broken Arrow, OK), need Wal-Mart because of the value it offers. It allows us to save money on essentials so that we have more to give to our church. I would love to rebuild an old house in an established neighborhood, but I can’t afford it; I have two kids in college. I suspect that only wealthy cons can become Crunchy.

If you want to encourage people to adopt your lifestyle, fine. But if you want to use the power of the government, i.e., the gun, to force people to be like you, that’s scary, and not very Christian or conservative.

Sincerely,
Roger D. McKinney
Broken Arrow, OK

Crunchy Medved
[Dreher  02/21 12:13 PM]

Just found out that I’m going to be a guest on Michael Medved’s radio show today in the 4pm-5pm (Eastern) hour. I’m really looking forward to this, in part because I followed Michael as the NYPost film critic when he left, and in part because of something Michael wrote years ago made a big impact on me. He said that no matter how hard you and your spouse work to raise good kids, if the other people on the block--whose kids your kids play with--aren’t with the program, you’ve got your work cut out for you. Well, he was more articulate than that, but you know what he means: that social context matters in forming the character of our children. This is, frankly, another way of saying “it takes a village to raise a child.”

Anyway, first Medved’s show, then I spend some time on the radio with Linda Chavez, whose son e-mailed me a couple of years back to tell me that his mom was a crunchy con. Heh heh heh. And did y’all know that Education Secretary Margaret Spellings describes herself as an “Earth Mother Republican”? For true.

Crunchy E-mail
[Lopez  02/21 11:49 AM]

Hi Rod,

I look forward to reading your book. But at the risk of stating the obvious, Crunchy Con seems to be a new name for lifestyle choices my husband and I (and many other Boomers) have been making for 30 years.

We made the financial and career sacrifices necessary to home school for 12 years, did the homemade bread and slow food thing (gee, I remember making our own Play-Dough and finger paints!), tried to make missions and service a regular part of family life, and did our best to pass on to the kids our Christian faith and love of literature, learning, and music. Our son and daughter – 25 and 28 – are both wonderful Christians, and musicians with graduate degrees. God has blessed us indeed.

We no longer have the long hair and Birkenstocks (or Earth Shoes, as the fad was in the ‘70s), but our hearts have always been “Crunchy.”

All the best to you and your family, and all the gang at NRO.

Margaret Parks
Rimrock, AZ

David Mills Weighs In
[Dreher  02/21 11:45 AM]

Touchstone editor David Mills, who will be contributing to this blog, writes to say he’s too snowed under today with magazine work to have written anything for the Crunchy Cons blog (yet), but he did send a link to his post on the Touchstone Mere Comments blog taking issue with George Nash’s idea that there is a “tension” between traddies and libertarians on the Right. David is skeptical that libertarians have much at all in common (anymore) with traddies. Writes David:

Nash uses "tension" as if he were speaking of stresses within a family, between husband and wife, or father or son, or perhaps as if he were speaking of stresses within a church — within, in other words, something with an established identity and a shared and coherent mind. But at best, the tension is like one between nations. It's not a case in which one can say, "Bob's wrong, but he's my brother, and we'll work it out." It's rather a case in which one must say, "That country is acting against our interests and against justice and the well-being of others to boot, and we can't pretend we're on the same side."

Which is not to say, before some of you start howling, that a traditionalist conservative or any other Christian might not think some version of libertarian economics superior to the alternatives. But he doesn't begin with a primary allegiance to "freedom" — an infinitely elastic idea — rather than virtue as a social good. He begins with virtue and all it represents and makes his economic decisions by its principles and on most matters, on which traditionalist principle does not direct one to any particular policy, prudentially. He might well advocate what the libertarian would consider "statist restraint."

Where the Right Went Wrong
[Dreher  02/21 11:38 AM]

I think the whole point about monasticism and worldliness is a great discussion, but one I’d like to hold off on, if we could, until we get to the final chapter, where it’s introduced as a secular ideal. While we wait for the rest of the panel to weigh in with a general comment about the desirability, or not, of crunchy conservatism, let me draw your attention to a point George Nash made in his review of Crunchy Cons in today’s Journal. He pointed out that the book has its intellectual roots in the traditionalist camp of postwar conservatism, as distinct from the libertarian camp. Both were united in opposing the behemoth state, but whereas libertarians were more concerned with economic liberty, traditionalists were more focused on virtue. It seems to me that modern conservatism, in the main, pays lip service to virtue, but is really more wrapped up with economics and libertarian concerns. Do you agree? If so, where, and why, did the Right lose touch with traditionalism?

Here’s a line from the first chapter that speaks to this concern: “Both mainstream liberalism and conservatism are essentially materialist ideologies, and we should not be surprised that both shape a society dedicated to the multiplication of wants and the intensification of desire, not the improvement of character.”

More Crunchy Radio
[Dreher  02/21 11:01 AM]

I’ll be on Linda Chavez's radio show today at 5:15 Eastern talking about You Know What.

Spengler on Culture
[Dreher  02/21 10:35 AM]

One of my favorite columnists is the pseudonymous Spengler, who writes for Asia Times Online. Here is his latest, a digressive meditation on his recurrent theme: that the survival of nations and peoples depends not on material success, ultimately, but on culture. And as we know, you can’t have culture without cult. Here’s Spengler:

Of the tens, perhaps hundreds, of thousands of human cultures buried beneath the sands, of how many do we have so much as a sandal-strap or pottery shard? And of these, how many have left us even a dozen words of their extinct language? And of the latter, of how many do we know the simplest elements of their history? Where are the lives, the passions, the intelligence, the love and ferocity of these departed peoples? Nothing remains but the cackles of Mephistopheles over their nothingness.

For this reason Goethe is the most relevant, and paradoxically the least understood, of modern writers. Life's triumph is to digest the daily sourdough, and its anxiety and sorrow are the greatest temptations. Contrary to my namesake Oswald Spengler, Western society is not "Faustian" because Western man seeks power, but rather because Western man still plays dice with the Devil for his soul according to the rules of the game established by Faust and Mephisto. Technology and freedom offer modern man the temptations of Faust more than those of Job.

Faust thwarts Mephisto because he never ceases to strive, but Faust is an exceptional fellow, a proxy for the inimitable Goethe. What we learn instead from the lives of ordinary people - and from the life and death of peoples - is that a sense of divine presence is what makes the Devil's sourdough digestible. US evangelical Christianity is not "about" conservative values, school prayer, or heterosexual marriage. It is about Christ crucified, and the rest follows as a matter of housekeeping.

Crunchy Time Has Come
[Matera  02/21 10:13 AM]

I would argue that the grassroots cultural renewal Rod describes in Crunchy Cons--home schooling, organic farming, Slow Food, etc.--is more necessary than ever because the conservative movement that has governed us for most of the past twenty-five years has undermined its own program of traditional values by unleashing business forces that have promoted consumerism, materialism and greed. They’ve allowed the "Naked Marketplace"--a business culture without values--to overwhelm American culture.

The phrase--"a priority for the conservative movement and the country"--implies taking Crunchy Conservatism beyond everyday monasticism and making it an explicit political platform, or at least a full-frontal critique of prevailing Republicanism. I would argue for exactly that.

As a Catholic I believe the monastic approach Rod proposes is most authentic (especially as embodied in lay movements), and most enduring. But I also believe Catholic Social Doctrine, which provides objective criteria for judging whether societies and government policies promote human dignity, can be brought to bear on the social issues identified in the book. Rod’s Crunchy Con agenda is also a good start.

In a 1976 article titled “Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism,” neoconservative Irving Kristol warned that “in a bourgeois, affluent society, happiness comes to mean little more than the sovereignty of self-centered hedonism.” Unfortunately, despite their triumphs, the conservative movement (now dominated by neoconservatives), has mostly made that problem worse.

Is Crunchy Conservatism Necessary? No.
[Stegall  02/21 10:10 AM]

Rod’s initial question raises, for me, the chief concern I have with the notion of "crunchy conservatism." It is not that I disagree with crunchiness as Rod has described it. I think he has done an admirable job recovering some of the essential conservative truths out from under the banner of an ersatz conservatism of right-leaning liberalism. It is rather that I see the authentically conservative posture of man towards reality as one of those natural things that becomes highly unnatural and potentially turned against itself when articulated.

The problem seems especially acute among traditional economic, cultural, and religious communities in a highly mobilized, mechanized, and secularized state in which they have become conscious of what they have lost or are rapidly losing. Attempts to compensate, renew, or restore--whether given a leftist or rightist spin—increase the problem of over-articulation. Everyone has a theory and everyone chases the latest theorist.

I do not have a high degree of hope for any version of movement conservatism, towards which I remain skeptical. I put much more stock in what amounts to monasticism, in the broadest sense, which includes all of the crunchy virtues Rod discusses and more, though in a very natural and inarticulate way. This would include the many lay movements in the Church, local economic coalitions, and various traditional cultures that do much more doing than speaking and theorizing. One does not need to theorize how to view and engage secular modernity if one daily concentrates on self-sacrifice, prayer, and simply doing the work of God and disciplining the body and mind to order themselves according to their place and heritage. One of the great things about the book is in the way Rod shows many such "ordinary" people doing just this.

Is crunchy conservatism necessary? No. In fact, it may be in danger of posing an additional hurdle to real recovery by becoming just another lifestyle option in a culture awash with narcissistic lifestyle choices (a danger I think Rod recognizes in the book). Is an authentically conservative response to the challenges of late modernity necessary? Yes, now more than ever.

Be Ye Separate?
[Muncy  02/21 10:03 AM]

Cultural renewal is always a priority for the same reason that the renewal of our own souls is always a priority. There is no such thing as a plateau either in culture or personal virtue: we are either progressing or backsliding. In this sense, “now” is always the time for renewal. Of course, we will probably spare ourselves considerable suffering by renewing sooner rather than later.

Do we need crunchy cons? We need many people who have the sacramental view of life Rod describes. But we will be less complacent, and less likely to make our preferences into an ideology, if we don’t think of ourselves as part of a "movement." Moreover, others will likely be more open to the dispositions we want to encourage if they don’t see them as part of something that they must abandon their family, professional, or social circumstances to “join”.

Yet inasmuch as there is already a “crunchy con movement”, I wonder how much it will participate in the renewal of culture. I detect in some of the conversations Rod recounts a belief that being detached from our current culture means separating from it. But I fail to see how we can renew a culture in which we do not participate. More than to monasticism, I look to the example of the early Christians, expressed in the well-known passage from the 2nd century “Letter to Diognetus”:

For the Christians are distinguished from other men neither by country, nor language, nor the customs which they observe. For they neither inhabit cities of their own, nor employ a peculiar form of speech, nor lead a life which is marked out by any singularity. . . . But, inhabiting Greek as well as barbarian cities, according as the lot of each of them has determined, and following the customs of the natives in respect to clothing, food, and the rest of their ordinary conduct, they display to us their wonderful and confessedly striking method of life. . . .

The Conservative Heart
[Muncy  02/21 09:52 AM]

Since Rod invokes Russell Kirk at a number of points in the book, I’d like to recommend what I will assert is the most insightful article on Kirk, "Russell Kirk and the Conservative Heart" by Mark Henrie, which appeared in the Spring/Summer 2003 Intercollegiate Review. In presenting Kirk as an educator of the sentiments, Mark touches on a number of points relevant to the Crunchy Con discussion. This comment in particular seems to me to capture one of the main themes of Rod’s book: “Kirk appreciated the real political achievements of many modern institutions; what was problematic were the ideological and sentimental meanings with which those institutions were invested and by which their development was guided.”

The entire article is worth reading twice.

re: George Nash
[Dreher  02/21 06:53 AM]

Now that's something great to wake up to! Last night, after I crawled in bed, I picked up my dog-eared copy of Nash's indispensable Conservative Intellectual Movement in America--which, nerd that I am, I really do keep on my bedside table--to brush up on the role that Viereck, Weaver and Kirk played in the 1940s and 1950s, playing traditionalist conservatism off against its libertarian strain. So imagine my surprise and delight to find that Nash himself reviewed the book for the Journal--and liked it. Cool.

I think this point in Nash's review is important to keep in mind in terms of placing crunchy conservatism -- which is nothing more than a contemporary restatement of traditionalist sensibilities -- in context of the broader conservative movement:

And therein lies the significance of "Crunchy Cons." It is a reminder of the enduring tension on the right between those for whom the highest social good is freedom--the emancipation of the self from statist restraint and oppressive custom--and those for whom the highest social good is virtue: the formation of character, the cultivation of the soul.

[snip]

Because Mr. Dreher offers no detailed blueprint for cultural renewal, some may dismiss his book as just another lifestyle manifesto. This would be a mistake. Like it or not, Mr. Dreher raises concerns that will not go away. America today is more broadly free and prosperous than any society in human history. We are gloriously "free to choose." But choose what?

OK, off to work. Bill Bennett calls at 7:05. Later today, if you're a 700 Club watcher, tune in for a long report on crunchy conservatism by Paul Strand, which includes a visit he made to the Hale and Hutchins farms. They're the Evangelical Christian organic livestock farmers featured in CC's food chapter.

Crunchy Con Radio
[Lopez  02/21 05:26 AM]

Rod will be on Bill Bennett's show this morning talking about...well, what else?

George Nash
[Lopez  02/21 04:49 AM]

reviews Rod's book here.

He calls Crunchy Cons, in part:

a rousing altar call to spiritual secession from an America that Mr. Dreher sees as awash in materialism, consumerism and "lifestyle-libertarian" thinking.

Do We Need Crunchy Cons?
[Dreher  02/21 03:59 AM]

Thanks, Kathryn, and welcome to blog readers and to the participants in this blog. A little business stuff before we jump in: This blog is going to work like a book-club discussion group. We're going to have a lively conversation about themes in Crunchy Cons, which is now out, and how they relate to contemporary culture and politics. We want the discussion here to be robust and free-flowing, but we're all going to try, more or less, to stick to a different chapter each week, in order. This will make it easier for those who haven't read the whole book, as all of us here have done, to make sense of the various threads if they're late coming to the book and the conversation.

Chapter One introduces the big themes of Crunchy Cons, a book that got its start when Our Beloved Benefactress, La Lopez, teased me one summer day in 2002 for leaving NR World Headquarters early to go back to Brooklyn to pick up organic vegetables from a co-op. (It's why the book is partially dedicated to her). That story got told initially here. From that point I heard from literally hundreds of NRO readers who said, "Me too!"--and a book was born.

You can get the basic crunchy con idea from reading the Manifesto on this page--and you can see that crunchy conservatism is about a lot more than Birkenstocks and organic food. Crunchy Cons main premise is that something has gone wrong with the conservative movement in this country. We have become too fixated on materialism and consumerism, at the expense of the family and, in turn, the moral character of society. As E. F. Schumacher said, "the essence of civilization is not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character." The book calls for a reinterpretation of and return to the kind of traditionalist conservatism espoused by Russell Kirk and others, a conservatism that put culture and cultural renewal--as distinct from economics--at the heart of the conservative mission.

We'll be talking in the coming weeks about what that means specifically in a number of areas, but to get the conversation going, I'd like to ask you panelists: Why does both the conservative movement and the country at large need to make cultural renewal, in the sense I write about in Crunchy Cons, a priority in the present moment?

Welcome Crunchy Cons and Nons
[Lopez  02/21 03:56 AM]

Today marks the release of Rod Dreher's new (and first) book Crunchy Cons. The book was conceived on NRO, so NRO is a natural place to discuss the book. This blog will include some familiar faces, and bring in some more discussing what this "crunchy con" business (some might say nonsense) is and what exactly conservatism is. I'm hoping it's a constructive conversation and one readers find worthwhile.

This blog will be freeflowing but also follow a chaprter-by-chapter flow. Feel free to consider it your online reading group, and read along with blog contributors.

Welcome and enjoy. Granola and Birkenstocks not required. --Kathryn Jean Lopez, Editor, National Review Online

February 20, 2006

Buy Crunchy Cons
[Lopez  02/20 04:35 PM]

here.