March 04, 2006

Before we finish the discussion of consumerism, I want to mention a great point that Rod makes in this chapter, which I don’t think anyone has mentioned yet.

Rod points out that, in judging our use of the media, the main consideration is not the content of the media we use, but the precious time that using the media at all takes away from our families and friendships, to say nothing of our relationship with God. I can confirm that this is something that even people who are otherwise quite harsh in their criticism of the media utterly fail to appreciate.

The problem is that we’re encouraged to think that we have a right to waste time, so to speak, so that if we meet minimum standards of decency and reasonableness in our use of the media, there is really nothing to worry about or criticize. This goes back to a point I made in another post about the misuse of leisure being one of the themes of CCs. Leisure isn’t “doing nothing”, but engaging in activities worthy of free men that, if necessary, require less effort than our professional work.

Christine Rosen’s New Atlantis article on video gaming is an eerie illustration of where the ethos of time-wasting leads. It’s worth asking ourselves, whenever we sit down to watch television or use the internet, whether this is really the best use of our time at that moment. Even if the answer is yes, the question was worth asking.

I think we've got a red herring on the aesthetics question; the name is just a bow tie put on a basic human impulse, to value beauty and to want to have it around. When scanning thriftshop shelves I've often been touched by the efforts ordinary people put in to beautifying (or attempting to beautify) simple household objects, sometimes in ways that made them as useless as a furlined teacup. Not everyone would agree that these improved objects are actually beautiful. But the underlying impulse is undeniable, irrepressible.

And if you look at old stuff, even simple functional old stuff, you see how frequently the original owners went to some trouble to add beauty; to carve vines on on a kitchen stool, for example. In earlier communities, people didn't just settle for crummy beer, clothing, bread, furniture, housing, and so forth. The Duff era was a bad dream. Beer is easy enough to make at home, and some guys would be known for having a good touch. Every mom might be making the family's clothes, but there would always one who stood out as creative and talented. Nobody *wants* to settle for ugly.

People just like to have beauty around, and there's nothing effete about it. A dandelion in a jelly jar qualifies.

Today's Rocky Mountain News takes on
"Crunchy Cons." 38_4513307,00.html>Writing in the "for"
corner, Your Working Boy. On the
MN_38_4513309,00.html>"against" side, RMN editorial writer Rick Henderson.

March 03, 2006

Rod, by the last line about not buying at all I meant what Frederica meant when she wrote about parachuting out of the consumerist mentality all-together and learning to make for ourselves or to work within the limits of the local economy of producers. When I said that “true beauty and joy are always rooted in the limits of what it means to be human” I am agreeing with the MacIntyre that Mitch quoted. What are the applications of this? I think Bruce put it well:

Simply put, we should try to be a part of virtuous communities involved in producing food, clothing, and shelter, as well as in our own faith, work and play, and the schooling of our children.

Economic choices informed by this sensibility ought to be rooted and committed to the limits, beauties, cultures, etc., of one’s place. A lodge-pole pine home on the Kansas prairie may be aesthetically beautiful, in a sense, but it does not have integrity; it is not “of its place.”

Now I also agree with Bruce that worrying about coffee beans while Rome burns is foolish. But we might let those who cultivate the more rooted beauties of their particular place, from hot drinks to homes and everything in between, trouble our conscience from time to time. Or as Wendell Berry put it:

I still cut my wood with a chainsaw, which has nothing to recommend it but speed, and has all the faults of an airplane, except it does not fly. It is plain to me that the line ought to be drawn without fail wherever it can be drawn easily. And it ought to be easy (though many do not find it so) to refuse to buy what one does not need. If you are already solving your problem with the equipment you have—a pencil, say—why solve it with something more expensive and more damaging? If you don’t have a problem, why pay for a solution? If you love the freedom and elegance of simple tools, why encumber yourself with something complicated?

And yet, if we are ever again to have a world fit and pleasant for little children, we are surely going to have to draw the line where it is not easily drawn. We are going to have to learn to give up things that we have learned (in only a few years, after all) to “need.” I am not an optimist; I am afraid that I won’t live long enough to escape my bondage to the machines. Nevertheless, on every day left to me I will search my mind and circumstances for the means of escape. And I am not without hope. I knew a man who, in the age of chainsaws, went right on cutting his wood with a handsaw and an axe. He was a healthier and a saner man than I am. I shall let his memory trouble my thoughts.

But Mitch, I think Macintyre was discussing Soren Kierkegaard’s “Either/Or” in that passage, so I’m not sure that you’re representing Macintyre’s view or his summation of the philosophical positions presented by SK. I would agree with you (and with SK) that aestheticism is not, ultimately, a defensible philosophy of life, but I also wouldn’t say that the non-religious conservatives I’ve talked to are philosophical aesthetes. They seem to me to be more or less libertarian conservatives who happen to have a particular appreciation for beauty and its role in the good life. I don’t think you have to be metaphysically committed one way or another to say, for example, that a neighborhood of old houses is beautiful and that it ought to be the business of conservatives to preserve them.

I’d like to respond to the reader who, in response to my proposal to tax short-term stock transactions, said this: “the ability to sell the stock at what you deem is the perfect time, whether it’s a day or a decade later. That's how the stock market works, and has worked since its inception. If I'm going to accept the risk of purchasing a pure stock, even if it is speculative, then I need the escape hatch of being able to sell it, whether it's going up or down,”

Well, I’m not sure “the need for an escape hatch” is quite the right he thinks it is. The stock market didn’t arise from a state of nature. It’s an artificial construct (just as, the “personhood” of the corporation, limited liability, etc., are not “natural.”). It exists for the public good. When people like Peter Drucker, the father of management theory, and W. Edward Deming, the man behind the Japanese economic miracle, decry short-term stock speculation, you can be assured there’s a good business reason for it. I’m not sure they would have treated the need for an “escape hatch” as important to capital formation. What productive business—not investing—reason is there for such a short-term horizon?

As someone who co-founded a company who made the Inc. Magazine 500 a while back, I can assure you I’m not anti-business. On the contrary, business building is a noble calling. But I don’t know the good business reason why someone would need to get in and out of a stock in, say, a day, other than for purely speculative reasons. And if it’s speculative, I have no interest in it, and I don’t think most average Americans would have an interest in it, as it doesn’t serve a real productive business end. I realize there is a whole structure, hedge funds, etc., built around the exigencies of the financial system. I’m not saying they aren’t important. I’m not saying they’re useless. But when John Bogle, the founder of Vanguard, can advocate a short-term tax (and mutual funds buying individual stocks just as individuals do), then I think the “system” can take it without falling apart. What we have here, I think, is an example of how the financial “game” has become sacrosanct—for no reason related to the public good it is supposed to serve.

By the way, as someone who sits on a board of a company, I agree that Sarbanes-Oxley is “ham-fisted regulation,” and it should be repealed. But the only reason it exists is because of the temptations created by excessive stock speculation.

There is a parody site. Though I could swear some of those comments are lifted from in here... (I kid.)

Here in Dallas, I had lunch today with David Spence down in the Bishop Arts District of Dallas. David is one of our city’s Really Good Guys. He owns and operates Good Space, a small renovation firm that buys worn-out but historically and aesthetically significant buildings, and meticulously restores them for residential and commercial space. David has been a driving force behind the revival of the Oak Cliff neighborhood south of downtown. Dave’s a simpatico liberal, and because (I’m guessing) he has to deal with city bureaucracy and various social forces that work against building back strong neighborhoods, he is pretty clear-eyed and realistic. Over tacos and quesadillas, we talked about consumerism and community, and how both the left and the right, in the main, seem to be out of good ideas on how to restore America’s lost sense of community. Dave talked about going recently to a neighborhood chamber of commerce meeting, and what a treat it was to see all the old-time small businessmen … but then to realize that the commitment to groups like the chamber of commerce was something that our parents’ generation did, not our own.

We talked about how the way folks shop today, and the way we think about shopping, makes it hard to revive neighborhoods like the one we were sitting in, where there’s a small commercial district and residential housing next to it. “People like to blame Wal-Mart,” Dave said. “But Wal-Mart is not some monster coming in and imposing something on us. Wal-Mart is us.” (A point once made on South Park ). I told David that I doubted we could expect any programmatic action from government or anybody else to address this problem – or even if it could be addressed at that level -- and that about the only thing that made sense to do is for us to join together with other little platoons and build back what we could, in our own backyards. And I don’t mean just architecturally. Once again, I go back to Alasdair MacIntyre’s observation that the cultural fragmentation is so profound now that true cultural renewal is something that will have to come from people who share the same values coming together to affirm them by figuring out new ways to live in community together.

I thought later how interesting it was – and hopeful to me – that here I was, a conservative, and my liberal friend David, both recognizing that something important has been lost amid our plenty, and how we’re both grasping in our own ways for a way to restore it by turning back to the past for lessons. David is doing this literally, by making old things new again with his sweat and his equity and his bare hands. And I’m doing it in my own way, as are many of you. After lunch, David took me over to see Good Space’s latest project, which just got approved by the city. It’s an early 1900s building originally constructed as apartments, but which Good Space bought and reworked as office space. It was so beautiful, and had been so lovingly restored. Some lucky tenants will soon be coming. I noticed that there were some down-at-the-heels houses on either side, and David remarked that the kinds of tenants he’s likely to get are designers or other creative types who can see the value in a place like the building he’s redone, and not be put off by the shabby housing elsewhere on the block. Maybe that’s it, I thought: whether you’re liberal or conservative, if you can see with the eye of a poet to the inner worth of a thing, an institution or a way of life, you can find the courage to commit to it even though it doesn’t make sense to most people.

. . correspondents who don’t care for the religion and spirituality thing, but who are serious aesthetes (as distinct from hedonists). . .

I’m curious about this distinction. I’m not sure Alasdair MacIntyre, for instance, would agree that it exists. Indeed, in MacIntyre’s view the “aesthete” is a “character” of the Enlightenment. MacIntyre draws the distinction thus:

At the heart of the aesthetic way of life . . . is the attempt to lose the self in the immediacy of present experience. The paradigm of aesthetic expression is the romantic lover who is immersed in his own passion. By contrast the paradigm of the ethical is marriage, a state of commitment and obligation through time, in which the present is bound by the past and to the future. Each of the two ways of life is informed by different concepts, incompatible attitudes, rival premises.

It seems to me that the correspondents you refer to, and some that you discuss in the book, are trying to have it both ways. But they must see (and admit) that “beauty and its enjoyment” point to the transcendent, or they can’t claim that their preferences have any objective ground. Aren’t those who “don’t care for the religion thing” just consumers or hedonists of a different kind?

Caleb writes:

I don’t know Rod, I may have to part ways with you here. I’m not so sure your enjoyment of a wide variety “of good food and attractive furnishings” is all that crunchy. Aestheticism, at least in its philosophical form, involves discipline, not just the satisfaction of appetites — even an appetite for beauty. So beauty and joy, yes! But true beauty and joy are always rooted in the limits of what it means to be human. The global marketplace is extremely efficient at satisfying appetites, and is clever enough to recognize that there is an appetite for aestheticism and satisfy it too.

You ask: “Is it crunchier to buy these great coffee beans from the little guy in NYC, or from the local not-so-little guy purveyor in my own city?” The reality is that it’s crunchier not to buy them at all.

Hmm, I don’t know what you mean by that last line, Caleb – I’m wondering if we might on this point find a difference between your Protestant sensibilities and my Catholic ones -- but it sounds like something we can start with in next week’s Food chapter discussion, which is partly about aestheticism. I have some crunchy-con friends and correspondents who don’t care for the religion and spirituality thing, but who are serious aesthetes (as distinct from hedonists) who believe that beauty and its enjoyment are key to a well-lived life. Just for now – and just to let readers know, I talk more in-depth about this topic in the Home chapter – I will say that I admire the philosophy of William Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement he helped pioneer. Morris and his disciples believed that simplicity was a component of beauty, and that beautiful houses and home interiors ought to be affordable to the working man too. In fact, they thought such was necessary, because the home ought to be a refuge from the world. The plain little house Julie and I live in was originally built for working-class people around the turn of the 20th century. It’s very beautiful, at least to my eye, and its plainness is part of its beauty. But I’m getting way ahead of our discussion here, so I’ll stop and wait for the right time to go down this route.

More mail:

I've been following the discussion avidly--and have just finished reading the book--but wanted to comment on Angelo's recent post, which is talkin' crazy.

I really don't mind government keeping an eagle eye on big business....from the abuses we've seen in the media, big business needs it, but there's no need to go all Eliot Spitzer and not just punish but further tax behavior that may or may not be good for Christians and "crunchies."

Short term capital gains are already taxed at a much higher rate than long term capital gains, so the tax laws already encourage a long-term perspective. If you're buying stocks, its ridiculous to suggest you should be severely punished for a basic market fundamental--the ability to sell the stock at what you deem is the perfect time, whether it’s a day or a decade later. That's how the stock market works, and has worked since its inception. If I'm going to accept the risk of purchasing a pure stock, even if it is speculative, then I need the escape hatch of being able to sell it, whether it's going up or down,

Angelo seems to be conflating stocks with mutual funds, an entirely different animal designed for different purposes. It's true that mutual funds should be long-term investments....and any time a money manager sells a stock, he passes the tax hit along to the client, so clients should seek out mutual funds that put their money where their long-term mouth is, such as Vanguard or American Funds, and look for low turnover ratios. But even the most respectable money manager will need to get rid of a stock quickly, based on his wisdom, experience and judgment, and why slap a set of one-size-fits-all regulatory handcuffs on this ability?

The greedy people who rushed into dot-com mania got the market smackdown they deserved when the market corrected itself, and hopefully they are now a little wiser. We're now seeing a "flight to quality" with money coming into reputable mutual funds companies, rather than crazy, flavor of the month tech funds driving demand. There are also a plethora of "socially responsible" funds for anyone who wants to avoid companies touting sex, drugs and rock and roll.

Unfortunately, we're also seeing the motherlode of ham-fisted regulation being enacted across the financial services industry, as regulators show up a day late and a dollar short, well after the bear market has turned back into a bull market, meting out punishments and raking companies over the coals for minor infractions because the consumers refuse to take responsibility for what is, at heart, the silly investing decision of jumping into stocks and funds at the very height of the bull market, and buying high instead of low.

I work for a moderate-sized financial services company--and work very closely with one of the huge investing giants--and it has been a fascinating few years. But it's also a good lesson in how we as Americans are taxed up, down, backwards, forwards and sideways, multiple times on the same money. I understand the need for taxes, but the deeper you get into the financial services, the more clearly you can see that the multiple layers of taxation are unfair.

One last note on the quarterly reports: one thing that WOULD help the market is reining in analysts who go into buy/sell hysterics if companies quarterly earnings are off by so much as a dime. That's where a lot of the damage comes from....but again, what are you going to do, tax them?

There's definitely a collision course between "gargantuan big-box" stores like IKEA, offering affordable quality and diversity, and "an economy where small artisans and businesses find it easier to enter the marketplace and compete for business." I don't see any way to reconcile these.

I disagree that the collision is necessary. See my earlier post on this.

The collision occurs when big producers try to squeeze out the small business, but this doesn’t have to happen if the government fulfills its role of removing obstacles (as Yves Simon might put it), that is, of keeping the market as open as possible. IKEA and Thomas Moser can both prosper if the market is free. True, most people won’t buy, say, organic meat, for whatever reason, but enough people will want it to keep small farms in business if arbitrary regulations don’t impede the flow of goods.

In the connection, I’ll mention something that struck me from the food chapter. Mr. Hutchins mentions in passing that he doesn’t ship his meat, though he implies he could, because he believes that people should buy from their local suppliers. Even as one praises the sensibility behind this decision, it is worth noting that Mr. Hutchins himself, not the free market or a big meat producer, has restricted his business in this way.

Such an integrated view of life is easy to ridicule, and impossible to put fully into practice (particularly if one believes in original sin), but perfect markets don't exist either, so what?

I think Bruce and Frederica have cut to the heart of CCs with their posts on this theme. In a sense, there are no “little things” because there is always a “who”, a “what”, a “when/how”, and a “why” involved in any choice, and these elements are open to moral evaluation.

I see CCs as a call for serious self-evaluation. Let’s take the most “mainstream” person you can imagine (who wouldn’t be any kind of conservative). It is possible, perhaps likely, that after deep reflection such a person would conclude that he was doing exactly what God wanted him to do, at least in general (we all have to work on the details all the time). Even if he didn’t change a thing about his “big picture”, wouldn’t the very act of searching his conscience and thinking about his life as a vocation renew him and help him to be even happier than he might have already been?

From the mailbag: A friend wrote this missive last year on cooperative design--communities that help each other with particular crafts, such as breadmaking. I thought this was relevant to the choice discussion, especially in light of what Frederica posted regarding the loss of the art of producing things ourselves.

Anti-Amish guy emails:

Okay, Caleb, I was going to leave this alone but you really set me off.

When I read the email from that woman who was extolling the virtues of living in squalor it drove me nuts. Now you're saying that she's a BETTER parent by virtue of the fact that she's raising 7 children in a structurally unsound house (holes in the floor and windows that won't close) that from time to time has no electricity. She's one step up from living in a tar-paper shack in the woods. This isn't better parenting. Raising children in an unsafe environment is tantamount to child abuse. Of course she home-schools her children. If they went to public school they'd be getting a visit from Children & Youth Services.

… [She] sounds like one of those weird (that's right, weird) people who keep their children home and cut off from the real world, resulting in individuals who are incapable of interacting in society. From her description it sounds like they live in some wacko wannabe-Appalachia corner of the middle of nowhere.

I think he’s wildly misinterpreting that mother’s email, but that’s not really the point. The point is to emphasize the virtue of not pretending that all the choices we make are best and of keeping front-and-center in our memory the example of those who have done better, sacrificed more, spoken more truthfully, loved more fully, and thought more deeply than we have.

As we’re moving on from consumerism, I’d like to make a pitch for policy. Last week a reader asked: What can be done to reduce the corrosive effects of the market? I propose a tax on short-term stock transactions.

This would reduce the obsession with quarterly financial results that leaves business managers little breathing room to manage for the long-term health of the ALL business stakeholders, and our culture, by “doing the right thing”—such as NOT issuing that pornographic gangsta rap video that would be a huge seller, or NOT choosing the advertising campaign that appeals to extreme selfishness, or NOT bringing a drug to market with too many outstanding questions about side-effects.

Short-term-ism has other bad effects. One of the silliest statements made by conservative pundits about Enron, Worldcom, and other corporate scandals was that it was just a matter of “bad apples.” No, the problem was a culture of easy money based on options-driven stock speculation during the Dot.com bubble. I was a consultant to several companies during this period, and witnessed many otherwise decent—even religious— people fall under the spell of a greedy, get-rich-quick mentality.

And have we forgotten the social example set by the internet mania? It was a full-scale cultural revolution, a revolt of the new against all things old, with arrogant, infantile goateed dot.com jocks out to overthrow the old, bricks-and-mortar, reality-based economy. It was business as performance art—economic Dadaism. And greed is what spawned it. Where were conservatives on this? Nowhere (or, like George Gilder, smack in the middle of it.)

A stock tax would keep “irrational exuberance” in check. If anyone thinks this is veiled Marxism, see the new book by John Bogle, founder of Vanguard, the #2 mutual fund company in the world—titled “The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism.” He advocates the same thing: “Mutual fund companies, Bogle charges, care more about short-term results than long-term value…. He advances in all seriousness Warren Buffett's once-joking idea for a high tax on short-term trading gains…”

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that nothing can be done about the “creative destruction” of Casino globalization. My concern about traditional conservatism is that an aversion to “the masses” can lead to an elitist, romantic isolation from fellow citizens, and from the human messiness of politics and policy. This why a very explicit Christian perspective is necessary.

There's definitely a collision course between "gargantuan big-box" stores like IKEA, offering affordable quality and diversity, and "an economy where small artisans and businesses find it easier to enter the marketplace and compete for business." I don't see any way to reconcile these.

Your focus, Rod, is still on the perplexing power we have a consumers. I picture Scarlett O'Hara surrounded by beaux. Which retail outlet will receive our favors? We will always insist on buying the best, but what are the repercussions of where we buy it?

But if you go back before the consumer tidal wave, the assumption was that people would *make* most of what they used in daily life. Is it possible to recover that, any part of it? Should that be part of the Crunchy focus? Not just beer-making as a hobby, for example; I mean, trying as an intentional discipline to find ways to get around the need to *buy* everything, whether from a local entrepreneur or from Walmart.

The things a person touches in a day, the wrap of clothing, the bread and coffee consumed, the floorboards under bare feet--all these humble things have a kind of nobility, as intimate companions of ordinary human life. People used to be surrounded by things made by themselves, or by people they knew, even people who loved them. I keep feeling like there is something inherently dislocating about being companioned solely by things that came home in a plastic bag. Are there ways we can question the consumer imperative entirely?

The skills to make-your-own anything (not to mention the tools) are mostly lost, so the effort tends to attract those who want to co-opt this desire and sell us stuff. It falls into the category of one more consumer action, this one categorized as "hobby." The results are often more expensive than buying at the BigBox.

An intermediate suggestion is to ask before any purchase, "Is it possible to get this second hand?" Parachute out of the consumer cycle, and learn the skills of repairing and refurbishing. My Dad taught me how to refinish furniture; I'm teaching my granddaughter how to sew. It's a start.

Several people have noted how easy it is to make fun of crunchy choices, in large measure as a set of snobbish lifestyle decisions masquerading as a philosophy of life. Perhaps one of the reasons is this: liberal society emphasizes how many rights we all have, as individual people. Within the liberal mindset this presents us with two choices, extend those rights to animals, the earth, etc., or emphasize the distinction between the person and things. As with everything else, liberalism gives us only an "either-or" choice. I once jokingly asked an important philosopher (Kenneth Schmitz) whether rocks have rights. His response is, I think, important: "no, but even a rock has integrity." Every part of God's creation has an integrity--it has a natural purpose, a natural way in which its existence should be recognized and used. Using puppies for target practice is wrong, even for those of us who don't believe animals have rights, because puppies are not for target practice, but for play, or hunting, or one of a finite number of proper ends.

The same logic applies to all kinds of creatures and things that get sold and consumed. And the point is that how we use these lesser things both says something about us and affects us by influencing our attitudes and habits of life. Why not torture "mere" puppies in our spare time, if we get utility out of it ("fun" or leisure-time enjoyment)? Not just because it's creepy, but because it develops in us the character of a torturer. Merely transferring such personal moral choices to "the market" does not, or should not, empty them of moral importance.

Given all the moral enormities being committed all over the world, one should not demand perfection in lesser things; bringing up good kids comes first. But to the extent one can, consumption, it seems to me, should be seen as one of the ways in which we all use things, and should use them in a manner that shows respect for God's creation and the inherent integrity, not just of creatures and things, but of the people involved in their "processing" and the people THOSE people deal with on a regular basis.

Simply put, we should try to be a part of virtuous communities involved in producing food, clothing, and shelter, as well as in our own faith, work and play, and the schooling of our children.

Such an integrated view of life is easy to ridicule, and impossible to put fully into practice (particularly if one believes in original sin), but perfect markets don't exist either, so what?

I don’t know Rod, I may have to part ways with you here. I’m not so sure your enjoyment of a wide variety “of good food and attractive furnishings” is all that crunchy. Aestheticism, at least in its philosophical form, involves discipline, not just the satisfaction of appetites--even an appetite for beauty. So beauty and joy, yes! But true beauty and joy are always rooted in the limits of what it means to be human. The global marketplace is extremely efficient at satisfying appetites, and is clever enough to recognize that there is an appetite for aestheticism and satisfy it too.

You ask: “Is it crunchier to buy these great coffee beans from the little guy in NYC, or from the local not-so-little guy purveyor in my own city?” The reality is that it’s crunchier not to buy them at all.

That’s not to say you won’t buy them, or I won’t buy them for that matter. There are lots of parents who might send their kids to daycare (and believe me, my mailbox was stuffed with their missives), and some are genuinely crunchy. The difference is between those who justify their decision on one ground or another and those who remember the mother who kept her kids home even with a hole in her kitchen floor and know--somewhere deep down--that she is a better parent than they, and then they let that knowledge trouble their soul.

One of the main themes of Crunchy Cons is the role of aesthetic pleasure in a traditionalist conception of the good life. We’ll talk more in-depth about this next week, when we get into the Food chapter, but I was thinking this morning about how complicated the economics of all this gets. I am able to enjoy a much wider variety of good food and attractive furnishings in my house thanks to the free market and greater consumer choice. When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s, our consumer lives were much more monochromatic. The beer you drank was one of several brands of barley water that all tasted the same (it was all Duff). Nowadays, I can go into just about any store and choose from all kinds of beers, foreign and domestic, including microbrews from here in Texas and other regions of the country. The war against bad beer has been won in America (everybody please bow your heads and observe a moment of silent thanksgiving). When I was growing up, home furnishings with a modicum of style were something only relatively well-off people could afford. Nowadays, thanks to gargantuan big-box stores like IKEA, people on smaller incomes can afford nice-looking things for their houses. The point is, it’s all well and good to observe that the consumerism has been bad in many ways for American life, but it has also improved it in ways that mean something to crunchies. I buy my coffee not from a local seller, but via mail order from a small NYC roaster, who gives me top-quality beans at a reasonable price (and these beans really are first-rate; people who come to dinner often remark on how good the coffee is). Is it crunchier to buy these great coffee beans from the little guy in NYC, or from the local not-so-little guy purveyor in my own city?

My ideal would be an economy where small artisans and businesses found it easier to enter the marketplace and compete for business. Are there ways to reconcile the fondness we crunchies have for quality and diversity in consumer products, with the sense of obligation we feel to tradition? Or are we destined to have to pull off a balancing act, doing the best we can with what we’ve been given--which could mean buying stuff at IKEA and the mom-and-pop, depending on our circumstances, financial and otherwise?

Rod says:

I intend Crunchy Cons as a call to return to fidelity to living out the Permanent Things in every aspect of our lives.

Megadittoes to that, Caleb. I have also credited--and let me take this opportunity to do so here again--Jonah’s insight that there ought always to be a libertarian in the room when making policy decisions. I freely admit that traditionalists like me think in poetic terms, and often fail to appreciate some of the more “realistic” aspects of economic and social life. Yet I would also insist that a traddie should be in the room too when these decisions are made, because we have insight as well into the nature of reality--that reality being that man is not merely a material creature, but also a spiritual one, and that the material environment has spiritual consequences. I am still a believer in fusionism--that a vigorous and vital American conservatism will be composed of both libertarians and traditionalists, and that the creative tension between us can preserve both liberty and tradition by reinterpreting its meaning for each generation, as our political, economic and social conditions change. My view is that it’s time for the traditionalist side of the alliance to wax. This letter this morning from a reader in New England captures my view perfectly:

Firstly, thank you for writing your book, and getting this discussion going. Personally, I believe you are helping to harden and focus a debate that is cyclical, and whose time has come again for our generation. I'm not sure how frequently it goes around. There surely are permanent things, and we know them when we see them. But just as surely we don't seem to be very good at fully grasping and retaining them. That would appear to be our dilemma here on earth. And that dilemma will never be solved, so we will continue to have this discussion every so often about what the good life is, and believe that we are living it even as it is slipping away again. It doesn't matter that others may have already said these things, or have been working on them. The need to be reminded about the permanent things is, in itself, a permanent thing.

Secondly, I think it does all come down to belief in God and our duty to a moral order not of our making, and which we can only approach in small steps, through sacrifice and selflessness. I have always loved CS Lewis's simple statement that we are half animal and half spirit. This describes our nature well, and suggests some balancing of the two: If we hew more faithfully to things of the spirit, we must walk away from the physical. I love America: I chose to emigrate here, and to become a citizen, and I have been much blessed in my life here. But America is a land of great material temptation as well as spiritual depth. I am not surprised that your critique of some aspects of American life is generating accusations of anti-Americanism (you can bet that many more are thinking it than those who are more boldly saying it). I would also not be surprised if those who are most offended by your critique are those who are more secular, more physical in their Americanness. But what do I know?

You quote Kirk: "The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal". This sums it all up for me. This is the great choice of life, there is no other true choice, and the great service of your book is that it places this choice back in front of us. Anything that does this, for me, is worthy of praise and support. Anything that confuses this choice, or presents false choices, is not quite so helpful. (Rep. vs. Dem, Lib. vs Con., pro vs anti this or that). I am a "blue-state conservative", and so not to be trusted :-) , but I must confess I sometimes feel much closer to my Democrat neighbors who I know to be genuinely religious and Godly (yes, there are some still left), than I do to my Republican boss who thinks my religion is rather foolish, and must never get in the way of my work in the vineyards of the insurance business.

Finally, there is a vulnerability in your argument that can allow this choice to be skewed, and your critics seem to be doing this. For example, I believe that you see organic vegetables not as uniquely good in themselves, but good only in that they reflect a more natural way of living, and of eating, something which hews more to the spiritual and less to the physical. They are in some way sacramental. This seems simple enough on the surface. But it is easy for your critics to present this merely as a choice between two modes of consumer bias, and therefore distort your point and accuse you of elitism or consumer snobbery. Perhaps, though, this a warning of the dangers of idolatory. Intent is everything.

A reader responds thus (with minor editing to preserve the family-friendly atmosphere) to the laugh-in held in the Corner yesterday afternoon at the crunchies expense:

Over dinner, which I cooked but my wife made (along with 20 other dinners) this afternoon at Dish Delish, a real crunchy boon that isn’t too bobo, I got to thinking about why "crunchy" is a symbol that is easily tweaked as effete, pretentious and fake. Maybe this is because in the imagination of effete, pretentious, and fake people, they see the truth about themselves when they imagine how absurd they'd look if they did anything too "crunchy."

Authentic crunchy is some tough [stuff].

I had Jewish friends in high school in NJ who got sent to a kibbutz in Israel each summer. They farmed and learned how to handle an M-16. I don't think chicken coops would make them or their Israeli hosts laugh or sneer.

I remember churches in the 80s in upstate New York composed of farmers and townies who met in the old Grange building for services, knew its history, had outhouses and chickens and other livestock. That wasn't poverty; it was normal.

When I was in ROTC in college with most classmates being country boy NCOs from Ft. Bragg (Rangers, Special Forces, 82nd Airborne), I discovered military-crunchy. More like Klingon-crunchy. We always had a CSM/Command Sgt Major on the staff who oversaw the Ranger Challenge teams. A CSM is the NCO equivalent of a four-star general, except generals are often fat and have generally killed a lot fewer people with their bare hands. Imagine a guy who coolly brags about living off bugs and reptiles in Vietnam, Africa, and South America, dealing with chronic dysentery, and who at retirement age thrashes the young guys on 6 mile runs while he is smoking a cigarette. The most liberal character I met in this crowd was a "progressive populist" from NH. I think there would be uniform contempt among these guys for people who mock the quaintness of living off the land.

This is why no “crunchy” ought to dismiss what I’ll call Jonah’s Corrective. Tradition as fad is an abomination!

In the increasingly clamorous Christian marketplace rebellion is where you find it: in full-contact skateboard Bible study groups; in Christian punk, Goth and hip-hop CD's; in evangelical tattoo parlors; in sportswear brands like Extreme Christian Clothing and Fear God; in alt churches or ministries called Revolution, Scum of the Earth and Punk Girl; in a podcast called Xtreme Christianity …

The caldron for this rebellion can be grass roots or institutional: the publisher of the rebellion handbook, Thomas Nelson, is among the world's biggest producers of Bibles and inspirational books in English.

… For a demographic that is used to being marketed to as rebels, he added, the new rebellion "is really a new installment of the original rebellion." He continued: "It's hearkening back to a raw faith not encumbered by the American dream, enslavement to a career or having to have two kids and a two-car garage.

(Sorry for jumping the gun on the religion chapter, Rod.)

Another example to follow up on Caleb's point. Many people today laugh at the old fashioned idea that one's word is one's bond. But it used to be true, and it was highly efficient--it allowed people to count on their agreements, plan for the future, and build trust among businesses as well as individuals. Then the notion of "efficiency" started getting out of hand. First came the idea that the person who was wronged didn't have a right to receive what he was promised; instead he would only get what the judge assumed was a monetary equivalent (monetary damages instead of specific performance). Well, the problem with that is that it leads people to calculate whether it is worth it for them to breach; lawyers now even have a "theory of efficient breach"--sometimes it makes more economic sense to renege and pay the damages, in the short term. Over the long term people stop trusting one another, hire more lawyers to put more and more in writing, and only deal in terms of monetary values defined in market terms (forget all the intangibles, including insights into possible value that used to be the stuff of entrepreneurship). Economic relations get soggy, and we all are poorer for it.

Back in the 1980s, Nico Colchester, an editor for The Economist, wrote a very short essay called "Crunchiness" which quickly became a cult favorite. I have a vague recollection of someone at NR bringing this piece up after Rod’s original article ran. Anyway, in the piece, Colchester contrasted what he termed "crunchy" economic policies with "soggy" policies. Colchester explained:

Crunchy systems are those in which small changes have big effects leaving those affected by them in no doubt whether they are up or down, rich or broke, winning or losing, dead or alive. The going was crunchy for Captain Scott as he plodded southwards across the sastrugi. He was either on top of the snow-crust and smiling, or floundering thigh-deep. The farther south he marched the crunchier his predicament became. Sogginess is comfortable uncertainty. The modern Scott is unsure how deeply he is in it. He can radio for an airlift, or drop in on an American early-warning station for a hot toddy. . . . Light-switches no longer turn on or off: they dim.

The whole centralizing/consumerizing tendency of modern economic, political, and cultural systems and institutions is predicated on the need to keep people in a "comfortable uncertainty." Thus, they are propped up by false systems of accounting; or by what Voegelin called a “second reality.” For example, Colchester pointed to the advent of floating interest rate lending as a soggy policy. Whereas fixed rate lending is crunchy (i.e., both parties know precisely where they stand), the move to floating rates has reduced the necessity of commitment, and "the result is a need for puzzlingly high rates of interest to curb consumer borrowing." Other examples abound, from the insurance industry to health care to schooling to mass media to no-fault divorce to mass mobility to the phenomena of the 3000 mile salad. Each conceals, in a comfortable way, the true cost of its operation. Each makes a person feel that he is up or rich or winning or alive, when the reality is that he may be closer to being down or poor or losing or dead.

Clearly, as Colchester recognizes, this kind of soggy system cannot continue indefinitely. It will, in the end, lead to poverty and bankruptcy of all sorts. This is because where the true cost is concealed, some kind of capital reserve account is being depleted. And this is the current situation: all of our capital reserve accounts are being depleted by the soggy machine of modernity: natural resource reserve accounts, political reserve accounts, social capital reserve accounts, and moral reserve accounts. This will continue so long as we resolve to remain soggily comfortable and sated in our second reality. So there you have it, straight from The Economist: go crunchy.

March 02, 2006

I’ve gotten a few e-mails from CC blog readers who want to know what we’re talking about when we invoke Kirk’s phrase “the permanent things.” This was Kirk’s phrase for the enduring universal moral virtues that make civilized life possible. Another term for the permanent things is the “natural law.” C.S. Lewis compiled a short list of the permanent things (he didn’t use the term, of course) in an appendix to “The Abolition of Man” (see here).

If you haven’t read them, you really should read Kirk’s Ten Principles of Conservative Thought, which end thus:

The great line of demarcation in modern politics, Eric Voegelin used to point out, is not a division between liberals on one side and totalitarians on the other. No, on one side of that line are all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal.

I think most people who call themselves conservative would affirm this. But saying and doing are two different things, as the poor example my own life testifies every single day. I intend “Crunchy Cons” as a call to return to fidelity to living out the Permanent Things in every aspect of our lives.

What did Russell Kirk have to say about economics? John Attarian explores his thought. Here’s an excerpt: [Kirk] gave economics due consideration, and was a sturdy friend of economic freedom and a foe of statism. Moreover, because he drew on religion, morality, and a comprehensive view of human nature, Dr. Kirk achieved important insights in political economy that a purely economic approach would have missed. Kirk's starting point was belief in God and a "belief in an order that is more than human," which rules both society and individuals. A transcendent God implies that eternal truths exist, that "human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent."

This conviction that certain norms, or enduring moral standards, exist was central to Russell Kirk's world view; upholding them was his life's work. These "Permanent Things - norms of courage, duty, justice, integrity, charity, and so on - owe their existence, and authority, to a higher power than social good.

For Kirk, loyalty to the Permanent Things is the standard for judging individuals, societies, and institutions. "Real progress consists in the movement of mankind to ward the understanding of norms, and toward conformity to norms. Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms, and away from obedience to norms.”

Attarian says Kirk was a stout defender of private property and the free market, but he was also a moralist who recognized that capitalism was a just system only for a moral people (just as the Founders, one might say, realized that our Constitutional order would only serve a moral people):

His view that people are spiritual beings led Kirk to maintain that though a prosperous economy is good in itself, "its real importance is the contribution it makes to our justice and order and freedom, our ability to live in dignity as truly human persons.... Economic production is merely the means to certain ends." Those ends are "to raise man above the savage level, to make possible the leisure which sustains civilization and to free man from the condition of being a simple drudge. " Regarding efficiency as an end in itself merely duplicates the error of Communism. Kirk realized better than many of capitalism's other defenders that economic activity does not occur in a vacuum; free markets require moral, cultural, and social foundations.

Which brings us back to the Irving Kristol essay that began the week, in which it is asserted that a free-market system that is not restrained by virtuous ends ultimately risks destroying itself.

More sympathy for Ricardo, this one from a Dallas reader:

Your Michigan reader made several points about the good quality of life of autoworkers. The same used to be said of the meat packing and farm plants in the part of rural Texas where I grew up. Those jobs are now either filled by immigrants at a lower inflation-adjusted wage and fewer benefits than a mere 20 years ago, or else the work has been moved to maquiladoras or shut down all together. Most of my classmates, including me, have moved on to cities like Dallas or Houston because there were no longer opportunities for us. My hometown’s population dropped 20% between 1990 and 2004. Surrounding towns are faring no better. Rural Texas is emptying.

Part of the problem is in some modern urban assumptions. We assume everybody has the same capacity, that they should all go to college and get good careers, and that if they don’t it’s because of laziness or lack of character. You might call it a bias against the blue-collar. We think there are “jobs Americans won’t do” because, after all, we don’t know anyone who would do them and we don’t see any Americans doing them. A few years ago while back home I ran into a 30 year old friend. He was working in a gas station. It was the only job in town and he wanted to stay. Another friend was hopelessly unemployed and planned to leave as soon as he could find a way.

The point I’m trying to make is that there are people who were living a rural, localized traditional lifestyle and they’ve been forced to give it up. Unrestricted trade and mass immigration are helping to destroy a way of life. I’m a hypocrite too. I make my living in international trade. But each day as I leave my small condo and sit in traffic in my 9 year old subcompact, I also mourn what I’ve lost.

Yesterday, I mentioned on the blog that I know middle-class couples in which both parents have to work because they couldn’t afford to get by on just one income, and acknowledging that it would be hard for my wife and me to keep up our lifestyle if my salary were cut in half. That prompted this response from a reader named Wendi, who doesn’t buy it:

I am a stay at home mom and have been since 1988. We homeschool. We eat organic when we can afford it. We grind our own wheat and make our own bread. We buy bags of oats and grain through a co-op (fifty pounds at a time). We gave seven children. The youngest is seven.

We are hardly 'comfortably middle class,' nor have we been able to do this because of my husband's wonderful salary. He's a hard working man, but for the first year of our marriage we barely kept our noses above water, selling nearly everything we owned, living without a car, without insurance, and sometimes without electricity because it mattered to us that I stay home. I owned two pairs of maternity pants that year.

Then he joined the Air Force as an enlisted man- the salaries there are no secret, so I'm sure you understand why the assumption that stay at home mothers can only afford that because they are comfortably middle class makes me raise my eyebrows. He stayed in the Air Force for twenty years, retiring almost three years ago. He now manages a discount grocery store. Our combined income from his salary, his pension, rental income and social security (two of our children are adopted and they get S.S. because their birth father died before they came to us) is about $50,000. That's the most it's ever been, and we're living a lifestyle we consider practically luxurious on that income. We have internet access, more than one car now (most of our married lives we've gotten by with only one car, and we have never, ever owned a new car. We bought new appliances when we moved here at my husband's retirement. This is the first time we've owned any new appliances, in fact).

I should perhaps add that currently we live in a 1,200 square foot house with one bathroom. It's over a hundred years old and has a hole in the kitchen floor and one window doesn't shut. We inherited it -- but before we inherited this house, we owned the house we were living in (well, the bank did; we made the payments), and that was in Colorado Springs. Even if we had not inherited this property, we would have been living in a (much nicer house) in Colorado Springs, and all on one income.

It isn't usually our economy that 'forces' people to have both parents in the workforce just to 'get by.' It's our unwillingness to make the sacrifices necessary to keep a parent at home with the kids, and our high standards of what it means 'just to get by.' You say if your income was cut in half it would be very hard for your family to keep living as you do. Maybe the way you live is more consumer oriented than you realize.

Reader Tom, a self-described paleocon, has Ricardo’s back:

I must register my support for your Michigan reader with respect to the American auto industry. My brother-in-law works for Ford, and is able to support my sister and their five Catholic (some home-schooled) children with what he makes working as a management employee at a Ford plant. As a result, my sister does not work, and many rank and file auto workers are also able to enjoy a decent standard of living with only one parent working, unlike in many other sectors of the American economy.

The notion that Toyota and other foreign companies with plants in America are making a comparable investment in our country is nonsense. As your Michigan correspondent noted, approximately $1200 per American car goes to pay for health care. As the New York Times reported last November, GM is the largest private purchaser of medical services in the US, and some 1,000,000 Americans depend on GM to pay their pensions and retiree health benefits. The Japanese carmakers aren't paying for 1,000,000 American retirees, and their profits are repatriated to Japan, where top management decisions are made and most of their engineering is still done.

If you believe that consumer purchases should reflect something more than selfishness, your second biggest consumer purchase (after your house) should be of an auto produced by an industry on which hundreds of thousands of Americans and large sections of America depend. The bankruptcy of Ford or GM would devastate the industrial Midwest, and cause large numbers of American retirees to lose their health care and pensions. There really is no offsetting consideration that would justify buying a Japanese car, if one accepts the premises of your brand of conservatism.

Did you just call me Rex Mottram, Dreher? What does that make you--Sebastian Flyte?

Fair enough, B’rer Pod, you’re free to take any attempt to analyze critically the way we Americans live today as evidence that we hate America, and therefore have nothing useful to say. I just cain’t quit you all the same. Still, I leave it to our readers to decide who has more serious things to say in this forum about American culture, Sarah Butler or the Rex Mottram of 86th Street, who believes we all live in an infallible, star-spangled paradise, only the crunchy-cons are too sinful to see it.

Actually, Rod, I mean very much what I said. The tinge of anti- Americanism in this discussion is very troubling. And Ms. Butler Nardo, forgive me the inestimable insult of taking your words seriously. Now that I know you don't mean what you write, I will be sure to pay less attention in the future.

That’s our JPod, proud to be an Okie from the Upper West Side. You cannot possibly be serious. In fact, I know you’re not, because if you were, you’d be saying that any criticism of the, ahem, “American way of life” is invalid on its face, and comes from bad motive. I don’t think you believe that. Anyway, it’s an attempt to stifle debate by calling the critic un-American. Silly rabbit, Trix are for kids!

Mr. Podhoretz, breathe, please. I'm not convinced you read anything beyond the sentence that made you want to throw your fist through your computer screen. Let me try to briefly re-state my argument in a way that you will find un-offensive enough to read.

I am not making an argument about whether people love their children or are good parents. I'm not really trying to make an argument about personal virtue at all (at least not yet!). I'm trying to make an argument about the way we see ourselves and the social roles we fill because of the unique historical moment we--all of us--live in. It is simply true that the way we understand ourselves and our social roles is different today than it was 100 years ago, and that has something to do with consumerism. The next question then becomes, "Have these changes made it easier or harder to be good?" That is a question about virtue, but it's still one that doesn't imply anything about your actual ability to be virtuous or mine or anyone else's. Is this any better?

Mr. Geraghty, Rod's asked that we hold off on the religious aspect of the discussion until we get to that chapter. I certainly have lots of anecdotes (my dad is a minister), but I also promise you plenty of delicious data when we get there, k?

Autoworker Tracy from Kentucky gets all up in Ricardo’s face:

I just happened upon the post from Ricardo in Michigan regarding buying American autos. I work at Toyota Motor Manufacturing in Georgetown, KY and as far as I can tell, based on what we currently know about the nature of reality and how to determine it (apologies, I may be too Kantian for Ricardo), I think (therefore I am) an American citizen in an American auto facility with health benefits and a retirement package. Maybe Ricardo should have taken the "Blue" pill from Mr. Moore (aka Morpheus) so he would "know" what is reality and what is Matrix induced reality. Funny that he should suggest reading "Rivethead", that hagiography of the union auto worker, replete with stories of the silly flaws that they would purposely put on cars that we unsuspecting Americans would have to pay large sums of money for so that they could live rent free for the rest of their lives. They would also laugh about it, according to the book. We at TMMK make as much as a UAW worker does. Probably more since we don't have to pay dues that go to support political candidates who then enact legislation to hasten the demise of the industry we so dearly depend upon for our sustenance. I understand that I owe much to the UAW, and would join it if my fellow team members voted for us to do so. However, until the UAW changes their policies to reflect economic realities, they will remain a static entity in a dynamic reality. Ricardo needs to get out more, drink less Kool-Aid, and look in the mirror as the first step to solving his (and the Michigan auto worker's) problems.

Caleb, there would be no point consigning The Public Interest to any location, as it has already ceased publication. Now, here's where I stand--with Merle Haggard: "When you're running down my country, Hoss, you're walking on the fighting side of me." I feel that way when liberals slander America and Americans and I feel that way when conservatives do it too.

Here is what I find so fascinating about this discussion. Some, like Jonah, point out--with significant justification I would add--the dangers of “lifestyle politics” and the fact that the ideas Rod draws from have had champions within mainstream conservatism all along--that’s true in my judgment. But then others, like JPod and Geraghty, stand ready to browbeat and anathemize those same ideas. Something very interesting is going on here. Some conservatives appear to stand ready to chop off their own arms and legs. Perhaps this is a problem of the “uppity traditionalist”; ironically tolerated when his truth claims are kept safely on the lifestyle reservation, but damned dangerous if he ever gets off!

To make my point clear, I wonder if JPod will send Public Interest off to hell too for publishing this excellent discussion of parenting and consermerism which I linked to earlier. Here’s what Bosworth wrote (be sure to catch the clincher at the end):

As a last example of the insidious effects of these economically shaped identities, I want to return to parenting and balance the "rash" with a "rational" model. Let's imagine a slightly upscale, much more admirably motivated version of the family mentioned on the first page: a white, married, Midwest couple, college educated, with two preteenage children, Adam and Amy. Although both parents now work full-time, the mother gladly stayed home a full year after each child's birth and then relentlessly sought out the very best child care, regardless of price. In fact, committed to both gender equality and responsible parenthood, this couple had planned to alternate working half-time until Amy reached junior high. But when the father's company was downsized, he had to take on more work rather than less, and although the mother was still willing to sacrifice the career advantage of full-time employment, they found that, without the extra income, they couldn't afford a home in the community with the best public sch ools. So she extended her hours--as did the father, for his commute was lengthened an hour each day after the move.

Such sacrifices are, in fact, characteristic of this couple. They have no desire to take impulsive vacations free of their children's company. To the contrary, their fondest fantasy, discussed over takeout dinners or whispered above the soundtrack of the children's Friday night video, is to have a more relaxed and natural family life. But everything they read, including the President's speeches, and their own employment experiences together warn them that their children must be highly trained to survive the changes that the new economy is likely to require. So they take out a loan to buy the very best home computers, which they upgrade, then upgrade again. When Adam has trouble learning to read, they send him to a nationally franchised Sylvan Learning Center for after-school training and then to a private tutor who specializes in dyslexia. When Amy shows ability in math, it only seems fair that they offer her tutoring as well, so they send her to the local Kumon Math Center (also nationally franchised) and pay for skating lessons as well.

All of this, of course, means more expense and less time spent together, but they try to adjust by using cell phones and e-mail to stay in touch. Furthermore, Adam and Amy are guaranteed "quality time" on the weekend (there's a sign-up sheet over the microwave): four full hours when each gets to choose favorite activities and special foods, when each has the right to be "spoiled" by the intensity of their parents' total attention. The couple also attends every conference, game, and performance they can. There, too, the intensity of their attention doesn't flag; there, as their children's passionate advocates, they work "the system"--lobby teachers, network neighbors, argue with refs--whatever it takes to wrest the best for Amy and Adam.

I could go on, but the portrait is complete enough and, perhaps, painfully familiar. What I find so insidious here is the extent to which the totality of domestic life is being shaped by economic models, motives, fears, and values: how much the grimly anxious pace of the postmodern workplace has come to command the postmodern household. And, of course, for clarity's sake, I have removed all the potentially corrupting effects of contemporary consumerism, the hedonistic half of the mixed message the economy presents. Statistically speaking, this is a uniquely ascetic postmodern couple. Here, we have no divorce, infidelity, rampant careerism; no alcoholism, drug addiction, compulsive shopping or gambling--none of the many forms of self-centered dysfunction that darken our day and rend family life. Here, we have nothing so rash, just a perversely rational schedule of pervasive separation, a desertion of one's own children "on their behalf."

This household has been purged of sexist inequalities, but it has also been stripped of wonder, curiosity, improvisational fun. Mother and father have merged into one cooperative, unisexual provider. The good parent has been reduced to the Good Producer whose job as parent is to supply society with a new generation of good producers--i.e., employees who are already accustomed to highly rationalized social environments and whose skills are upgraded to the ever-evolving specs of the time. The new parent doesn't teach by example; he hires tutors, coaches, experts "in the field." His role is less to cherish and chasten than to outfit and facilitate; less to shape meaning than to make money, furnishing each child with all the materialist gear and rationalist techniques the economy requires.

Even this household's happier moments have been reinvented in the economy's terms. The notion of prescheduled "quality time," for example, converts parenting to corporate standards of executive efficiency. As in the rest of the technological economy, enhanced technique is supposed to reduce the need for management "face time," leading to an implicitly absurd rationalization by which, nevertheless, many of us now run our lives. We believe that the better parents we are, the less time we actually will spend with our children. The parent as passionate advocate--the one lobbying hard on her child's behalf without broader concerns for truth, justice, or even common courtesy--is likewise a rote reenactment of workplace roles, especially as defined by the ever-expanding service domain. Such behavior accurately reflects the highly specialized code of conduct--the so-called professional ethics--of the lawyer, the therapist, the consultant, or the licensed accountant whose firm does the books for both a local church a nd an S&M supply house. Our job at home, like our job in the field, is not to reprimand but to represent. All clients are good clients. Our children have become our customers, and the customer is always right.

Yes, some days when I'm feeling a bit saucey I call myself one. But no, I'm no libertarian. I think it was Ramesh who summarized the trouble with liberarianism most succinctly. He said something to the effect of: except for the fact that it can't respond to the challenges of children and foreign policy, it's a nearly perfect political philosophy.

But, having spent 3 years reading and writing about fascism, I will say I have become more libertarian and vastly more sympathetic to the freedom side of the freedom-virtue fusionist coin (though few would have ever confused me for a virtucrat). What may sound libertarian in my response to things Crunchy is my opposition the what scholars of fascism refer to as the sacralization of politics (note: students of Voegelin (like Caleb) will understand this doesn't merely refer to theocratic enterprises, but Progressive enterprises generally).

Religion informs values and values should inform politics, but politics should never try to replace religion. Conservatism's traditional emphasis on the transcendent understands that these spheres may interact but they should never serve as substitutes for each other. As much as a guy named Goldberg can, I've become a disciple of Augustine, at least insofar as I think the City of God and City of Man dichotomy is the right way to look at life, politics and history.

From Rich Shipe:

I always read practically everything Jonah writes on NRO. He's a hilarious
and insightful conservative writer and I've especially enjoyed his past
sparring matches with libertarians (especially the crazys over at
lewrockwell.com! Go Jonah Go!). But based on today's critique of "Crunchy
Cons" I wonder if he might be coming out of the closet as a libertarian?
Jonah, don't give in to those guys! Please, you are one of our best
anti-libertarians. Ok, maybe he just has a special place in his heart for
libertarians and just dabbles from time to time?

Jonah does make some good points, particularly for me was his one about
Olasky's "Compassionate Conservatism." (Olasky would probably say that
while Bush vocalized support of the concept, the actual policy implemented
by the Bush Administration has been far from Compassionate Conservatism.)
I'd like to here Rod's answer to the Olasky point especially.

Anyway, if as a conservative you agree that greed can be a bad force on a
marketplace that doesn't make you a Marxist. Libertarians often slip into
the view that man is generally/naturally good and therefore will in a free
market always make the choice that is best for him and if everyone is
making the right choice for themselves the whole thing will be good.
Conservatives will say that man is not generally/naturally good and that
he's naturally evil. We quite frequently make decisions for ourselves that
are very bad for ourselves. (The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak)
Unlike in the animal kingdom where the carnivore eats just what he needs,
man naturally falls into gluttony and the general slavery of sin. The
libertarian doesn't acknowledge this problem or glosses over it. The
Marxist looks to the state to solve this problem. The conservative wants
the state to allow a free economic market but wants the
church/family/community to regulate the greed and selfishness of man in
the marketplace.

To me, the big theme of Rod's book is that conservatives do need to
revitalize government with conservative ideals, but that will fail if it
doesn't also happen at the family/community level. (Rod provided a great
quote from John Adams on this in chapter 1) For this to happen at the
family/community level conservatives need to shrug off the "me first"
approach of libertarianism. I'm sorry to take both barrels to libertarians
in this way but I think it is true and based on Jonah's past writings I
think he would agree. Go Jonah Go!

Whoa, whoa! Can we save the particular talk about religion until we talk about that chapter? Because it’s all about traditional modes of faith and why they’re so attractive to more and more people. N.B., just because you affiliate with a “conservative” church or denomination doesn’t mean that you are conservative in every respect. I think what Sarah might have been pointing to is that even those of us who belong to conservative churches have incorporated a consumerist mentality into the way we approach the world. Fair point. And I think, JPod, that she’s onto something by talking about how the whole consumerist ethic informs nearly all aspects of our identity.

Sorry I’m late to this. I’m going to try to keep my posts shorter, so I’m not going to answer Noah and Jeff point by point, but I do recognize that they raise important questions.

On the Amish per se, I don’t know, Jeff, you live among them, I don’t. If they truly do scorn the “English” for not being as pure as they regarding technology, then I can’t help but find fault with that. Yet I find it difficult to condemn out of hand any community, Amish or Lubavitch or whatever, that takes its worldview seriously enough to rebel against the modern world in their day-to-day doings. It seems to me that if one wants to be more or less separatist, in the Amish or Hasidic way, then one’s default position should be to look upon those who aren’t enlightened enough to conform their lives with the Truth with compassion and humility, not from a position of spiritual or moral high-handedness. I would expect to find Amish and Hasidim who do just that, and Amish and Hasidim who are nasty about it.

The kind of “apartness” that personally interests me is of the “in the world, but not of it” variety. I don’t want to hive myself and my family away from the world (though for those who want to, I’ve got no complaints), but I do believe that the moral choices we make (which entail decisions about using technology, e.g., TV) unavoidably involve making a moral judgment on others. Yes, this is elitist--but anybody who believes in standards and tries to live by them is an elitist. I think we should all be elitists about standards, but populists about human beings. That is, hold to high standards, but approach people from a place of love and respect. The homeschooling farm-family Christians I write about in the book--more on which next week, when we talk about food--live a semi-Amish existence, but I’ve never gotten the least idea from them that they look down on me and my family for staying in the city. My sense is that you might be projecting the bad feelings you have about and bad vibes you get from the Amish onto everyone who sounds like they might have sympathy for the Amish--and that’s not really fair or accurate.

Noel writes:

I think an honest crunchy should admit to being, in a substantial way, elitist. If we had laws strictly regulating against factory farming, for example, the price of meat would go up substantially, and some people at the lower end of the economic spectrum would eat less meat. Strict environmental laws raise the cost of fuel, land, etc. At the margins, someone as a consequence will not be able to afford a car, or a house. If the crunchy position is honest, the proper response is: thems the breaks. You, the marginal individual or family who doesn't have meat, a car, or a home, are paying for a better society, one that treats animals better, keeps the air clean, reduces traffic congestion, etc.

[snip]

But I'm not sure I've heard you articulate things in this way, and say, frankly, that crunchy conservatism is elitist. It knows what the higher things are, and it wants to make all of us pay for them, even if we don't appreciate them or get the opportunity to enjoy them. Am I wrong?

There is a hyperbolic sensibility at work here in some of these blog entries, a sensibility that seems to border on the hysterical. This morning, Sara Butler announced that in our "consumerist" society, "we are consumers first, and then fathers or mothers, Presbyterians or Baptists, 'crunchy' or 'mainstream' conservatives." To which the only possible response is to blow a giant raspberry as a means of suppressing the impulse to put one's fist through the computer screen. Honestly, how dare you write such a thing, Sara Butler? How dare you presume to make a blanket statement about American parents in this fashion? There are 300 million people living in the United States. "We" aren't anything "first." We contain multitudes. If this kind of nonsense is what crunchiness leads to, then I say to hell with it. Seriously.

Sara Butler writes:

Take a look at the "spiritual marketplace," for example. Church shopping abounds, the "church on the corner" is struggling — and often failing — to stay open in the face of competition from megachurches, and denominational differences (and traditional moral teachings) are muted for the sake of marketing. This is a deeply unwholesome trend because it undercuts both the authority and function of churches as vital institutions of civil society.

A study released in September 2002, indicates that the membership loss may be tied to dissatisfaction with the mainline's drift into religious liberalism. Entitled "Religious Congregations and Membership 2000," the study of 149 denominations was sponsored by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies. The research showed that conservative denominations which held to traditional, orthodox doctrine, and which expected a high level of commitment from members, grew at a faster rate than liberal, mainline churches.

Ken Sanchagrin, sociology professor at Mars Hill (North Carolina) College and director of the Glenmary Research Center, which published the study, told Baptist Press, "I was astounded to see that by and large the growing churches are those that we ordinarily call conservative. And when I looked at those that were declining, most were moderate or liberal churches. And the more liberal the denomination, by most people's definition, the more they were losing."

I find Crunchy engagement difficult. You argue by anecdote, but I need statistics and data!

I’m thrilled that Sara Butler has joined our little circle. I think I do address this issue in the book, Sarah, though perhaps not as clearly as I ought to have. In After Virtue, Alasdair Macintyre zeroes in on what you’re talking about. If I recall correctly--Mitch, help me out here--he says the moment that one becomes aware of morality as a choice, a line has been crossed. That is, even if one were to affirm the rightness of a choice to live an ethical life, the fact that one approaches it as a choice in the first place concedes a great deal. We’re already far along the road to “it’s right for me” and “my truth,” and ultimately radical subjectivism.

And yet, what is the alternative in a pluralist society such as our own? There is no authority save that of the individual, unless the individual chooses to recognize a higher authority--but again, in being conscious of that choice, isn’t the individual implicitly nodding to subjectivism? Kierkegaard--who in Macintyre’s view helped get us into this dilemma--recognized that the only way to “prove” the truth of any non-scientific proposition is by the willingness of the individual to live and to act as if it were true--in other words, to radically commit oneself to the truth of the proposition. Maybe that’s what Macintyre meant when he pointed to the Benedictine communities of the fifth century, who left the shattered fragments of the Roman Empire and built new communities dedicated to Christian virtue in the countryside, as an example of the only escape from nihilism left to us today, in a culture where freedom of choice is seemingly the only ethic binding society together.

Dang, somebody talk about oatmeal or something.

Frederica raises the idea of e-mail as an aid to conviviality. That really is true--but it poses problems of its own. About 10 years ago, I moved from Washington down to south Florida for a job. I found myself adrift at sea: as a political and religious conservative, I found it very difficult to find simpatico friends. I did have great pals at my office, but talking politics, faith and culture was important to me, and that just didn’t interest them. I came to focus much of my attention, and to direct much of my intellectual and emotional energy, to a couple of online groups of friends scattered around the country. Frederica was one of them; the other was made up of a group of us conservative Catholics who’d come together in 1993 or so after we realized that discussing faith on the AOL Catholic bulletin board was impossible, because we lacked the same moral language as liberal Catholics, and were only talking past each other and exhausting ourselves.

Honestly, I don’t know how I would have made it without those e-mail groups and the fellowship they provided. And we helped each other too: when, for example, one of us lost his job and was on hard times, we took up a collection and one of us drove to his house with groceries. I’m still in touch with both groups, though they’ve morphed several times since then. I must say, though, that Frederica warned me at the time that the time and energy I was spending communing with like-minded folks in our little Internet community was not time spent actually getting to know and serving the people who lived in my actual community. That’s a very fair point--and yet, the online community was not fake either.

I'm a bit nervous about joining the conversation at this late date, but I wanted to try and raise an issue with consumerism that I don't think has been clearly addressed either here or, unfortunately, in Rod's book. In a consumerist society, we approach all arenas of life, not just the economic, as consumers; we are consumers first, and then fathers or mothers, Presbyterians or Baptists, "crunchy" or "mainstream" conservatives. This troubles me much more than whatever issues there may or may not be with capitalism as an economic system. To this non-economist, the free market seems to work well enough, but it is not at all appropriate for application to other spheres of life.

Take a look at the "spiritual marketplace," for example. Church shopping abounds, the "church on the corner" is struggling--and often failing--to stay open in the face of competition from megachurches, and denominational differences (and traditional moral teachings) are muted for the sake of marketing. This is a deeply unwholesome trend because it undercuts both the authority and function of churches as vital institutions of civil society.
When people shop around for churches that affirm their pre-existing prejudices, churches are less able to influence behavior in the way our society needs them to.

Rod does write, in the chapter on consumerism,

"A consumerist culture also tends to cede authority to the secular priesthood of scientists and other professional experts."

I just want to point out that I said it first. And in a lot fewer words. Does that mean Jonah and I agree on all the rest? And isn’t all the rest what is really important?

The DC Examiner runs a skeptical review.

You think Crunchy Cons are exaggerating the impact of technology? Then check out what the technologists themselves are saying. In today’s Fast Company magazine, Slate columnist Adam L. Penenberg gleefully describes the implications of the coming technopoly:

“…in the next 10 years, the Internet also will invade your appliances, even your clothes. And just as you wouldn't dream of being without a telephone now, the thought of being offline will be unthinkable…. More generally, though--and more important--the fluidity of information will bring about a radically democratized society where consumers enjoy unprecedented power…. Historian David Nye wrote, ‘People do not merely use electricity. Rather, the self and the electrified world have intertwined.’ The Internet, too, is being braided into our lives, and that will probably make us stronger--even if it leaves a few of us hanging. “

“Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deificaiton of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology. This requires the development of a new kind of social order, and of necessity leads to the rapid dissolution of much that is associated with traditional beliefs. Those who feel most comfortable in Technopoly are those who are convinced that technical progress is humanity's superhuman achievement and the instrument by which our most profound dilemmas may be solved.”

A reader sends a link to a Wendell Berry essay explaining "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," which, of course, is online.

Rod has got to be proud that he got Jonah thinking about his book for so many words today.

March 01, 2006

Ricardo from Michigan says yep, I’m a hypocrite:

The top plant in terms of quality is a union-run Cadillac plant here in Michigan. Of the top brands in terms of quality, as measured by JD Power, Buick and Cadillac are always in the top five. The Japanese quality thing is highly, highly overrated- so is the fuel efficiency; because import cars are EPA-tested upon import and not sale, foreign manufacturers are able to inflate their EPA ratings by making certain features of the car dealer-installed (that is, by having the dealer install standard features on the car instead of the plant, they can reduce the vehicle's weight and boost their EPA rating to a number a consumer will never reach).

American automakers pay a $1200 premium per car in terms of their sunk costs of pensions and healthcare. Japan, with its nationalized healthcare, allows its manufacturers to avoid this. Japan further limits the sale of foreign-manufactured cars in their nation to 15% of the total, while the US has no limit on the number of foreign-built cars that can be sold here.

The American auto industry is one of the few left in the world where a person can make a comfortable living doing manual labor. Unionized workers on the GM line can make up to $100,000 over time. Read "Rivethead," by Ben Hamper, a friend of Michael Moore's; he worked on the line at GM in Flint and wrote for Moore back when he was running the Flint Voice. It's a good account of that life. Is it a fun job, or a fulfilling one? No. It's a well-paying one, though. Which puts it ahead of the vast majority of jobs that aren't fun or fulfilling and pay poorly.

One in every ten jobs in America is directly or indirectly reliant on General Motors' continual existence. GM's domestic automobile production facilities are losing ventures for them. They could close all their plants in the US and move them abroad; they sell more cars internationally than here anyway, since Americans have lost their taste for things built by their countrymen.

Would I say you're a hypocrite if you espouse those principles and buy a Toyota? Yes. This is one of those few purchases where you are very directly impacting the lives of workers; the healthcare and pension premium on an American car is pretty directly traceable to an individual worker.

I don't think everything you buy needs to be American-made, but this is the single biggest one-off purchase you will make after a home. If this is the only American-made thing you ever buy, you're probably doing OK. Whether you personally buy American-raised chicken has no appreciable effect on the market; your personal choice of automobile does.

Thanks, Noah, for that post. It’s late here, and I’ve got to go to dinner, so I’ll answer you in the morning. Meanwhile, moments ago the following came in from Jeff, the Pennsylvania guy unimpressed by the Amish (and by CC-ism). Thanks Jeff – I’ll post this, and answer both you guys tomorrow. Meanwhile, the rest of you feel free to jump in. I’m blogged out today:

Here's my gripe, Rod (and I'm going to use the Amish as my example): to listen to the Amish, they are better than we "English" because they eschew all of those bad things like technology, electricity, cars, phones, and materialism in general. However, their shunning of these things ends when it infringes upon their interests. They don't seem to have a problem with manufacturing "authentic Amish quilts" in large quantities so yuppies from New Jersey can snatch them up for their cottages at the shore. Isn't that feeding the materialistic society they have such a problem with? They want to be "apart" yet still benefit from participating what say they want to be apart from.

This is the same vibe I'm getting from your blog. All of this materialism and adherence to technology is bad...except for when you decide it's not. It all seems very arbitrary and much like what YOU LIKE is "good" and what you DON'T LIKE is "bad"...and those things may change tomorrow.

If you (and the Amish) want to limit your use of technology, by all means go ahead. If you want be less material, go with God, my friend. But when you stand on the street corner and lecture those of us who don't follow this Crunchy path, you may get called out when you appear inconsistent.

Noah Millman e-mails:

Rod:

I think you're missing the key to your emailer Jeff's point. "They want to be 'apart' except for when they don't" - that's the key. Jeff's annoyed that (in his view) the Amish are saying that they have a better style of life, but that style is parasitic on the larger society that they disapprove of: the consumers who buy their products, the people who give them rides, etc. In other words, the Amish have not come up with a better way of living that we can all emulate; they have elected themselves an elite and are willing to ride on the backs of their lessers when that makes sense for them, even if it undermines their independence. You can see something of the same dynamic in the way that secular Israelis - and some religious Israelis, too - object to the ultra-Orthodox who spend their lives studying in yeshivah and living on the public dole and not serving in the army. These people have certainly dedicated themselves to a higher ideal, and sacrificed creature comforts for it. But they can't survive without the support of the larger society, and they expect the larger society that does *not* share those ideals to support them for their dedication. You can see why that would be resented.

I think an honest crunchy should admit to being, in a substantial way, elitist. If we had laws strictly regulating against factory farming, for example, the price of meat would go up substantially, and some people at the lower end of the economic spectrum would eat less meat. Strict environmental laws raise the cost of fuel, land, etc. At the margins, someone as a consequence will not be able to afford a car, or a house. If the crunchy position is honest, the proper response is: thems the breaks. You, the marginal individual or family who doesn't have meat, a car, or a home, are paying for a better society, one that treats animals better, keeps the air clean, reduces traffic congestion, etc.

In the Middle Ages, guilds strictly regulated prices and quality standards for most products. The consequence was relatively high quality (guild members could still compete on quality, though not on price) but restricted quantity. So you had high-quality linen for the elite and rough homespun for the plebes. You also had the great Gothic cathedrals, while most people lived in hovels. This, again, is not a point about technology; lots of technological innovation went on in the Middle Ages - those Gothic cathedrals were a technological marvel. It has to do with how technology was used. It was not used, primarily, to satisfy the wants and needs of most people.

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with espousing an elitist philosophy that says: society should prefer that fewer people enjoy better (or higher) things rather than many people enjoying worse (or lesser) things. And classically, though not so much in the American conservative tradition, conservatism is elitist, and frankly so. I myself am frankly elitist on all sorts of matters. I'm not sure there is anyone who is truly, consistently a preference utilitarian, trying to maximize the preference satisfaction of the most people today and not worrying about tomorrow. But I'm not sure I've heard you articulate things in this way, and say, frankly, that crunchy conservatism is elitist. It knows what the higher things are, and it wants to make all of us pay for them, even if we don't appreciate them or get the opportunity to enjoy them. Am I wrong?

-Noah

I confess: Email Changed My Life. It made it possible to communicate with like-minded people, which wasn't so easy when I was restricted to people who are, literally, local. The neighbors were nice enough, but that's not the same as being able to talk with people who are really like me; who've read the same books, who have the same convictions and the same sense of humor, and who are ready for a rousing conversation. Rod was one of my earliest e-buddies, a dozen years ago when I first fired up the old 14k Hayes modem and logged onto AOL 2.0.

Shortly before that I had spent a year as Communications Director for a statewide pro-life referendum. In the course of losing that fight it was powerfully borne in on me that my type was not welcome 'round here. Virtually no media coverage was fair, much less friendly. Local was not a friendly place to be. What a relief to find that there were people like me scattered around the country, and that I wasn't alone after all.

But there's still a longing for local, and now and then one of my e-buddies floats the fantasy that it would be great to shake the dust off our feet and go someplace safe and stable, to live and raise the kids. (Walker Percy's Lost Cove, TN, for example.)

But utopia ain't all it's cracked up to be. I was searching for a post that came in very early in this blog -- I think Rod pasted it in, on the first or second day. A woman was writing about living in a C