"Crunchy-Cons"

I cannot help it . . . I am intrigued by, and attracted to, this book (by Rod Dreher) and its thesis (and, I admit, its title):  "Crunchy-Cons:  How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)."  I'm too lazy to home-school (even though I think it's probably best), I think "organic" is code for "covered with small bits of fecal matter," I hate the smell of Patchouli (which I associate with Birkenstocks); I love Starbucks, the Cheesecake Factory, and the mass-marketing of good beer; but I think that Dreher is on to something.

Here is a Dreher essay, from three years ago, introducing the "crunchy cons" idea.  And, here is an excerpt from the book:

Kim Anderson (not her real name) lives with her petroleum-engineer husband and their eight homeschooled children in Midland, Tex., the hometown of President Bush. They are serious Calvinists who get their crunchy-con marching orders from the first principle of the Westminster Catechism: The purpose of a man's life is "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Says Anderson, "That enjoyment of God is not just for when we get to heaven. What are we to do with ourselves while we're here? We don't have a longing to return to the Fifties, or some past era. We just long for God and His ways, and are trying to figure out how to live our lives to go along with that."

For the Andersons, taking faith seriously means living and raising children in a more radical way than most churchgoers. It is no accident that they are converts to a more rigorous form of Presbyterianism. As you talk to religious crunchy cons, you find a surprising number who are religious converts of one sort or another, many of them to traditional Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. What they have in common is a craving for an older, more demanding kind of religion, a faith with backbone that stands against the softness of bourgeois Christianity. . .

The crunchy cons, religious or not, share a belief that something has gone seriously wrong in contemporary mass society, and are grasping for "authenticity" (a word you hear often from this group) amid a raging flood of media-driven consumer culture. . .

A view of the material world as fundamentally flawed but fundamentally good, and therefore to be revered, embraced, and celebrated within limits, is a key crunchy-right concept. Crunchy cons, even the non- religious ones, take this sacramental idea seriously, which leads them to beliefs and attitudes (stereo)typically associated with liberals. . . .

In the crunchy-con view, right-wing indifference to natural beauty extends to the man-made world. Today's conservatives don't say enough about the importance of aesthetic standards. Ugly suburban architecture, lousy food, chain restaurants, bad beer, and scorn for the arts are defended by many rank-and-file Republicans as signs of populist authenticity, as opposed to the "elitist" notion that aesthetics matter. In previous generations, it was taken for granted among conservatives that cultivating taste was a worthwhile, even necessary pursuit in building civilization. Nowadays, talking like that in front of a number of right-wingers will get you denounced as a snob. . .

Though they share with many liberals a critical interest in aesthetics and the environment, a key difference between crunchy cons and the Left is the emphasis placed on these issues. Leftists tend to absolutize their tastes and convictions, look upon people who don't share them as morally deficient, and seek to impose them on an unwilling community. Crunchy cons, on the other hand, are more inclined to think simply that they've found a neat way to live, and want only to propose it to others. . . .

While crunchy cons would stop well short of imputing moral inferiority to those who don't share their own tastes in architecture, trees, or foodstuff, they would also say that it's a serious mistake to think of these issues as mere matters of taste. A child who grows up in a neighborhood built for human beings, not cars, may think of man's relation to his world differently from one raised amid the throwaway utilitarianism of strip-mall architecture. One's sensitivity to and desire for beauty, and its edifying qualities of order, harmony, "sweetness and light," has consequences for the character of individuals and ultimately for civilization. It's perilous to forget that.

You may be saying, "God save us from these Brie-eating bobos, who have the money to indulge their snobbish tastes and want to inflict them on the rest of us." But most crunchy cons are different from bobos — David Brooks's bourgeois bohemians — in part because they tend not to have a lot of money. Which brings us to the fourth big area that sets crunchy cons apart: their ideas about family.

Many religious crunchy cons have large families because they believe large families are a positive good. This usually means the mother, who is often highly educated, forgoes a career to stay home with the children — and possibly even homeschools them. . .

One does find that most crunchy cons are at least uneasy being fully open with both right-wing and left-wing friends. Some say they avoid talking about politics with liberal friends, because sooner or later someone will say, "How could a nice fellow like you be such a fascist?" On the other hand, to discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese around many conservatives is to set yourself up for knee-jerk mockery. Crunchy cons wish their fellow Republicans would show tolerance for diversity within their own ranks.

"I don't want a McExistence bought in a strip mall and a mega-mart, but that doesn't mean I disparage those who like the comfort and regularity of suburbia. The problem is many GOPers view anything not embraced by the GOP mainstream as suspect," says Kerry Hardy, 33, a D.C. libertarian. "Western civilization is not threatened by people eating tofu or wearing tie-dye, and if the GOP mouthpieces stopped acting as if it were and stopped a priori judging those who do to be liberals, they might find that many of them are on their side."

And not only on their side, but ready with something to teach them about ways to live more fully within the conservative tradition. . .

Rick