Crunchy Cons

Rod Dreher's book on "Crunchy Conservativism" is out.  And . . . there's a blog, too.  (Scroll down; there's a lot of stuff that's consonant with things we talk about here.)  As I've mentioned before:

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.

Check out also this post over at "Get Religion", which excerpts an essay by George Nash:

In Mr. Dreher’s view, consumer-crazed capitalism makes a fetish of individual choice and, if left unchecked, “tends to pull families and communities apart.” Thus consumerism and conservatism are, for him, incompatible, a fact that mainstream conservatives, he says, simply do not grasp. He warns that capitalism must be reined in by “the moral and spiritual energies of the people.” It is not politics and economics that will save us, he declares. It is adherence to the “eternal moral norms” known as the Permanent Things.

And the most permanent thing of all is God. At the heart of Mr. Dreher’s family-centered crunchy conservatism is an unwavering commitment to religious faith. And not just any religious faith but rigorous, old-fashioned orthodoxy. Only a firm grounding in religious commitment, he believes, can sustain crunchy conservatives in their struggle against the radical individualism and materialism he decries. Nearly all the crunchy cons he interviews are devoutly Christian or orthodox Jewish believers who are deliberately ordering their lives toward the ultimate end of “serving God, not the self” — often at considerable financial sacrifice.

Rick