“Crunchy Cons” A Book Review and Reflection

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).

Sometime back, fellow blogger Russell Smith put me on to the Crunchy Conservative phenomenon. I recently got around to reading Rod Dreher's book on the topic. What is a Crunchy Con? Here is the Crunchy Con Manifesto.

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.
2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.
3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.
5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.
6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.
7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.
8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.
9. We share Russell Kirk's conviction that "the institution most essential to conserve is the family."
10. Politics and economics won't save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Dreher devotes chapters to consumerism, food, home, education, the environment, and religion. The book is not a hardcore political analysis but rather an exploration of flavors and hues.

For my taste, the book gets a little too idealistic and over-romanticizes at times. (This may have more to do with "Mr. Spock" like approach to the world than with Dreher's deficiencies.) For instance, his take on food and its role in our lives, especially about meal preparation and dining as a family event, has much to commend. I liked his critique of the inhumane treatment accorded to animals in the food production process. Still, he seemed to me to be obsessed with the healthy food thing. (Ah, nuts! I just dropped part of my Twinkie on my Big Mac.) He also seems to take the climate change science too much at face value, although I do agree with his emphasis on sound environmentalism

I wish Dreher had articulated his uneasiness at times about free markets with more clarity. I deduced that he is troubled by the idea of pursuing the most "efficient" at all costs. Instead, I would suggest that what we deem "efficient" is rooted in our values. Change values, and you change what efficient means. I think Dreher would agree with this, but he seems to confuse bad or incomplete values with the vehicle (free markets) for expressing those values. His imprecision with terms like "culture," as in item number four above, "Culture is more important than politics and economics," makes it hard sometimes to determine what precisely he has in mind. To my way of thinking, politics and economics are integral aspects of culture, not distinct compartments.

Another thing I asked myself after reading his book was, what happened to the world outside the U.S.? Dreher makes almost no mention of other nations and people, yet it seems to me that the conserve in "conservatism" would contain the idea of conserving and nurturing all human life on the planet. I wondered how he would frame the Crunchy Con perspective on that.

Still, despite these criticisms, I resonated with the book's broad sweep and general themes. I have numerous GOPers among my acquaintances who are healthy food eating, energy-efficient home building, modest-income-one-parent-working, TV avoiding, wild game hunting, homeschooling folks. While reading this book a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were at a reunion of some longtime friends, where one such couple told us that they got rid of their TVs six months ago. They were going on about what tranquility it had brought and how much family time they now had. I have other friends who are urban core dwellers (like me) who have restored urban neighborhood homes and involved themselves and their kids in public school. They see their mission as conserving and nurturing the ancient moral truths that Dreher talks about. The caricature of GOPers as money-grubbing, SUV-driving, suburban ticky-tack dwelling, religiously bigoted Neanderthals is precisely that; a caricature. I suspect many who call themselves Democrats are Crunchy Cons precisely because they find the caricature so distasteful.

As a Christian, I am always reluctant to embrace labels like liberal, conservative, moderate, or even Crunchy Con. My first allegiance is to the Word of God and God's mission. Becoming overly identified with a political ideology can divert our attention from higher truths. I believe that free societies and free markets are optimal for promoting shalom in the world. That is not because I am a conservative or libertarian. It is because I assess what God is doing in the world and how this contributes to it. The problem is that fallen people regularly use freedom from control as a license to do whatever they want. Instead, the freedom from control is freedom to virtuous living. Sustained virtuous living requires preserving and nurturing institutions, communities, and ancient values. I think Dreher senses this, which is where I most connect with his message.

I think Dreher is uncovering a broad group that is largely under the radar of what gets reported in political media. I recommend the book.

(If you want to learn more about Crunchy Cons, I highly recommend you visit Russell Smith's blog, where he is doing a chapter-by-chapter review starting here. He gives links to several book reviews and other resources.)