The headline took my eyeballs hostage. Meet Rod Dreher, a conservative who is critical of capitalism. When conservatism wants to divorce itself from capitalism, the mother’s milk of individual freedom, I head straight for the fire escape. If conservatism, which to me represents freedom from the social engineers, becomes a weapon in the hands of a different set of state socialists, I along with others will happily kiss conservatism goodbye. But before that fateful day, do we at least owe this eccentric conservative a hearing?
Rod Dreher writes columns for the Dallas Morning News. But he is now worthy of a headline in the newspaper that I think of as the daily diary of capitalism, the Wall Street Journal.
Dreher’s book is called Crunchy Cons. George Nash, a conservative author in his own right, in his review for the WSJ writes, “Dreher is a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighbourhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency—the guiding principle of free markets—is an “idol,” he says, that must be “smashed.”
Hey Crunchy! Stop the presses and stop the madness! What part of the above sounds like the conservatism that we have grown accustomed to since the days of Reagan and Thatcher? Is this what we signed on for? The tome sounds like the predictable hysteria of the far left, the folks I sometimes refer to as egg sucking, Birkenstock wearing, granola munching moonbeams.
Have some conservatives decided that they don’t like the fruit of freedom and prosperity?
Yes, it’s true that couples are freer than ever to divorce. Children are not unaffected. Universities are open for business to both genders in all faculties. Increasing numbers of women are becoming doctors and engineers and captains of business. Are there consequences for children? You bet. Many women are choosing to have none or just one.
A free society where the emphasis is on economic growth has also meant the freedom to stop the embryo from becoming a child and the child from being born and this has had dire consequences for those millions of children who have never had the luxury of furiously pounding on these keys.
I don’t bite my tongue when I think about this consequence of freedom. But I don’t wag it either to invite the state to intervene. On balance, I favour authority being placed in the hand of the individual rather than the heel of the church or state.
Now to be fair to Mr. Dreher, he doesn’t say he wants the state to lord it over the citizenry. But he is asking his people to turn down the Costco and turn up the Christ. He is asking people to leash Tony the Tiger and choose crunchy granola instead. And now you know why the booked is called Crunchy Cons.
The latter day Conservative Cap’n Crunch wants people to open their hearts and heads to the simpler things, like mom and pop stores and family farms. He also implores us to submit to a larger thing known as God. At the moment he doesn’t call for government coercing people to go to these small and large things.
Hopefully he and his band of crunchy conservatives will keep all things voluntary and consensual.
Question: Can the conservatives who value restraining their material desires restrain themselves from voting for social engineers willing to grant government the freedom to impose crunchy conservative values?
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