Free Republic

Today, the Los Angeles Times ordered its bloggers not to talk about the story. Here, via Kausfiles, is the memo from an editor there: Hey bloggers, There has been a little buzz surrounding John Edwards and his alleged affair. Because the only source has been the National Enquirer we have decided not to cover the rumors or salacious speculations. So I am asking you all not to blog about this topic until further notified. If you have any questions or are ever in need of story ideas that would best fit your blog, please don't hesitate to ask Keep rockin,...

Forty years ago this month, Paris exploded in left-wing student riots that led to a nationwide general strike. The revolutionary fervor of France's soixante-huitards ('68ers) spread widely, including to American campuses. If you're wondering when the Good '60s of peace, love and civil rights gave way to the Bad '60s of anarchy and violence, May 1968 is as good a historical pivot point as any.John McCain was in the Hanoi Hilton at the time. Barack Obama was 6 years old. Yet the restless spirit of '68 haunts this year's presidential campaign, especially the White House bid of Mr. Obama, who,...

Now that Benedict has come and gone we are in the thick of media analysis of the meaning of it all. Many folk (Rod Dreher is a notable example) were (as I expected) disappointed because the pope didn't "do something" about bishops who have, to say the least, not particularly distinguished themselves in the Scandal. Dreher wanted a "read them the riot act" moment. Others scattered around the secular and mainstream media talked about Benedict "firing" them and so forth. The pope, as you might expect, addressed the bishops and (as you also might expect given his high degree of...

Could it be that cultural and religious conservatives are fed up with being treated like useful idiots by the Republican establishment? Karl Rove helped re-elect Mr. Bush in 2004 by pushing statewide ballot initiatives to protect traditional marriage. But when the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution came up before the Senate, the GOP backed away from it, and President Bush gave it only desultory support. The amendment died with barely a fight from the Beltway right. Then there was the secret memo sent by Michael Scanlon, associate of crooked GOP fixer Jack Abramoff, that mocked Christian conservatives as...

Why does the GOP Establishment fear Huck? Juan Cole's got a bad case of left-wing Huckenfreude: I simply can not tell you how much I am enjoying this. The GOP has been pandering to these stupid bastards for years, and every time I pointed it out I was called “anti-Christian” or something or other. Those of us who saw what the party was becoming were told to shut up, that it was good politics. Enjoy your new GOP, folks. And here is something else to think about- are the evangelicals going to support Romney or Giuliani if you do manage...

Mormons aren't Christians ... ... and other thoughts on religion and politics sure to get your blood boiling Herewith, my views on religion and the politics of the present moment, with something to offend just about everyone: 1. Mormons aren't Christians. I don't mean that as a criticism, only as a descriptive phrase. When Mormons claim Jesus Christ as their savior, there's no reason to doubt their sincerity and good will, or even to deny that they are in some way followers of Christ. Yet Mormonism rejects foundational doctrines of traditional Christian orthodoxy, such that it is impossible to reconcile...

Roman Sacristan tells me that Rod Dreher, a right-wing writer (Dallas Morning News, National Review) who used to be Catholic (convert) has jumped ship and joined an Orthodox church (personal take: for me it'd be absurd to join, say, the Russian Orthodox church without being Russian). On Beliefnet, Mr. Dreher explains himself in quite a pitiful manner, citing the sex scandals and dissent in the Church - only to offer up dissent himself. Back in 2001, when I first started writing about the child sex-abuse scandal in the Church, Father Tom Doyle, the heroic priest who ruined his own...

Over this past weekend, I had the opportunity to read Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons. This is a book that has been stirring up conservative circles since its release this past winter. Dreher is a popular Generation-X conservative writer and a convert to Eastern Catholicism. He has worked for a number of publications, including the National Review, the New York Post, and the Washington Times. He is now a full-time writer and editor with the Dallas Morning News. A Manifesto for the Family In Crunchy Cons, Dreher sets out to chronicle how “Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip...

Book review: 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). By Rod Dreher. 259 pp. Crown Forum. $24. THE upscale natural foods grocery chain Whole Foods now stocks a brand of cereal called Ezekiel 4:9. It could pass for any other gravelly, whole-grain, flour-free concoction on the shelves, but Ezekiel's box credits its inspiration to "the Holy Scriptures." If this sounds like your kind of breakfast, you may be a crunchy con —...

From the reviews of Crunchy Cons Sometimes, it is said, one must be cruel in order to be kind. "Architecture, trees, foodstuff...[Let's] discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese". He calls himself these days a "crunchy Republican" and has written a book to that effect in the hopes that the Wizard can give such a creature a brain and maybe help recapture some who have rightly become morally very uneasy with GOP schizoid "values". So why not transvalue them altogether, he asked himself? Put them in jeans and a log cabin and take...

DALLAS, Texas- Some people love organic food, are environmentalists, and do not think much of unbridled capitalism, yet they still insist they are hard-core conservatives. Can this be true? Now there is a new subset of conservatives known as “crunchy cons.” Crunchy cons is a term coined by journalist Rod Dreher, who realized after he and his wife got hooked on the superior taste of organic foods, that he himself might be a crunchy con -- or crunchy conservative. Dreher said, "My wife had cooked these amazing vegetables. They were delicious. I said, 'Where did you get these?' She goes,...

The New CountercultureMeet Rod Dreher, a conservative who is critical of capitalismBY GEORGE H. NASHRod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, "the Democrats act like the Party of Lust." But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism,...

A 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,...

Don't know how many of you caught Rep. John Murtha's very angry, very moving speech just now in which he called on the White House to institute an immediate withdrawal of US troops from Iraq. CNN didn't air the entire thing, but as I listened to it, I could feel the ground shift. Murtha, as you know, is not a Pelosi-style Chardonnay Democrat; he's a crusty retired career Marine who reminds me of the kinds of beer-slugging Democrats we used to have before the cultural left took over the party. Murtha, a conservative Dem who voted for the war, talked...

American conservatism is in crisis at the moment because the bizarre Harriet Miers nomination imposed a surreality check on the right, forcing us to consider just how much nonsense we had gone along with for the sake of party discipline. Where to start? With the LBJ-level spending? The signing of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance bill, which candidate Bush had denounced as unconstitutional? The race-preferences sellout in the University of Michigan cases? (SNIP) There was also the cynical use of the federal marriage amendment, which the administration dropped after turning out the social conservative vote in 2004. And grass-roots conservatives cite...

Those Dallas Zionist Conspirators At the DMN blog, Rod Dreher reports on Michael Jones' Culture Wars explanation of the DMN series on fugitive priests: I've just read a delightful article from the current issue of Culture Wars, a Catholic magazine run by far-right conspiracy cranks. The long essay, which -- alas for you! -- is not available online, rips Your Humble Servant and this newspaper over its series on fugitive priests. Do you want to know who's really behind these stories, according to Culture Wars (whose lousy website is here)? Wait for it... Ding, ding, ding! That's right, the Jews,...

DALLAS, HERE I COME [Rod Dreher] I have news. I'm leaving NR to join the Dallas Morning News as an editorial-writer and columnist. My last day at NR is April 2, and I'll start at the News on April 10. I'm excited to be going to Dallas, moving closer to family, and putting down roots. When I wrote this a couple of years ago, I knew that it was only going to be a matter of time before we left our beloved New York. Osama helped push us out the door. My three-year-old, Matthew, thinks Texas is paradise, and is...

Rod Dreher (always a favorite around here) slips in a bit over at "The Corner about his junket to see The Two Towers - lucky dog: "THE TWO TOWERS" [Rod Dreher] Saw it tonight. I give it a B, but if I hadn't read the book first, I'd probably give it a strong A. It's three hours long, but that time flies by. The film barely stops, which you can understand inasmuch as they've got a hell of a lot of plot to get through. "The Two Towers" was my favorite of the trilogy, in part because I absolutely loved...

May 24, 2002 10:15 a.m. Weakland’s Exit A liberal bishop and his downfall. Today, Milwaukee Catholics are without an archbishop. Many orthodox Catholics have wondered for weeks why the sex-abuse scandal has hit America's more conservative bishops — Law of Boston and Egan of New York — hardest. Not any longer: Archbishop Rembert Weakland of Milwaukee, the most liberal bishop in America, has been disgraced by the revelation that he paid $450,000 in hush money to buy the silence of an apparent former male lover. The Vatican accepted Weakland's resignation Friday morning. He had offered it in April, upon reaching...