Moosewood Republicans [NYT re new book on gun-loving, whole foods eating, hippie Republicans]

NYT Book Review ^ | March 12, 2006 | DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

[summer]

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 — a new species of ecologically minded, religiously orthodox and socially traditionalist conservative that Rod Dreher speaks for. If not, take the market for Ezekiel 4:9 as evidence he may be onto something.

Dreher, a writer and editor at The Dallas Morning News, argues that a growing number of people are drawn to a kind of across-the-board rejection of modernity that he considers true conservatism but that makes them look a little like "right-wing hippies." Crunchy cons disapprove of abortion rights, same-sex marriage, illegal immigrants, public schools, secular liberals and mothers who work outside the home. But they don't like Wal-Mart, McMansions, suburbs, pollution, agribusiness or processed foods, either.

...Dreher calls "Crunchy Cons" a "handbook of the resistance" ...

...Still, Dreher's survey of crunchy-con lifestyles makes a convincing case that there is a market for his brand of half-hippie traditionalism, even if it is not exactly the conservatism we know today. "There are many mansions in the American conservative house," he writes, "and some of them are old and funky and smell like a pot of organic mustard greens cooking down on the stove."

[Sir_Humphrey]

And no, I am not talking about Dreher per se, I am familiar with his work and know he is a true conservative. I am talking about the media in general. Those of us who are conservatives have no problem saying we are to the right. What gets me are the "progressives" who pose as pragmatic centerists who in reality are way too the left.

I have no problem if that's the way they see themselves. What is an issue for me is how the media plays along.

[summer]

...though I don't know if he has now returned to eating cheeseburgers...

[Horatio Gates]

I think some of these voters are right here on FR!

I'd buy that. I was at a major county GOP event back in 2000 and there was a guy nearby talking with a local radio host from Seattle. He reminded me of a cross between a hari krishna and a Woodstock attendee in Birkenstocks. But to hear him talk I was thinking I was a little too far to the left myself

[Sir_Humphrey]

See above post. I haven't yet read his book but would like to. I am refering to the MSM.

[katagious]

I used to call myself a right handed, left winged independent....but, as I've grown older I've no longer wanted any connection at all to the "left", however..crunchy con...I'm liken it.

[Gabz]

I don't wear birkenstocks (I'm too cheap) but much of the rest of it sure describes me, and a bunch of other folks I know.

Well, my afternoon break is over, back to the seeds and potting soil and then venison for dinner!!!!!

[summer]

See, the idea that one can "tell" by looking at someone is just wrong. Some people think they can "look" at a person and immediately know: he is right or he is left. But, really, one can't tell.

[summer]

ROTFLMAO!

[fanfan]

He probably leaves off the cheese and calls it a diet.


Mmmmm.
Cheeseburgers.

[summer]

:)!

[summer]

PS :)

[A.J.Armitage]

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."

I just hope they didn't keep reading to Ezekiel 4:12.

[marsh_of_mists]

Hmm, Rush Limbaugh may not be happy about this.

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"Well, my afternoon break is over, back to the seeds and potting soil and then venison for dinner!"

I'm starting seedlings today, too. Next week I hit it hard; today it's just for my own pleasure. Amish raised, organic chicken for dinner at our house tonight eventhough I have a freezer full of venison, too. ;)

[JerseyHighlander]

I fall squarely into this camp. I was raised, as the joke in the family goes, as a post-hippie. Areas like parts of Brooklyn NY, Orange County NY, Sussex county NJ, Ocean County NJ, Pike County PA, Central NH, Suffolk county LI, NY, NW suburbs of Chicago, Front Slope fringe communities, North central CT., (and lots of places in the South, I just don't know place names) there are a lot of places where this is the dominant social scene for younger people in their 20's and 30's.

See enough women driving through the McDonald's drivethru in a $80k+ Beemer, with kids in tow, see enough McMansions built by illegals with materials and labor quality that guarantees the house will be in shambles in under 15 years, see enough schoolmates hyped up on artificial sugar, food additives and psychotropics, see enough of the school systems, see the bottom of the barrel from your h.s. and university fill the public school teaching positions, see your taxes(especially property taxes in metro areas) increase far faster than inflation to pay for effects of illegal immigration, see the quality of goods available fall as imports cut every corner, and sooner or later you ask yourself why feed the machine.

[Semi Civil Servant]

Live simply. Live smart. Live free.

I think a bunch of people here can relate to that.

[PoorMuttly]

Uh-oh. They've got Muttly's number.

Me was always referred to as a "right-wing hippie," back in the actual day.

I only got much better at it through the years.

I have a taste for the best stuff, regardless of all the self-appointed judges who can't handle what they can't file into some well known group, with a label. I even called myself a Conservable, or a Liberative. Then I learned to just kept quiet, smile mildly, and walk away.

Does being nourished in the depth of my soul by being in nature make one a hippy tree-hugger or a redneck hunter? They ask, I know. May "they" find their own way. I have found mine. I love animals, they respond to me, and follow me around. Visitors are amazed, but never accept how I do it. Their viewpoints are stiff, vain, "uptight," as we used to say. They sometimes imply that I am wimpy about them, a boy, not a tough man, which they would respect more. Then they eat the best free-range organic chicken dinner they ever tasted, see the rattlesnake skins on the wall, see me shoot, see the loyalty of my dogs, which are always encouraged to do what pleases me, not focusing on what was wrong, which they comprehend well enough....and they stand amazed, respectful, but not able to allow themselves to do it themselves. They call me a wonder, but they know who has it better, for all their bluster and bravado. I pray all the time, because I am grateful for all of this, the modern world's best, along with the ancient world's best, and my gratitude is overwhelmed by pure worship. I walk out of the barnyard and into a limousine with nary a ripple, all things being the same to me, because I am close to the earth, and the truth.

Back to the computer, the mung bean sprouts, the Browning Hi-Power, and the woodburning stove.

'Works for me.

By the way, "have a nice day" is my favorite insult, because most people who cause me their superior, judgemental trouble could not find their butts with both hands if their lives depended upon it....which it actually does. I do not torture the lost, and prematurely dying.

[ClaireSolt]

I do not think I am mistaken in thinking that people will not flock to join crunchy cons, even though the description fits.

[mugs99]

Most Dem posters would never imagine such voters even exist

The Dems would be right. Crunchy Cons are a figment of Rod Dreher's imagination. He's selling books and pushing his mantra of building Christian communities. His ideas are copied from the Hippies' "back to the land movement" of the sixties. He reminds me of Jim Jones.
.

[summer]

Well, read this thread. There are people who identify with the description of his figment of his imagination. Not to say they all like the "crunchy con" label. But to many Dem posters, Republicans are either 1) all rich and all powerful (and no Dems are ever that way in their imagination); or 2) trailer trash. And, that's it. These people described in this book are very different than what the typical Dem poster writes about when stereotyping GOP voters.