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."

[PoorMuttly]

Theodore Roosevelt :

Big Game hunter
Child Labor laws
National Park system
Gunboat Diplomacy
Devoted Husband and Father

Humanitarian, Naturalist, Warrior


Behold my tag line, which is written on a bronze plate on a boulder at his graveside...

....a few yards away from Harry Chapin's grave, the man who started World Hunger Year, a clearinghouse for information on resources for the hungry all over the world to avail themselves of, including sustainable agriculture....

...near the small old wooden crosses marking the graves of colonial slaves who expended their lives where they eventually fell....

....a few yards away from the first Audubon park in the world, Audubon being a friend of T.R.'s, and whose journals, filled with some of the best wildlife paintings ever made, and much to the consternation of modern American left-wingers far and wide, equally filled with recipes.

"In the lifelong fight for righteousness, the watchword for us all is "Spend, and be Spent."

[mugs99]

These people described in this book are very different than what the typical Dem poster writes about when stereotyping GOP voters.

I'm too old to go for the rope a dope. Are you looking forward to joining one of his communities?
.

[BobS]

Republicans have fun. Democrats eat rotten lemons. If some of us become hippies we will do it correctly.

Love, Peace and Happiness!

[summer]

Love, Peace and Happiness sounds good to me, too. :)

[summer]

LOL...just making an observation there!

[summer]

FYI. :)

[Gabz]

I'm starting seedlings today, too. Next week I hit it hard; today it's just for my own pleasure.

I'm running out of space for my seedlings - my family room looks like a greenhouse -I don't have one of them yet, but I'm working on it.

My cilantro is already 2 inches high, with parsley not far behind....and tomatillos have started sprouting. I'm off to a very slow start on peppers, only 18 varieties started so far, and no tomatoes in at all yet. Of course it will all be for naught if we don't get the danged tiller fixed pretty soon.

(I am I driving the libs crazy yet????)

[cyborg]

That's ME.

[cyborg]

I got the latest issue of Backwoods Home and they've got some great ideas about using old tires for planters. I'm doing the seedling thing pretty soon too.

[NeoCaveman]

LOL...actually, I heard Michael Moore is on a diet!

I know how he could lose 20 pounds of ugly fat.

.

.

.

He could cut off his head.

[x]

I feel sorry for Dreher. Mess with the simplistic categories that journalists and ideologues use to divide up the world, and they'll tear you to pieces.

Evangelicalism or environmentalism or pro-life activism doesn't fit neatly into the packages that ideologues and the media design for them. One family may opt to have one parent stay home to teach the children without "disapproving" of "mothers who work outside the home." Nor is any attitude towards immigration necessarily implied by crunchy conservatism.

I think the point is more that many of these beliefs are detachable and can be combined in ways that people think right. Viewing Dreher's beliefs as "funky" or "crunchy" or "right-wing hippiedom" or "anti-modernism" is just falling back into the same tired old categories of thirty years ago or more. I don't know if Dreher understands it himself but Kirkpatrick surely doesn't. His article is another example of looking at something so far from the outside that you don't see what it's really like.

"Modernity" is a pretty problematic concept. I don't think one can write environmentalists or evangelicals or birkenstock wearing-hippies out of "modernity" any more than one can make the modern the exclusive property of secular liberals or corporate executives or scientific rationalists.

National Review obsesses about "crunchy conservatism" in their crunchy blog. Those interested may find it worth a look.

[summer]

(Am I driving the libs crazy yet????)

LOL...I think you are doing just that, Gabz. :)

[summer]

National Review obsesses about "crunchy conservatism" in their crunchy blog. Those interested may find it worth a look.

Very interesting -- I tool a quick look and I see Dreher posts on that blog. Maybe he started it. BTW, I never heard of any of this before I read the book review. If someone had mentioned the phrase "crunchy con" to me prior to that, I probably would have thought it a new breakfast cereal! But, since being on FR, I always knew those kind of conservatives exist, and as I said, such an image really goes against the image of conservatives that some Dem bloggers want to promote. Perhaps that's one reason their candidates never win elections these days.

[cyborg]

No they want to say that conservatives are a bunch of squares not at all interested in health food, environment and wearing earth shoes. Actually my hippie shoe of choice is okabashis. Cheap and made in the USA.

[summer]

Yes, that is in fact what I mean! :)

[Gabz]

Old tires for planters doesn't cut it for me........I would need a junk yard full of them to provide me with enough planters for what I'm growing :)

[Gabz]

Good - that's my goal!!!!!!

[cyborg]

Don't you find the nootiness aggravating though? I sure do. It's like someone appointed libs the sole guardians of the environment.

[summer]

LOL...in Florida, it's funny how concern for environmental issues did not stop Republicans from winning a majority here in recent years. Gov Bush has been very good on environmental matters for the most part, so that is no longer seen as a Dem issue in this state.

[summer]

PS That is a very interesting magazine you mentioned! :)