Also -- it's funny how this article mentions GOP voters who wear Birkenstocks, while in another article in today's NYT about Birkenstock sandals, the entire slant is that no one other than liberals wear Birkenstocks!
Just remember, Teddy Roosevelt was a Green Republican.
Didn't we just have a recent discussion about just this subject? :^)
This whole "Crunchy Cons" subject is one of the lamest topics ever manufactured. Never has so much hot air been generated about a more meaningless topic. Everything about it - from the fundamental concepts to the very name - is a huge bore. This is the first and last time I ever intend to comment about it anywhere.
*Waves Madly* Yep. I'm a Crunchy Con. ;)
It's funny how shallow liberals have to create classifications that everybody is supposed to conform to.
Could Birks just be another comfortable shoe??....Gasp!.... the horror!
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
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.
I just hope they didn't keep reading to Ezekiel 4:12.
Hmm, Rush Limbaugh may not be happy about this.
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.
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.
Love, Peace and Happiness!
That's ME.
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.
OTOH, I have not shaved yet today. So, maybe, I am unconsciously going hippie?
I'm a crunchy. Moosewood is on my bookshelf and organic milk, eggs, cheese etc in my fridge. No Birkenstocks for me but my even crunchier daughter wears them. She bought hers in Germany and she loves them!
When you think of politics are just left and right you will never define the population.