Crunchy Conned

I bought Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher (Crown Forum, 2006) with one question in mind. After all the publicity this book has received, I wanted to know how much his cultural agenda requires of the state. How much liberty must we give up in order to achieve this author's vision of what is right and true?

This is, after all, the critical question to ask about any book on politics. If someone believes that some cultural outlook is better than some other, wants to live this way instead of that, prefers the country over the city, or likes rye bread more than white, it doesn't affect you or me in the slightest. What matters is the extent to which a person believes that the state ought to be used to impose their particular vision of what ought to be.

So I picked up this book — a political book by a political writer — expecting to find a full-scale blueprint for crunchy conservatism that would crunch right through our freedom to live a different lifestyle than the author does. After all, the pitch made for this book is that the author believes that conservatives are far too celebratory of the market economy.

What I found was not that, however, but something you might say is even worse: Dreher seems untroubled by serious issues of economics and politics. He has not put much thought into the political or the economic implications of what he writes. He is not the slightest bit curious about what his vision for his life and yours means for society at large. Though he imagines himself as a rebel against mass consumption, he seems completely unaware that he is purchasing his lifestyle choice just like everyone else, and that the market he loathes is precisely what makes his choice possible.

For those who haven't read about this new approach to conservative living, here is a quick primer. Dreher follows in a long line of writers dating back to the Industrial Revolution — and a certain strain of post WW2 conservative writers — who loath consumer culture, believe that mass production for the masses is sheer corruption, that free trade is deracinating us all from praiseworthy national attachments, that machines destroy souls, and that capitalism is the enemy of faith because it fuels change and progress. Dreher reports with disgust that America has become one big shopping mall populated by people driven by spiritually barren materialist motives who buy buy buy goods and services of shoddy quality to feed their frenzied desire to live decadently while eschewing friends, community, family, and faith.

And make no mistake: it is the free market that is his target. He even says that "the place of the free market in society" is precisely where he departs with regular conservatives (who he wrongly assumes love the market).

We should go another way, says he. We should cook at home, turn off the television, have kids, educate them at home, buy organic veggies, eat free-range chickens, bike not drive, buy from small shops and never Wal-Mart, live in cottages rather then gated communities, buy old homes and fix them up, and you know the rest of the story.

What's really strange about this book is that it does not really go much beyond this, at least on the surface. It is mostly a guide to how above-it-all the author and his family are, how they got to be so fabulous, and how they and their friends are to be congratulated and admired for having escaped the trappings of the materialism of our age. No Wonder Bread and Cheez Whiz circuses for them! They live a fully "sacramental" life, from their choice of crusty multigrains to their love of fancy French cheeses.

It never occurs to the author that his crunchy way of living is a consumable good — nay, a luxury good — made possible by the enormous prosperity that permit intellectuals like him to purport to live a high-minded and old-fashioned lifestyle without the problems that once came with pre-capitalist living.

He has fallen for some romantic notion of the past — happy, faithful communities raising their own food and working their own land — without considering the downside: infant mortality, plagues, lack of sanitation, short lives, surgery without anesthesia, and all the rest. The market — that global matrix of exchange that forms its own order out of billions of individual decisions — is his benefactor, and he seems completely unaware of it. A writer like this can make an economist wish that the invisible hand were slightly more visible so that at least its merits could be appreciated.

There are times when his romanticism is overt: as when he favorably cites John Ruskin's claim that the Industrial Revolution "came at the cost of [England's] soul" and ended up "debasing the soul of man by treating people as mere consumers." This line of thinking makes good poetry but has nothing to do with reality. How does a switch from wood fuel to fossil fuel debase the soul?

The author doesn't speak of demographics at all: the population of England soared from 8.5 million in 1770 to 16 million by 1831. This is the result of a vast increase in living standards. The result of the Industrial Revolution was not "a loss of the human in everyday life" but exactly the opposite: the vast increase in the number of humans who could participate in everyday life.

The world today has 6.5 billion people, and many of them are growing richer all the time thanks to the advance of capitalism. How does Dreher propose to feed and clothe and care for all these people? If they were all required to live a "crunchy con" lifestyle they would die, first by the thousands, then by the millions, then by the billions. The world today absolutely requires a vast productive machinery called the market. I'm sorry that he doesn't like it but this is reality. To be truly pro-life means to embrace free markets.

It is these demographic realities that lead most "crunchy" ideologists of the Left to come to support population control. They come to understand that a world without a market would have to have far fewer human beings, and those still alive would be far less healthy. At least they are consistent. As a good Catholic, Dreher won't explicitly go there. But that is where his ideology leads, and you can already see steps in that direction with his demand for a crackdown on immigration.

Yet there are places where the author does stumble on some truth. He points out that government regulations hurt small business and favor big business. But rather than conclude that laissez-faire is the way to go, he wants policies that "adopt an attitude toward business laws that favor small businesses over large corporations." How he alone expects to convert the whole permanent bureaucracy to his value system is left unclear.

Still, he persists. He blasts government for its centralizing education policies, but then turns around to attack any Republican who favors welfare cuts, because he has some crunchy friends who need the money. He doesn't want government involved in family life but he does want government to "encourage an expansion of the role of civil-society institutions." He does not want government to dictate to churches but he does want government to "strengthen legal prohibitions against pornography." And of course he is all about environmental laws, and is scandalized that anyone would want to loosen restrictions.

So what we have here is a grab bag of weakly argued policies to support his particular lifestyle, which he is not content to live on his own but rather wants to see legislated as a national program. Never mind whether any of this stuff is consistent or what the consequences would be.

Of course we get lectured on the evil of large retail shops driving smaller ones out of business. Even Dreher admits that larger stores often offer lower prices and better quality. He further admits that he would not pay premium prices for second-rate products when offered the choice. But then he goes on to say that the real problem is that we are all victims of a "cultural revolution" that teaches us to never deny ourselves consumer choice.

What is he saying? That it is a pure artificial construct of our culture that we don't want to fork over for bad stuff when we can spend less on good stuff? That in his ideal world there would be a new Crunchy Con Man who spends profligately in order to support inefficient producers? This is dangerously close to the "false consciousness" argument of the Marxists.

Price and quality aren't matters of some mystical consciousness. Prices are tools of economization. They make sure that resources are not being wasted. It always mystifies me how people who claim to loathe the wastefulness of capitalism don't see that it is precisely prices, property rights, and free exchange that lead to waste-minimization.

I admit to being completely confused by what this "crunchy" ideology of the Left and Right really wants concerning prices. They think it's awful how people pay $50,000 for an SUV when they could pay $7,000 on a subcompact. But they also think it's dreadful how people scarf up cheap pickles and soft drinks at Wal-Mart instead of paying higher prices for oatmeal and honey at Ye Ol' Corner Grocery Store. As far as I can tell, they object to both low prices and high prices. The more you try to make sense of this, the more it seems like it's just commerce they hate!

But isn't our author right that America has become a consumer-driven cultural wasteland? I asked several non-political friends of mine whether this is true, and they all readily agreed. But when pressed as to what part of their own lifestyle they believed reflected an excess that they should give up, not one could think of a thing.

It seems that consumerism is one of those things people condemn in the aggregate but not in its particulars — and even less so when it comes to ourselves. Here, for example, is a scenario I just observed over the weekend. A young couple pulled up to a parking lot in their oversized SUV. They were dressed in top-of-the-line sports gear from their glare-resistant sunglasses to their shock-proof running shoes. They lifted two children out of the backseat and into three-wheel canvas running strollers that they had stored in the back. They set their thermal tumblers down and took off on a run with the children.

On the face of it, it looked like a picture of excess that Dreher would readily condemn. But then I began to think about what this couple should give up in order that their souls and our country would be saved. Their shoes? But those expensive running shoes, made to provide support over hundreds of miles, are essential for their physical health. Would Dreher wish middle-age knee surgery on them? Maybe they should give up their pricey strollers. But then the kids would be bumped around and might fly out if they hit a rock. Their huge car? Well, where are they going to put their kids with their oversized safely seats that take up so much room, and where would they store their large strollers? Their sunglasses, which might have cost $100 each? Lesser glasses do not cut the glare as well, and make it more likely that they will overlook a hazard. Their top-dollar shorts? How does it help them or anyone else to force them to where cut-offs instead? Their thermal tumblers? I fail to see anything soul-saving about a tumbler that doesn't keep coffee warm.

We could do the same examination of every aspect of this couple's lives and see that everything they own or do — at least from their perspective — is making their lives better. Maybe they live in a subdivision, maybe because it is safer, maybe because it has a pool for the kids, maybe because they saw it as a good investment. How is it that Dreher purports to know better what is good for them? Why can't he see how magnificent it is that the market provides such choice for people? What is it that so bugs him about people who are bettering their lot in life?

His answer is certainly not that this couple ought to pay less for their possessions, since that would entail going to Wal-Mart for cheaper sneakers, poly-blend shorts, and look-alike sunglasses at a fraction of the price. After all, Dreher condemns Wal-Mart too as a sign and symbol of our decadence. Maybe he thinks that this couple should not be out running at all, but instead they should be at home canning their own vegetables and washing their laundry down by the river. I fail to see how this can be considered the true path to social salvation.

As we approach the end of the book, we finally get to the inevitable Chicken Little scenario about what will happen to our nation should we continue to eschew his demands. He warns of nuclear holocaust, peak-oil scenarios, and bird flu epidemics — never mind that the last one is a hoax, the middle one is just bad economics, and the first one would result from reckless US foreign policy, about which he has nothing to say. We should be thankful that he finished the book around the time that New Orleans was under water from a flood and government was botching the clean-up operation. Watching this news seems to have tempered his enthusiasm for government solutions.

It is easy to lose patience with writers like this. He writes about economics but has no time at all for economic studies. ("What kind of economy should we have, then? I don't know; I'm a writer, not an economist.")

He is under the impression that the world we live is somehow hammered out by our wishes and desires concerning how we want society to be shaped, and therefore that reshaping it requires nothing more than wishing in a different sort of way.

So toward the end, we find that he is sympathetic to "distributivism," a theory of property organization that does not need to be explained here but which makes zero economic sense.

Why do people like Dreher avoid the study of economics? Why do they refuse to engage the topic? Maybe it seems too technical. Maybe he thinks it is something one should study in school and it's too late after.

But there might be a more subliminal reason: he might vaguely know that economic theory imposes limits on the human imagination. It claims that there are hard realities in this world and explains that there are tradeoffs. You can't always get what you want. Social structure is not just a product of the dreams we dream.

For example, you can't take steps toward reducing the division of labor in the world and expect people not to be impoverished as a result. Economics imposes a grueling intellectual responsibility that makes writers accountable for what they say. If you want to make a living as a provocateur, economics is best avoided.

"It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."

By the way, the book is available on Amazon, that big business that uses the most modern technology, and is responsible for the uses of vast amounts of gas and energy to deliver his book all over the world — all so people can read about the dangers of big business, technology, and overuse of energy, and so he can convert the masses to consume less of what he doesn't like and more of what he does like.

Jeffrey Tucker is editor of Mises.org. Send him mail. See his articles. Comment on the blog.

Reminds me of a couple of Don Henley (of The Eagles) concerts I went to in the early '90s because my former wife liked him. On both ocassions he launched into a diatribe against the homogenization of American culture, with McDonald's and Home Depot displacing the local Mom and Pop stores and local language and culture.

The irony to me was that he was blind to the fact that his industry (the entertainment and music industry) had more to do with the homogenization of American culture than any other single factor, but I guess since that's where he made his million$ he didn't really care.

Although some may like him, I do not.

He is a complete economic dunce that demonizes the very system that is proven to best raise the boats all - especially the least skilled at the economic first rung.

Just like the minimum wage forces the least skilled out.

And yet the Republican party is chocked full of those who insist we need more govt, or are willing to go along with it because our party is in power.

I offer the following links of essays and videos to all with enough intellectual honesty to identify what may be errors in their thinking regarding the progressive causes of the loss of our once limited govt and constitution of liberty - for which I continue grieving, but will not relent in disseminating about til my death, because my grandkids deserve no less of me.

These links if watched and read will fill the gaps purposely left out by educrats self interested in ever bigger Govt, who are today responsible for college graduates knowing less than a 1950's HS grad did, including being able to name ALL three branches of our own Govt which the majority of today's adults sadly cannot.

You will gain much from the effort - dig in!

How Progressives Rewrote the Constitution
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-15-06.ram

The Issue of Tariffs: How U.S. Revenue Collection Was Turned Inside-Out (video)
http://mises.org:88/Sophocleus

Size Matters: How Big Government Puts the Squeeze on America's Families, Finances, and Freedom (And Limits the Pursuit of Happiness)
http://www.cato.org/realaudio/cbf-02-02-06.ram

Big Business and the Rise of American Statism
http://praxeology.net/RC-BRS.htm

The Founding of The Federal Reserve (video)
http://mises.org:88/Rothbard-Fed

The Great Depression, World War II, and American Prosperity, Part I (video)
http://www.mises.org/multimedia/video/Woods/Woods5.wmv

Secrets of the Federal Reserve
http://www.barefootsworld.net/fs_m_ch_01.html

Jackson's 2nd Bank US VETO (very important - what he correctly and constitutionally opposed is just what we ended up with in 1913)
http://alpha.furman.edu/~benson/docs/ajveto.htm

"There are some things that can be provided cheaply by the market which undermine the economic aspects of family life--sewing, home cooking, food provision, education--and thus help to undermine family unity and the society which it supports."

I am afraid you'll have to better explain this to me, it makes no sense at all IMHO.

If you sew at home, you still have to buy material, patterns, thread, a machine, etc. Or if you buy decking at HD and DIY, commerce is still in the loop. We aren't by-and-large logging and sawing our own boards, or making our own nails, although some have and do and get satisfaction and fun from doing it. More power to them. But I doubt it even touches markets. They are just different choices and opportunity costs within it.

I am all for those who want to "live off the land", compost, raise chickens, victory gardens, etc. In fact it would serve all Americans to not foget how to survive on the basics and provide for themselves.

Our existence on this planet is tenuous at best. Any day a volcano could blow, a comet or asteroid could hit, tsunamis, earthquakes and on and on. Only those with the ability to grow, hunt and fish have the best chance of survival.

There are at least two extinction impacts now known, the one in the carribean, and the recent one discovered under Anarctic ice.

I checked that out, very interesting indeed. I am all for retaining at the very least the grassroots history, lore and customs of America.

I also consider myself a Jeffersonian decentralist, but can't go quite as far as total anarchy. Not because I don't believe it could have worked, but because in large part the state of the world our unconstitutional interventionism has created has made the world and it's tyrants, viz a vis our safety from them, less palatable to me.

I have often wondered what must be the immense magnitude of the opportunity costs of the policies taken to generations of American's wealth and mental well being, our pride of country, sense of self. It's no surprize the rest of the world sees us as they do.

The very size of Govt beyond constituional limits is directly proportional to the rampant corruption we have and necessarily inversely proportional to our ability to pursue happiness.

IF things had gone differently how much more in spirit, wealth, compassion and liberty, would we might otherwise have had? What we lost out on, maybe forever, the true vision of the Founders the Declaration embodies.

More or less; "Harm no man, then do as you will", sums it up for me. The Golden Rule.

Sure the south was wrong for wanting to continue slavery, but America didn't create it. And Lincoln has been as falsely idolized as TR & FDR. His egregious tarrifs, subsidy and corruption enabling of the railroads (even tho Hill built his own without a penny from govt), and his ultimatum to the south; all questionable as to who was the money and minds behind it all. In every respect Lincoln was a mercantilist, he started most the accelerating incestuousness between Govt and Big Biz. The money behind the groomed and financed that would serve their power and finances best.

I don't like Hamilton that much anymore either - his want to duplicate the power structures we fought to cast off.

TR made the monopolies and trusts he claimed he was against as he pressured Std Oil for more political contributions. What if we had not fought Spain over the Maine, which they did NOT blow up? What of the Canal now run by the Chicoms, who are now soon to drill oil off Cuba?

In "Wilson's War", IIRC from the booknotes I saw, he ran on keeping us out of WWI, like FDR did WWII, and which would not have happened w/o WWI. How much did this cost Americans compounded, and who made the most money on the wars?

Weren't they the same political and financial elites who financed and massaged policies on both sides of both wars? I'm pretty sure they were. The elites always have worked to re-interperate our constitution for their own gain no matter the burden they well understood they were putting on the common man as they pilfered his purse, for "His own Good".

Which Americans was it that sent Trotsky from America to Russia w/a purse of $10k they put in his pocket to start the revolution, with a little detention in Canada on the way, settled with a call from high up in the US Govt to let him get on his way?

There are not a few authors who say our every entry into war, starting with the CW, the Spanish-Am, WWI, WWII, Korea, Nam and now, were steered into by those elites that stood to gain the most in money and power, particulary the bankers who owned controlling shares in every corp in the world of mention. I've even heard it said the Marshall Plan was a total theft all way round, American taxpayers, and those who we were helping, being the financial losers. More and more Iraq seems the redux as hard as I resisted believing it being a vehement Rat hater.

In my mind from the smattering I've gotten from mises.org, (and mises has some fantastic videos and essays on history and economics), cato, Hayek, our founding documents, the book presentations on C-Span Booknotes ea w/e, di Lorenzo, Miller, Epstein, Rothbard, Menken, Luskin, Williams, Stossel, and even Rush, I've come to the conclusion that the elites did indeed engineer every corruption of our constituion that gave them preferential non-general treatment at taxpayers expense. No few of whom are on record as deeming themselves superior to the rabble, better able to see to the destiny of the individual than he could do for himself. An excuse that gets thinner for me every day watching the posers on the floors of Congress, their every word and deed interested only in their own longevity.

We the people were duped by the elites from the very beginning. Wasn't it about a third or fourth of our population that were still loyal to the crown and that syle of Govt, especially amongst the landed gentry?

Wouldn't America simply be lightyears ahead by now had we strictly followed the Constitution from the beginning?

What was it Einstein said about compound interest?

Think what might have otherwise been without all the wars we could, and should have constituionally avoided. Staggering to me. And don't even get me started on FDR and his WH full of commies, his complicity with Stalin and all the people's treasure he gave him, the perpetual enemy to keep the elite's interests cranking out guns, versus butter and peace. In that they have owned media and academe for the last 100 years, we instead got the rah rah versions of history.

Orwell, and the repetitions of history, must have gone over everyone's heads! Oh yeah - thanks to all our statist educrats who've made it all possible by keeping those inscrutable truths from us and the all goodness of the nanny state they suckle on, and we pay for.

I just found this article, see if you like it. Another reason I am ever closer to political limbo since the Dems traded Jefferson for Marx, and the Reps, well they were in the thick of it even more, until Goldwater. See the others above too, if you please.

http://www.mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae1_1_1.pdf

If you sew at home, you still have to buy material, patterns, thread, a machine, etc.

I'm not arguing for domestic autarchy. It's just that our economy is so efficient that learning to sew seems counter-productive. If your cheap wal-mart shirt gets torn, just buy a new cheap wal-mart shirt. Though cheap goods have great benefits, the trade-off is the end of cultural uniqueness and domestic frugality. Rather than having clothes styles arising out of cultural or family traditions, you get mass-produced clothes. Arguably, cheap goods encourage neglect and discourage creativity. Is mom going to be as saddened or angry at her kid if he tears cheapo shirts than if he tears the shirt she made herself? Is that kid going to have the discipline and care for his own clothing if it is supplied so cheaply and without any personal connection to himself? Economics, in its oldest sense, is the ordering of the household. Economics in its newer sense affects that domestic order.

Perhaps music is a clearer example. Rather than disciplining oneself to play a musical instrument, one can just buy and listen to music mass-produced off in LA or NYC. There is a cultural and creative loss here, enabled by economic efficiency and human laziness.

Food, too, is often produced and cooked outside the home. Made for TV dinners just aren't the same as grandma's home-cooking, and putting a purely economic price on such qualitative differences really misses the point.

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