"Crunchy Conservatives"

In an attempt to dispel any notions of conservatives marching in lockstep, I'd point everyone to Rod Dreher. In a 2002 piece, he described how he and his wife found themselves rather quirkily with one foot in the conservative camp and the other in the crunchy camp. "There are four basic areas that are touchstones for crunchy conservatives: Religion, the Natural World, Beauty, and Family." (For more, see the extended entry to this post). Now, Dreher has just completed a book on the topic. It should be an interesting read. In some ways, this is similar to the idea of a so-called "Purple America" that has been proposed more recently. In short, it is possible to be politically conservative, enjoy the "fine things" (like wine, opera, classical music, art, literature, etc.) and not "buy" all the way into free-market capitalism and consumerism. In all things there is an appropriate balance and the quality of a conservative's life is often more important than the quantity of goods one can buy at the right price.

Excerpts from Rod Dreher's "Crunch Cons"

Kim Anderson (not her real name) lives with her petroleum-engineer husband and their eight homeschooled children in Midland, Tex., the hometown of President Bush. They are serious Calvinists who get their crunchy-con marching orders from the first principle of the Westminster Catechism: The purpose of a man's life is "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." Says Anderson, "That enjoyment of God is not just for when we get to heaven. What are we to do with ourselves while we're here? We don't have a longing to return to the Fifties, or some past era. We just long for God and His ways, and are trying to figure out how to live our lives to go along with that."

For the Andersons, taking faith seriously means living and raising children in a more radical way than most churchgoers. It is no accident that they are converts to a more rigorous form of Presbyterianism. As you talk to religious crunchy cons, you find a surprising number who are religious converts of one sort or another, many of them to traditional Roman Catholicism or Eastern Orthodoxy. What they have in common is a craving for an older, more demanding kind of religion, a faith with backbone that stands against the softness of bourgeois Christianity. . .

The crunchy cons, religious or not, share a belief that something has gone seriously wrong in contemporary mass society, and are grasping for "authenticity" (a word you hear often from this group) amid a raging flood of media-driven consumer culture. . .

A view of the material world as fundamentally flawed but fundamentally good, and therefore to be revered, embraced, and celebrated within limits, is a key crunchy-right concept. Crunchy cons, even the non- religious ones, take this sacramental idea seriously, which leads them to beliefs and attitudes (stereo)typically associated with liberals.

Take the environment. Crunchy cons tend to look at the world through the eyes of Tolkien's Sam Gamgee, returned from the war to his beloved shire, only to find the land despoiled by industrial "progress." While they reject the anti-scientific utopianism of hysterical mainstream environmentalism, crunchy cons are skeptical that the Republican party can be trusted as stewards of the natural world. . .

. . .American Enterprise Institute pollster Karlyn Bowman says that while the environment isn't a big political issue nationally, it is "very important at the state and local levels," particularly in populous, environmentally conscious swing states like California and Florida. AEI's Steven Hayward has studied these issues, and says that the GOP's bad rap on the environment is somewhat deserved. "It's the flip side of what defense policy is for the Democrats. Republicans don't like it, they don't study it very hard, and they tend to do a lousy job with it," he says. "Conservatives tend to belittle environmental concerns, or issue blanket condemnations of all environmentalists."

A closely related flashpoint is suburban sprawl, which is more of an aesthetic issue. Greer, a lifelong small-town Republican, says he would worry about conservatives' running his town's government, out of fear they would let developers gut the historic town center and call it another triumph of the free market. . .

In the crunchy-con view, right-wing indifference to natural beauty extends to the man-made world. Today's conservatives don't say enough about the importance of aesthetic standards. Ugly suburban architecture, lousy food, chain restaurants, bad beer, and scorn for the arts are defended by many rank-and-file Republicans as signs of populist authenticity, as opposed to the "elitist" notion that aesthetics matter. In previous generations, it was taken for granted among conservatives that cultivating taste was a worthwhile, even necessary pursuit in building civilization. Nowadays, talking like that in front of a number of right-wingers will get you denounced as a snob. . .

Though they share with many liberals a critical interest in aesthetics and the environment, a key difference between crunchy cons and the Left is the emphasis placed on these issues. Leftists tend to absolutize their tastes and convictions, look upon people who don't share them as morally deficient, and seek to impose them on an unwilling community. Crunchy cons, on the other hand, are more inclined to think simply that they've found a neat way to live, and want only to propose it to others.

Judy Warner, a rural Marylander who works in conservative fundraising, nicely captures the distinction in talking about the organic-farming, home-canning, composting, dulcimer-playing lifestyle she shares with her ex-Marine husband. "I'm a red-diaper baby and the conservative black sheep in my unreformed family. Here's the difference between my siblings and me: I do this as part of my life, a part I think is important and pleasurable, but not the most important. For them, it is the meaning of their life. It is their religion."

While crunchy cons would stop well short of imputing moral inferiority to those who don't share their own tastes in architecture, trees, or foodstuff, they would also say that it's a serious mistake to think of these issues as mere matters of taste. A child who grows up in a neighborhood built for human beings, not cars, may think of man's relation to his world differently from one raised amid the throwaway utilitarianism of strip-mall architecture. One's sensitivity to and desire for beauty, and its edifying qualities of order, harmony, "sweetness and light," has consequences for the character of individuals and ultimately for civilization. It's perilous to forget that.

You may be saying, "God save us from these Brie-eating bobos, who have the money to indulge their snobbish tastes and want to inflict them on the rest of us." But most crunchy cons are different from bobos — David Brooks's bourgeois bohemians — in part because they tend not to have a lot of money. Which brings us to the fourth big area that sets crunchy cons apart: their ideas about family.

Many religious crunchy cons have large families because they believe large families are a positive good. This usually means the mother, who is often highly educated, forgoes a career to stay home with the children — and possibly even homeschools them. . .

One does find that most crunchy cons are at least uneasy being fully open with both right-wing and left-wing friends. Some say they avoid talking about politics with liberal friends, because sooner or later someone will say, "How could a nice fellow like you be such a fascist?" On the other hand, to discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese around many conservatives is to set yourself up for knee-jerk mockery. Crunchy cons wish their fellow Republicans would show tolerance for diversity within their own ranks.

"I don't want a McExistence bought in a strip mall and a mega-mart, but that doesn't mean I disparage those who like the comfort and regularity of suburbia. The problem is many GOPers view anything not embraced by the GOP mainstream as suspect," says Kerry Hardy, 33, a D.C. libertarian. "Western civilization is not threatened by people eating tofu or wearing tie-dye, and if the GOP mouthpieces stopped acting as if it were and stopped a priori judging those who do to be liberals, they might find that many of them are on their side."

And not only on their side, but ready with something to teach them about ways to live more fully within the conservative tradition. . .