THE TRUTH WE SEE

I know that to bring up politics is to enter dangerous territory, but we're all friends, right?

I’m plugging a book that I haven't read, but that sounds very interesting. I heard a great commentary on NPR yesterday afternoon from a guy named Rod Dreher, a columnist and editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News and author of a new book called *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). [Don’t you love books with good sub-titles?]

Dreher describes a fledgling movement of committed conservative thinkers who recognize that something is wrong with what has come to be known as conservatism in America. Crunchy Cons shop at Whole Foods, read Wendell Berry, and fear the forces of both “Big Business” AND “Big Government.” The review from Booklist suggests, “their most cherished hope is to overthrow the consumerist mentality that has made the Democrats the party of lust and the Republicans the party of greed.”

I went out and bought the book last night and read the first couple of chapters…. Good stuff!

To give you a bit more of the flavor of the book, here’s “The Crunchy-Con Manifesto,” which precedes chapter 1:

“1. We are conservatives who stand outside the contemporary conservative mainstream. We like it here; the view is better, for we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. We believe that modern conservatism has become too focused on material conditions, and insufficiently concerned about the character of society. The point of life is not to become a more satisfied shopper.

3. We affirm the superiority of the free market as an economic organizing principle, but we believe the economy must be made to serve humanity’s best interests, not the other way around. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. We believe that culture is more important than politics, and that neither America’s wealth nor our liberties will long survive a culture that no longer lives by what Russell Kirk identified as ‘the Permanent Things’–those eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life, and which are taught by all the world’s great wisdom traditions.

5. A conservatism that does not recognize the need for restraint, for limits, and for humility is neither helpful to individuals and society nor, ultimately, conservative. This is particularly true with respect to the natural world.

6. A good rule of thumb: Small and Local and Old and Particular are to be preferred over Big and Global and New and Abstract.

7. Appreciation of aesthetic quality – that is, beauty – is not a luxury, but key to the good life.

8. The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.

9. We share Kirk’s conviction that ‘the best way to rear up a new generation of friends of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o’ evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise: the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths…. The institution most essential to conserve is the family.’

10. Politics and economics will not save us. If we are to be saved at all, it will be through living faithfully by the Permanent Things, preserving these ancient truths in the choices we make in everyday life. In this sense, to conserve is to create anew.”

It should be noted that while this is not a "Christian book" Dreher's political convictions are deeply informed by his Christian faith. He and his wife are devout Roman Catholics. I think that Dreher would still stand to my right on the political spectrum on a number of issues, but his brand of conservatism confirms my hope that we can dream up some better political options than the ones we have currently.

You can hear Dreher’s commentary and read an excerpt of the first chapter on the NPR website here.

You can check out the book on Amazon.com here.