What Shall We Think About Crunchy Cons?

Okay, I guess it's a phenom I can't ignore any longer. Rod Dreher and his book, Crunchy Cons. I first clued in to this crunchy conservative deal about ten days ago, listening to All Things Considered. Rod read a little piece about organic foodies in Birkenstocks, living in old houses, belonging to food co-ops, returning to some kind of deep conservationist GOP roots, yada yada. "Huh," I thought to myself, "interesting. Sounds like my entire childhood." I guess my parents were GOP crunchy cons before it was trendy, down to the subscriptions to National Review.

Next, I found references to this book in other green blogs. Then I read an essay by Robert Walker, of Get America Working (site termporarily unavailable), on Environmental News Network, Putting Conversation Back into Conservation, on Dreher's book and the whole crunchy scene. Some excerpts from that piece:

Rod Dreher, an editorial writer for the Dallas Morning News,, has written Crunchy Cons, a new book that, among other things, urges conservatives to practice “restraint, humility and good stewardship, especially of the natural world.” A conservative with a taste for organic vegetables and Birkenstock sandals, Dreher appears to have tapped into a sudden wellspring of conservative concern for the environment.
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Dreher says that “crunchy conservatism” is a “contemporary revival of the traditionalism that, along with libertarianism, is one of the two great streams of the conservative intellectual tradition in America.” That may be an overstatement, but it’s always been wrong for conservatives to equate environmental concern with liberal orthodoxy, as if clean air and water were antithetical to conservative values.
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Whether this translates into action depends in large part on whether the ideological divide between “crunchy cons” and “crunchy libs” can be bridged. And it can. With proper understanding and the right prescription, a compromise can be forged.

And, once again I said to myself, "Huh. Sounds interesting. Possibly even promising." And maybe it is. It's at least time to pay some attention to this. I'd almost rather be drug across Texas behind a Buick than link to National Review, but, yep, I'm about to give you a National Review link. There is a Crunchy Con blog on NR's site, where discussion about all this is ongoing. I didn't spend too much time there, but will return when things are less hectic to further check it out. Please help me out here, dear readers. You who are not packing out a fourteen room farmhouse, please spend some time checking into this crunchy business. How for real is it, can you tell? Can we bridge that divide Walker speaks of?

The All Things Considered page has an excerpt from the first chapter of Crunchy Cons. So far I'm not thrilled. It's written in that snarky NR tone that sets my teeth on edge no matter what the subject matter. I feel I should read this book, but - what about my blood pressure? Here's the book's subtitle: 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). Whaddya think?

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