Rod Dreher - Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots

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.

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

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

We believe that culture is more important than politics, and that neither Americas wealth nor our liberties will long survive a culture that no longer lives by what Russell Kirk identified as the Permanent Thingsthose eternal moral norms necessary to civilized life, and which are taught by all the worlds great wisdom traditions.

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.

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

Appreciation of aesthetic qualitythat is, beautyis not a luxury, but key to the good life.

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.

We share Kirks 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.

I0. 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.

When we were young, the countercultural people had long hair, no socks, and didnt trust anyone over 30. Now, we are the countercultural people.

J OHN B UCK , A RKANSAS PSYCHOLOGIST AND
CRUNCHY CONSERVATIVE

A FEW SUMMERS AGO , in the National Review offices on the east side of Manhattan, I told my editor that I was leaving work early so I could pick up my familys weekly delivery of fruits and vegetables from the neighborhood organic food co-op to which we belonged.

Ewww, thats so lefty, she said, and made the kind of face Id have expected if Id informed her I was headed off to hear Peter, Paul and Mary warble at a fund-raiser for cross-dressing El Salvadoran hemp farmers.

Lefty? Moi? But on the subway home to Brooklyn, I had to admit she was right.

A taste for organic vegetables is a left-wing clich, and here I was, a writer for the premier conservative political magazine in the country, leaving my post on the front lines to consort with the liberals in my neighborhood as I filled my rucksack with the most beautiful and delicious broccoli, carrots, greens, and whatnot in the city. Whats up with that?

And come to think of it, whats up with those Birkenstock sandals on my feet? It just about killed me to buy them the summer before, given what Birkenstocks symbolize (you know, patchouli, pot, and ponytails on men). But New Yorkers walk a lot, and my sensible wife persuaded me that durable, comfortable Birks made sense for hot summer sidewalks. She was right. So thats how a pair of hippie shoes found their way onto my right-wing feet, whichalas!had begun marching to a different beat than many of my conservative chums. Funny, I didnt