RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Crunchy Conservatives: Right Wing Hippies

The upscale natural foods grocery chain Whole Foods now stocks a brand of cereal called Ezekiel 4:9. It could pass for any other gravelly, whole-grain, flour-free concoction on the shelves, but Ezekiel's box credits its inspiration to "the Holy Scriptures."

If this sounds like your kind of breakfast, you may be a crunchy con — a new species of ecologically minded, religiously orthodox and socially traditionalist conservative that Rod Dreher speaks for. If not, take the market for Ezekiel 4:9 as evidence he may be onto something.

Dreher, a writer and editor at The Dallas Morning News, argues that a growing number of people are drawn to a kind of across-the-board rejection of modernity that he considers true conservatism but that makes them look a little like "right-wing hippies."

Crunchy cons disapprove of abortion rights, same-sex marriage, illegal immigrants, public schools, secular liberals and mothers who work outside the home. But they don't like Wal-Mart, McMansions, suburbs, pollution, agribusiness or processed foods, either.

What is a crunchy con? [Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher] provides a “manifesto” describing those “who stand outside the conservative mainstream” and therefore “can see things that matter more clearly.” According to Dreher, “Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.”


I’ve got no problem with much of Dreher’s crunchy agenda. If he wants to eat free-range chicken and organic vegetables, more power to him. Scorn exurban “McMansions” and buy a century-old Craftsman house in a hip in-town neighborhood? No problem. (I can’t afford any of that stuff myself, despite my greed.)

Heck, I’m a fundamentalist father of six homeschooled children—the very epitome of crunchiness, according to Dreher. Yet because I believe in economic freedom, he says I don’t even exist. Crunchies “orient their lives” toward “serving God, not self,” Dreher writes. “By way of contrast, a libertarian conservative sees the point of life as exercising freedom of choice to serve his self-chosen ends.”

Look, Rod: My kids have to eat, our minivan needs a new transmission, and my daughter wants to go to college in the fall. Unfortunately, the grocer, the auto mechanic, and the university registrar seem to be libertarians who expect payment in something more substantial than spiritual bliss. So I write for money, not because these are my “self-chosen ends,” but because God cursed our mutual ancestor Adam: “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread” (Genesis 3:19).

Others have chastised Dreher for praising Hillary Clinton’s mantra “it takes a village,” but I’m more disturbed by his economic views. Crunchy Cons mentions neither Ludwig von Mises nor F.A. Hayek, and it seems entirely possible that Dreher has never read anything by the free-market Austrian economists or their successors. Instead he relies on Small Is Beautiful author E.F. Schumacher, practically the only economist mentioned in the book.

This is a telling choice. As the economist Mark Skousen has pointed out, Small Is Beautiful has a substantially Malthusian message that “enslaves everyone in a life of ‘nonmaterialistic’ values.” For Skousen, Schumacher’s Buddhist economics was a primitive mysticism that “clearly results in a primitive economy.” Dreher, no doubt, would dismiss Skousen as a soulless libertarian.

National Review’s Jonah Goldberg concluded an anti-crunchy jeremiad by voicing the suspicion that Dreher might eventually follow the leftward footsteps of ex-righties such as Michael Lind and David Brock. I think Goldberg’s wrong. Dreher is Catholic, and his anti-market mood echoes the economic gnosticism of encyclicals like Rerum Novarum (1891) and Quadragesimo Anno (1931). Dreher might trust the Vatican with his soul, but he should seek economic insights elsewhere, and not from Buddhist economists. I’d suggest starting with St. Leonard Read’s gospel of “I, Pencil,” the 1958 parable that explains the spontaneous nature of economic order.

Hate the sin, but love the sinner. I’m praying for Dreher, who, thanks to the Invisible Hand, gave me the chance to write this greed-motivated review. God bless you, Rod. Go in peace.

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the G-man said:

The upscale natural foods grocery chain Whole Foods now stocks a brand of cereal called Ezekiel 4:9. It could pass for any other gravelly, whole-grain, flour-free concoction on the shelves, but Ezekiel's box credits its inspiration to "the Holy Scriptures."

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We call Whole Foods, Whole Paycheck in my office.

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the G-man said:
God, Guts, and Granola

Others have chastised Dreher for praising Hillary Clinton’s mantra “it takes a village,” but I’m more disturbed by his economic views. Crunchy Cons mentions neither Ludwig von Mises nor F.A. Hayek, and it seems entirely possible that Dreher has never read anything by the free-market Austrian economists or their successors. Instead he relies on Small Is Beautiful author E.F. Schumacher, practically the only economist mentioned in the book.

Austrians are pretty much ignored in academic economics by everyone except other Austrians. That social darwinist thing put a lot of people off.

This is a telling choice. As the economist Mark Skousen has pointed out, Small Is Beautiful has a substantially Malthusian message that “enslaves everyone in a life of ‘nonmaterialistic’ values.” For Skousen, Schumacher’s Buddhist economics was a primitive mysticism that “clearly results in a primitive economy.” Dreher, no doubt, would dismiss Skousen as a soulless libertarian.

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