A Thinking Reed

Daddy, what’s a crunchy con?

Written by

Lee M.

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I assume, and hope, that you have better things to do, dear readers, than following internal ideological debates on the political Right, so you may not be familiar with Rod Dreher’s 2002 National Review article on “Granola Conservatives.” In Mr. Dreher’s telling, a granola conservative – or “crunchy con” – is someone who is politically conservative, but rejects much of mainstream consumer culture in favor of a “sacramental” approach to the world. This attitude manifests itself in attitudes and concerns typically thought of as liberal, like enjoying organic food, farmer’s markets and community-supported agriculture, concern for the environment, and a desire to rein in the excesses of the free market, whether environmental, economic, or social.

The article caused a bit of a hubbub at the time, and Mr. Dreher has expanded the idea into a book to be released this week: 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). Really rolls off the tongue, doesn’t it?

Via the Japery I see that National Review Online is launching a blog this week to discuss the book, with contributions from Caleb Stegall of The New Pantagruel, Amy Welborn, Frederica Mathewes-Green as well as Mr. Dreher.

What’s not clear to me (and I haven’t read the book, so maybe there’s an answer to this) is what differentiates a cruncy con from, say, the type of “paleo”conservatism represented by the folks at Chronicles magazine. They’re down on capitalism and consumer culture, tout the Jeffersonian agrarian ideal, etc., so what’s the difference? Is it immigration? Foreign policy?

Comments

9 responses to “Daddy, what’s a crunchy con?”

  1. Camassia

    This is a guess, but it’s probably some undefinable “hipness.” I remember Dreher writing about liking the movie “American Beauty” as one thing that marked him as a crunchy-con, for instance, so maybe it’s a matter of being more boho-artsy as compared to traditionally populist.

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  2. Kevin Jones

    My rather uninformed take resembles the “hipness” interpretation. Paleos are given to complete denunciation of radicals, while crunchies think they have common ground in aesthetics and lifestyle choices.

    Another “cruchy” article that comes to mind is Peter Kreeft’s short essay on urban architecture opinions from a traditionalist, a conservative, a liberal, and a radical.

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  3. Lee

    The crunchy con phenomenon seems ironic because I’ve always thought of investing one’s consumer preferences with political significance as a quintessentially liberal (or radical) undertaking. “Ethical consumerism” and all that – reminds me of the vegan/straight-edge people I knew in college.

    Not to say there aren’t good reasons for buying organic food, or preferring funky urban neighborhoods to the ‘burbs, or whatever (by those standards, I guess I would qualify as somewhat “crunchy”), but it seems strange that you’d need to provide an ideological justification for them!

    And it’s also kind of funny that these preferences get labeled as “countercultural.” Maybe 20 years ago, but now? Have you seen the people who shop at Whole Foods? They aren’t the counterculture, they’re the mainstream. I think David Brooks is more on target in seeing the mainstreaming of a lot of this stuff as the union of countercultural values with capitalist success (the CEO of Whole Foods is, ironically, an outspoken libertarian).

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  4. Jennifer

    And nowadays, in order to be ‘countercultural’ and shop at Whole Foods, etc., you must have a certain income. So the class issues here are interesting (I guess Brooks get at this in his book? I haven’t read it.) I once heard someone define the term “bad neighborhood” as one in which there is no grocery store within a certain mile radius. People in low income areas often don’t have the ability to choose to shop organic or to practice “ethical consumerism” (buy fair trade coffee, whatever) because one must buy whatever is cheapest.

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  5. Lee

    Uh oh – I think I may live in a bad neighborhood by that definition! Within the last couple of years two of the nearby grocery stores closed, leaving it very difficult for anyone who didn’t have easy access to a car in our neighborhood to get to a grocery store. We have the luxury of driving to the suburbs to shop if need be, but a lot of people in the area wouldn’t.

    Kim at Crossroads had a good post a while back on the problem of trying to be an “ethical consumer” on a limited budget:

    http://kim-loi.blogspot.com/2005/06/on-cheap-priorities-and-privilege-i-am.html

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  6. Maurice Frontz

    Well, I followed the link and read the blog, and then I went out and got the book. I very rarely go out and get new or current books. I highly recommend it as a snapshot of the current state of many people’s minds, and it crystallizes from Dreher’s perspective a lot of disparate stuff we’ve seen in the blogroll. It also may help “conservatives” and “liberals” start talking to each other. Indeed, the lady at the local bookstore where I bought the book (no Amazon for me, thank you!) and I had a short conversation about it as I was paying. Having not read the book, this was harder than usual.

    A short description of the mentality might be “anti-corporate conservative.” These are religious conservatives who believe that the exclusively corporate approach to things like consumerism, food production, environmentalism, etc. doesn’t conserve anything. They might even find themselves working in common with (gasp!) liberals.

    The book is written simply enough, and is fond of “a pox on both your houses” statements like “Democrats are the party of Lust, Republicans are the party of Greed – both are individualist and materialist to the core.” The penultimate chapter cites orthodoxies of various stripes as the only ways of life in which a “sacramental” approach to life can be practiced in a world where food, children, the environment, etc. have been reduced to mere “commodities.”

    Very entertaining for me is the section where Dreher (a conservative Catholic) relates his conversion experience in college. “(But) I wanted God on my terms…was there a place where I could have the liturgical beauty I craved, without having to change my beer-swilling college boy sexual ethics?”

    You guessed it –

    “Yes there was. And so I became an Episcopalian.”

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  7. Lee

    Chip, thanks for the mini book review!

    Not having read the book, I’m interested in whether the “anti-corporatism” of the Crunchy Cons is soemthing they are willing to translate into political action, or if it is largely a matter of personal lifestyle. If it’s the latter, it does seem like they are open to the charge that it’s a movement for those who can afford it.

    I recently read an interesting book by two left-of-center Canadian academics called Nation of Rebels: How Counterculture became Consumer Culture. Essentially they argue that the fixation of the post-60s left with lifestyle, counterculture, personal “authenticity” and the like has obscured any movement for significant political action. And, along the way, the “counterculture” has been co-opted by the nefarious capitalist forces it was ostensibly opposed to (i.e. it becomes just another market demographic). I wonder if the same fate may await CCs.

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  8. Maurice Frontz

    In a way, the book is somewhat negative about “political action” b/c it tends towards pessimistically assuming that the trend towards bigness is not likely to be reversed. In the last chapter, he cites Alasdair MacIntyre and his concept of “waiting for Benedict.” In fact, the last chapter is called “Waiting for Benedict.”

    The book does suggest that government restore protectionism of a sort for small growers, calls for the GOP to “invent” conservationism (as opposed to kooky environmentalism). But a lot of it is vote with the wallet type stuff. He does address the issue of the affordable of the organic lifestyle, saying, “I wince when I have to pay almost twice the price for a roasting hen from Texas Supernatural Meats…but that price difference is about the cost of a single venti latte from Starbucks.” For the middle to upper middle class, he seems to indicate it is doable if one reprioritizes one’s budget and eats smaller portions of meat. Anything more would imply a serious overhaul of policy issues.

    You asked about the consumer culture of the counterculture – this to me is perfectly described in Douglas Rushkoff’s PBS documentary “The Merchants of Cool” (a bit dated, but still available online). Dreher quotes someone who said that Woodstock was “the very acme of consumerism…several hundred thousand people willingly reducing themselves to a condition of infantile dependence and passivity in the expectation that competent adults would take care of their physical needs.” If anything, Dreher’s point of view that a “sacramental” view of life resists the consumerist mentality, and quotes several people who are appalled with the evangelical consumer culture. I think that might be the target that has been coopted by the capitalist forces (although CC’s and anyone in this culture certainly will be vulnerable).

    The one part of the book that I was suspicious about seems to be its unquestioning assumption of some MSM shibboleths (we’re in Iraq mainly to protect the oil supply, global warming is happening and anyone who questions it is a quack). He seems to say, “basically, this is a quality of life issue, but BTW, all the disaster stories are true.” The last chapter cites four apocalyptic scenarios which only 21st century Benedictines will survive.

    I think you would enjoy the book. It’s not an academic book, but aimed at the popular audience and could introduce many in that audience to Berry, Stegall, etc. One of the reasons it interested me is that it seems to “decode” for me the non-GOP-worshiping-conservatism I seem to read here and over at Bill Cork’s name-du-jour blog. 🙂

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  9. Lee

    I think I’d like to read it. May have to wait til the library gets it, though; a brand-new hardcover book is a luxury I don’t often allow myself. (Is that crunchy?)

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