If I get time (and when I finish), I'll write a little review of Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschool mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and thier diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republcan Party).--currently on my nightstand. For now I'll give you his "A Crunchy Con Manifesto". The Manifesto on the dust jacket is better than the one inside the book with one exception, so this is a hybrid version:
1) 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.
2) Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
3) 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."
4) A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility and good stewardship--especially of the natural world--is not fundamentally conservative.
5) Small, local, old and particular are almost always better than big, global, new and abstract.
6) Beauty is more important than efficiency
7) The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and widom.
8) The institution most essential to conserve is the family.
Wednesday, September 16, 2009
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2 comments:
The concept of conservative conservationist or the environmentally conscience conservative is interesting. I am a firm believer in the principles of stewardship - but I find myself often repulsed by the environmental movement's identity with the totalitarian left. Every answer, from their viewpoint, is found in increasing the power and control of the government - most often at the expense of liberty. I don't think we have to discard private property to "save the planet."
I'm looking forward to the review.
I think the problem with the "environmental movement" is that it is usually focused on some stupid gimmic and sometimes thier solutions are worse than the problem.
The book makes an interesting point that, just as the left in reporting on and discussing the pro-life movement focuses on the fringe people who plant bombs, the right, in considering environmentalism focuses on the wild-eyed PETA and Greenpeace positions and stunts. Neither is fair.
He shows a strong tradition of conservation on the right which mostly ended with Reagan in 1980.
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