Check out this blog I recently discovered: http://www.beliefnet.com/blogs/crunchycon/
Scroll down and read his post "The sunny side to global warming". This made me think of you, Bill.
I have been meaning to read his book, 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), for ages. He also has a Crunchy Con Manifesto:
1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.
2. 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.
3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.
5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.
6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.
7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.
8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.
9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”
10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.
Thoughts?
Very intriguing. I haven't yet looked at the blog, but I really like what he says in his manifesto. Amen, brother!
ReplyDeleteI've not read the book either, but it's on my list. Reviews in National Review and First Things were pretty negative though. The FT review is here: http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=127&var_recherche=crunchy+cons
ReplyDeleteThe main criticism is that Dreher doesn't really identify a unique strain of conservativism and is persistently smug. But I think it's still worth taking a look at.