Rod responds to John Savage’s critique of what Savage sees as Rod’s undue enthusiasm for Huckabee and excessive willingness to engage or reconcile with the Left. Inasmuch as this second point repeats canards about crunchy conservatism generally and Rod personally, I don’t agree. I agree with Mark of Protestant Pontifications that crunchy conservatism is the real version of Brooks’ “conservatism that pays attention to people making less than $50,000 a year,” and I also grant that Huckabee doesn’t have the right answers for these folks and usually isn’t even asking the right questions. What he does seem to do, and this is where I think many of us find ourselves mildly sympathetic to Huckabee in spite of ourselves, is to gesture in the right direction.
Savage wrote:
But the way that most crunchy cons look to him [Dreher] alone to define crunchy conservatism is unhealthy, especially when he’s the type who’s easily made to feel apologetic about taking conservative positions, and has an excessive need to just get along and ingratiate himself with the Left.
As someone who has written a good deal about crunchy conservatism, I grant that crunchy cons and their sympathisers have acknowledged Rod’s role in drawing attention to this kind of conservatism and we have defended him against the more ridiculous and unfair attacks that have been leveled at him, but I question whether the “crunchy cons” have generally looked only to him. To the extent that they are what he says they are, they were already looking to Kirk, Berry and others before Rod came along to document what they were doing, or they were practicing the kind of conservatism of place, virtue and proportion that Rod was describing in his book without articulating what they were doing. Were they relying entirely on Rod, or on any single figure, I think that would be unhealthy, but I don’t think that this is what has been happening. I doubt that Rod has an ”excessive need to just get along and ingratiate himself with the Left.” If he had, he would not have made such a point of challenging Dallas-area Muslims over the dangers of Islamism, nor would he remain as staunchly pro-life as he has always been. Those who wish to “get along and ingratiate” themseves with the Left do not typically rail against local Muslims and condemn the iniquity of abortion.
Savage says:
Dreher is mostly a single-issue “conservative” whose single issue is traditional morality, narrowly construed as being pro-life, anti-promiscuous-sex, and anti-homosexual-unions.
Rod can speak for himself on this point, and he has, but I would add that this is a strange argument to make against the author of Crunchy Cons, whose most controversial and contested claims involved matters of conservation, consumption and economics. If he were simply the “single-issue” social conservative described here, Rod and crunchy conservatism would have created little resistance.
The least persuasive part of Savage’s post was this:
I resent that I can hardly defend crunchy conservatism in good conscience from people I meet on non-crunchy blogs, who assume on the basis of the name that crunchy conservatism is just another form of left-wing hippie-ism.
Most of us who have defended crunchy conservatism against its critics have lamented the name, which doesn’t really capture what it is. Most of us prefer simply to apply the name traditionalist or even neo-traditionalist conservative to what Rod was talking about. We should not allow such assumptions to be a cause of discouragement. Who knows what people assume what the name paleoconservatism means? It is up to paleos, if we insist on using the name, to explain what we are to those who do not yet know. The same goes for those attracted to the best elements of crunchy conservatism.
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January 9th, 2008 at 9:02 pm
Koz
Savage’s complaints are a result of the fact that, imo, crunchy conservatism is interesting, even profound, as a cultural phenomenon but very weak as an agenda.
Since you quoted Brooks, compare it to Boboism. Basically, we ought to be able to perceive that Bobos are a real cultural fact while still being free to judge them either well or ill. Rod goes too far down the advocacy route.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:38 pm
TGGP
I thought Lawrence Auster had cornered the market on “traditionalist conservatism”, and he doesn’t think much of Dreher. Auster also tangled with John Savage here.
January 9th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
Anthony King
Dreher is also in a fit of indignation at his blog over what he’s calling “Ron Paul’s Racist Kook Past.” I think on the one hand you have to understand the guy’s an editor at a major mainstream newspaper. He’s circumscribed by the orthodoxies of the day and can’t, for instance, link to the League of the South webpage on his blog or he’d be run out of his office lickety-split. One the other hand, I don’t think he has to hold back much at all–if any–of his true self to conform because he’s a fairly mainstream thinker who happens to document and advocate for a niche group of conservatives. Savage’s points miss the mark and many are unfair, Dreher’s fault isn’t that a less than adequately conservatism but rather a too conventional optimism that too easily finds something promising on the political horizon. I get the feeling he really wants to support someone who he shares some of his politics and is politically viable, which is why he’s willing to overlook so many of Huckabee’s faults. To be fair, at his best Dreher embraces the more realistic view of St. Benedict (head to hills and wait out the barbarians).
January 10th, 2008 at 4:39 am
Zarathustra
‘Dreher is also in a fit of indignation at his blog over what he’s calling “Ron Paul’s Racist Kook Past.”’
And yet, Saint Obama’s current and completely unabashed membership in a black nationalist church is treated as a non-story by the “news” media. I only wish I could say that this is surprising, but nevertheless, it’s still absolutely sickening.
January 14th, 2008 at 9:30 pm
johnsavage
“To the extent that they are what he says they are, they were already looking to Kirk, Berry and others before Rod came along to document what they were doing, or they were practicing the kind of conservatism of place, virtue and proportion that Rod was describing in his book without articulating what they were doing.”
That’s a fair point. I suppose I just don’t see that it distinguishes crunchy cons from any other sort of “crunchies”. To me, practicing “conservatism of place” and “proportion” is a necessary condition to be a real conservative, but not a sufficient condition. And as regards “virtue”, crunchies of all stripes try to practice it, but often define it quite liberally. If not for his pro-life and traditional-marriage stance, can we assume Rod would self-identify as a conservative?
As for the emphasis on “reconciliation”, I think the comments section of Rod’s post on this topic essentially proves my point. The general tone, which Rod also partakes of (and is influenced by): “We don’t need people like John Savage because they want everything to be ‘polarized’ (Franklin Evans), disrupt the ‘common ground’ (naturalmom), etc.” The focus of the criticism of me, and I’m no longer surprised these days, was not that my views were wrong; it was that I was being mean, polarizing, or intolerant of the way that Rod called himself a conservative while arguably not measuring up to a standard I was setting.
Whereas I thought much of the rationale for even having a crunchy conservative movement was that American culture was so degraded that it was about time to put up more fences and walls to separate ourselves from corrupting influences. My understanding was that we were to separate from the leftist-dominated society and media, which would certainly preclude “reconciliation” with the Left. We were to agree with a certain type of leftist only on the idea of separating from each other. “Tolerance” in any sort of liberal sense was not to be a crunchy conservative value, as I understood things. Leftists are in the habit of preaching “tolerance”, and then stabbing conservatives in the back. Rod seems to be losing sight of that fact. And no one can really tell him he is threatening to become a heretic to crunchy conservatism by doing so — it’s viewed as his movement. Those would be my main complaints about the direction that crunchy conservatism is going.