- Place. Limits. Liberty.
- Rootlessness, Utopia, Dependency.
- Doing what comes unnaturally.
It has been about five years since Rod Dreher wrote Crunchy Cons, so it’s time for a retrospective:
Crunchy Cons made a big media splash when it appeared and—as expected—attracted a good deal of contumely from neoconservatives, some of it thoughtful, most of it hysterical. Many right-wing Americans cannot conceive that there was any such thing as conservatism B.R. (Before Reagan) or that uncritical worship of the free market undermines the foundations of the social order. Despite the intentionally hyperbolic claim in its subtitle that the book’s ideas would save the Republican Party, Crunchy Cons did not suggest a political program but rather called for conservatives—especially religious conservatives—to rethink their way of life in light of first principles and reform accordingly …
Then Dreher blogs about his little article (which itself is like a longish blog), and evokes some intreresting responses from “Susan D” when he speaks of Crunchy Conservatism’s limited market-penetration:
Maybe we Crunchy Con/Distributist/Third Way/Localist types need to hire us some really good marketing weasels …
Abortion and gay marriage aren’t causes of the breakup of the “traditional” family; they’re effects of that breakup. I think much of that can be attributed to the over-industialization of production, the enclosure of common-held farmland, the advent of giant businesses that provide jobs, and the loss of small, family-owned businesses (both farm and mercantile) that provided livelihoods, not just jobs …
Note the common threads:
- “that uncritical worship of the free market undermines the foundations of the social order” (Dreher)
- that “causes of the breakup of the ‘traditional’ family” prominently include the way we have organized the work part of our economic life (Susan D)
I’m hopeful because good people continue to discover Dreher, Wendell Berry, Front Porch Republic, even James Howard Kunstler (who’s no conservative in his mind, but has Place and Limits down solidly).
Of OWS,
At what point does a protest movement become an excuse for camping? At what point is utopianism discredited by the seedy, dangerous, derelict fun fair it creates? At what point do the excesses of a movement become so prevalent that they can reasonably be called its essence? At what point do Democratic politicians need to repudiate a form of idealism that makes use of Molotov cocktails?
(Michael Gerson) I’ve been waiting for OWS to get a semi-coherent message that recognizes, well, Place, Limits and Liberty. I’m getting a message, if any, of rootlessness, utopianism and dependency. This is not a message I can support.
Of the Penn State/Jerry Sandusky scandal, Frank Bruni writes:
Institutions do an awful job of policing themselves.
That has been true of the Boy Scouts, which has paid out tens of million of dollars in response to lawsuits by former scouts molested by adults who continued to work in the organization despite complaints or questions about their behavior.
That has been true of the Roman Catholic Church, whose diocesan heads and bishops repeatedly transferred abusive priests from one parish to another rather than report them to law enforcement authorities. This cover-up spanned decades and went all the way up the hierarchy of the church.
Rod Dreher extensively quotes an administrator and department chair to the same effect:
Rod, You need to know the culture of college campuses regarding these kinds of issues. As an administrator (a department chair) I have taken the “sexual harassment” online course that we all have to take (indeed, as a faculty member I had to do it again!). The correct answer to every scenario is the same: do nothing and report it to the appropriate administrator. “If true,” Paterno did exactly what university policies all over the nation ask us to do: nothing. The institutions have bureaucratized how they deal with these kinds of accusations. For fear of lawsuit, this whole area, that of sexual harassment/abuse, has been turned over to bureaucratic professionals housed in the legal and human resources wings of our universities. One can guess that Paterno told the appropriate division of his institution and was then told by university legal counsel to keep his mouth shut.
In other words, institutions must inculcate doing what comes unnaturally: treating acute problems as bureaucratic agenda items.
It apparently is not just sex. I have close acquaintance with an episode wherein the correct accuser in a matter of major scientific fraud was for a year or more treated as badly as his fraud-perpetrating University colleague because he went outside channels when channels proved incapable of better than a whitewash. I personally observed the University’s high-powered attorney absolutely pop a freakin’ cork in rage at the accuser. But the University avoided Penn State’s disgrace in the end because he acted so.
Meanwhile, a disgraced, whitewashing Cardinal’s buddies in Rome throw him a big birthday bash. “Do they not fear God?”
* * * * *
Bon appetit!
Having become tedious even to myself, I’m Tweeting more, blogging less. View this in a browser instead of an RSS feeder to see Tweets at upper right.
I also have some succinct standing advice on recurring themes. Maybe if I link to it, I’ll blog less obsessively about it.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 