Dreher's Crunchy Cons

I received today a book published recently by Crown Forum in the U.S. which I intend to review. The book is titled Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip home-schooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) and was written by former National Review writer Rod Dreher [now at the Dallas Morning News]. It is based on a highly contentious article on new forms of conservatism that he published in National Review a few years ago and which ended up the subject of long-running debates on blogs everywhere.

There will be many things to comment on, I’m sure, once I start reading Dreher's book. Already, though, while looking over the index, a reference to a former English professor of mine, Jeffrey Hart, caught my eye. Dreher writes:

“Man is not an island. This is something conservatives used to know, before we got puffed up and arrogant. One thinks of a statement attributed to my old National Review colleague Jeffrey Hart, a Dartmouth professor:

‘It is depressing to hear cigar-smoking young conservatives wearing red suspenders take a reductive review of, well, everything. They seem to contemplate with equanimity a world without lions, tigers, elephants, whales. I am appalled at the philistinism that seems to smile at a future consisting of a global Hong Kong.’” (p.165)

Prof. Hart is right. And I’m glad Dreher chose to use this excerpt. Many young conservatives today do seem to have an entirely materialistic view of the world. Many conservatives I’ve met have no understanding of the importance of, say, rural values to conservative political values. It’s a kind of Tory Bohemianism. It's what Dreher instead calls Crunchy Conservatism.

This is worth discussing further and I know I will be coming back to these themes in the coming weeks.

Prof. Hart, it should be noted, has published several articles over the past few years which have also served to re-assess where we all stand as conservatives. He has been increasingly critical of the Bush Administration and his articles over the past few years have provoked others to re-consider what some of us mean when we say we are "conservative."

One example of Hart's recent writings is "The Evangelical Effect" written for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and dated April 17, 2005. The sub-title to the article says it all:

"The Bush presidency is not conservative. It is populist and radical, says Jeffrey Hart, its policies deformed by the influence of Christian extremism."

This is highly provocative stuff. Hart gives fuller expression to his views in his recently published history of the 50 years of National Review, titled The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times. We shall look at this particular books later this year but these are questions and themes that, again, I think are worth grappling with if we realy mean to be engaged with the world.

Modernist Discourse?

In class today, we heard a 20-minute presentation on the so-called “modernist discourse” and the major criticisms to it.

What does this modernist discourse mean? Well, in the simplest of words and most general of treatments, it is everything that says that the use of critical, rational thought (Enlightenment rationality) will lead mankind towards ever greater progress.

In the context of the media, it refers more specifically to the set of ideas that are embodied in the works of such contemporary cultural / social theorists as Jurgen Habermas, Neil Postman and others. Beginning with Habermas, these gentlemen say that there exists a so-called “public sphere” that is neither the state nor the private realm, a sphere of action in which men become informed, discuss and engage in discourse, and exercise their rights and fulfill their obligations as citizens. They also suggest the idea that the publication of the book and the rise of so-called print-capitalism contributed to the development of the typographic mind through the increased penetration of the written word in human society. Furthermore, people like Habermas and Postman believe firmly that there has been a corruption of this public sphere. The rise of mass media, television and pop culture has ushered in what may effectively be called the end of the typographic age. And this, ladies and gentlemen, has weakend our capacity to become informed, deliberate and thus participate fully as citizens in their democracy.

Fascinating, huh? Some of it may even ring true. With my classmates over here, there has been much debate—both in and out of class—ever since we began reading Habermas last semester and Postman just a few weeks ago. Some people argue that to even posit that education and intellectual engagement with social reality are necessary in order to truly be informed participants in a democracy is authoritarian (for imposing an image of an ideal citizen) as well as elitist (for insisting that to one needs to be educated at all in order to be an informed political participant).

I am reluctant to say this but I sympathize with both Habermas and Postman. I haven’t any empirical data to back up my comments, but I do have anecdotal evidence indicating, I think, the deleterious effects of television on the cognitive abilities of my peers. Too much television. Toomany movies. Too many videos games. In general, I also find people around me increasingly impatient and less willing to struggle with things that are, shall we say, more poetical or meditative, more time-consuming and text-oriented. If they do read at all, it is not literature but trash or junk fiction (like The Da Vinci Code). I also find that people are increasingly nasty, ironic ain their outlook on life, caustic in their comments, sarcastic in their humor. This is fruit of a steady diet of secular entertainment. And these people are detached from life.

So, according to some critics, because I presume that things were better before the triumph of television, I should be labeled a modernist. (Confusing, I know.) In the same way, those who argue on behalf of the idea of a well-informed and vibrant public sphere, or a normative conception of the informed citizen, are thus critiqued by those who say that everything must be analyzed, unpacked, deconstructed and set into its proper context. The modernists, as it were, are attacked by the post-modernists who insist that there is no universality, that there is no Truth and that all we have to do is reveal the underlying assumptions and relationships of power, gender, etc., all of which must be made apparent to others. This is the post-modern discourse.

Then again, as socialogist Peter L. Berger said to me at a seminar last summer in Boston, the very fact that we are even engaging in this type of discussion is very modern and a legacy of the Enlightenment itself. I suppose one could say with a smile, We are all modernists now--even those who are against the modernist ideals.

Technical Issues

Until a few days ago, we were without an Internet connection at home, here at Oudezijds Voorburgwal 183 in Amsterdam. And I realized today that I have not posted anything for nearly a month. Well, now that we finally have an Internet connection at home, I will make a serious attempt at catching up. I even intend to back-date a few posts--perhaps going back to Denmark!

Have I mentioned how lovely and reasonable the Danes were?

Thanks for still being willing to read me. I promise to make it worth your while and to work hard to earn the time you give to me.