What a pity. Today sees the final posts on the Crunchy Cons blog set up at NRO. By an odd coincidence, I finished Rod Dreher's book this afternoon (I started it a couple of weeks ago, got distracted by work, then returned to it yesterday.) I don't know whether I really qualify as a CC - for one thing, my religious beliefs are a lot shallower than Dreher & Co's - but I really did think it was a thought-provoking polemic: chatty without being condescending and above all reassuringly undogmatic.
Dreher may not care for left-wing Democrats, but he's just as hard on mainstream Republicans. The old Left-Right partisan divide depresses him, in fact. He's also the first to admit that there are all sorts of contradictions involved in taking a stand against consumerism. Where do we get these nice, cheap, shiny laptops from? Not from organic farms, that's for sure.
If you want to learn more, Dreher has posted a reading list. Glad to see Jane Jacobs makes the cut:
T.S. Eliot, The Idea of a Christian Society and Notes Toward a Definition of Culture.
Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences.
Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind
Matthew Scully, Dominion.
James Howard Kunstler, The Geography of Nowhere.
Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities.
Alasdair Macintyre, After Virtue.
E.F. Schumacher, Small Is Beautiful.
Wendell Berry, various essay collections, including What Are People For? and Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community.
Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation.