"Crunchy Con" reviews

I promised to say something about the First Things review of my book by Gilbert Meilaender once I'd read it. Well, now I have, and ... I'm not really sure where to begin, because I don't recognize in his piece the book I wrote. The review starts with the author enjoying a meal at Burger King, as I have and do from time to time, and takes off from there to dun "Crunchy Cons" as elitist nonsense (or "moral preening" as FT's blog had it). The point of the whole review, in fact, seems to be, "I like Burger King, and Rod Dreher is full of crap." There are some decent criticisms in the piece, don't get me wrong, but it's startling to see how an intelligent reviewer took words and phrases out of context and put the worst possible spin on them. I am grateful for any attention to the book, but it does seem that "Crunchy Cons" got on Meilaender's nerves in the worst way. For what it's worth, Spengler felt the same way about the review.

I think the First Things pan is the only review in the religious press that has been negative. I saw a generous review in the new issue of Crisis (the piece isn't online) by Tom Hibbs, for which I'm grateful. Seen any other reviews in the religious press of the book? Drop me a line at rdreher -at - dallasnews.com.

Froma Harrop, a sensible liberal, had some kind words in her syndicated column. Matt Continetti was fairly dismissive in yesterday's WaPo, saying that the book is "ultimately unpersuasive" because I offer no evidence that there are a lot of crunchy cons. True, I don't, but is that what makes the ideas unpersuasive? I wouldn't have any idea how to quantify who counts as a crunchy con, though it's a pretty good rule of thumb, I've found, that when you find a conservative homeschooler, you've got someone who is sympathetic to crunchy con principles. But Matt's review ended intrigutingly, saying of the book: "But it still suggests an answer to an important question: What happens when voters find themselves irritated at ideologically exhausted and rhetorically uninspiring political parties? The answer: They drop out of today's politics -- and begin quietly laying the foundation of tomorrow's."

In the early 1950s, I think it was, Lionel Trilling famously observed that liberalism wasn't the dominant intellectual mode of thought, it was the only one. And he was almost entirely right. There were libertarians and traditionalists trying to figure out how to revive the Right. There weren't that many of them, all things considered, but they believed in their ideas, and they didn't give up ... and within a generation, had changed the world. I think that the rest of this decade will be for both conservatism and liberalism about creating the next iteration of both movements. I hope "Crunchy Cons" has some contribution to make.