First Things letters

A friend faxed me this morning the four letters published in the current issue of First Things that were critical of Gilbert Meilaender's review of "Crunchy Cons." There's no link to those letters yet, but I want to thank letter-writers Mignon Sass, Paige Hochschild, Marc Rogers and Rachel Stone for their generous comments about the book. I'll reproduce Ms. Hochschild's letter here (because it looks like the shortest of the lot, and therefore the quickest to type in on this busy morning) to give you an idea of what the letters say.

Gilbert Meilaender's main criticism of Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Cons" is that the author is a snob, or at least a mere aesthete. Let Dreher have his Birkenstocks, his organic homegrown vegetables, and his meat purchased from the farm down the road: Burger King, baseball, and New Balance sneakers are the hallmark of the real heartland conservative. But while Meilaneder, while reluctantly praising the book, engages in a disingenous misrepresentation fo tis real content. It's not about "sorrel soup" vs. the Whopper.

Dreher points the reader to E.F. Schumacher's central reflection that the economics of the West, as much as in the East of old, is "built on philosophically materialist assumptions." Any debate among conservatives about economics must begin by acknowledging that man is not a purely economic being.

This seems to be the assumption within the political discourse of libertarian Republicanism. To a Christian, pro-life, "organic-food," homeschooling mother, whose family is happily but barely able to get by, Dreher is one of several voices (including Russell Kirk, Christopher Lasch, and Wendell Berry) that critique Republican conservatism from within a more authentically conservative tradition. Thsi publication deserves to give a book like Dreher's a fairer consideration. The agrarian argument may be irritating, but it speaks to the heart of a new conservative generation.

Paige Hochschild
Emmitsburg, Maryland

Well, okay, indulge me here -- a couple of grafs from Marc Rogers's letter:

Dreher is trying to get conservatives and Christians to focus not just on sexual morality and immorality but also on virtue more broadly and deeply understood. To focus not just on the sin of lust but also on the sins of greed, envy, and pride, which are equally deadly to the soul. In this he is surely being faithful to the word of God, which contains more teaching on the blessing, use, and abuse of material possessions than anything else. Dreher is also being faithful to Our Lord, who by choosing to be born in the way he was among the people he was, who by the people he chose as his friends and the people he chose as his enemies, who by the people he lifted up (the widow with the two mites) and the people he confronted (the rich young ruler, the moneychangers in the Temple), showed that our relationship with wealth and the world is determinative in our relationship with him.

The choices we make about money and liefstyle are not, as Meilaneder would have it, just a matter of likes and dislikes. In a biblical worldview everything -- agriculture, food, city planning, politics -- falls under the lordship of Christ.