Critiquing "Crunchy Cons"

Respectfully, having kept up with your writing over the last year makes me wonder if your follow-up book will be political in precisely the way Wilson fears. It wouldn't seem to make sense to see you argue for pushing things further in our personal lives since, when you quote people who take things like organic/local/sustainable food much further than you, you make clear that you don't endorse those lifestyles.

Regulation due to environmental concerns could be the proverbial tip of the iceberg, since Rod wrote that, following the GOP defeat in November, conservatives could "unify behind an agenda of social and cultural conservatism married to economic populism (which in a conservative context, would not mean government redistribution of the wealth so much as the government using its power to push reforms that would help small business, as opposed to big business, as well as some form of localism and protectionism to buffer the destructive effects of globalism on local communities)." I hardly imagine that the supposed reforms that help small businesses would be free market reforms, and trade barriers are hardly the mark of a government making room for economic freedom. And, Rod believes that crunchs cons are "populist nationalists", a group that generally supports policies that include "the defense of government programs that help ordinary people bear the burdens that threaten to wipe them out (e.g., health-care costs)." Add to this the generally negative (and I would argue, false) portrayal of those who defend the free market, and I suspect that a crunchy con platform would include -- in addition to trade restrictions -- socialism for the sake of the environment, socialism for the sake of the small business, and socialism for the sake of families. That these policies would not be so directly motivated by the Left's rhetoric of class warfare and the goal of eliminating poverty isn't exactly enough to rally me to this platform.

Oops. Forgot to close that italics tag.

Be on your guard with Douglas Wilson! He is smart,and sometimes says wise things, but his narrow version of Reformed theology leads him to some bizarre places (defense of Southern slavery, for instance). Also, I don't know what he's like in person, but his writing is arrogant (let's just say that he and Sam Harris deserve each other).

Sorry--for some reason my first post had disappeared when I looked back, so I assumed it was deleted

I am not familiar with Wilson, but his casual dismissal of climate change concerns makes me queasy. Many reasonable folk agree that there is enough substance to climate change concerns to make concerted action prudent. And among these folk, there are many approaches being proposed. Some rely on government regulation on the national scale, others on the state scale (i.e., the effort by West Coast governors), some even on the city and local scale. Even among these regulatory approaches, there are numerous variations. Some emphasize market mechanisms, others emphasize incentives, others R and D, and still others traditional command and control regs. Then, there are those in the business community who are joining together to move their companies toward action on greenhouse gases. To reject all of these offhand (in favor of individual action) seems unwise. You don't have to be an Al Gore fan to seriously consider some kind of concerted action (even some action involving some level of government)on global climate change warranted. There are many Evangelical thinkers who agree.

Luker: "Your openness to dialogue and critique is laudable, Rod." YMMV

Er, "big hands," although "bog hands" sounds intriguing.