The ballad of les crunchies

The English subtitles make an important mistake. In the penultimate verse, the translation futzes up a clever line: in French, the song accuses young people today of taking their minds off fantasies of robbing a bank by reading books about voluntary simplicity. The idea is that this generation has been in some way impoverished by its dispossession from the land, and it deals with its rage by reading books like, um, "Crunchy Cons," which evoke a lost world. The mood of the song finds this sort of thing pathetic, for the record.

What is this modern emptiness you speak of?

Gabriel, thanks for the link to Andrew Cusack's blog. There went the last hour. What a brilliant kid!!! This guy and Russell Kirk have a lot in common, including a degree from St. Andrew's. But what makes Cusack more likeable than Kirk is his sense of fun. The man from Mecosta famously threw a TV off the roof, but would he ever have blown up a microwave using butane-filled balloons for the fun of it?

Cusack writes well. For example:

"Conservatism – when I say conservatism I mean of course the real pragmatic traditional Christian social ideal, my conservatism, not neo- or corporate or libertarian or whatnot – gives voices to all the epochs of civilization and progresses along a merry path of continuity. Continuity is a keystone of conservatism. Falkland said "when it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change." I'd be inclined to agree. The modern way of thought – 'liberalism', progressivism, socialism, what have you – insists on a break with the past: a chasm between what has always been and what they would have us be. It is revolution, instead of evolution. As science has shown us, evolution is how God has made Man what he is; revolution is how Satan perverts us from what we should be. Where there has been a breach between ourselves and the past, we must fill it. Not retreat to the other side of the gap, but fill it. Restore, inspire, and create; don't retreat.

In a conservative world, the Church inspires John to give to Jack. This is virtuous. In a modernist world, the State takes from John, gives half to bureaucrats, and some to Jack. This is ridiculous.

America, by some curious fate, stands today as the paragon of conservatism. Many find this out of step with the founding of the United States, and I believe them mistaken in so finding. When we look at the British political tradition, we can see that in many ways the American Revolution, imprudent as it may have been, fits in perfectly with English political evolution: from Runnymede, to William and Mary, then Lexington and Concord, and finally Philadelphia 1789."

Rod, I'm heading to my cottage in Quebec on Thursday, and I'll be listening for this terrific song on the radio.

And I love the anglicisme "holduper la caissière". This is the sort of thing my father-in-law, who speaks no English, would say.

Thanks much for this.

Thanks for the S & G, Grump. Interesting song, but a bit of a downer. Then again, you crunchies tend to be like that, eh? ; ) By the way, it is available on iTunes for download. Now if they'd write a song about the wonders of poutine...mmm... poutine...

Maybe I'm just up late, but I've been watching the Mes Aieux video several times, and, coming from a very rural area, I find it so poignant -- the teen girl trying to stuff the soil in her purse and running and running, yet stopping to get the purse when it falls -- symbolizing either trying to escape the land into modernity while not being totally willing to relinquish it, or desparately trying to hand it on to the young boy, who simply uses it to bury the picture? Either way...it moved me.