Good stuff from the University Bookman

The latest edition of The University Bookman, published by the Russell Kirk Center, has some good stuff that should interest readers of this blog and my book. The reviews and essays in this issue focus on economic man.

1. Jeremy Beer reviews, mostly positively, "Crunchy Cons." He liked the book, but it left him wanting more. He correctly identifies its author as pulling punches (though unselfconsciously in the writing), and too timid in his steps away from mainstream conservative thought. I think his review is fair, and he's right that I would have written a different, less defensive, book had I done so now rather than when I did. I would add that now that I've read more deeply into traditionalism, the book would have been less breezy, and more philosophically grounded -- though as I've said before, my editor specifically instructed me to write a book that was primarily reportage, not theorizing. Perhaps there's a deeper, more considered book to be written ... but then again, those books have already been written. Nothing would make me happier than if my book were to send more readers to Kirk, Berry and others. And maybe that's happening. Here's Beer:

In fact, the publication of Dreher’s book signals a cultural shift that is as important as it is unmistakable: the intellectual energy in conservatism has been transferred from its institutional spokesmen to a new generation of traditionalist writers and thinkers. It is as a popular symbol of this shift, I think, that Dreher’s book has real significance.

2. A terrific interview with James Howard Kunstler. Little of this is new to Kunstler fans, but there are a couple of striking passages that told me things I didn't know about him:

What is your opinion of the legacy of the baby boomers? Will they be remembered as a generation that brought idealism to public life again, or a generation that could not see beyond its own interests in light of the looming oil problem?

The boomers managed to degrade all the standards and norms of behavior necessary to keep our civilization going, and to respond to changing circumstances effectively. A simple example is Boomer finance. Boomer lending practices, especially in the realm of mortgages, has led to a credit fiasco so exorbitant that it may destroy the legitimacy of capital as a general proposition far into the future (the way the “Mississippi Bubble” discredited banking in France for more than a century). Boomer greed and narcissism has led us into an economy based on the expectation of unearned riches. I agree with the authors Strauss and Howe who say, in their excellent book, The Fourth Turning, that Boomers will be harshly punished in their old age by their children and grandchildren by the withdrawal of support. I hasten to add that the pre-Boomer generation (my parents’ generation) was just as bad, though in a different way—they thought they deserved to live in a technological heaven-on-earth as a reward for having fought and survived the Second World War.

Is there any political figure you see who recognizes or is addressing the natural resource problem?

Well, Al Gore is an obvious choice, but more for his very public campaign about climate change, which is the flip side of the resource problem. The rest of the scene is sort of like the 1850s—you have two major parties (back then, the Whigs and Democrats) losing legitimacy and credibility, and the whole nation paralyzed over the issue of slavery. Today it’s a paralysis over looming fossil fuel scarcities and the flip side of climate change. Both the Republicans and Democrats are preoccupied with idiotic distractions like the issues arising out of gender confusion. I’m a dissatisfied registered Democrat. I would like to see my party become less preoccupied with homosexual issues and more active on restoring the U.S. passenger rail system. The time has come for those suffering from gender confusion to take their problems out of the political arena and work them out in private. The Republicans, on the other hand, face even more acute problems regarding loss-of-legitimacy as a result of the Iraq war fiasco and the impressive body of scandal generated by its members the past decade. We’re in for some big political changes, in my opinion, but my crystal ball is pretty cloudy for the moment.

3. Caleb Stegall's penetrating review of a memoir by the last member of a Wisconsin farm family, a man who realizes that he's the end of a line. Caleb picks out the unsettling position most of us are in regarding our relationship to modernity: the cables have been cut to the past, and we're left wandering, wondering if any attempt we make to reconnect with a lost past isn't just sentimental fakery.