David Frum, crunchy con

Uh oh, David Frum gets on board. Excerpt:

These stereotypes have a basis in reality, for sure. There are more Whole Foods stores in Massachusetts' 617 area code than in both Carolinas; more in Chicago and Evanston than in all of Georgia. Meanwhile, the state of Alabama supports only one Whole Foods store, but three Ruth's Chris steakhouses. Mississippi: 0 Whole Foods, 3 Ruth's Chris.

Yet the stereotype equally bumps up against certain contradictions. I happened into my nearest Whole Foods on Saturday. Among other things, I bought a half gallon of milk for $3.79 - almost double the price I could have paid at Walmart. For my money, I got organic milk from cows raised on grass rather than corn.

I prefer that my children drink milk free from pesticides, herbicides and artificial hormones. I am relieved not to contribute to the promiscuous overuse of antibiotics in cattle, hastening the development of anti-biotic resistant superbugs. If the extra tariff secures more humane treatment for the dairy cows on which we depend, that's welcome news too.

As I bicycled the groceries home in my "I used to be a plastic bottle" recycled Whole Foods bag, I must have looked the image of a northwest Washington progressive. Yet it is very easy for me to imagine how the cultural polarities on food might have been reversed.

I can imagine a cultural left that fumed: The local family farm is as obsolete as the two-parent family! If you have an extra buck and three quarters burning a hole in your pocket, David Frum, why not give it to the panhandler on the corner rather than an overpriced dairy? Before getting exercised about the welfare of milk cows, how about some concern for the child prostitutes of the Third World or the underprivileged here at home?

Likewise, I can imagine a cultural right that championed premium milk in exactly the same way that it now champions luxury cars and $20 cigars. Or that worried as much about its own health and nutrition as it did about the strength and fitness of professional athletes.

No, it didn't work out that way. But it easily could have - and could still again.

If you read my book, you know where this essay is going. Good for David Frum! I especially like his Pollan-inspired discussion, from the Right, of how government subsidies are screwing up our agriculture, with far-reaching results. But if you've followed the reaction to my crunchy-con stuff from my NR days, this excerpt from Frum won't surprise you, either:

Federal subsidies to corn, federal tariffs against sugar, and genuine improvements in the efficiency of corn production have together created a new market in super-cheap corn sweeteners. They show up in everything from sodas to toothpaste. These new sweeteners have not displaced sugar - Americans simply added corn. In 1967, the average American consumed an already excessive 114 pounds of sweeteners, per year, almost all of it in the form of cane sugar. By 2003, the sweetener ration had jumped past 140 pounds, more than 60 pounds of it in the form of corn sweeteners. Soda pop seems to be the prime culprit: the average American now drinks nearly a gallon of soda per week.

When I wrote about this problem in my book Comeback and proposed that conservatives ought to take it seriously as a public health issue, an offended National Review reviewer was led to question whether I still had any conservative instincts at all.