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Another guy who doesn’t like crunchy cons

The other day I made a less-than-complimentary reference to the thoughts of so-called “crunchy con” Rod Dreher, who has taken against the ugliness of modern capitalism and its assorted vulgarity. Blogger Clive Davis thought that I was being a touch unfair.

Well, if you thought I was harsh, then check this out by Radley Balko:

“Only after raw, unabashed capitalism has taken care of more primitive problems can we begin to have places like Whole Foods, or targeted products like no-chemical, no-additive, no-hormone, free-range chicken. Only after industry has knocked down a lot of trees and sullied a lot of streams on its way to feeding us, medicating us, and giving us good reason to think we’ll live past the age of forty do we get the luxury of beginning to worry about the health of the environment, and the survival of beings outside our own families, much less outside our own species.

I don’t begrudge Dreher his Birks and his granola, but talk about the excesses of capitalism and so-called conspicuous consumption are innevitably followed by calls to slow things down — maybe idle the engines of progress for a bit. There’s generally little acknowledgement that it is excess and consumption that have put them in the position of being able to write books about the problems associated with…you guessed it…excess and consumption.”

Absolutely. My only query: what on earth is a Birk?

29 comments to Another guy who doesn’t like crunchy cons

  • jcf

    ‘Birk’ == Birkenstock, a species of crunchy footwear.

  • why things are exclusive is beyond me.

    let the richer folks buy their organic free-range chickens. I think they taste better, and act on that when I have the cash, but have no inclination to say what someone _else_ should buy.

    I suppose it is pretty similar to compassionate conservatism: big government under another name.

    Those that seek to let people have the freedom to choose their lifestyles are one side, and those that seek to implant their one-best-way are on the other.

  • Sean

    Birks are short for “Birkenstocks”.

  • Euan Gray

    Those that seek to let people have the freedom to choose their lifestyles are one side, and those that seek to implant their one-best-way are on the other

    And in the middle are most people, who say let people generally do what they want but let’s also have a few limits here and there. It’s not binary.

    EG

  • toolkien

    From one who has regarded commercialism and the retarded cousin of capitalism, I may be speaking from the gallery who dislikes mindless consumption (i.e. trying to impress the Jonses) while not being “crunchy”. I may even wonder whether it is worth the superficial use of resources, but certainly would not use force to make sure incremental disposable income is not used in certain ways.

    I hate smoking but would rather support people’s right to smoke and private establishments to regulate for themselves what people do. In the same way, I can dislike if someone puts up a house that they can’t furnish just for the sake of being the “the right neighborhood” but won’t force them to do otherwise, or put blanket restrictions to effect the same end.

    So for me it’s not about protecting mother earth or perserving a certain view or setting, it’s more about the flaunting of wealth for no good reason, especially when many of the flaunters are in over their head. If a large house is functional, and can be properly maintained, and the owner is enjoying the spread, great. If the owner is merely trying to one up the world, they probably could do something else better with the resources. But it’s always their call.

  • Nick M

    I find the whole “organic” movement to be decadence plus ultra. I agree absolutely that it’s only when you can guarentee having a full belly do you start pondering the minutiae of what you’re filling it with. I believe in progress: GM crops, nuke plants, animal experiments, supersonic transport and a car owning democracy. As has often been noted in this forum, the ultimate sanction an individual has against a government they really disagree with is to exit stage left.

    I note in particular that most of the lentil-munchers seem very comfortably middle class. You never hear the working classes ask for slower economic growth (though what their self-appointed spokespeople say is another thing). My computer must burn about 10 times the electricity of my first speccy back in ’84. Would I go back, never!

    Full steam ahead and screw the greens! And if our future King objects I wouldn’t object to him meeting the same fate as an earlier namesake of his. Although, is it considered wrong nowadays to execute a mental defective? Hell, maybe we can roast him in Texas.

  • Nick M

    Toolkein,
    I agree. But we have the ultimate sanction against such idiots. To all thinking folk they are quite obviously twats. Being a twat is its own reward and punishment. Gratuitous, tasteless over consumption is the rope we pay out to these people so they can hang themselves.

  • bud

    What annoys me most about the bunny-huggers is their failure to recognize that their prescription (slow down tech) would, of necessity, kill a large number of people. People that would starve to death, or die in the wars started over what resources can be extracted in the old slow ways.

    They can’t be oblivious of this fact, so I have to think that they don’t worry about it because it’s obviously not going to affect them or theirs.

  • Walter E. Wallis

    The only tacky conspicuous consumption I see is by politicians spending other people’s money. I glory in the good luck of those who are able to be nice to themselves. I distrust those who condemn the personal choices of others because they feed tyrany.

  • Millie Woods

    Well you have your answer to what Birks are but no one mentioned how ugly they are, also inordinately costly; however, they have their uses in alerting one to the fact that the wearer is probably toxic in a touchy feely kind owf way.

  • Euan Gray

    What annoys me most about the bunny-huggers is their failure to recognize that their prescription (slow down tech) would, of necessity, kill a large number of people

    Oh, I think they do recognise that. However, they elevate bunnies above man, so they often don’t see it as important.

    I’m all for looking after the environment and not trashing the planet in the name of selfish extravagance, and I realise that as the dominant species pro tem it’s largely (but not entirely) up to us whether this happens or not. On the other hand, I also recognise that as we are the dominant species we can pretty much do what we want – although I suggest we do it with a light touch and bear in mind that there are always consequences.

    Anyway, in a couple of million years, few of the currently extant species will still be around, and that almost certainly includes us.

    EG

  • The assumption from pretty much all the critics assumes that crunchy advocacy will inevitably morph into government action. But that’s just absurd. Advocacy of crunchy moral values through government action has a decades long tradition on the Left so why bother with making crunchy conservatism?

    My understanding is that crunchy conservatism is at the start of advocating the crunchy social ethic and reconciling that social ethic with small government traditional conservatism. It’s like the Birkenstock jibe by Balko. Talking about Birks is such a shorthand for damned commie hippies in the US that it’s become impenetrable slang. Birkenstocks are a tribal label choice and Dreher’s looking to move the social tribe in a new, more conservative direction.

    I don’t think that Dreher is looking to make crunchy conservatism universal. In fact, there’s significant discussion of the problem of living a crunchy lifestyle on a budget. To me, the solution seems obvious though. Pour on the capitalism and create ever more wealth and you’ll have raised living standards to the point where even the poor can be “crunchy”. That hardly sounds like a solution a libertarian should bristle at.

  • I think it’s interesting to note how many of the things he decries about capitalism are the product of state intervention. Mass production, mass agriculture, media conglomeration, and mass transit are heavily subsidised by the state. Zoning and land use laws wreck the traditional mixed community and drive up the cost of housing. White Flight rode on expressways and interstates built by the state.

    I don’t think it can be understated how much of capitalism is underscored by state subsidy and planning.

    – Josh

  • veryretired

    We’ve all seen the movies about ancient Rome, or better yet, “I, Claudius”, in which scores of slaves are ready at the whim of the noble to perform all the mundane tasks of daily life.

    We’ve all seen movies like “Gosford Park”, where the upper class of Victorian England travel with their personal servants, and stay in mansions with numerous maids, cooks, butlers, gardeners, and more to take care of every big or little need.

    Now we live in a culture in which machines and mass production of basic necessities accomplish much of what used to require the muscles and labor of multitudes.

    It is the nature of “crass capitalism” to find ways to produce a great deal of what people want at the cheapest cost. In case there is anybody who hasn’t noticed, that means there aren’t too many people doing laundry by hand anymore, and a whole lot of people who now have more than one shirt and pair of pants. Some even have shoes and socks.

    It’s always easy to look down on the crude, garish, unsophisticated tastes of those who just aren’t as hip and sophisticated as the “birks” are. They probably don’t drink the right micro ales, or read the right books, or gush over the right movies either.

    I actually feel bad for these “crunchies”, whatever they really are. It’s hard to be a granola bar when the rest of the world wants a Butterfinger.

  • Peter Melia

    As I understand it, “birk” is the phonetic of “berk”, derived from Cockney rhyming slang “Berkley Hunt ” pronounced “Barkley…..” and referring to something rather rude. Abbreviated in print this appeared as “berk” and soon became spelt as it appeared, “birk”.
    In this form it is now quite commonly used in conversation, by normal decent people and seems to be taken to mean a silly person.
    Perhaps it would be used less often if people considered the origins of the word and it’s meaning. If my argument is not correct, that makes me a “birk”. If it is wildly, miles away from the truth, that makes me a “berk”.

  • Sandy P.

    –It is the nature of “crass capitalism” to find ways to produce a great deal of what people want at the cheapest cost. In case there is anybody who hasn’t noticed, that means there aren’t too many people doing laundry by hand anymore, and a whole lot of people who now have more than one shirt and pair of pants. Some even have shoes and socks.—

    There’s a story out of Iraq that after the war, a woman w/a large family was able to afford a washing machine. She saved so much time she went out and got herself a job.

    —-

  • cerebus

    Near as I can see, crunchy cons are religious culturally-minded rightwing social conservatives. The Chronicles set, basically. The annoying neologism and organic food business are a distraction.

    Blog’s pretty fun.

  • veryretired

    There was a BBC show a few years ago in which a family —husband, wife, 2 kids early teens?—volunteered to live in an 18th or 19th century milieu for a certain amount of time. Each show, they discovered more of the hard work and ishiness of “the simpler life”.

    I remember one episode in which the wife, utterly exhausted from the day long chore of washing clothes, and fighting with her daughter about the hard work of drawing water, heating it, scrubbing the clothes on a washboard, etc., just burst into tears when she was done because she was too tired to heat more water to have a bath.

    Instead, it was time to begin preparing the evening meal—no mean feat when everything has to be done by hand, starting with killing the chicken and making bread.

    One of the most dangerous aspects of the failure of the educational system to teach even a rudimentary outline of world and American history, (or British history, as the case may be) is the inability of young people to comprehend how utterly different life is now compared to even the beginnings of the 20th century, much less hundreds of years ago.

    I remember reading an estimate several years ago that 90% or more of the “horsepower” used for labor in human history was provided by human muscles until about 1850, when the percentage started dropping off dramatically. By 1950, the percentages were reversed, with less then ten percent of the horsepower in industrialized countries provided by human muscle.

    I wonder if the kids who spend 10-12 hours a day making rugs or pounding out brass trinkets in many developing countries would like some of that crass capitalism so they could take some time off and go to school. Nah. Too frivolous and neuveau riche. (they might even learn to spell)

  • Matt O'Halloran

    veryretired: It does make you wonder, though, what we’ve gained from all this labour saving and affluence and opportunities and all. People seem more ‘stressed’ than ever. Why does the pace of life always seem more relaxed and pleasant in retrospect, when we know that there was more strenuous manual work to be done (and a lot less obesity and diabetes)?

    Can it be that wellbeing is, after all, very little to do with nervy idleness and the machine-made distractions of today’s ‘leisure’? Might contentment consist more in having a clear place and set routine in a knowable community of human faces, instead of skidding about the virtual world preening oneself on one’s freedom to be lonely, narcotised and ignored? And with Homeland Security looming over the Land of the Free!

  • Johnathan Pearce

    It does make you wonder, though, what we’ve gained from all this labour saving and affluence and opportunities and all

    Quite a lot, actually. Perhaps you should ask elderly women who used to have to spend all their waking hours cooking, scrubbing, cleaning and so forth, or folk like my late grandfather, who worked down the Nottinghamshire coalmines hewing the blackstuff to earn a crust. Labour-saving technologies have made the lives of such people immeasurably better.

    Actually I am not sure that the modern generation is all that more stressed than earlier generations. Much of this stress is fuelled by a media trying to create bogeymen to scare and titillate probably the most prosperous generation in human history. I’m with VeryRetired on this issue.

    Might contentment consist more in having a clear place and set routine in a knowable community of human faces, instead of skidding about the virtual world preening oneself on one’s freedom to be lonely, narcotised and ignored?

    Indeed it might. Why don’t you take your own advice then?

  • Matt O'Halloran

    Pearce:

    All these anecdotes about living at the bottom of a pond with no oil lamps don’t mean a row of beans. Happiness is a state of mind. Some idle zillionaires are as miserable as sin, and some kids living in a favela next to raw sewage are happy as kings. No correlation.

    You sound more marxist and materialist every time you comment. You’re clinging to this idol called Progress, and you can’t bear to admit that all the chopping, changing, spending and wasting might just amount to things being different, not “immeasurably better”.

    The redundant miners of the 1980s had higher material living standards than their grandfathers in work, but I bet they weren’t as content.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Matt, you treat happiness as purely subjective. In fact you seem to embrace a sort of cultural relativism, to wit, that no way of life can possibly be happier or nicer than anywhere else. If that is the case, how do you explain the striviing of many people for a better life? Why, for example, have millions of people emigrated to places like the United States if happiness and contentment were all a state of mind?

    The redundant miners of the 1980s had higher material living standards than their grandfathers in work, but I bet they weren’t as content.

    How on earth can you prove that?

    And anyway, as a fan of genetics, I would have thought you would realise that there are long-running aspects of human nature, such as a desire for wellbeing, and so on. One could even argue that the desire for progress is a sort of Darwinian process in a way.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Some idle zillionaires are as miserable as sin, and some kids living in a favela next to raw sewage are happy as kings. No correlation.

    The key word here, of course, is “some”. If you took all idle millionaires and all kids living in a favela, I bet I can spot a correlation in a heartbeat.

    I do think there is measurable progress, though heaven knows I don’t believe in it in a sort of naive Whiggish way. But to claim mankind is as happy or as well governed in the age of human sacrifices, smallpox and mass infant child-death as today is misanthropic absurdity.

    I bet anyone who has lived in a favela and read your comments would be tempted to punch you extremely hard in the nose.

  • veryretired

    One of my most favorite adages from the Bible is the admonition, “Do not lay up treasures here on earth, where moths and rust consume, and thieves break in and steal…”

    I have never been very ambitious about making a lot of money, or having a lot of toys, so most of this complaining about “materialism” goes right past me. I don’t consider this as a moral issue, just a question of what interests a person.

    I knew guys who just had to have a new set of golf clubs every few years, or a new boat, who needed some fancy stereo equipment, or the latest computer gear. I don’t try to figure out why— they just want it.

    There’s a strong streak of asceticism behind this idea that material things don’t matter. If you feel that way about yourself, more power to you.

    If, however, as I see all too often, you decide that because you don’t see the need for X, nobody really needs X, and therefore its all a waste and, somehow, kind of disreputable, then I’m afraid I think you have drifted into foul territory.

    It is a standing joke in my family that next year I’m going to get a fishing boat. It’s been next year for about 20 years now.

    One set of fishing boats sent my oldest to the best prep school in our area, then a few years boats paid for the next son to play several sports year round while he went to the private schools he thought were a good fit for him. (He graduates from college in a few months to be a teacher and coach—worked his way through on scholarships)

    My last several boats have payed for the princess of the universe to play hockey, run track, play lacrosse and softball, and generally immerse herself in the activities of the pricey private suburban school she picked out. She also made the A honor roll, so it’s not all play and no work. She takes after her mother, as they all do, thank God.

    The point of all this is just that what a person does with their life, and their time, and their money, may not be what you would pick, but then, it’s their life, not yours.

    If I won the Powerball, I think I might just buy some billboards or full page ads with the oft ignored message—” It’s my life and it’s my business—not yours.”

  • Johnathan Pearce

    If I won the Powerball, I think I might just buy some billboards or full page ads with the oft ignored message—” It’s my life and it’s my business—not yours.”

    Another candidate for quote of the day!

  • Matt O'Halloran

    Well, I don’t argue with any part of veryretired’s homespun philosophy. I simply point out that the very notion of ‘progress’ is recent, far from universally shared and apt to lead to worse outcomes than when individuals pursue goals that are not necessarily related to the notion that they can be, on average, wiser, sexier, more artistically gifted or healthier than their ancestors.

    My study of history fails to disclose such gains: in all change as much is lost as gained. Far more damage has been done by the stirrers of Mankind than its tranquillisers. I articulate the bred-in-the-bone conclusions of the great apathetic majority: the rock of dullness on which, praise the Lord, all enthusiasm dashes itself to pieces.

  • JSinAZ

    Matt,

    Your comments bring to mind a conversation my father related to me, in which my maternal grandmother (bn ~1900) asked why my parents would run to the doctors any time me or my siblings were sick.

    His reply: “How many babies used to die when I was young?” For reference, he was born two years before the Great Depression struck in the first third of the last century.

    She immediately saw the point, and never questioned my parents again in this regard.

    The plain fact is, you are romanticizing the past (and most of the third world), while trivializing their pain at the same time.

    Your point seems to be that the children of the favela are happy to play in sewage – and that they die in droves because of it, is a trivial point as they were happy at the time. And the fact that their parents must bury them, and a lot of their siblings, is deemed inconsequential to their own happiness and satisfaction with life.

    After all, they’re used to infant mortaility. And they are happy despite it, so why consider less death and disease an “improvement” wrought by modernity?

    As long as they seem happy in the filth before they die, then they are as happy as we could ever hope to be, what with our empty materialistic lives and all.

    That really is the height of post-modern relativantism, and you should really think hard about the awful nature of what you are suggesting.

  • veryretired

    I’m homespun? What a surprize. And here I thought I was a very complex and subtle empiricist, with just a touch of the romantic.

    Ah, well. I guess I’ll have to throw in a few “shucks” and “golly gees” into my comments now.

    But I refuse to wear a straw hat or smoke a corncob pipe. There are limits, after all.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Mr O’Halloran’s nonsensical point about bored millioinaires and inhabitants of favelas also misses a key point: choice. The bored rich man has the luxury and opportunity to spice up his life, whereas the guy living in a shack in Sao Paulo probably doesn’t. I suspect that Matt knows this full well.

    I am beginning to develop a major dislike of this individual. It started as a sort of low-level dull pain, now morphing into full-blown toothache.