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Crunchy Metrocons Forever

At the inaptly named American Thinker is this whiny article by one J.R. Dunn, who so completely misunderstands both Rod Dreher and Mark Gavreau Judge that taking apart his argument is almost too easy. It’s so very easy, it doesn’t even count towards ending my writer’s block. Someone who refers to the “pre-’60s paleoconservative golden […]

At the inaptly named American Thinker is this whiny article by one J.R. Dunn, who so completely misunderstands both Rod Dreher and Mark Gavreau Judge that taking apart his argument is almost too easy. It’s so very easy, it doesn’t even count towards ending my writer’s block. Someone who refers to the “pre-’60s paleoconservative golden age” is so badly informed (unless we are referring perhaps to the 1860s or maybe better yet the 1060s) that it is almost not fair to take him to task.

Here is Dunn not getting it:

They like conservatism – appearances aside, they probably both like the same things – but they don’t like the current packaging. Which reduces their arguments to nullity, since conservatism is not about packaging, or fashion, or what kind of footwear you slip on in the morning. It’s about principle, a framework of ideas and concepts that are expressed in various ways and constantly debated but which boil down to the contention that “novelty must always be examined under the presumption of error”. If you believe that, you’re a conservative. If you don’t, a copy of every New Criterion ever printed is not going to help you.

—-

So wear some socks with those Birkenstocks, Rod… it’s cold outside. And Mark, loosen that bow tie a little. Sit back, relax, drop the ideology… and I think we’ll all get along.

What Mr. Dunn refers to is the fruit of an extremely superficial reading of Mr. Dreher’s conception of crunchy cons outlined in his book of the same name and a fairly superficial understanding of Mr. Judge’s unfortunately dubbed “metrocon.” Like Jonah “Lie For a Just Cause” Goldberg, Mr. Dunn has managed to grasp one particular expression of crunchiness that Mr. Dreher has embraced and mistake it for the whole of Mr. Dreher’s vision. Further, he has mistaken Mr. Dreher’s view of conservatism for a lifestyle seminar. One of the points Mr. Dreher makes again and again, and which the perennially dull constantly miss, is that organic foods, for instance, represent a vision of a humane, more natural order that connects people to the farmers who produce that food while also serving to support those farmers. People can eat nothing but processed and fast food, but in so doing they are buying into an entire way of life that prizes consumption and indulgence rather than sanity, moderation and sober stewardship of land.

In other words, there are certain ways of life that are not conservative–outside of those ways of life, there is plenty of room for diversity among conservatives. Of course, Mr. Dunn misses the obvious point that it is Mr. Dreher who is advocating such diversity and arguing against the stifling effects of homogenisation and leveling that the state and market have brought to bear on American society. The larger point is that his sort of humane, Kirkean conservatism does take many forms (the book is Mr. Dreher’s effort to catalogue and discuss many of them), that conservatism is precisely non-ideological and that mainstream conservatism of today is exceedingly ideological and party-oriented (and not in the sense of being festive!), and anything more than a superficial glance at Mr. Dreher’s ideas would make that clear.

I am not as personally committed to the fashionable conservatism of Mark Judge. I leave that sort of thing to Michael Brendan Dougherty, the paleo master of style, but if Mr. Judge’s proposals are not necessarily quite as substantial they are not the superficial nothing that Mr. Dunn charges them with being. This is Mark Judge’s confession:

I am a conservative metrosexual.

As most people know, a metrosexual is a heterosexual man who has good taste in art and music, and likes to pamper himself with nice clothes and expensive grooming. There’s only one drawback: I can’t stand much of the so-called common-man culture celebrated by the Right.

There might be something of vanity in the metrocon outlook, but for the most part it is a reaction against the complete lack of taste and discretion that prevails among many American men. The metrocon wants to say, “Yes, the common people are good folks, and otherwise I may trust them to know what is best for themselves and their communities, but I wouldn’t go to dinner dressed like one of them.”

What would have once passed for polite conduct and good grooming are now consigned to the alley of “metrosexual.” Men who would prefer not to play the role of yobs have been pulled towards this identity. This is probably not because they want to be identified as “metrosexuals” or anything of the kind, but because they would rather not be identified as boorish clods.

This, Mr. Dunn informs us, is horrifying elitism. Well, then, sign me up, and not just for my usual reactionary reasons. What is the “common man culture” to which Mr. Judge refers? His three targets in particular are NASCAR, the WWF and the Left Behind books. I defy Mr. Dunn to defend any of those things on their merits. Oh, wait, that’s right–they have no merits.

I have, alas, watched NASCAR from time to time, and it is not only dull and time-consuming to watch (and this from a self-confessed Bollywood fan), but even by the standards of professional auto racing it is certainly “second-rate.” There are a few genuinely good drivers on that circuit, but only a few who could compete seriously in any other racing circuit. It is a perfect sport for Mr. Bush’s America, in its way: a rigged system designed to provide phoney competition that nonetheless always yields one of a handful of winners, usually the absolutely obnoxious Tony Stewart over the last couple of years. It sounds like modern democracy, actually. But I defy Mr. Dunn to defend Tony Stewart or the people who cheer for him. I would rather argue for seeing that the Southerners get their rights and self-government back rather than pretend to enjoy their ridiculous motor sports.

I might add to the list of the crass, idiot culture of this country The DaVinci Code, which so many “conservatives” I know have bought and taken seriously that one wonders whether their teachers should have bothered to teach them to read in the first place, if this was all they were going to do with the ability. In one sense, they are not to blame for being taken in by this rubbish–many of them were never taught about history or Christianity to the extent that would reveal this book to be a cheap fraud in about two seconds. If it is elitist to resent the cult of Dan Brown, then I am a proud elitist.

The real problem with Mr. Judge’s metroconservatism is not its fashion sense, which might be fine, nor is the problem his distaste for the crass and stupid in our country. On that count, I applaud him. The real problem is that Mr. Judge believes Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol represent “an older conservative order,” and it is to them and their policies that he looks when all is said and done. To be that, in the end, is far worse than being an elitist or even a metrosexual. It is to be a neocon, or one of their fellow travelers.

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