I suggest that sacramentality, self-reliance, rejection of mass culture, and attention to the non-economic requirements of human flourishing lie at the heart of the movement, though I am still working on figuring out how these and its other elements fit together. ~Maxwell Goss, Right Reason

Mr. Goss gets a great deal right in his assessment of what is fundamental to crunchy conservatism, and I have to say that reading someone who has genuinely engaged with the substance of the idea is a real breath of fresh air after the level of some of the criticism in the last month. To these core elements that Mr. Goss identifies I would add, in no particular order, a certain degree of the spirit of self-denial and asceticism, festivity and (as an aspect of sacramentality) communion, in the sense here of being closely bound to a place and the people in the community, as well as cultivating a sense of obligation before religious tradition and local community. Additionally, a key idea running throughout all of these is right proportion or right measure, which finds its expression in the principle of moderation that informs the crunchy attitude and the appreciation of beautiful things in terms of their proportion, balance and harmonious arrangement of space. Part of moderation involves curtailing and restraining desire, rather than “the multiplication of desires,” which is unwelcome in itself, and which the crunchies tend to regard as the moral consequences of the rhetoric of “economic freedom.”