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Torrance Reviews Crunchy Cons

Kelly Jane Torrance reviews Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons at The American Enterprise. She gives a generally positive assessment, though no review would be complete without at least one shot across the bow: There are some policy prescriptions, however, and most of them involve bigger government. His frequent rants against modern agriculture ignore how many people […]

Kelly Jane Torrance reviews Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons at The American Enterprise. She gives a generally positive assessment, though no review would be complete without at least one shot across the bow:

There are some policy prescriptions, however, and most of them involve bigger government. His frequent rants against modern agriculture ignore how many people those methods have fed. He also advises, “Use government, within limits, to look after the poor and the weak without creating a culture of dependency.” Politicians and social scientists have been trying to devise such programs—without success—for decades now. Dreher’s earnestness sometimes gets the better of him. Perhaps his happy medium between a free market and a cohesive but overpowering society tilts too much in one direction at times. He’s learned a lot from Russell Kirk. But he may have forgotten some of the lessons of Milton Friedman.

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