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Dreher’s Crunchy Cons and Hart’s American Conservative Mind

Peter, I agree with you on Jeff Hart’s piece [in today’s Wall Street Journal]. We were in a staff meeting here at the Dallas Morning News, and my editor had to nudge me to get me to put down the Journal and pay attention, so captivating was Jeff’s essay. Crunchy me especially liked this passage: […]

Peter, I agree with you on Jeff Hart’s piece [in today’s Wall Street Journal]. We were in a staff meeting here at the Dallas Morning News, and my editor had to nudge me to get me to put down the Journal and pay attention, so captivating was Jeff’s essay. Crunchy me especially liked this passage:

But the utopian temptation can turn such free-market thought into a utopianism of its own–that is, free markets to be effected even while excluding every other value and purpose . . .such as Beauty, broadly defined. The desire for Beauty may be natural to human beings, like other natural desires. It appeared early, in prehistoric cave murals. In literature (for example, Dante) and in other forms of representation–painting, sculpture, music, architecture–Heaven is always beautiful, Hell ugly. Plato taught that the love of Beauty led to the Good. Among the needs of civilization is what Burke called the “unbought grace of life.” ~Rod Dreher (via Peter Robinson) at The Corner

Mr. Hart’s remarks on beauty brought Mr. Dreher’s ideas to my mind as well–it is encouraging to hear that Mr. Dreher responded in much the same way to the article. What was telling in the responses to Mr. Hart’s article at The Corner was the complete lack of any comment on the anti-Wilsonian arguments advanced therein. That is something that NRO understandably doesn’t want to touch.

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