I have looked at his proposals and found them to be very anti-growth and anti-business. I agree that conservatives need to explain our stance on the environment better, but Dreher's path isn't the way.

Very interesting...

Dreher has many of the same criticism's about "conservatives" that I have and I am an angry moonbat but he is worth a critical read.

Even more interesting is that Dreher who calls himself a conservative who stands, "outside the conservative mainstream; therefore,... can see things that matter more clearly", manages to see the exact same things we liberals have been seeing with mainstream conservativism for years.

What's next? Conservatives acknowledging that the "pre-emptive war" in Iraq was a massive foreign policy blunder?

This Mitch is why the conservative movement is starting to implode. It was all slick marketing, empty promises, blaming Democrats, clever buzzwords and Swiftboat tactics but there was never truth to match the rhetoric.

It's nice to see conservatives starting to acknowledge that truth and take some responsibility for a change.

The fact that Doug agrees with Drehrer is not a point in Drehrer's favor.
The biggest problem I have with Drehrer(and mitch agrees with him here) is with this item:
" 5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship,especially of the natural world,is not fundamentally conservative.

Very true - and beyond that, fundamentally not-very-Christian (for the Christian conservatives)."

Drehrer's words are platitudes. Who will admit they are against restraint, humility, and "good stewardship"? How do you translate platitudes into something resembling policy? If opening an area to logging in a depressed area will provide needed jobs, is it "fundamentally conservative" to oppose it? If putting a mill on an otherwise pristine river will lift thousands out of poverty is it un-Christian to build that mill?

Terry-

Dreher isn't saying that government is the answer to the problem. He's asking that people think about the choices they make and the impact that said choices have on the environment, culture, and society. I too don't agree with everything that he says, but he is most certainly not "anti-business." He is anti-big corporations using the power of government to squeeze out rivals, put up barriers to new entry, and limit competition. That's a position that I would think that most true conservatives would agree with.

Doug-

Be careful not to confuse healthy debate with an implosion of the "conservative movement." While Dreher and fellow Crunchy Cons may have issues with the GOP, they are relatively minor compared with the differences they have with the Dems.

Terry said,

If opening an area to logging in a depressed area will provide needed jobs, is it "fundamentally conservative" to oppose it?

The issues are restraint, humility, and good stewardship.

Clear cutting several hundred thousand acres of timber would most certainly be profitable and would lift some people out of poverty. The goods produced are cheap.

Selective logging is more difficult, time consuming and expensive. The goods produced with selective logging are more expensive.

Now go to Walmart and tell me which brand of conservativism is being practiced.

I hunt and I fish and never take more than the legal limit. I follow the law because it's the right thing to do from a wildlife management perspective. My brother-in-in law who is a diehard conservative Republican ALWAYS takes a couple extra when we go fishing.

Again, restraint, humility, and good stewardship?

Granted, he's just one person and doesn't necessarily represent other conservative individuals but at least for him, he is conservative only when it's convienent.

Now take the thousands of corporate entities that act just like him and tell me if they are really conservative or are taking a few extra walley because they think they deserve it.

elder,

Be careful not to confuse the "conservative movement" with conservative ideology and ethics.

We have more in common than most people would want to admit and Dreher makes that pretty clear in his manifesto.

I wish I would have been able to listen to him but I just can't stomach all the used car ads...

Just kidding...

Personal responsibility? Wow. What a concept.

The Elder-
It seems to me that Drehrer wrote the crunchy manifesto with the goal of affecting public policy (though he'd probably say 'how we think about public policy') so he really needs to come up with something other than platitudes about being 'good stewards'. Ralph Nader and the president of Exxon would agree on the wording of article 5.

Doug-I don't have any feelings about clear cutting or walmart per se. Context is important. And just to get a battle of anecdotes going, I live in an artsy community in a blue state; our county councilman is a Greenie. You'd be surprised how many people who proudly call themselves environmentalists buy an acre of rainforest out here (we're in a UN biosphere reserve), flatten it with a D9, build a house on the land, and then show their concern for the environment by putting a recycling bin outside their front door.

So big business deserves the same scrutiny as big government? We get to vote once every couple of years on the makeup of our government. We generally have two choices. Then they move to Washington or St. Paul where our representatives can ignore our interests with impunity and redistrict themselves into safe seats.

Big business (except for government endorsed monopolies) must win our vote every time we spend a dollar. If you don't like Wal*Mart you literally have hundreds of alternatives. Sure, there are conspiracy theorists that think that Microsoft or a group of oil companies are out to get us, but those claims just don't bear scrutiny.

Government is forceable. If you don't believe so, try not paying your taxes this week. Even the biggest business engages in voluntary transactions. The free market provides enough scrutiny, thank you very much.

Nihilist,

As the most free-market libertarian conservative either of us knows, I agree.

However, business doesn't always obey markets. When business at any level co-opts government to serve it, it distorts the market. And it happens - lots. Think Best Buy and Target don't benefit, respectively, by having government fix 'em up with land for their new HQs (via rampant eminent domain)? Think Tax Increment Financing doesn't use government to skew the market in favor of *some* businesses against others?

I disagree with Dreher about many things - but as a matter of fact, when business and government start to drink from the same water dish, it's not a good thing.

Subsidizing business is not much better than subsidizing poverty.

I knew that if I hung around here long enough, I would hear Mitch say something that I absolutely and completely agree with.

I might add one comment though Mitch. Subsidizing business is significantly different than subsidizing poverty in one respect. People living in poverty, whether through their own actions or forces they can't control, generally need the help.

Terry- Actually Dreher isn't aiming to influence public policy in the slightest. He's asking people to make choices based on what he believes should be the conservative approach. As I said, I don't agree with him on everything, but he's talking about personal choices, not public policies.

His Crunchy Con Manifesto is merely a broad statement of beliefs. You can dismiss it as "platitudes" but you could also say the same thing about the Declaration Of Independence, couldn't you?

NIGP- I'm all for being able to "vote" in the free market. As long as the market is truly free and open to competition. You know as well as I do that corporations are not above using government to hamstring their competition if it gives them an advantage. There's some speculation that the reason that Wal-Mart has recently changed its tune on the minimum wage is just such an example.

Mitch & Elder,

The fact that corporations influence governmental units to harm their competition shows why we need to limit the powers of government, not business. I think we all can agree that when government subsidizes businesses or awards contracts based on work specifications that are not neutral it is abusing its power and little good can result.

The major beef I have with what I've heard from Dreher so far is that he seems to have cartoonish perceptions of other conservatives. One of the writers at National Review Online--I think it was Jonah Goldberg but I could be wrong--accused him of using "Frankenesque stereotypes" of other conservatives. When he tries to describe what distinguishes crunchy cons from other conservatives what he mentions doesn't sound new or different. If he believes his approach to conservatism is the best, he has to argue why his approach best serves the goals the majority of we conservatives already share with him even though he doesn't seem to recognize that we do.

Eightgun- That is a criticism of Dreher's book that I share. All too often, he seems to set up a false dichotomy between Crunchy Cons and absurd caricatures that represent "mainstream cons."

The irony of refering to youselves as "cons" just makes me giggle...

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