book report

(The subtitle is pretty summary, eh?)

I love words, new phrase that pinpoint what I am trying to say or define. Crunchy con(servative) was a word revolution for me! My liberal lifestyle had always felt juxtaposed to my conservative belief system. Stumbling across Rob Dreher's book, Crunch Cons, pushed me forward in my quest for a more sustainable, green (ish, I'm not entirely sold out to environmentalism) approach to work, business, family, home, life in general. What is the crunch in the conservatism? This is Rob's Manifesto:

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.

2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.

3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.

4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.

5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.

6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.

7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.

8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.

9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”

10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Food for thought, all! Read his book, or borrow it from me and save a tree (and a few dollars!) :)