Drunk Talk
It is ironic that Mr. Dreher at once abhors capitalism and avails himself of its most important attribute: freedom of choice. If Mr. Dreher does not like suburban sprawl, he is free to live closer to an urban center or in a small town that has not yet been enveloped by growth. If he does not like McMansions, he is free to live in a more modest home in an older subdivision. If he dislikes industry farming and is a devotee to organic farming, he is free to shop at Whole Food Markets. If he dislikes malls, he is free to shop at boutiques.
However, even as we may be sympathetic to Dreher’s aesthetic tastes, some of us count on "urban sprawl" for safe affordable housing because urban renewal has driven city and inner suburban prices through the roof. Some of us who cannot afford to shop at Whole Foods every day thank the efficiency of the market for providing us the opportunity to buy cheap, industry-farmed produce at Wal-Mart. Some of us are grateful for Ikea because our homes would sit half unfurnished if we had to buy our furniture at boutique shops.
While Mr. Dreher may romanticize about a landscape comprised of small shops and boutiques and family farms and Main Street USAs, static and frozen in time like a coast-to-coast historical re-enactment, most of us are grateful that capitalism has provided us with choices that can accommodate him and the rest of us.
If OpinionJournal’s claim that Dreher “is critical of capitalism” is a misstatement, if what they really meant was he is critical of some of capitalism’s outcomes, then some of my criticism is unwarranted. Still, I could still do without the nose-in-the-air elitism with which he views many institutions that serve vital functions for many people. It strikes me as little more than stock leftist patronization of the less-cultured little people – as embodied in the conclusion of Manifesto Point #1, “we can see things that matter more clearly” – with evangelism thrown in for good measure. Bleh.
I don't think it's fair to say he "abhors" capitalism. From my reading of NR's blog, though, it's probably fair to say he has some criticisms of capitalism as it's currently practiced. Or, probably more accurate, consumerism -- which is a different thing.
I think the essence of what he's driving at is looking at man as a spiritual and not purely material being. I don't think he's breaking any new ground in this, of course. The Catholic Church has long criticized consumerism and the idea of Economic Man. It almost sounds as if he's updating or restating Chesterton and Belloc's idea of "Distributism."
Some of your points are well taken, and have been made by others. Since they all deal with questions of material, though, I think they might be missing the point a bit. Also, especially with regard to issues like "sprawl," it is probably easy enough to locate government interventions that cause, or at least contribute to, e.g. sprawl -- thus one needn't get down on the market. (I was surprised when an urban planner pointed out that some government regs make ugly-ass, monochromatic subdivisions essentially inevitable.)
At any rate, I should be getting the book either today or Monday, depending on the mail.
I tried to read the page you linked, I really did, but I just couldn't get through it. A lot has to do with my short-attention span, I guess.
If mainstream conservatism is the far-right wackiness we see in the current administration, I'd probably have to agree with ol' Rod's (I like how everyone's on a first-name basis!) assertion that greed is a dominating factor, er, that's Jonah's summary of Rod's assertion, I guess. Greed isn't just about money, it's about power. Bowing to the radical religious right is just another way to get more votes is an example, because with the exception of a few idiots (Santorum, Bush, Brownback, DeLay, uh fuck it, there's more than few), I think a lot of them just play along for the votes.
That said, a few of those tenets seemed pretty good until I saw #9. That looks like code words for the justification of constitutionally defining words and otherwise telling people how to live. Let me know if that's really the case once you read the book.
Dave, one cannot separate the material argument from the spiritual argument as Dreher frames it. My point is that many of us shop at and live in places Dreher frowns upon out of financial necessity, not just for purposes of soul-sucking crass consumerism. One can live in a new suburban housing tract and shop at big-box stores without straying from God.
There are no doubt plenty of trivial, vapid consumerists out there who acquire stuff just for the sake of acquiring it. It appears to be mainly those people that Dreher laments, as evidenced by this bit in the OJC piece: "He recognizes that not everyone can afford to withdraw from the mainstream or follow the nearly monastic path that he keeps pointing to." This is relevant to the first part of my two-fold objection; namely, that the moralizing net he casts also lands upon the very people he acknowledges can't afford the choices he advocates by lambasting institutions essential to their well-being.
My second objection is the undercurrent of hypocrisy in his position. I'm all for choosing one's own lifestyle and advocating that others choose likewise. When I can, I even choose a lifestyle similar to those Dreher advocates. The only reason I own a TV is to watch movies on occasion. I don’t subscribe to cable. You’ve hung out with me in my old Chicago neighborhood, so you can understand how much I hate living in the outer suburbs. You know I’d rather drink one beer from a small craft brewery per month than drink Budweiser every day. I almost always prefer to dine at a locally owned restaurant than some Chili’s-like chain. But Dreher goes beyond advocating these sorts choices and calls for the destruction of the very means to make those choices. "Efficiency is an idol that must be smashed," he proclaims in the OpinionJournal article. I presume his book was not mass-printed on a moveable-type press, bound by hand, and distributed to bookstores via horse and carriage, so he can spare us the self-serving twaddle.
Only people with Dreher's resources can afford the inefficiency of the century-old economic model he fantasizes about -- a model, mind you, that prior generations toiled to rid us of so that we can sit back and comfortably wax nostalgic about it today. Efficiency is precisely what has afforded the countless millions of "crunchys" -- liberal or conservative -- the luxury of their fatuous navel-gazing. As for the rest of us, efficiency is what keeps us out of poverty and gives us a fighting chance of living past 50. If that makes me less spiritual, then count me among the heathens.
I'm not going to get into the religious or spiritual aspects of this.
But I'll come to Dreher's defense on issues like sprawl and consumerism. One could argue that the financial necessity of the 'burbs of which you write is a product of crass consumerism and corporate domination. And there are certain choices that people make that also drive that behavior. As a resident of an annoying, sprawling house farm with a mile or so of houses between two main roads dotted with strip malls and Home Depots myself, I see it every single day.
The people around me don't need to have the house they live in. Or the Grand Cherokee parked in their driveway. Or the 85 blow-up dolls on their lawn at Christmas. Or the Scott's lawn service that comes every other week. But people choose to have those things because places like Wal-Mart and Meijer allow them to have the income to do so, and they want, want, want all of it.
The efficiency you speak of allows -- and encourages -- them to have *all* of it.
And perhaps you're simply saying people should be able to choose to have it all. But humans are malleable enough that those desires are at least in part planted by, grown by, and fostered by a corporate, mass-produced culture that prods them along.
Speaking as a "liberal" who places a high level of value on choice, I actually find that these types of choices are merely an illusion. The choice becomes between good, healthy living and cheap, easy living rather than having a number of choices within a good, healthy lifestyle. And it's not as though there aren't a variety of businesses that can't compete with corporate chains -- if they're given the chance. How many local burger joints charge essentially the same as Chili's? Almost all of them. How many coffee shops and tea houses have better products for *roughly* the same price as Starbucks and drastically better products than other outlets for only a dollar or so more? Tons. How many red table wines are available for 6-14 bucks that are every bit as good or better than some similarly priced CostCo Mondavi special? Lots.
But this corporate-driven culture of "efficiency" has created a veneer that makes seeing THOSE choices very difficult and encourages the sprawl and excess to feed upon itself without giving people a fair opportunity to poke their head up and look for something better.
Some people will never want to do those things. But REAL choice would mean making those things more accessible to people, and I think that most certainly means that what Dreher's calling "efficiency" must be "smashed."
Well, based on all the comments on here, I'm encouraging you, Dave, to do a update on this book once you've read it.
I got a copy on Friday but haven't had time to so much as get through the introduction yet. But I'm going to write a review for LewRockwell.com, and I'll post some thoughts here, too. Hey, maybe I'll come up with my own little manifesto. Manifestos are, like, cool.
I won't try to answer what's been said here point by point since I'll have more to say later, and also since for all I know I may ultimately disagree with what Dreher says in the book. I'll just say that I think you, Drover, are being overly harsh. Maybe it's a cop out to make a distinction between social criticism and political advocacy, but I'm approaching this as an issue of the former. Dreher may have some political proposals based on what he says, I don't know. If so, I'd guess to the extent they begin with "Government should..." I'm going to be unsympathetic to them, unless the next word is "stop." I don't think he is saying that living in a McMansion and shopping at Wal-Mart makes you immoral or less spiritual. I think he's recognized what many of us already have: that modern suburbia is a soul-strangling plague and it's only getting worse. And he's asking, as I ask, why? And does it have to be this way? Our neighborhoods and towns are no longer built for edification, nor for anything recognizably human. Why?
And to Evan, our resident atheist and self-described liberal (welcome!), I'd say: hey, you beat me to it re: chain vs. local choices. I'd also emphasize there are often viable alternatives to the cheap goods of Wal-Mart, etc. I don't know that one necessarily needs to be well-off to follow Dreher's lead. (I should add, too, that Catholic Dreher, even though he emphasizes the spiritual side of things, has said he doesn't believe one needs to be religious to be a "crunchy conservative.")
Anyway, more later. Thanks for the thoughtful comments so far.
P.S. Here's another review, this one in the New York Sun.
I can't help but notice the Sun review echoes many of my points... it will be interesting to see how this continues to unfold...
I'm definitely enjoying the discussion it's sparked so far. There's always been an uneasy alliance of various types on the right, and for my money, the conservative vs. libertarian arguments were always the most interesting to me, liberals mostly having had nothing interesting to say for a long time.
The trouble with Scott's Lawn Service is precisely that they DO NOT come every other week. They let the crabgrass grow up to your ass, unless you call them to complain, and then they'll rush out to do a perfunctory spraying...too late.
T. S. Eliot once observed that the difference between high and low art isn't in it's quality, but in high art's awareness of itself as an art. Shouldn't an ideal conservative society produce goods and services that fit some consciously accepted standard of quality? Those who argue for unquestioned market forces avoid the question.
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