Sunday, March 12, 2006

From David Kirkpatrick's New York Times review of Rod Dreher's Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, Gun-Loving Organic Gardeners, Evangelical Free-Range Farmers, Hip Homeschooling Mamas, Right-Wing Nature Lovers, and Their Diverse Tribe of Countercultural Conservatives Plan to Save America (or at Least the Republican Party):

Are [Dreher's] crunchy cons really so conservative? ... He speaks approvingly of government action to protect the environment, restrain big businesses and help out hard-pressed home-schooling parents -- all of which sounds suspiciously like liberalism, rewound to before the sexual revolution.

Er, no, it doesn't. It sounds suspiciously like just what we expect of conservatives: that they'll abandon the right-wing party line the minute it conflicts with their own wants, needs, and desires. Think Richard Brookhiser advocating the legalization of medical marijuana (because he smoked pot when he had cancer), or Andrew Sullivan's high-risk gay sex life (which doesn't quite jibe with his moralizing about others and indifference to those who can't afford the treatment that keeps him alive). Nothing liberal here -- just the same old "I want mine, I don't care about anyone else's" attitude we've come to expect from the Right.

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