God, Guts, and Granola: A Manifesto for "Crunchy Conservatives" Forgets Why Self-Interest Is Important.

• Author: McCain, Robert Stacey
• Position: CRUNCHY CONS; 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 - Book review

Historians may some day look back on 2006 as the year of the Great Conservative Freakout. Former Reagan administration official Bruce Bartlett wrote a book declaring that Dubya is no conservative. The Republican Congress mutinied against the White House. And leaders of the religious right were implicated in the scares of a casino lobbyist.

Into this right-wing meltdown steps Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher, with 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) (Crown Forum), a book remarkable in several ways, not least of which is a subtitle so long I should earn $10 just by repeating it in this review.

But see? There I go again, thinking like the greedy materialists of the "GOP mainstream" who are the chief objects of Dreher's scorn, to wit: "The tragic flaw of Western economics is that it is based on exploiting and encouraging greed and envy."

Absolutely. Right now, I'm envious of Dreher, whose anti-materialist conservative book is selling like crazy at Amazon. com. But I'm exploiting Rod by reviewing his book for the greedheads at reason, so that's cool.

What is a crunchy con? Dreher provides a "manifesto" describing those "who stand outside the conservative mainstream" and therefore "can see things that matter more clearly." According to Dreher, "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."

I've got no problem with much of Dreher's crunchy agenda. If he wants to eat free-range chicken and organic vegetables, more power to him. Scorn exurban "McMansions" and buy a century-old Craftsman house in a hip in-town neighborhood? No problem. (I can't afford any of that stuff myself, despite my greed.)

Heck, I'm a fundamentalist father of six homeschooled children--the very epitome of crunchiness, according to Dreher. Yet because I believe in economic freedom, he says I don't even exist. Crunchies "orient their lives" toward "serving God, not self," Dreher writes. "By way of contrast, a libertarian conservative sees the point of life as exercising freedom of choice to serve his self-chosen ends."

Look, Rod: My kids have to eat, our minivan needs a new transmission, and my daughter wants to go...