Granola Conservatives and Conservative Liberals and Red/Blues

[Armstead]

Here's a couple of interesting articles I came across about how political pigeonholes fail to acknowledge the fact that we may have more in common with ideologival opponents than we do with people on our "side" of the political spectrum.

It's from the National Review. It's an interesting concept that challenges some of the Red/Blue stereotypes and familiar political alignments. I see this in my own community, and actually within myself.

It's worth reading and wondering if anyone has throughts about it.


http://www.nationalreview.com/dreher/dreher071202.asp

Birkenstocked Burkeans
Confessions of a granola conservative.
Rod Dreher -- National Review Online

Talking with a conservative friend the other day, I mentioned that my wife and I were having a friend over to dinner, and were going to serve him all kinds of delicious vegetables from the organic food co-op to which we belong.


"Ewgh, That sounds so lefty," she said. And she's right. We're probably the only Republicans who subscribe to this service, which delivers fresh vegetables once weekly to our neighborhood from farms out on Long Island, and at a good price. But so what? Are lefties the only ones allowed to consume quality produce? We made fun of our liberal friends who did this stuff last summer, until we actually tasted the vegetables they got from the farm. We're converts now, and since you asked, I don't remember being told when I signed up for the GOP that henceforth, I was required to refuse broccoli that tastes like broccoli because rustic socialist composters think eating it is a good idea.

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Boston College professor Peter Kreeft discovered this phenomenon a few years ago. Kreeft said he and three friends fit John Courtney Murray's four American political types: radical, liberal, traditionalist, and conservative. One day, Kreeft, a traditional Catholic, discovered a close affinity with the Marxist atheist in the group. What did it was driving around Cambridge and judging everyone's reaction to a new housing development the conservative Republican had moved into. It was clean, well lighted, green, and spacious, with attractive amenities.

Kreeft and his friend Dick, the radical, thought it was an abomination, because it was ugly and therefore inhuman. The conservative said the fact that they cared about how the place looked marked them as "artsy-fartsy," but the traditionalist and the radical argued that beauty was one of the most important things there is.

Soon, Kreeft and his radical friend found out that despite the gulf that separated them on politics, they shared a number of areas of agreement (suburbs bad; nature good; big business and big government bad; small business and small government good). Kreeft determined from this that "beneath the current political left-right alignments there are fault lines embedded in the crust of human nature that will inevitably open up some day and produce earthquakes that will change the current map of the political landscape...."

MORE

[greenman3610]

1. I remember reading this article

I agree with the premise, but I think since the war the
fault lines have opened so deeply that it is
getting impossible to even begin a discussion
with a repub. I know there are a lot of them that
care about their health, but don't seem to make the
connection with pollution, big corporations, and
Mr Bush's cronyism...

[Finder]

2. There are many liberal Republicans...

They are socially liberal yet fiscally conservative for the most part. The political spectrum is so messed up these days. A big problem today is painting all repubs or all dems with one brush. Zell Miller is a good example. RINOs and DINOs are everywhere.

[Armstead]

3. But on the flip side, there's people like Pat Buchanan

It's true thst 9-11 and the War in Iraq opened the fault lines between liberals and conservatives.

But even there, in a sense, there are also areas where values overlap. For example, during the debate over the War in Iraq, many hard core conservatives like Pat Buchanan and even Robert Novac were more in line on that specific issue the with Howard Dean anti-war lefties than some of the pro-war Democrats were.

[Armstead]

4. Related article

http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft9611/opinion/kreeft.html

It became obvious to all four of us that there was some sort of a serious spiritual division between "us" and "them": with the radical and the traditionalist on the one side, and the liberal and the conservative on the other. It was more than a set of aesthetic preferences. It soon became clear that it unexpectedly flowed over into social and political issues. Dick and I discovered that we shared a preference for "small is beautiful" populism, a suspicion of bigness whether in government or business, a lack of interest in economics, a dislike of suburbs, a love of nature, and a concern for conserving the environment. (I've never understood why "conservatives" aren't in the front rank of conservationism.) We didn't get into moral and religious issues, but I suspect that even there we would have found a psychological kinship beneath our philosophical differences.

[Armstead]

5. One more try

Okay, so this isn't as satisfying as bashing freepers.:shrug:

But, IMO, we also ought to be looking at what's happening below the easy Red/Blue divide, both in political and social terms. One reason the Corporate Right is creating divisions that are really against the interests and desires of the traditionalists who have gravitated to Corporate Conservatism.

:kick:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. Unfortunately, the current Republicanites in power

are NOT into "small is beautiful," not in any sense that I can think of.

[Armstead]

7. True but it's the grassroots that matter

Personally I think a lot of grassroots Republicans really are into variations of "small is beautiful" but they've been misled into thinking the GOP form of corporate conservatism is the answer.

These are areas where true conservatives and progressive could find common ground, and in the process erode the right wing base.