Granola Conservatives and Conservative Liberals and Red/Blues [View All]

[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.

<cut>

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