I sense a pattern here...

I posted this two years ago today. It was in the midst of the famous Topix flare-up. It may be a good idea for anyone new to the Benedict Option discussion to review this. Or anyone wishing to meditate further on the Platonic ideal of chickenness.

Especially note Jonah Goldberg's remarks on the archived link from that post. I believe they apply to the Benedict Option just as well as they describe Crunchy Conservatism.

I don't believe Crunchy Conservatism exists. I think it is Rod's invention. I don't think there is any body of thought, serious or otherwise, that is "crunchy conservative." I think Rod points to things he agrees with or likes and calls it crunchy and conservative when often they are one or the other. I think Rod's taxonomy is entirely artificial. And I think the word "crunchy" and the props used to support it are not only superficial, but they smack of precisely the kind of branding and marketing outlook Rod decries. Yes, yes, yes: There are people out there worried about the ravages of the free market and modernity who are conservative. Some of them dig organic food and open-toed-shoes. Some of them do not. I do not see what is to be gained by dividing people who agree on important things by concentrating on unimportant things.

Try it out, unless you fear that you may become a dreaded Benedict Option Denialist if you read it. But it is a good question to ask. Is the Benedict Option proposal "dividing people who agree on important things by concentrating on unimportant things"?

So how does Rod Dreher actually practice his beliefs out in the real world?

Brave Sir Roddy stamps his foot and runs away. Takes a powder. Hits the road, Jack. Becomes a late Catholic (or parrot, depending on your species). Bats for the other team in protest.

He explains here:

In a few minutes, I’m going to walk over to the courthouse and vote either Democrat or Libertarian as a protest, which is to say, I’m throwing my vote away to object to the Tea Party. The current crisis in Washington is the last straw.

His very first commenter, sk, wonders how this makes a bit of sense at all:

sk says:   
October 12, 2013 at 1:05 pm   

“Jay Morris is pro-life, pro-gun, and pro-traditional marriage! Jay Morris will lead the fight to build the wall along Mexico and protect our nation’s borders!

… The single most important action facing our Congress is to defund Obamacare.”

I really don’t get what is wrong with these statements, per your own standards. He wants to restrict abortion, he wants to restrict illegal immigration, and he wants to restrict gay marriage. He wants to defund Obamacare. He also believes in the right to bear arms, and supports freedoms related to gun ownership. I feel like I understand pretty clearly where he stands.

Are you expecting him to write a replacement for Obamacare (perhaps his own 3,000 page alternative document)? Are you expecting a freshman congressman to have a plan for rewriting the laws in these five issues? Are you expecting that a freshman congressman that you vote for will have any direct, independent power to do any of these things? You are the political analyst: as you know, freshman congressman basically have the power to vote.

So perhaps you expect each candidate for their first time in national office to understand the legal and bureaucratic outlines of how to genuinely make changes on the five hot button issues of our time, to have written appropriate legislation to say how they would independently change things, and then acknowledge that they actually won’t have the power (due to their inexperience and freshman status) to do any of it?

I’m just not getting your complaint.

sk

Rod feels exactly the same way, then goes on to explain why voting for this Republican candidate is the wrong approach, but voting for the Democrat or Libertarian instead in protest is the right one:

[NFR: For immigration restriction? Me too. But "build a wall along the Mexican border" is unreasonable, and I don't think he really means it. I think he's pandering to anti-immigrant sentiment. And if he does mean it, that's worse, because it's crazy to think we could build a wall that long. Against abortion? Me too. But what is he going to do about it, given the realities of the Supreme Court's rulings? What can be done in the real world? I'd like to know. He doesn't say. Gun ownership? I probably agree with him, but I don't get the level of panic many conservatives have over the issue. On Obamacare, you know what I would like to see? Republican Congressmen talking about how Obamacare can be reformed. For better of for worse, defunding the thing is not going to happen. They're tilting at windmills. I get that he hates Obamacare. That was a respectable position two years ago. Today, though, Obamacare is in place. Continuing to fight its very existence is futile, and dramatically hurting the party. That all these GOP candidates are taking these maximalist positions, despite the political realities on the ground having changed, is very discouraging. It tells me that conservatives who don't like Obamacare are going to lose bigtime because these Tea Party people are unwilling to compromise at all. If it's all-or-nothing, and you lose, then your side gets nothing. -- RD]

See, it works like this. As long as everything is theoretical, whether religion or politics or "culture", Dreher's catch-all term for that vast universe of things he doesn't understand and can't articulate, it's all good. There aren't any consequences in theory, except, of course, only theoretical ones. It's safe and warm in theory, because theory doesn't have to exert and defend itself out in the real world, only real choice and action does. If you're only theoretically a conservative, everyone can still like you, because you haven't actually done anything real to them out in the world through any sort of boots on the ground political action. You haven't taken any less than perfect actions that might get you scorned or laughed at. You can "be" against abortion and your friend's wife, who just had one, will still invite you over for dinner, because you're harmless. You're safe, like your wife or girlfriend's gay guy friend. Better to stay safe, not like those actual real world Republicans whose hands, unlike Pilate's, can never be absolutely, perfectly clean.

Of course, in theory, safe you hasn't actually restricted abortion, or illegal immigration, or gay marriage, or anything else worth doing either, but you are still a hero, because of course you believe in heroism. And you just know that, when exactly the right opportunity presents itself, you'll be that hero you believe in, or that conservative. Because that's how the world works. In theory. And in the 8-year-old mind.

Unless, of course, the porridge or the Congressman is not just exactly right, the way you demand they should be. Then you can play your get-out-of-heroism card, because, you know, they're not playing by your rules. Rod's all for the theoretical conservative bowl of porridge, you see. It's just that, just as with the case of his personal Rodist Catholicism, out in the real world where there isn't any theoretical Conservative Party, only Democrats or Republicans, the real world Republicans haven't made the porridge exactly the way Rod would have prepared it in his own theoretical kitchen. Too hot perhaps. Or too cold. Maybe not seasoned to perfection. And what sort of hero eats an imperfect actual porridge? I mean, really? Or remains a communicant in an imperfect Catholic Church? Or votes for a real Republican Congressman over a theoretical conservative one? Or a Democrat?

So the only way for Rod to really register the depths of his developmentally arrested, petulant rejection of the imperfect real adult world that won't conform to his childish, imaginary demands is to vote for that Republican Congressman's Democrat opponent. That'll show them how he wants his porridge. That'll show them all!

Makes perfect sense to me.

Coda: so how did Rod really vote? Only he knows. Hell, he might have even voted Republican, for that very same Congressman he tore apart in his blog post. So what? What difference does it make? As with all things Rod, the important thing here is not what Rod actually did, but what he talked about doing. Oh, not what he talked about doing to further conservatism, or to restrict abortion, or illegal immigration, or gay marriage, or to preserve religious liberty. What he talked about doing that parroted what the Obamacons who pay him want to hear said about their political opponents. About Republican Congressmen running for office.

So maybe Rod Dreher really is a principled, man of action conservative after all - at least when it comes to conserving his own livelihood. When it comes to actually standing and fighting for anything else, though...

Brave Sir Roddy ran away.
Bravely ran away, away.
When real world choice it reared it's head
He bravely turned his tail and fled.
Yes Brave Sir Roddy turned about
He gallantly chickened out.

Bravely taking to his feet
He beat a very brave retreat.
Oh bravest of the brave, Sir Roddy.

A Nasty Note from Joel Salatin

You might remember this guy, Joel Salatin, as the self-righteous farmer quoted in Crunchy Cons who implied that you couldn't be a true Christian and work in the agriculture industry unless you did things his way, i.e., organic pigs, small, local and what-not. If readers of Crunchy Cons forget him I'm not surprised. His over-the-top statements just melt into the high-pitch background of scolding dogma which is the warp and woof of standard Crunchy Conservative judgmentalism. It seems to me like Salatin is vying to become the successor to the throne of Wendell Berry, although I'm not sure he's against electricity.

Here's the recent rant from Salatin in which the squeal goes up another octave. He's mainly reacting to a speech given by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack at a Democrat fund raiser in which Vilsack points out that 40% of the US Military comes from rural America even though rural America represents only 16% of the US population. This is horrible news to him as someone who wants to see more people entering the farming industry. Here's his reaction in his words:

Are you ready? Here’s his answer: although rural America only has 16 percent of the population, it gives 40 percent of the personnel to the military. Say what? You mean when it’s all said and done, at the end of the day, the bottom line–you know all the cliches–the whole reason for increasing farms is to provide cannon fodder for American imperial might. He said rural kids grow up with a sense of wanting to give something back, and if we lose that value system, we’ll lose our military might.

Emphasis mine, I don't know about you, but I'm not going to go up to a member of the military from rural America—Sergeant Theresa Vail, to use an example from recent news—and tell her she is "cannon fodder". First of all, she'd kick my ass in short order, but more importantly because I respect the US military more than any other government institution. Pew says I'm in the majority with regard to this opinion and my guess is Vilsack knew his statement would resonate well with at least 78% of the invitees in that room.

Is the "cannon fodder" remark just an off-the-cuff angry outburst of Salatin's which we can excuse? I don't think so. Aside from the fact that he put it into writing, he does so twice. Here's his second use of the term, again with my emphasis:

But to think that my agenda is key to building the American military–now that’s a cause for pause. I will redouble my efforts to help folks remember why we need more farmers. It’s not to provide cannon fodder for Wall Street imperialistic agendas. It’s to grow food that nourishes, land that’s aesthetically and aromatically sensually romantic, build soil, hydrate raped landscapes, and convert more solar energy into biomass than nature would in a static state.

Again, you have to think about what members of the military would think if you went up to them and told them they were "cannon fodder for Wall Street imperialistic agendas". Have you ever met people who have lost hands and arms in accidents of an agricultural nature? I have; but I will spare you the details. Suffice to say I'd rather have a 7.62x39 round in me than to undergo what some of them underwent. So—were they "cannon fodder" for the food industry? The people I'm talking about got hurt working for family farms, not huge agribusiness enterprises.

The piece gets sillier, nastier and more and more shrill until the last sentence, "Here’s to more healthy worms," squeaks out. Speaking these five words seems to be the perfect way to end this rant. I advise everyone to read it in its entirety to get a taste of how lunatic rage reads in print. My main takeaway is as long as these people continue to overstate their case with this fever pitch of poisonous rhetoric the world will be safe from their ideas. They blow their credibility whenever they speak in anger, which is to say practically every time they speak on a topic. There is nothing Christian about elevating the greatness of your profession and career choices above that of others. And let it be known that I have plenty of huge, healthy, organic earthworms in my backyard; thank you very much for your kind offer to take care of them.

Quick Refresher Course on Crunchy Conservatism

I'm planning to post something soon about the libel flair-up which we've been discussing over here, but I've been too busy to do so, so I'm throwing this out there for now. Not apologizing—see number three here.

I came across this review in New Criterion while googling the phrase "platonic ideal of chickenness". It's seven years old, but I don't remember reading this review when the book Crunchy Conservatives first came out. I might have read it, but either way, I think it's good to read it again and note that Dreher's ideas, his tone and his manner haven't changed very much even though, from what I know, he doesn't use the adjective crunchy that much anymore unless he is referring to his earlier book. WSJ's Joseph Rago, the author, read the book and came to the same conclusions that we did. Here are some excerpts, but the entire thing doesn't take long to read.

The major thinkers, to be sure, may be reinterpreted to meet the conditions of contemporary life. New discoveries must be made. But Dreher’s findings are slight. The novel thing about a “Birkenstocked Burkean,” it seems to me, is not the Burke but the Birkenstocks. Dreher is preoccupied by lifestyle signifiers—the way people dress, the homes they live in, and, particularly, the food they eat. For reasons I can’t comprehend, he has a voracious obsession with the “right” kind of organic food. At one point, he tells a story about a really delicious free-range chicken he ate with his family: “It was … almost the Platonic ideal of chickenness.” Eating is for Dreher a fundamentally political act. “There are many mansions in the American conservative house,” he writes, “and some of them are old and funky and smell like a pot of organic mustard greens cooking down on the stove.” This gives you a taste of his ersatz cracker-barrel folksiness.

Style over substance—check. The phrase which jumped out at me was "Dreher’s findings are slight." This was something we were always noting back in the Contra-Crunchy days. Whenever Dreher said something we agreed with it seemed like others had said it already and usually better and less obnoxiously.

One thing he marginally adds in this is the notion that under our current political alignment, not all conservative ideas belong usufruct to the Republican Party, and indeed the GOP often does things that are not conservative. He further reminds us that not all ideas emanating from the left are bad ones, particularly in regards to the stewardship of the environment. True enough. The traits crunchy cons mainly borrow from the left, however, are sanctimony, condescension, and impermeable self-regard.

Sanctimony, condescension, and impermeable self-regard—check, check, check. Nothing to add to this observation. Crunchy snobbery deserves no more than this bulls-eye waiting room diagnosis.

This is most evident, and most insulting, when Dreher draws distinctions between crunchy cons and regular cons. If you’re not wearing the Birkenstocks, so to speak, you’re not getting Burke. Only those who have been inducted into the mystery cult of crunchy conservatism are leading rich, fulfilling lives. Dreher’s mainstream conservatives are “really” spiritually arid and “really” desire only filthy lucre. “[M]ost people who call themselves conservative today,” he summarizes with by-God certainty, “aren’t really conservative in a deep sense.”

These are severe charges. Regrettably, Dreher is not analytic but impressionistic in his writing. He relies heavily on interviews, which lend to his arraignment an air of sociology, but little evidence or argument. You could say that the crunchy cons believe they’ve cornered the market on virtue—but then, they don’t believe in markets.

Here the money clause is "little evidence or argument". Dreher was incensed at the time because Jonah Goldberg basically denied the existence of crunchy conservatism as a political reality, and challenged him to give evidence of its existence. But proving a theory is beneath the Believer who has unshakeable faith in the object of his Belief. Or maybe what seems like faith is merely disguised delusion based on "impermeable self-regard".

View From Your Nuts

Here's the text from the Youtube page:

My "pet" gray squirrel, Crunchy.
Crunchy is sat on the bird table, munching an unsalted peanut.
He comes and goes.

Glad to see Crunchy is limiting his sodium intake.

Some observations about blogs

I was reading through the old Contra Crunchy blog last night, especially focusing on the light bulb post, and I was struck by a whole bunch of thoughts at once. Firstly, just the spontaneous awesomeness of the whole venture, secondly the pure irritation of the crunchies who, lacking arguments, hurled invectives, calling us rodents and nematodes, and lastly but not leastly, all the great friends I made over there many of whom comment on my own blog to this day.

I always seem to see something new over there whenever I check it out from time to time. I found a link to this blog entry which I don't think I'd read back in '06. Basically Daily Duck came to the same conclusions as we did. He included a damning passage from Caleb Stegall:

It was not until later, when I moved into the wider world of business, high-stakes law, and Evangelicalism, that I discovered that all conservatives were not like this. That instead, there existed a kind of upwardly mobile coldblooded rationalizing self-serving conservative mind that struck me, still strikes me, as sterile and not quite human.

In response, Duck concludes:

I find it hard to admire the moral compass of a man who can let his aesthetic values lead him to question the humanity of his fellows. This is what I meant by the dangers of moralizing aesthetics. Can he point to anything immoral that these one-time business acquaintances have engaged in, other than career ambitions? It is an extreme judgment of personal qualities that society as a whole finds admirable. If this is the face of crunchy conservatism, then it will be seen as no more than a scolding kind of snobbery and holier-than-thou elitism. . . .

Again, our thoughts exactly. I bring this all up because another observation I had was that all these links to small, local, particular blogs like ours are still good, whereas most of the links to big, global, abstract blogs like NRO Crunchy Con blog and the Beliefnet Crunchy Blog are pretty much dead. So we actually value The Permanent Things more, if by that term you mean "things that stay in one place", which is the obvious meaning.

I sort of wonder if this is not to some degree by design on the part of the big, global, abstract bloggers. Yes, Rod Dreher's famous Orthodoxy and Me post is still available via the Wayback Machine and Fisheaters post, but the original document which was widely read and reacted to has been crumpled up and tossed into the garbage, in a virtual sense. So when you read old posts commenting on it, the link to it doesn't point to the original Roman Catholic to Eastern Orthodox conversion story as penned by Rod Dreher. But like I say, this is a desirable feature if the piece as originally written has points that the the writer would rather bury than have people reading and continuing to comment on in the present. Another good example would be the aforementioned Caleb Stegall, who I think is on Kansas Governor Sam Brownback's legal staff currently. He also might not want his comments questioning the humanity of rich, successful Republicans to be brought up again, even if he didn't mention the nose size of those whose humanity was in question. So it's good news to him that NRO deep-sixed the Crunchy Con Blog.

The excuse of the publishers for ditching links is probably that the format needs to be updated from time to time. Remember the old Haloscan commenting host which so many bloggers were in love with? I wished I'd have archived more of those threads, both from the Beliefnet Crunchy Conservative blog and from Mark Shea's old blogspot blog; they were some of the most amazing examples of silliness I'd ever read. But the publishers' main concern is always hits and page-views—i.e., ratings for advertisers—and once the initial burst of popularity wears off, they care less about residual pennies. Hence the scrapping of Haloscan by Beliefnet, bringing all the copy into one page and providing many more page updates which keeps content "fresh". In fact, my hypothesis is that the big, gobal, abstract publishers like Patheos and Beliefnet would much rather have these old posts "disappear", especially from writers who generate popularity from controversy rather than insight or writing skill. Even those friendly with Rod used to wonder aloud why Rod would post on things like "Hanna Montana's slutty new pictures" or items of a gross or scatological nature. The answer is obviously hits and ratings. Things advertisers care about.

Of course if this were true, it is about as ironic as it could possibly get. The hue and cry of Crunchy Conservatism and all the other boutique ideologies labeled "conservative" by the amconmaggers and their ilk has been "Don't trade your birthright for porridge! Don't compromise important social principles for filthy lucre promised by the so-called free market! Don't sacrifice culture and the Permanent Things for material wealth!" And on and on, usually concluding that the damage is already done, the mainstream has caved, Rush Limbaugh is on commercial radio stations therefore we've all sold out and become libertarians posing as conservatives. The fact that Amconmag regularly advertises for Purina and Kitchenaid isn't seen as noteworthy, I'm sure ("We've all got to eat, you know!!"), but because Rush moves more product and is more successful, he is seen as the epitome of commercial crassness. If you doubt me on this, please link to a positive remark about Limbaugh or Hannity or Fred Barnes any successful "mainstream conservative" person over there. Then I'll partially apologize, even as I regale you with 5 or 10 negative comments from their site about the same persons.

A smaller irony is that people doing this for free are more respectful of the free-market economy, big internet advertising models included. And our words stay around until the apocalypse or until Google goes under, which feels sort of like an approximation of the apocalypse at this point. True, we are hobbyists and not wordsmith intellectual careerists, but that seems to be the healthier choice both culturally and for the interests of economic stability.

As usually, the operative principle for the content provision of the know-it-all class isn't any eternal principle at all, but merely a content provision industry with an advertising model. And the operative principle for their attitude toward those with a more successful venture is the ol' green-eyed monster.

Whence Rayne?

I was discussing some recent matters this morning with some of the veterans of the original Contra Crunchy blog when the name of a mysterious commenter on said blog came up: Rayne. A circumstantial email correspondence back in 2009 informed me that commenter Rayne is female. Here are several of the comments which she made about Crunchy Conservatism at the time.

Here's her first insightful comment.

Now this is rich. The rest of us are "soft" - but Dreher et al - padding about in their lesbian sandals on the cobblestone paths to their artsy-crafty bungalows fretting about their profiles in the Style section of the Washington Post - THEY are the poster boys for Alpha males. Is a Crunchy Con anything but a disaffected metrosexual with a ludicrous passion for food and an unhealthy preoccupation with home decor and ugly, expensive footware? I cannot wrap my head around Dreher hailing from Southern Louisiana - it just doesn't seem possible. No wonder those guys love homeschooling - they probably got the living crap beat out of them on the playground.

Bwa-ha-ha. Next:

Oh my - you're right! The New Pantagruel is Stegall's (aka Fr. Jape, IMO) little self-created soapbox where guess who? James Rovira! is a contributor. Shocking! You're right about the jig being up, Contra Crunch - looks like Dreher's biggest cheerleader, Frederica Mathews-Something, just threw him a rope with which to climb up from that hole he was trying to shovel his way out of:

"Rod... would you answer a question? Earlier today you said:

'I’ve learned a lot from critics of the book.'

Like, what, fr'instance? Care to list off a few? Or is there anything you would change or present differently in the book, from your current perspective?"

Would an accurate translation be: "Rod, you've dug your own grave and there's no graceful way up. Let me help you climb out & then back away slowly; otherwise, they'll bury you."

Here's a third

Great expose - now Whole Foods & Birkenstock should fire their entire PR departments for this colossal advertising failure! Dreher has only served to repulse everyone except his Crunchy Choir with his sanctimonious and hypocritical I'm-so-much-better-and-holier-than-you attitude; basically, just being a crashing bore. What does Dreher care that it's all a scam? - he's laughing all the way to the un-crunchy bank. Anyway, no one is even pretending to dignify it anymore by responding on the NR blog - only Dreher and a new poster (Amy Welborn) already in his Crunchy Corner have appeared today. Not surprisingly, Ms. Welborn has posted 2 nonsensical and irrelevant musings in attempt, I think, to be profound. Someone wake me when this is over...

...and on the same page, a really interesting one...

It's just that the Weinkopf guy didn't say anything remarkable - in WHAT sense is drinking organic milk, staying at home with the kids, and working less than 80 hours a week crunchy? LOTS AND LOTS of nuclear families across the political, social, economic & religious spectrum live exactly this way for a myriad of reasons - but QUIETLY without making exhibitions of themselves and demonizing anyone else who doesn't share their lifestyle choices.

Now Dreher drags in my beloved Benedict to support his self-aggrandisement. Has he NO shame?!

No shame indeed, especially since Dreher admitted today that he was on his way out of the church at the time of Pope Benedict's election, which was 10 months before the publication of Dreher's book Crunchy Conservatism, widely embraced by many Catholics at the time—for some reason. One wonders if that would have been the case if he had left the church before the publication date.

Well, I actually feel confident that Rayne might show up again on this here Est Quod Est blog. She and her wise contributions shall be welcomed by all of us.

They could have just called one of us...

...and we would have told them. But instead, a study was conducted that found that "Organic Foods Reduce Prosocial Behavior and Harshen Moral Judgments" or as it is put in the connecting link on MSNBC (hat tip goes to reader Diane for emailing this to me) "organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks."

"I stopped at a market to get a fruit platter for a movie night with friends but I couldn't find one so I asked the produce guy," says the 40-year-old arts administrator from Seattle. "And he was like, 'If you want fruit platters, go to Safeway. We're organic.' I finally bought a small cake and some strawberries and then at the check stand, the guy was like 'You didn't bring your own bag? I need to charge you if you didn't bring your own bag.' It was like a 'Portlandia skit.' They were so snotty and arrogant."

As it turns out, new research has determined that a judgmental attitude may just go hand in hand with exposure to organic foods. In fact, a new study published this week in the journal of Social Psychological and Personality Science, has found that organic food may just make people act a bit like jerks.

I guess this makes it official. But to me it goes in the "no duh" category with established phenomena like divorce rates being higher among Hollywood stars and kids being more likely to drop out of high schools in the inner city.

"We found that the organic people judged much harder compared to the control or comfort food groups," says Eskine. "On a scale of 1 to 7, the organic people were like 5.5 while the controls were about a 5 and the comfort food people were like a 4.89."

When it came to helping out a needy stranger, the organic people also proved to be more selfish, volunteering only 13 minutes as compared to 19 minutes (for controls) and 24 minutes (for comfort food folks).

"There's something about being exposed to organic food that made them feel better about themselves," says Eskine. "And that made them kind of jerks a little bit, I guess."

A little bit? You guess?? Come on. These people will bring their own snacks to your party and put them front and center, and then they go around telling everyone to eat their stuff because its organic. No lie.

Oh, I loved the concluding quip:

"At my local grocery, I sometimes catch organic eyes gazing into my grocery cart and scowling," says Sue Frause, a 61-year-old freelance writer/photographer from Whidbey Island. "So I'll often toss in really bad foods just to get them even more riled up."

Woman after my own heart.

Est Quod Est Phrase of the Week

The phrase of the week, IMHO, is "free-range dog meat." I found it in this HuffPo piece from December 2009.

Within Thailand, this no-stoplight town known as Ta Rae evokes free-range dog meat the way Memphis conjures thoughts of hickory-smoked ribs. The village does not showcase its signature industry, which relies on bribery and crime. Nor does it openly embrace dog eating, regarded by mainstream Thai society as hickish and uncivilized. The local dog meat vendors operate on a dusty side street, outside the town's sanctioned outdoor market. But the village's discretion is for naught: Ta Rae is regionally known as a nerve center in Southeast Asia's stray dog meat trade. Here, Northeast Thailand's seemingly infinite supply of wild dogs are corralled, graded, crammed into wire cages and prepped for export. The destination: Vietnam, where demand for grilled dog sells for triple the price of pork.

So the remaining questions. Is eating a free-range dog a sacramental thing to do (reference)? I mean this meat has got to be organic, right? Even if it is a bit diseased.

If you watch the video on the HuffPo page, you'll probably laugh at the line "[A]nimal welfare advocates... think the dog trade taints Thailand's reputation." What reputation is that? Give me a break.

Here come the Bishops! Here come the Bishops!

Remember how we use to continually be amazed by the phenomenon of everything reminding Rod Dreher of the malfeasance of Roman Catholic Bishops? Well, nothing has changed. The piece starts out quoting Thomas Frank on financial crises and impending economic doom. Then in the midst, out of nowhere, we get this:

Isn’t that how nearly all our elite institutions work? Isn’t that why not a single Roman Catholic bishop — save, arguably, Boston’s Cardinal Law — lost his post as a result of the abuse scandal? United we stand, or divided we hang.

And then, laughably, he writes this in the conclusion.

I think many of us must imagine these people sitting in their Ivory Towers of government, academia, media, banking, etc., and making decisions they consciously know are wrong, or corrupted. Maybe some do, but the key point here is that many, even most, of them don’t realize at the time how social, emotional, and psychological factors corrupt their own judgment.

But not your judgement, Rod, oh no.

He begins that last paragraph with a ridiculous false dichotomy that you can either be a good poor person or a bad rich person. And he's about to get a seven-figure advance for writing a book about his dead sister. Is Rod Dreher not the biggest laughingstock at this point? I, for one, feel absolutely vindicated for all the work I've done over the years in trying to expose him for the fraud he is. And Jonathan, Diane, Kathleen et al — you should all feel vindicated as well.

Defusing Manufactured Guilt About Driving

Common sense mixed with good humor is the best way to sell conservative ideas. Another good practice is to alleviate the guilt many people wrongly have over purely preferential decisions such as whether or not to own an automobile. These are two reasons why this article by Colin Kingsbury is so worthwhile and timely. First excerpt:

Here’s the truth: Going car-free is considerably easier if you are happy spending a relative fortune to rent a small apartment in an ultra-high- density neighborhood; enjoy one of a limited number of well-paying jobs in a downtown office; rarely need to move anything larger than a week’s supply of Lean Cuisine frozen dinners; and are happy within the confines of your neighborhood. Just imagine commuting from Dorchester to an office park on Route 128, or wrangling two children and a week’s worth of groceries onto a bus, which many less-well-off Bostonians do. Only a few neighborhoods — mostly Beacon Hill and the Back Bay — have the density to support the kind of mass-transit network and local retail presence to make car ownership largely irrelevant the way it is in Manhattan. No, in Boston, a voluntary carless lifestyle is only realistic for the young and childless with the luck of working at a well-paying job near a T stop. In short: yuppies. They’re the very same people who subscribe to locavorism and sneer that food in this country is far too cheap, but have no clue what it’s like to raise a family in a dodgy neighborhood or take the bus to a low-paying job across the city.

We regulars over here at Est Quod Est laugh at the references to Zipcars and locavores, and the usual suspects show up in the comment boxes with visceral overreactions based on politically correct talking points. I tried to leave a comment over there, but after going through the tedious registration process and clumsy interface, it was partially vomited by Boston Magazine's locavore webserver. So here it is:

The comments on the piece demonstrate the relentless liberal utopian attack on sensibility. Colin K. mentions what everybody already knows, i.e., if you don’t own a car you pay more for other services and limit your available choices, on balance. So he is called “ridiculous”, “selfish”, “immoral” and “worthless” by those commenting. We are treated to brilliant statements such as “Bikers are sexier than car drivers. We just are” and “His perspective is so obviously flawed, baseless, and immoral, that it is not worth a rational person's time to criticize him.” These overreactions mostly serve to prove his point.

These kinds of articles serve a high purpose because they help alleviate the guilt which is brought to bear on a sensible populace which, without the constant PC drumbeat, would see nothing immoral about the responsible use of an automobile. It’s a little sad that we need them to be written, but that is where we are.

I invite all of you to read the comments and notice that the only variation in the "arguments" against freedom to drive is the intensity of the invective. That is all they have left.

Again, what I really love about informative and clarifying articles like this is that they help the undecided among us see the folly and the control freakishness of the left. Colin's paragraph about who really screwed up the cities drives the point home, and is not even dealt with by the angry commenters. Probably because they don't have a response.

It wasn’t cars that devastated cities, but urban planners with a terminal excess of confidence in their own genius. The midcentury notion that the world ought to be segregated into vast tracts of exclusively residential, commercial, or industrial zones linked by multilane highways is now rightly regarded as a radical and myopic shift from how cities previously grew — slowly and organically, boasting a combination of homes and businesses. Livable cities are, above all else, places where people can pursue the sort of life they want, and for the vast majority of people, that includes a car.

Most people see the sense in this. There is room in the world for bikes and cars and people who own either or neither. And the central planners should all get real jobs and just leave us alone to work it out, instead of screeching and regulating everything.

Even so, the politically correct institutions (media, universities, etc.) have an advantage because they conscript the language of morality to voice their assertions. Most conservatives don't do that, unless they are weaked-kneed and looking for mainstream media acceptance. People want to be perceived as good citizens so they go often comply with the liberals' distortion of freedom. Hopefully the next feat of a man as successful as Kingsbury will be to discover a car gene which at least 98% of us have. But if he does I wouldn't hold my breath for a Nobel Prize.

International Sustainability Kool-aid from Prince Charles

I promised a post on this intersection of crunchiness and royalty, so I'm delivering on that, albeit a little late. Excerpt from Prince Charles's remarks:

With so much growing concern about this, my International Sustainability Unit carried out a study into why sustainable food production systems struggle to make a profit, and how it is that intensively produced food costs less. The answer to that last question may seem obvious, but my ISU study reveals a less apparent reason. It looked at five case studies and discovered two things: firstly, that the system of farm subsidies is geared in such a way that it favors overwhelmingly those kinds of agricultural techniques that are responsible for the many problems I have just outlined; and secondly, that the cost of that damage is not factored into the price of food production. Consider, for example, what happens when pesticides get into the water supply. At the moment, the water has to be cleaned up at enormous cost to consumer water bills; the primary polluter is not charged. Or take the emissions from the manufacture and application of nitrogen fertilizer, which are potent greenhouse gases. They, too, are not costed at source into the equation.

I'm laughing about the entire thing, including the comments, and I really don't know where to begin. First of all: check out the first sentence of the blog post: "In the next issue of TAC, I’ll have an essay about the Prince of Wales as a Traditionalist." Gee, can't wait until that comes out.

Also: here's a royal guy who probably never gets his hands dirty talking about organic farming and how all those big, bad corporations are doing it ALL WRONG. Prince Charles states: "as things stand, doing the right thing is penalized." What is the right thing? The elephant in the middle of the room to me is that these food fascists want to make a lot of money doing their organic thing and they can't because their inability to crack into the market. This whole thing about environmental cost is a big bunch of blather. Industrial farms and slaughterhouses have to spend beaucoups bucks on pollution control, that all gets factored in to the final cost. And their product is still cheaper. And I know what I'm talking about here; federal inspectors live at large meat-packing plants.

Another reason I'm laughing at the whole conversation involving Prince Charles and food is that I recall a really funny segment of Michael Savage that I heard several years ago when he used to be on WHK. Savage was going off on one of his many food tangents (Savage was a published nutritionist before he started doing whatever it is he does on the radio.) The topic was about how Prince Charles would sit downstairs, constipated with expensive French cheese, while his wife, Princess Diana, would bang her lovers upstairs. Then he riffed on this whole tragic speculation until a conspiracy nut called stating that Diana's murder was somehow related to Prince Charles's desire to join the Eastern Orthodox Church. I just shook my head and shorted at the time, but I should have known that this all was somehow related to crunchy conservatism.

Comment away, Pikkumatti.

More on this later

Wow. Rod Dreher almost convinced me to become Eastern Orthodox in his latest article about how great Eastern Orthodoxy is. Then I saw the picture...

...and I could not believe my eyes. Orthodoxy has completely sold out and become suburban American as evidenced by that big powder-blue Tupperware pitcher used to fill the baptismal font. Plus that book the deacon is reading from is a paperback. It's like Pizza Hut with an iconostasis. Obviously Eastern Orthodoxy has become just as hokey as Catholicism, and all hope for civilization and transcendent beauty is now lost.

Bill Donohue on Anne Rice

I have a lot of opinions on events in the news, big or small. I don't always blog on them for one reason or another. Either I'm too busy, too lazy or just too something else or whatever. But on matters of slinging mud at the Church I barely ever need to go farther than the Catholic League and Bill Donohue who nearly always shares and expresses my exact opinion in precise and succinct language. His summary of Anne Rice's latest temper tantrum is no exception; here are some excerpts:

Rice said this week that when the American bishops opposed homosexual marriage, that was the "last straw." She offered, "I didn't anticipate in the beginning that U.S. Catholic Bishops were going to come out against same-sex marriage." Did she think they would be silent on one of the most contentious moral issues of our day? Or that they were silently cheering for gay marriage all along? Either way, her virginal views are startling.

Yeah; I wonder if she knows how to say the Our Father yet.

Last night, Rice told Joy Behar "I myself am anti-abortion." It didn't take long before the pro-abortion and anti-Catholic Behar snapped, "You would deny other women the choice to have an abortion?" To which Rice said, "I would not deny them the choice." Yet in the same breath she added, "I do think it's the taking of a human life."

Wow, not above her pay grade, I guess, to say that unborn humans are actually human. Didn't even need Mr. Spock's tricorder. But "go ahead and kill 'em anyway" seems to be her position, at least when around Joyless Behar.

Rice came back to the Catholic Church in the 1990s, but only the day before yesterday did she learn that the bishops are not fond of guys marrying. She said in 2008 that Catholicism is not anti-gay, but in 2010 it was so anti-gay she had to quit. She is pro-life, knows abortion kills, but sides with the agenda of Planned Parenthood. She wants Christ without the Christianity. This is more than an odyssey—it's a tragedy.

Well, her odyssey is not over yet, odd and dizzying as it may be. My advice is that when and if she does come back to the Church that she does it quietly. I suppose I'd advise any other authors known for noisy conversions to do the same. You're welcome in the church, but please shut the hell up. We'll listen to people who know what they are talking about. Those of us who want to read cheesy novels will make sure you can afford your big mansions and whatnot.

The Other McCain on "Other Conservatisms"

Your homework for Monday is to read this piece by Robert Stacy McCain. Here's a teaser:

Beyond this, however, is the basic confusion caused by the fact that no one holds a copyright on the word “conservative,” and there is nothing to prevent anyone from saying, “I am a conservative and therefore . . .” Which brings us to the problem of Rod Dreher, who has provided what he calls “A Conservative Read On Palin’s ‘Going Rogue’” at National Public Radio.

Why was this invitation extended to Rod Dreher? Because he was willing to do what NPR wanted: Slam Sarah Palin.

We will stipulate that it is possible to dislike Sarah Palin — or at least to believe her not to be an ideal Republican presidential candidate — and still be a conservative. But the person who accepts an invitation from a liberal outfit like NPR to be the token “conservative” who attacks Sarah Palin has a few other hurdles to clear. And over these hurdles, Dreher stumbles badly.

When you are finished reading it, please comment for an automatic passing grade. If you finish before Monday, you are a geek. That's fine, just don't go complaining about the popularity of the prom queen and the quarterback. They got their gig and we got ours.

And, oh, yes—extra credit for a full paragraph on the last line explaining how and why it applies in spades to the subject.

(Hat Tip to Dianonymous.)

I'm going to turn dining back into eating

My Favorite Crunchy Conservative

"Cookie tastes so good."