Since Crunchy Cons was published in 2006, I've taken on a lot of criticism from fellow conservatives about the supposedly unrealistic ideals the book champions--especially when I call on conservatives to make consumer and lifestyle choices that are more in line with what we profess to believe.
Some of these challenges have been valid. But I've found that many, perhaps most, of the criticism says more about the challenger's unwillingness to try something difficult and discomfiting than about the inherent value of the ideas. How easy it is for mere expedience to masquerade as principled realism.
And, truth to tell, that's where my chicken agita came from. See, I'm the sort of person who loves to read Wendell Berry and Michael Pollan, and to talk about Slow Food, and the integrity of our farms, yada yada. I really do believe that not everyone is called to light out for the organic prairies, and that city people have an important role to play in the sustenance and growth of small family farms, if only by choosing to purchase their meat, dairy, fruits and vegetables from these producers.
But raise chickens myself? Even just three? Well now, squire, let's not be hasty. Why risk failure, and making fools of ourselves? I thought back to how in my childhood, we country people used to laugh at the city lawyers and politicians who used to come up to the hills during deer hunting season and prance around like seasoned woodsmen. Wouldn't I, long removed from my rural roots and thoroughly urbanized, risk being that kind of poseur?
Crunchy cons--and everyone else--wouldn't be so afraid of this if the rest of us didn't get mad at people who have difficult ideals, and then put them into practice. As long as no one else is doing it, we can let our own behavior go, swept along unthinkingly in the comforting certainty of the herd. But once one of the sheep starts moving in a different direction, we have to start wondering if we're going the right way.
Luckily for me, I'm pretty sure my apartment is too small to do much in the way of farming.
It's funny, one of my medium-term goals is to have enough land to farm on a (very) small scale. My primary purpose would be to educate myself (and more importantly, my children) on where food comes from. That's why they'll be learning to can, cure, hunt, and do such things as repair cars.
I don't really care what Rod Dreher or anyone else things of me; I don't have any pretensions of self-sufficiency or grand philosophical notions guiding me, just a sense that the kids need to know these sorts of things, and nobody else is going to teach them.
Just what we need, a new variety of Dumbya supporters, raising their own chickens. Don't encourage them, Megan, these people can barely take care of themselves.
Mr. Dreher is, now, anything but a "Dumbya"
supporter.
"As President Bush marched the country to war with Iraq, even some voices on the Right warned that this was a fool’s errand. I dismissed them angrily. I thought them unpatriotic.
But almost four years later, I see that I was the fool.
In Iraq, this Republican President for whom I voted twice has shamed our country with weakness and incompetence, and the consequences of his failure will be far, far worse than anything Carter did.
The fraud, the mendacity, the utter haplessness of our government’s conduct of the Iraq war have been shattering to me.
….
As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.
I had a heretical thought for a conservative - that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word - that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot - that they have to question authority.
On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn’t the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?"
http://seesdifferent.wordpress.com/2007/01/13/conservative-columnist-rod-dreher-scales-fell-from-his-eyes/
"Just what we need, a new variety of Dumbya supporters, raising their own chickens. Don't encourage them, Megan, these people can barely take care of themselves."
While that was an impostor writing, I sort of agree with the post. I'd just wonder if Dumbya supporters would torture the chickens before killing them for food.
It seems like whenever MLaJ gets called out for saying something stupid, he attributes it to an imposter, and then tempers the remark, like he did here.
"It seems like whenever MLaJ gets called out for saying something stupid, he attributes it to an imposter, and then tempers the remark, like he did here."
What's an "imposter," moron?
What's an "imposter," moron?
Google it, it's a perfectly valid spelling of the word.
Also, try not to be stupid quite so often.
@MMcA: Luckily for me, I'm pretty sure my apartment is too small to do much in the way of farming.
Oh, come on. Why not give it a try and find out? I'll buy your first chicken.
Until recently, I had completely forgotten that my parents always kept a few chickens. We lived inside the city limits of Philadelphia. Before I was born, they lived in a tiny rowhouse under the EL train in a very urban neighborhood, but many of the neighbors had chickens even in this very urban area. They stopped when I was around 2 years old, so I barely remember, but I have often heard the story about the chicken that got into the dryer. I don't know why they stopped. It could have been a city ordinance, or maybe my father got a better job, or maybe it was that a chicke got into the dryer.
I suppose it isn't really far fetched. Chickens are less trouble than dogs. When you consider the huge biomass of urban pigeons, a few chickens is nothing.
Mr. Dreher recently admitted (apparently quite unself-consciously) that all of the windows in his house are painted shut, which he said was for security reasons (evidently fearing burglars unwilling to break glass more than fire hazards). He might begin to re-orient his consumption in a salutary direction with incremental steps such as jimmying the windows open and shutting off the air conditioning.
"city people have an important role to play in the sustenance and growth of small family farms"
Oh, gods. The small family farm belongs in the same grave as the village smithy, cobbler, and potter. Moral objections to the treatment of animals is one thing; mythology about the virtue of small-scale production is quite another.
wouldn't be so afraid of this if the rest of us didn't get mad at people who have difficult ideals, and then put them into practice.
It would be easier to admire those who put difficult ideals into practice if so many of them didn't insist on being moralizing, smug, self-satisfied jerks about it. I greatly admire religious people/pacifists/vegetarians/greens/etc. who make their choices and then shut up about them and set a quiet example for the world to live by. People who use their choices as a moral bludgeon against others who do not share their values (e.g. any Christian rightist or proselytizing vegetarian you care to name), not so much. You have difficult ideals, great. It doesn't make me a bad person if I don't share some of them, so put a sock in it.
Also, try not to be stupid quite so often.
Lurker, you might as well ask your dog to write a treatise on the theory of relativity in Swahili. Some things just ain't in the DNA, and for MLaJ, not being stupid is one of them. I honestly believe that when January rolls around and the belated realization that the sun in his benighted little sky for the last eight years, "Dumbya", is no longer in office, sets in, his poor head will explode.
Chickens? My grandparents had a small scale poultry farm. No thank you. Too much work for too little reward.
I believe in markets and division of labor. I support that every time I go to the grocery store.
If Dreher wants to raise chickens, he's free to do so. Just spare me the moralizing.