Ee-i Ee-i Oh!
Ahh, for the yeoman farmer! Unlike Office Man, preoccupied with his "TPS Reports" and allergic to plaster, toner, and crabbing about his red Swingline stapler, the rural gentleman is the aristocrat of our bedrock agrarian class, indeed the rock on which the ship of state sinks or swims.Yes, I come to praise the farmer, for in him alone resides the great and lasting values of free men. As Victor Davis Hanson writes,
What other profession is there now in this country where the individual fights alone against nature, lives where he works, invests hourly for the future, never for the mere present, succeeds or fails on the degree of his own intellect, physical strength, bodily endurance, and sheer nerve?
It may or may not be true that the French have no word for "entrepreneur," but they certainly have one for "Farmer," and there is no question which of those two things they respect and value. For here in America we are indeed overrun by people fiendishly and greedily starting new businesses, often with the sole (if unspoken) intent of putting fine old ones out of business, as if we needed a better mousetrap. Let the poor mouse have some food, you cruel harridan!
Yes, this is a point our European friends know too well. Small farms, brimming with expensive but high-quality local produce, consumer appetites kept in check and devoid of the harsh glare of the Wal-Mart Super Center, Europe indeed understands the value of its noble agrarian heritage. What does the entrepreneur, with his sleepless nights peckign at the keyboard, his years without salaries, his constant attempts to evade government regulators, waiting perhaps years to reap his "capital gains" (more like windfall profits!), what indeed has he to teach the farmer?
Yes, the Europeans know the score here. And well we should mind them, for while America's economy stagnates, Europe's religious faith is experiencing a profound rebirth, particularly in the most traditional and "strict" forms. Not to mention that they do it all without those hideous agribusiness subsidies.
Indeed, one need look no farther than 3,000 miles over the horizon to see how the health of the small local farmer is the health of the nation.
posted by The Snob at 6:15 PM
20 Comments:
Rod Dreher and John Miller at NRO have plugged this blog, correctly, as very funny.
I just hope Rod doesn't read some of my comments on the threads (wink).
Those who labour in the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.
-- Thomas Jefferson
haggard, no doubt Jefferson wrote that in the comfort of his custom built home, taking a little break between inventions/experiments probably, while his SLAVES tilled the soil outside. rich, isn't it.
Aye, lea' the wee, sleekit, tim'rous, cowerin' beastie some food, ye murderin' pattle-wieldin' farmer!
We all know mice are conservatives, anyway!
Cheers,
PGE
Well, not all of Jefferson's slaves tilled the earth. One of them, apparently, tilled Jefferson himself.
Yes, I'll concede that the DNA case isn't completely proven.
Kinda off the subject, but Dreher just posted an extract from his book that disses American suburban church architecture...because it's not as good as the architecture of the Chartres cathedral.
What's next, Rod? A dismissal of the neighborhood baseball field because it's not as big as Yankee Stadium?
Unfortunately, this comparison says a lot more about Rod's contempt for the suburbs than about any kind of architecture. Bruce Frohnen just chimed in with another priggish condemnation of those oh-so-tacky burbs. Of course, when it comes to selling his book in suburban Borders stores, Rod gets less contemptuous real fast.
At least some recent posts indicate that Dreher is aware of his, ah, inconsistencies. I think he's starting to realize how preachy, condescending, and insufferable the crunchblog often sounds to non-crunchies. But this trashing of the suburbs will grate even more on non-crunchy ears.
By the way, non-crunchy ears are a lot more comfortable than the crunchy variety.
Yes, the hymn to imperial Japan was unfortunate. But nobody at NRO seems to bother any more with the crunchblog except the crunchies themselves. So the crunch crowd doesn't get even gentle feedback that a loving reminiscence of the regime which gave us Pearl Harbor might not work so well with many Americans.
I really have to wonder at the crunchies' tone-deafness sometimes. It seems that they just can't imagine how many people reading their blog would react to some of their wilder and crazier remarks.
Anyway, the crunchblog seems to be winding down. The hot new blog at NRO is the Phi Beta Cons blog. It's an education-themed hangout for all those much maligned mainstream conservatives like John Miller and Roger Clegg. They do not discuss veggie burritos.
Bubba,
So long as they crunch, I will munch. Like the butterfly my season is short, but glorious.
-CC
The crunchblog is still attracting some attention from non-crunchies at NRO. JPod got on the soapbox to denounce the crunchies' attitudes on housing.
Dreher replied with another swipe at those yucky suburbs (or exurbs as he likes to call them). You know, those terrible places where most Americans live. Just to make it a crunchy trifecta, Rod also praised keeping the wife at home and living in a small house.
Then Dreher bid a hasty bye-bye because he had to fly out for a speaking engagement. I assume he's flying on a crunchy plane, maybe one of the Wright brothers' later models.
At least the speaking engagement is a little crunchier than a book promo on Fox News or at Borders: he's talking at a private Catholic school called Belmont Abbey College. The subject? "Benedict, the Domestic Monastery and Media Barbarians of the Dark Ages."
It's hard, but I won't make any jokes about crunchies talking about the Dark Ages.
Rummaged through stories about Dreher's hated suburbs, and found this item from San Francisco, of all places: 51% of Americans prefer to live in the burbs, while only 13% want to live in Dreher's beloved urban centers. The rest wanted an even less urban existence in those super-yucky exurbs Dreher despises. The URL:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/29/INGHSGSE691.DTL
But what do we stupid run-of-the-mill Americans know? Rod Dreher says the burbs suck. So they gotta suck, right?
At least Stegall is controlling his rants to some degree, though JPod might disagree. Stegall hasn't called Podhoretz a Stalinist or "not quite human" at any rate. But once again the crunchies can't avoid turning people off with their snobbery and disdain.
The blunt fact is that most Americans live in the suburbs because they want to live there. When the crunchies rant against "strip malls" and "sprawl" and "McMansions", they're unnecessarily alienating most people in this country. They come off as snobby elitists gazing down their noses at us poor, clueless peasants who like suburban living. Or even exurban living, to use Dreher's favorite hate-word.
It would make far more sense for the crunchies to skip the rants and modestly propose solutions for what they see as problems. Do they want stricter zoning laws? Fine, argue the issue in a mild, rational manner and avoid the table-pounding condemnations of suburbia. Priggish, strident contempt won't convince anybody except a very small minority of true believers.
Frohnen just offered a perfect example of how clueless the crunchies are in making their case:
"But it seems to me a good thing to...present people with the argument that there is something better than strip malls and McMansions."
Bruce, ol' buddy, if you really want to present that argument, I advise you to drop the dripping-with-contempt hate-words about strip malls and McMansions. Otherwise, suburbanites (a.k.a. "most Americans") will just laugh you off...or tell you to take a flying leap. You really do come off like Captain Kirk gazing down upon an - in your view - primitive civilization, to use Bubba's very appropriate analogy.
Gawd, if the crunchies could only hear how they sound to other people...
Casey nails it for me in this summary: "But once again the crunchies can't avoid turning people off with their snobbery and disdain."
Amen. This suburb-bashing and fear of sprawl is thinly-veiled prejudice and straw-man stereotyping. To us humble suburbanites, the rhetoric is no less offensive as racial slurs like "French people never bathe", "Blacks don't speak good English" and "Irish people have too many kids." I moved out of the city to the suburbs after I got married and had kids because of the insanity of my inner-city neighborhood. I don't have time to sit around and figure out a way to fix the urban squalor caused by 50+ years of bad management, labor union worship and Democratic party control - does anybody?
What would I sound like if I lived on a farm but condemned someone who gave up a 1.5 story bungalow on a 1/10-acre plot in a blighted, under-patrolled, crime-ridden urban area to move his family of 5 to a nicer, bigger house with a little bit bigger yard and less drug-dealing neighbors? This being what I did, I routinely hear it being termed a selfish move in crunchidom among other things. And these self-proclaimed moralists should know that we have better things to do in Midwestern suburbs than to sit around trying to impress each other. We work; maybe not as hard as farmers, but harder than these crunchy clowns.
I offer the left-handed congratulations to these guys for inventing the political correctness of the right.
Getting off the subject again, but something very intresting just happened on the crunchblog. Stegall approvingly quoted Maggie Gallagher's slam against Dreher for his - well, I'll say the word - hypocrisy:
"A true traditionalism would not be represented by people who move to Dallas, buy a nice bungalow and invite friends over for tasty organic cooked food."
I think everybody has noticed how Stegall occasionally nips at Dreher for his, let's say, inconsistency. (That sounds nicer than "hypocisy.") The first entry on this blog cleverly caught the tension between the two.
But this is as explicit as the conflict has gotten. I figured one of the anti-crunchies would sooner or later really rip Dreher for saying one thing and doing another. This is the closest we've come, and Stegall seems to agree with the rip.
Will true believer Stegall, the Carrie Nation of daycare centers, go after Dreher for selling his book at Borders? It could happen, and it would make the crunchblog a lot livelier.
Of course, Dreher could rip back at Stegall for being, gasp, a lawyer instead of a dirt farmer. This could get to be fun.
Shucks, Stegall seems to have backed off from his approving quote of Maggie Gallagher's attack on Dreher. He just posted a long e-mail that rambled on about many things but ended with a defense of Dreher from Gallagher.
Still, I have to think that Stegall would just love to challenge Dreher on how he's marketing his book, among other strayings from the righteous path of crunchiness.
Bubba noted:
> [Stegall] pretty much said outright that
> suburbanites are evil.
Bubba, I don't know if Stegall ever says anything outright. :) But he definitely insinuated it in this post where he reiterates the crunchy line that a moral judgment should be attached to every simple human action. For example, it seems like I'm supposed to believe that the horizontal architecture of my split-level suburban house is not only offensive to his superior tastes, but offensive to Almighty God who created the Heavens and Earth in the Byzantine-Romanesque style - especially the Heavens part.
Stegall is really starting to remind me of the famous Longfellow quote, "Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad." His assertions in this case seem to be, if I'm not going crazy myself, that we suburbanite sub-humans have a disordered "love" of strip-malls, McMansions (tone-deaf slur meter just went off) and that ol' devil, sprawl.
The way I look at it is this. The way to deal with a strip mall isn't to blow it up in a wild, vengeful fury of crunchiness. Just extend the strip mall a few blocks, put one of the same size across the street, put a traffic light at each end, a supermarket down one side street and a church down another, school down another…. Plant some trees, let 50 years go by and voila! you got yourself a little town. Granted it's not Rome, Venice or Paris, but "Rome wasn't built in a day" as they say.
The retort might be "yeah, but no one does this. They just let everything continue to sprawl all over the place, blah, blah, blah." Ok - well then you go do it - take all your book royalties or client fees, take out a loan and actually become part of the process. You show us how it’s done, bro. Build us a crunchy, convivial place to live.
You could even zone part of the town as a place to slaughter chickens when you get the urge.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Gas. Jape wrote:
> Pauli doesn't want to
> do any really challenging
> work, but the Crunchies should:
Oh Jape, thou hast searched me, and known me... NOT. I paid my dues in the city. A few examples are in order:
1) I bought my house for $70k. Added a bath & bedroom, roof, patio. Many other improvements. Just appraised for $102,000.00. Challenging? I'd never done any of that before. Let the jury decide.
2) I went to the crime watch meetings in the area pretty regularly. Offered my pad for a cop perch for apprehending criminals. Met the cops. Kept up on what was happening.
3) I lent my neighbor $1,000.00 after he told me he needed money for his family. Paid back $600.00. He had a gambling problem. I tried.
4) I was propositioned in my own driveway. I said "no", but gave her some dough so her big, fat pimp wouldn't beat her up. (He actually banged on my car window.)
5) I ran out in the street with a camera to take a picture of a guy who just bought drugs in front of my house. He throws it in reverse. I walked right up to the car, he rolls down the window and pretends to ask directions. Then peels out.
6) I come home there's a car in the driveway and some guys running toward me. I left my car behind them, I got into their car and said "Wow, thanks for the car bros", I get out and call the cops on my cel phone and bust them - turns out they're running. Didn't need my 9, thank God.
Speaking of God, are you a priest or do you just play one on the internet?
Since when is a loan a handout, Japey?
Help me folks, Bubba, Kathleen, et al. Do you think I said to myself "Damn - I got to move to them thar suburbs. I'm going CRAZY from this urban thing!! I CAN'T TAKE IT!!!"
Or do you think we went driving around looking for houses, some in the city, some in the country, some in the suburbs until we found something suitable for our family?
And what's funny is what you learn at the crime watch meetings. Like the fact that the utopian "other less blighted" parts of the city are just the next target. The ex-cop that ran the meetings was always reiterating this, mostly in defense of the police's delayed responses to the flare-ups. The other thing that you learn is if you want criticism of a city, a white dude like me cannot possibly hold a birthday candle to what those 50-80 year old black church ladies who can't afford a house in the burbs say. "They ought to burn those projects down!!", "They ought to give him life with no parole, but he's walking!!"
It's all about law enforcement, Japey, can't you guys see that? The liberal judges have got to be replaced. The concerned citizens are not part of the machine that keeps them in power, and that machine is not conservative.
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