I'm late to the party in commenting on Rod Dreher's
Confessions of a Granola Conservative in NRO, but better late than never, right?
I think part of the reason I couldn't comment immediately is that my first reaction to it was, "Huh?" as I tried to search through my own experiences that might resonate. It was hard. It's not that I don't share in the general gestalt Rod's talking about here: I'm generally conservative/libertarian politically, and I believe small and authentic is better, I like buying produce directly from farmers when I can (if only our Amish-run market weren't on the other end of town), I used to regularly bake my own bread (before I hit child #3 - then cooking became something other than a pleasure, as I was adjudicating battles between two then-younger boys and tending to a baby), Joseph has had maybe three jars of baby food in his life - I use a baby food grinder and make most of it myself, I still nurse him, I've had one child with midwives (the only time nurse-midwives were available in my area), I listen to Lucinda Williams and Robert Earl Keen, I wear sandals with my long flowing dresses with batik prints, and yes, up until the sixth month of my last pregnancy, I sported a naval ring.
So, sure, I'm with Rod and Julia, but still...
I guess my caveat lies in the fact that I find none of the above very unusual. Maybe if I were a GOP party activist, I would, but I'm not. Why? (I mean, why don't I see it as unusual...) I guess it's because I've known a lot of people of varying political ideologies who do exactly the same thing, and while a lot of items in the list above might seem counter-cultural to some, in most areas I've lived, they're not. Every place I've lived, the natural food co-op is frequented, not just by stereotypical granola types, but by lots of people who want their bulk herbs and their organic vegetables. (Joseph's babysitter, who is a member of our middle-America Catholic parish, bakes her own bread and does mostly natural foods, and I think they're vegetarians, as well. I wonder if their reasons are derived from the fact that both she and her husband have had careers in the restaurant business, and they know what processed food is all about...) Almost every retro/traditionally minded Catholic under 45 I've ever known has been mad for traditional country music and more alternative contemporary "Americana" sounds. By the way, most of them - the men, at least - have also been mad for The Simpsons, a phenomenon which would probably be much more shocking to some folk than liking organic vegetables. But more on that later. And believe me, down in Florida, it doesn't matter who you vote for - naval piercing is old news, as is casual, ethnic-flavored dress. It's not a symbol of anything except taste, and no one blinks.
But there are deeper points to examine here. Dreher speaks with Julianne Loesch Wiley and Frederica Mathewes-Green, both of whom I interesected with briefly back eons ago when I was involved with Feminists for Life (It's still the best pro-life group out there. It's just that my activism is mostly writing as well as tending to my own kids. For now). What he hints at in relation to these two, but doesn't bring out explicitly (perhaps he's letting us draw our own conclusions!) is the role that religion plays in shaping one's lifestyle. Business-type conservatives may (and I say may) walk in some sort of Celine Dion/Chrysler lockstep, but my experience tells me that those committed to faith within a more traditional framework - don't. At all. Evangelical churchdes that preach moral and theological hardlines are full of long-haired guys with earrings and kids with blue hair (well, not Pentecostals with strict dress codes, but a lot of the others are - think Vineyard, etc). Some of the post-Vatican II babies who are committed to faith and the converts who've joined them can, indeed, be pretty darn uptight, culturally speaking, but others are open, as Matthewes-Green (an Orthodox) comments, to the sacramentality of creation - all of it. There's a definite and frequent progression from Natural Family Planning, pro-life sentiments to natural birth, breastfeeding, attachment parenting.....to distrust of secular authority in all of its guises in school, government and the marketplace - the authorities that try to manipulate our bodies, mess up our kids with formula, distance us from our children, and control our thinking and our wallets - to a passionate conviction that no one except Christ is gonna tell us what to do.
The best way to think of it is the quote from Chesterton with which Mark Shea signs his emails: Break the conventions; obey the commandments.
But there's more, and another side to this. Two, actually, if you can take more of what Eve Tushnet would call a "vast post."
I think there are actually two other fault lines that divide those who call themselves conservative that are harder and faster than granola and organics. First is openness to contemporary culture. I remember when a uh...certain film reviewer for a...uh...certain Catholic publication wrote a positive review of American Beauty. I bet I don't even have to tell you what happened. You can probably imagine. There are NAKED PEOPLE in that movie. There are people USING DRUGS in that movie. How could a GOOD CATHOLIC be positive about such FILTH?
(For the record, I disagreed with This Reviewer, not because people were nekkid, but because I thought the movie was a pretentious, preening, load of crap.)
I am a devotee of a few (but not all) HBO shows - The Sopranos, Six Feet Under, and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I also watch Sex in the City with a certain grim horror regarding my gender - or at least about my gender as a presented in a show mostly written by gay men. But anyway. But you know, there's a lot of BAD STUFF in those shows - nekkidness, bad language, and so on. I guess you'd call it sin. I guess you'd call it stuff that happens in life. So it doesn't bother me. But it does, indeed, bother many, many social conservatives, who would see such programs as part of the problem and would question the credentials of anyone seeing anything positive in them.
The second fault line has to do with circumstances of one's personal life. It is not easy to speak on contemporary issues impacting our culture when you're divorced and remarried and when you've had some of the other experiences in life my husband and I have both had. You get nasty letters from people who question whether you should be writing for Catholic publications because of those circumstances. You may even have a hard time getting a job because people will become aware of a few things in your past and then reflexively think "liberal" or "not orthodox" or "sinner who's not worthy, unlike me, right, Lord?"
In other words, maybe some would say it would be better if my life had gone in a straight line, I had been married to one person for twenty years and had ten perfect children I was homeschooling. Maybe then I wouldn't get nasty letters and maybe then I could reach a wider audience. But that's not what happened, and, since I am more than content in my life now, I suppose I can only thank God for life as it is, and dare to be glad that my life has not been what some Catholic traditionalists tell me it should have been. And if they don't want to listen to me because of that, fine. There's plenty of other voices out there. Lots of pilgrims, with one marriage or two, munching granola or sipping lattes, homeschooling or not, watching The Sopranos or Lawrence Welk. The Lord God sees us all. And probably laughs.