JPod – Fair enough on anti-republicanism, though I’m sure someone has a problem with it (someone always does).

As for ties, I agree it’s a generational thing, but it’s not merely a generational thing.

I think Kirk would probably agree: this wasn’t just fashionableness. People wore ties and dressed properly at public events not just in our parents’ generation but for several generations. I remember when I was a kid people still got dressed-up to go on airplanes. And if you look at pictures of old baseball games, everyone was wearing a tie.

I could take almost every quote and author in the supposedly Crunchy Con oeuvre and make what I think would be a much, much stronger case that instead of putting on hippie clothing a true “crunchy con” should put on a tie and jacket. Rod talks in his opening pages about the comfort his birkenstocks provide and makes it sound like a virtue that he donned them. But Rod’s whole argument is that the comfort and ease our consumer culture brings is the enemy of The Good Path.

Rod talks often and eloquently about the permanent things, of custom and tradition, but when they collide with comfortable open toed shoes and loose fitting shirts, guess which one gets defenestrated?

In other words one of the things that has contributed to a declining sense of community is precisely what Rod now celebrates. A common culture where everyone is inconvenienced equally is far more in keeping with the spirit of Russell Kirk than a culture in which everyone indulges in sartorial rebelliousness and self-satisfaction.

Schools impose uniforms, for example, not to make everybody look like a country club Republican but to make poor kids and rich kids feel just a little bit more like equals.

Man, oh man, could I go on but I really must stop myself for now.