Why Wets Are All Wet

SUZANNE FIELDS in a recent column detected some eerie crunching sounds that she worried might be early signs of the conservative coalition’s cracking up. By my count the conservative coalition has been cracking up regularly since Ronald Reagan left office and R. Emmett Tyrrell heard very similar sounds. Blows were then exchanged between libertarians and the Christian Right. But the Democrats encouraged the coalition to get together again.

The immediate cause of Ms. Fields’s anxiety was Rod Dreher’s new book launching the cause of “crunchy conservatism.” This argues that conservative support for free markets should be tempered by concern for nature, family life, religion, and social stability. My sense is that conservatism, as opposed to libertarianism, has always accepted such limits to pure capitalist competition. I share Jonah Goldberg’s feeling that Rod is exaggerating the novelty of crunchy conservatism and in the process giving himself a not-wholly-deserved pat on the back: “Lord, Lord, I thank thee that I am not as these other conservatives who shop not wisely but too well.” This may be irritating but it hardly constitutes a deep moral divide. So I doubt that either NATIONALREVIEW or the wider conservative movement will crack up over crunchiness.

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John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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SUZANNE FIELDS in a recent column detected some eerie crunching sounds that she worried might be early signs of the conservative coalition’s cracking up. By my count the conservative coalition has been cracking up regularly since Ronald Reagan left office and R. Emmett Tyrrell heard very similar sounds. Blows were then exchanged between libertarians and the Christian Right. But the Democrats encouraged the coalition to get together again.

The immediate cause of Ms. Fields’s anxiety was Rod Dreher’s new book launching the cause of “crunchy conservatism.” This argues that conservative support for free markets should be tempered by concern for nature, family life, religion, and social stability. My sense is that conservatism, as opposed to libertarianism, has always accepted such limits to pure capitalist competition. I share Jonah Goldberg’s feeling that Rod is exaggerating the novelty of crunchy conservatism and in the process giving himself a not-wholly-deserved pat on the back: “Lord, Lord, I thank thee that I am not as these other conservatives who shop not wisely but too well.” This may be irritating but it hardly constitutes a deep moral divide. So I doubt that either NATIONALREVIEW or the wider conservative movement will crack up over crunchiness.