Those who know the Style Editor well can tell you that her closely held ambition is that one day after I make sufficient dosh to support this scheme, I will own a farm where I would raise rare breed animals and heirloom plants, for the purpose of preserving their genetic pool for future generations. I even have all of my breeds picked out and happily list them for interested parties, who generally become rapidly uninterested by the time I start comparing the merits of the Large Black vs. the Mulefoot hogs.

The Style Editor she shops regularly at the local farmer’s market, only eats sausages and scrapple made from contented pigs by local producers, and buys most of her bread from local bakers. She has warm, fond memories of the small farmer and his wife who had the next property over when she was a child—it was there that the Style Editor learned to milk a cow—and thinks they were the salt of the earth. I have been known to wax eloquent on the topic of native plants vs. invasive species. If I had children, I would be a stay at home mother. (I’m not sure this counts though as that would be motivated by pure selfishness. I find the crumb crusher set highly entertaining and watching them develop is simply fascinating.) I even like to make my own granola.

So what is my opinion of the ‘crunchy cons’ dear reader? It verges so near extreme dislike that I think I will have to go drop some dollars in the penitential Lenten alms jar for thoughts unbecoming to a Christian.

Every time I read the actual Crunchy Con blog I feel a serious need to wash the sanctimony off me. I am happy to report that this blog provides the needed rinsing and also present a nice précis of how I view this group with much more humor and accuracy than I can muster.

However, I do not think the Crunchy Cons are hypocritical, a charge too easily tossed about in these heady days. I think they actually do practice what they preach. Thus, I would term them pharisaical. There they are in the front of the temple saying, now if you only did this, this and this, then God or Russell Kirk would love you like he loves us because we do all those things. It is hardly surprising. Their problem of is the problem of prosletyzing any creed that ultimately depends upon the law, and, man, do those Crunchies have laws! You can’t move for breaking them. It’s a problem that becomes even more exacerbated when the law is not a divinely instituted one, but one made up and maintained by man and apparently radically altered depending upon whim.

The more I read from them, the more I view them as the Objectivists of the Conservative movement. I remember having an interesting conversation once with a chap at a party who held the position that the Objectivists are the mystics of the Libertarians. It was a good observation. The Objectivists aren’t really all that objective. For all their claims of logic, they really do believe that they have a special truth revealed to them by the goddess Rand. They will themselves worthy of her; they are the chosen.

Likewise, the crunchy cons apparently have gotten the secret word via Russell Kirk, Wendell Berry, and Jimmy Carter and will by these practices make themselves worthy of—well—God truth be told. But as they say it’s not necessary that you believe in God to be a Crunchy Con—although it does seem awfully useful, just as it’s awfully useful to be an atheist if you’re going to be an Objectivist—then it would be accurate to say it will make you worthy of True Conservatism, however they feel about defining it that day.

Now I am more sympathetic to mysticism in Christianity than a good Lutheran girl ought to be. (Bunnie Diehl heaves a great sigh of blended pain and exasperation and starts calling around to schedule an intervention.) And I confess to having a profound admiration and respect for several mystics in the history of the church. But for all the press, mystics are human too, and there are some right stinkers among them, people whom you look at and say, “By golly if this mysticism stuff is true, it is also true that God uses every vehicle for it, which frankly is a relief to the rest of us. For’ard front and center, Margery Kempe!”

Have you read Margery Kempe? The Style Editor has, twice, once as a mere strippling of about 14 and once in college, and I look forward to never having to read her again. Both times I read Margery Kempe I was seized by a powerful sensation that coursed through my body and took control of my senses: I wanted to turn her over my knee and spank her with my hairbrush.

The Crunchy Cons remind me vividly of Margery Kempe. This is a pity for their “movement” for while the Margery has her ardent supporters—the Style Editor notes that the Ombudsman was a Kempe supporter when he read her—she also turns a lot of people off. When taking the mystic path, it is a far better practice to follow the advice of St. Francis, “Let all the brothers, however, preach by their deeds.” then shrilly proclaiming your virtue and condemning others via the Internet.

As we Lutherans like to say, “We have this one funny idea called the doctrine of vocation and this other funny idea known as the freedom of the Christian. We think that if you stick to these ideas, we will live the life that God meant for us to live on earth. Now these won’t be the perfect lives God actually meant for us to live, of course, because this here is a fallen world, and we’ll fall off the wagon a lot because we’re a poor, miserable sinners, and also we’ve got to watch that cheap grace, because that’s a great big stumbling block, you betcha. But we keep trying because it’s the least we can do for Someone who loves us so much, and we know that in His love, He will pick us up and stick us back on the wagon even if we’re going in the opposite direction. And don’t get any ideas that we’re better than everyone else, because we’re not. If our neighbor has fallen off the wagon, don’t, for goodness sake, prose on about how great it is to be on the wagon and not in the mud like our neighbor. Let’s get down and help the poor man and stick him in the middle of the wagon for a bit until his dizziness passes. Give him some bread and wine; that should help him feel stronger. Whoops, there goes the Style Editor again. Someone throw her a line!” (Bunnie Diehl relaxes and wonders if she can scale back the intervention to a mere one-on-one counseling session.)

An Orthodox priest once pithily observed about fasting, ‘Keep your eyes on your own plate.’ The Crunchy Cons would do well to follow this advice and keep their eyes on theirs.