There's usually a difference between the person who discovers and coins a social phenomenon, and the person who really groks and defines it.

Rod Dreher is still in the early stages of noticing something, and defining its outlines. It shows. "Granola conservatives" are mostly an anthropological phenomenon, not a political one... yet. Rod's book begins to explore it, but in the end it's just Rod's viewpoint - and my personal take is that it's a viewpoint coloured pretty heavily by who Rod is. That may not necessarily be who the movement is.

His take on "Crunchy Cons" going to be tested hard in debate, as it should be. As it needs to be. That will temper it. It's also likely to attract conservatives (the potential resonance with evangelicals, for instance) and independents (like Communitarians) in for a look, whose presence and influence will change the very thing he began talking about. Which is another reason why Rod may not, in the end, be the person who really defines it.

Does Rod's work have a tendency to adopt a caricatured picture of mainstream conservatism? Guilty, and Jonah is right to take him to task for it. Avoidance of the "compassionate conservatism" strain of thought that bears more than a few overlaps with Dreher's ideas, and failure to grapple with its successes and failures? Guilty. Weak on the economic foundations even as it discusses economic subjects? Not surprising in a mostly anthropological book, but a weakness nonetheless. A bit of boomer narcissism? Yah. Jonah Goldberg:

"...there are some legitimately moving and useful parts to this book. Rod is quite gifted at conveying a sense of loss and alienation with mainstream culture I think most conservatives either share or should have sympathy for. Technology and capitalism are inherently destabilizing of tradition and community.

But the basic problem with crunchy conservatism - much like Andrew Sullivan's various attempts to create some new political movement out of his own random collection of biases and convictions - is that it is narcissistic. Rod extrapolates from his personal preferences and priorities an entire branch of conservatism. When he hears from other confused readers that they too like whole grain bread and home schooling, he assumes he's found a new trend. Thus he casts about for, and finds, a bunch of social conservatives who live crunchy lifestyles and assumes they are intellectually distinct from other social conservatives (and he overlooks the fact that many, many "crunchy" rightwingers are in fact libertarians)..."

Valid criticisms - and again, all of these attributes are pretty much what one would expect in a mostly anthropological book.

Where Jonah and I part company is in my belief that it would be a big mistake to dismiss the concept itself.

I think Rod is on to something, for a whole bunch of reasons. Trends like these toward "voluntary simplicity" are real. Straus and Howe's "Generations" work strongly suggests that many Crunchy Con themes around The Permanent Things, a different approach to community and duty, et. al. are already at work - and more than a few surveys of younger people these days suggest that they're right. Design/policy philosophies like "New Urbanism" are making themselves felt. Key environmentalist tenets are getting a strong rethink in some quarters, in ways that could make it less of a voodoo cult and more of an ethic that conservatives could once again hold proudly. Energy prices are already changing public attitudes, and will change them still more in ways that go beyond our energy use. Etc.

Then there are the responses Rod has received, and that we have seen here. Too many people are coming back with relieved messages of "thank goodness, I'm not the only one!" for me to dismiss this.

I've said before that the 60s are dead - and so are the 80s. The tension between the worldviews they represent has governed most of our political lives. Both have lessons to teach - but both are also inadequate to our future. As I noted:

"...the winds and waves of change will not stop with the media. For the Class 5 storm that began on Sept. 11 will wash away the certitudes of both parties before it has run its full course."

When politics begins filling up with independents, and demand rises for independent voices as partisanship accelerates, that's a clue.

What Rod is talking about is interesting to me for a number of reasons - not least its attempt to find a worldview that synthesizes the 1960s and 1980s in a conservative way, rather than accepting their permanent polarity. Major tensions are appearing in both parties' coalitions, and Strauss and Howe's "Crisis Generation" thesis looking better and better by the day. If it's hammered out well, concepts like "granola conservatism" offer the right both a potential resolution of conflicts the culture is stuck in, and ideas that resonate with the shape of a very possible future in ways that can appeal to aging bomers as well as the younger "Millenials." A fine letter from a reader makes a very worthwhile point:

"Personally, I believe you are helping to harden and focus a debate that is cyclical, and whose time has come again for our generation. I'm not sure how frequently it goes around. There surely are permanent things, and we know them when we see them. But just as surely we don't seem to be very good at fully grasping and retaining them. That would appear to be our dilemma here on earth. And that dilemma will never be solved, so we will continue to have this discussion every so often about what the good life is, and believe that we are living it even as it is slipping away again. It doesn't matter that others may have already said these things, or have been working on them. The need to be reminded about the permanent things is, in itself, a permanent thing."

And the ability to do that reminding in a way that is rooted in religion, but not tied to any given one, is critically important to the age we currently live in.

All of which is really just a more thought-out explanation of a visceral reaction I had to Rod's "granola conservatives" at the time, and still do on considered reflection.

Be patient with it, Jonah. Walk down the road with it a bit, and see where it might lead you. Once you accept that the participants are kind of feeling their way around the elephant blindfolded rather than articulating some new thought-out political vision, you can just accept that and notice as interesting stories and ideas pop out.

For instance, I liked Bruce Frohnen's bit about animals having an inherent integrity rather than rights per se, for instance, a concept that extends beyond animals to things and communities, and explains why the little choices we make every day matter. Rod's experiences with a (liberal-leaning) builder friend in Texas who has a business refurbishing old places rather than tearing them down was also good, and worth it just for the observation at the end.

Overall, the Crunchy Cons blog at National Review is getting better after a shaky start. It's a bit less of a group wank now, and a bit more of a serious grappling with ideas and criticisms. They'll need more of that, because there's a lot of work to do before the "Crunchy Cons" concept goes from political anthropology to an influential movement with a realized worldview.

If folks like Rod and myself are right about the trends, that's exactly where it will have to go eventually. It will take time for The Bus to get there - and listening carefully to criticisms like Jonah Goldberg's is a good way for folks like Rod to make sure they're still On The Bus when it does.