{"id":23,"date":"2008-12-09T06:01:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-09T06:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/12\/your-crunchy-quotient.html"},"modified":"2008-12-09T06:01:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-09T06:01:00","slug":"your-crunchy-quotient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/12\/your-crunchy-quotient.html","title":{"rendered":"Your crunchy quotient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I stumbled across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1400050642\/davesmormonin-20\">Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing natrue lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)<\/a> at the local library a couple of weeks ago and couldn&#8217;t resist. Any book with a subtitle that long must be worth reading. I don&#8217;t mind being a conservative but I&#8217;m not especially keen on being <em>crunchy<\/em>, so before long I was quietly and defensively computing my own crunchy quotient.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>I suppose you can just mull over the subtitle and see if any of those labels fit. &#8220;Right-wing nature lover&#8221; &#8230; maybe. Alternatively, scan the six topical chapter headings and see how you match up.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Consumerism.<\/strong> You&#8217;re crunchy if you have read Schumacher&#8217;s <em>Small is Beautiful<\/em>. (I did, but it was a long time ago.) You&#8217;re crunchy if you don&#8217;t own a big-screen TV. You&#8217;re very crunchy if you don&#8217;t have a wall big enough to hang one on.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Food.<\/strong> You&#8217;re crunchy if you have ever knowingly purchased organic produce. I&#8217;m oh-so-safe on this one.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Home.<\/strong> If you ditched the suburbs for the new urban adventure, you&#8217;re crunchy. If what you really need in your next house is a three-car garage, you&#8217;re not.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Education.<\/strong> You&#8217;re crunchy if you home school or really wish you could. Personally, I&#8217;ve had a very good experience with the half-dozen public schools my kids have passed through. Not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with home schooling or home schoolers.<\/li>\n<li><strong>The Environment.<\/strong> If you think about carbon footprints when you buy an appliance or wish there were an American Green Party (is there?), check this box. If you still want a Hummer someday, forget it.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Religion.<\/strong> Are your values grounded in a religious tradition that you claim as your own? Are your values grounded in anything, or just free-floating? Do you have any values, or are you just a roving utility-maximizing rational choice unit?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I score 2.5 out of 6 (I gave myself 0.5 for consumerism). Not quite crunchy, but within striking distance. My one-sentence review of the book: It&#8217;s an enjoyable and insightful book that brings a refreshingly new perspective to the liberal-conservative debate and helps strengthen the weak left flank of the Republican Party.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I stumbled across Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing natrue lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) at the local library a couple of weeks ago and couldn&#8217;t resist. Any book with a subtitle that&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":173,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Your crunchy quotient - Mormon Inquiry<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/12\/your-crunchy-quotient.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Your crunchy quotient - Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I stumbled across Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing natrue lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) at the local library a couple of weeks ago and couldn&#8217;t resist. Any book with a subtitle that&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/12\/your-crunchy-quotient.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Mormon Inquiry\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-12-09T06:01:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dave Banack\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Your crunchy quotient - Mormon Inquiry","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/mormoninquiry\/2008\/12\/your-crunchy-quotient.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Your crunchy quotient - Mormon Inquiry","og_description":"I stumbled across Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing natrue lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party) at the local library a couple of weeks ago and couldn&#8217;t resist. 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