"The hippies" finally get through

Dallas Morning News columnist (and National Review Online contributor) Rod Dreher had an epiphany this week, as he recounted in an NPR interview:

As I sat in my office last night watching President Bush deliver his big speech, I seethed over the waste, the folly, the stupidity of this war.

I had a heretical thought for a conservative -- that I have got to teach my kids that they must never, ever take Presidents and Generals at their word -- that their government will send them to kill and die for noble-sounding rot -- that they have to question authority.

On the walk to the parking garage, it hit me. Hadn't the hippies tried to tell my generation that? Why had we scorned them so blithely?

The "heretical thought" is kind of confusing to me. Distrust of presidents and generals would seem to go hand in hand with any true conservative, libertarian thought. But for some reason the American brand of conservatism has always exempted the military from their comprehension of "Big Gubmint" instead of its most wasteful, destructive manifestation.

But no matter. Rod has come around, and good for him.

Dreher is an interesting conservative, it must be said. He is the author of a recently published book with the ungainly title Crunchy Cons: How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican party).

In which he explores a potential common ground, based in healthy local food consumption between conservatives and left-leaning granola types, a nexus I see every time I pick up a copy of one of my favorite magazines, the Stockman Grass Farmer.