Asymmetrical Information

The problem with "crunchy conservatives" is that they take some of the "lefty" agenda without questioning it too much. The rise of the Atkins diet - finally accepted by "Science" after decades of functionality - and the debunking of the "organic" label as anything other than a license for fraud are two examples of how the new conventional wisdom, which used to be revolutionary, is fragile and deceptive.

In other words, Jane, you can't accept irrational thinking and just hope it won't infect your economics and politics. Every aspect of life must be open to question. I'm not saying you don't have a "right" to be a vegetarian. But thinking such a diet is better than the traditional primate omnivorousness is highly dubious. I've got a book from the Thirties called "You Must Eat Meat" which insists, with quite a lot of detail, that man's digestive system is not suited to an all-vegetable diet. But I'm sure you're aware of that argument. And, hey, what's wrong with a little "lolling"?

Kind of an odd argument, Robert, considering the few vegetarians I have known were happy with their diet AND healthy. How does being a vegetarian and liking it better mean that someone is "buying the assumptions of the left?"

As long as they don't force me to give up meat I'm fine with it. I do eat vegetarian-esque meals now and then, there's something to be said for an ocassional light vegetable minstrone and salad lunch, or a dinner based around a non-meat pasta dish.

How nice to read that. I, too, am both a vegetarian and a libertarian, and of course there's no conflict between the two; in both cases it's taking what seems to be the most rational approach. Like you, I feel no need to proselytize to others about it. Then again, your average outspoken vegetarian (probably vegan) hippie probably came into it strictly from an animal rights perspective, and thus would have more of an emotional stake in letting all the chickens run free or whatever.

Oh, and Robert, I can think of some other books from the 30's whose ideas, how shall we put it, didn't quite stand the test of time. I suggest consulting some of the more recent research on vegetarianism would be helpful. And there's no evidence that our primate ancestors were really omnivores. Imagine the time before humans invented spears, or fire: with refined teeth like ours, and no way to cook, how could they have sunk their teeth into any animal other than the occasional raw fish?

Interesting. I had a very similar "mistaken identity" experience, but on the opposite end of the spectrum.

In college, I was a member of a mainstream Christian student organization, and generally seen as a straight-laced conservative. Upon graduation and settling into the community where I found a job, I ended up at an Indy-Fundy Baptist church for around a year, where I was seen as some sort of dangerous radical who likes to dance, occasionally play cards, and listen to rock 'n' roll!

I wrote to Dreyer and told him that his crunchies were just upper middle class yuppie types who for one reason or another don't despise their own success. Most people brought up in this highbrow bookish granola way wind up wracked with guilt over their supposedly undeserved leisure and priviledge, and they turn to imbecilic left-wingery for some sort of half-assed attonement. "Crunchy Cons" are the ones who were too clear-eyed to be guilt-tripped, and they stand out for their rarity as clear-eyed people so often do.

Allan Levite wrote a great book called Guilt Blame and Politics. He mentions that priviledged types who did something useful at some point are immune to guilt, while those who hung out with the drama club or spent a semester in Florence doing nothing in particular are high-risk. Maybe Krunchies like Jane who grew up priviledged did something tangible to earn their keep along the way, or maybe it's just economic literacy.

David Brooks wrote a book called Bobos in Paradise about rich folk who hate their own success. I think Krunchy Kons are just Bobos without the guilt.

But I know talking about social class makes people nervous, so I'll stop.

I'm not a Conservative, I'm a small government liberal / libertarian populist progressive. Of course, in today's screwed up ass-over-teakettle, black-is-white, up-is-down, bearded-spock-universe political spectrum that means I identify much more strongly with the "Conservative" Republicans than the "Liberal" Democrats. I favor small government, a well armed citizenry, flat taxes, free markets, open trade, thin social safety nets, and small amounts of business regulation. I also ride a bike, do yoga, "practice" atheism, etc. So I guess that puts me in the ranks of the "crunchy conservatives". But if you ask me the whole concept is just an exercise in the prejudices of the left wing.

Y'know Robin, your last line about "the whole concept is just an exercise in the prejudices of the left wing" was probably more instructive than all the adjectives you used to describe the rest of it.

Anyway, ditto. Stupid reactionary left-wingers!

Who is Jane Galt? I enjoy the writing, but Jane Galt is not a conservative, and not a libertarian.
See: the Jane Galt Tax Plan. It may be "fair" and "efficient", but certainly does not roll back the oversized state.

>> Jane Galt is not a conservative, and not a libertarian.
>> See: the Jane Galt Tax Plan. It may be "fair" and "efficient", but certainly does not roll back the oversized state.

Do conservatives think that the state is oversized, or do they just think that certain parts are too small while others are too large?

By eliminating deductions and various incentives to game corporate accounting, the Galt plan definitely reduces the impact of govt on ordinary people.

Yes, as stated it leaves govt with just as much money as it has today, but reduced income is easy enough to arrange - just drop the rates a bit.

I was soooooooo out ahead of this. Except for my 6 years in the Army I've always had long hair and a beard. I've hitch-hiked all over the country. I'm an organic and heirloom gardener. I go to rock concerts. People who see me on the street or know me casually classify me as a hippie. But ... even back in 72 I was the only Goldwater Republican on the commune. I've been a NORML supporter at least as long as I've been an NRA member. I've had a good many funny conversations over the years both with people who assumed I was a lefty and those who were suprised that I was on the right.

And there's no evidence that our primate ancestors were really omnivores.

There is abundant evidence. You need to read some up-to-date anthropology. But I suppose that if you want to go far enough back, you could find some primate ancestor that was an herbivore. However, it's irrelevant to our dietary needs, because that was a different species.

Imagine the time before humans invented spears, or fire: with refined teeth like ours, and no way to cook, how could they have sunk their teeth into any animal other than the occasional raw fish?

There was no such time. Humans have had fire and weapons as long as they've been humans--technology, even crude technology, is one of the defining characteristics of Homo Sapiens (though our pre-sapient ancestors had tools and fire as well, going back almost half a million years). The teeth evolved to our diet, not the other way around. Our dentition has been relatively stable for many tens of millennia and, then and now, indicates an omnivorous diet.

Even prior to the development of technology, hominids ate meat--if only carrion (i.e., whatever they could find after the lions were sated).

Vegetarianism is a relatively modern invention, made possible by agriculture, and a lifestyle that doesn't require large amounts of calories. A strenuous lifestyle requires much more caloric content than can be provided by roots, nuts and berries, which were the only significant pre-agricultural non-meat items available.

However, having said that, there's a wide variety of human body types, and some do better on some kinds of diets than others.

Yaron, look at the teeth on a chimpanzee or a horse. A diet of raw plant material is much harder on the teeth than a diet of meat. Most of the stuff we do eat raw is either rather rare in nature, or (like cabbage)has been selectively bred from less nutritious or harder to process forebears. Much of the herbivorous diet is going to be hard nuts, whole grain kernels, twigs and leaves, and other stuff that needs to be ground up before it will digest. Our dentition is far less suited to that job than it is to eating meat.

Most carnivores do have really impressive killing teeth - but once the prey is down and skinned, chewing the meat into pieces that can be swallowed is much easier than eating wild veggies raw and unprocessed. Humans don't need big teeth for killing or for getting through the skin, our ancestors have been carrying sharp flakes of rock for hundreds of thousands of years. Nor do primitive humans hunt large prey alone in normal circumstance - a pack of ten or twenty apemen armed with sharp flint fragments and treebranch clubs would be a serious threat to most big animals - but mainly because they could talk to each other, plan to surround the prey, and coordinate their attacks. Big teeth get in the way of talking clearly, so once a handheld replacement for the fang became possible, big teeth were a strong evolutionary disadvantage for hunters.

It's also quite plausible, although not yet proven, that before the pre-humans learned to make weapons sufficient to become effective predators, they were quite effective scavengers - that is, the first protohumans used superior intelligence and communications to beat the hyenas to carrion or hold them off by throwing a rain of sticks and stones, and to raid leopards' food stashes while the owner was away.

OTOH, study of the remaining so-called primitive tribes shows most of them getting far more than half their nutrition from gathering rather than from hunting or scavenging. Our small teeth are equally the result of discovering that we could smash up those hard-to-chew plant items with rocks, and if that was insufficient then we could boil them. It's highly unlikely that we're really well-adapted to eating as much meat as many Americans do. We're probably also imperfectly adapted to a vegan diet, but it's possible to thrive on one if we bend enough of our brains and technology to the job.

Finally, Rand, it takes longer than Homo Sapiens has existed for a new species to fully adapt to a new niche. Remember "mad cow disease", which is the result of feeding animal parts to animals that evolved as complete herbivores? Carnivores would obviously have to evolve a substantial immunity to cross-species prion diseases, if not to all prions. Even pigs seem to be immune (they are not built for chasing prey, but will eat any meat they find and animals careless enough to come into reach). We are not immune. I take that as sufficient evidence of herbivorous ancestry not too far in the past.

As a conservative I must reject the existence of the "crunchy" or any other subcategorization based on lifestyle.

Conservatism is not an ideology. To us conservatives, as opposed to Left wing ideologues, the personal is not the political. The fact that personal tastes of some conservatives (say love of veggies), resemble behaviors fashionable among Lefties as a manifestation of ideology (say conspicuously eating 'lower on the food chain' to save the rain forest from evil capitalists) is merely a coincidence.

Conservatives are often mistaken for being 'conformists' and therefore unlikely to hold 'crunchy' tastes that are 'out of the mainstream.' The truth is that any conformism is limited to a respect the traditions and mores that are important in preserving a strong society. Hair length, diet, clothing, etc. have never fallen into this category.

Alright, I stand corrected.

Nice Post.

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