BREAKING NEWS FROM 2006: The rise of the hippie conservatives.

That was the theme of Rod Dreher’s 2006 book, Crunchy Cons, as the author notes 10 paragraphs into his article. In its original hardcover edition, its subhead was “How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party):

We’ve heard this echo before. Rod Dreher’s Crunchy Cons first drew attention to the symmetry between the hippie Left and religious Right way back in 2006; more recent writers such as Matthew Crawford have charted a middle course between these two poles, offering an existential critique of Liberalism that avoids the off-putting vocabulary of either side; even Roger Scruton, by no means a market fundamentalist and author of a book on “Conservatism and the Environment,” comes close to striking this note.

Take Sir Roger’s campaign for a return of beauty in architecture – what is it but a genteel version of hippie conservatism? In an essay published in the Times this weekend, Scruton called for a return to community-led building practises and local architectural materials that reflect “the indigenous life and landscape where they are deployed”. Compare the Climate Strike manifesto, which calls for “non-corporate, community-led climate solutions that recognize the traditional knowledge, practices, wisdom, and resilience of indigenous peoples and local communities”. Hippie Conservatives.

Actually, with their “obligatory diet of uncooked mush in garlic,” their obsession with “green building,” their desire to “Start From Zero,” and their socialist and Communist leanings, the Bauhaus, who created the now ossified 1920s-era architectural styles that Scruton seeks to replace, were far more like ‘60s hippies, than the courtly 75-year old.