Some of my friends (the few that will discuss politics with me) know that I don’t claim a party affiliation.  Many of my beliefs fall into the conservative realm.  But not necessarily Republican.  In fact, there are many things about being a Republican that I just can’t agree with.

I can say the same about Democrats, too.  I think my running mix is about 55% GOP and 35% DEM and 10% random unknown.  Lately, many prominent Democrats have just been bugging me, with their smug cockiness over Obama’s win.  I am glad to have the first black president, I just think DEMs should be concerned that nearly half the voters didn’t get the president they wanted… and that we are still stuck with one of the lowest rated Legislatures in history.

But back to my original post.  I tend to ramble, which is bad for you reading this.  Anyway, I have thought that there has to be some other middle ground or third party worth following, or some system that I can tell people when they ask me what side I am on.  Recently I have been interested in the concept of the “Crunchy Conservative” (CrunchyCon).  There just isn’t that much out there on CrunchyCons, so I am reluctant to throw my support behind a movement that might be gone faster Guns’N’Roses chance of having a hit record.  But I am intrigued by what I’ve read so far… we’ll see if they keep gong the direction I want them to.

A Crunchy Con Manifesto
By Rod Dreher

1. We are conservatives who stand outside the conservative mainstream; therefore, we can see things that matter more clearly.
2. Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff, and insufficiently concerned with the content of our individual and social character.
3. Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
4. Culture is more important than politics and economics.
5. A conservatism that does not practice restraint, humility, and good stewardship—especially of the natural world—is not fundamentally conservative.
6. Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.
7. Beauty is more important than efficiency.
8. The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our senses to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.
9. We share Russell Kirk’s conviction that “the institution most essential to conserve is the family.”
10. Politics and economics won’t save us; if our culture is to be saved at all, it will be by faithfully living by the Permanent Things, conserving these ancient moral truths in the choices we make in our everyday lives.

Now, if I can just find a good middle position for the Calvinism/Arminius debate….