Posted on 02/22/2006 7:05:37 AM PST by Pyro7480
From the reviews of Crunchy Cons
Sometimes, it is said, one must be cruel in order to be kind. "Architecture, trees, foodstuff...[Let's] discuss the case for regulating sprawl or the deep pleasures of Humboldt Fog cheese".
He calls himself these days a "crunchy Republican" and has written a book to that effect in the hopes that the Wizard can give such a creature a brain and maybe help recapture some who have rightly become morally very uneasy with GOP schizoid "values". So why not transvalue them altogether, he asked himself? Put them in jeans and a log cabin and take pictures of them buying books by Emerson. But Rodney, a military socialist (he taketh from the poor and giveth to the Pentagon), is and likely always will be, besides being a tireless promoter / marketer of Self and Amy (twins at the level of sophmoric intellectual depth ) a National Review kind of guy even if he would also, and very tellingly, by some bizarre alchemy, turn E.F. Schumacher (say what?) into yet another Child of Buckley (will it be Dorothy Day and Tolstoy next?) But this fellow, who must have had big connections because he can't write substantively to save his life, and has precious little that is original worth saying anyway, as we shall see, leaves a long record of blustering inanities aimed like birdshot at the most hallowed of men and causes, unhindered by thought, against which he measures his now cool Self.
A mere couple of such inanities I leave here as samples, like droppings from a bad dream, to serve as an index to his very thin gruel indeed; a gruel so thin it confuses lifestyle with the---a-hem!---"countercultural" and leaves warmakers, the powers, and death itself, alone, even while he attacketh the most countercultural pope who ever lived:
"Top Catholic Church officials have been unsparing in their public criticism of the U.S. for planning what Rome considers an immoral war. The Vatican has been resolutely unmoved by arguments based on Catholic just-war doctrine that defend war on Iraq. ...The Vatican's monumental efforts, both diplomatic and pastoral, to avert war with Iraq have focused the attention of the Holy See and summoned its energies behind a cause like no crisis in living memory. Hardly a day goes by without Pope John Paul II denouncing the march to war, meeting personally with world leaders or dispatching high-level diplomats--such as Cardinal Pio Laghi, who came to Washington this week--to beseech the belligerents to stand down... We're already moving toward Baghdad in our war against Iraq, one I believe with all my heart is just and necessary...My descendants will surely and rightly call the pope St. John Paul the Great, but that's hard to see when you're figuring out how you're going to get your family through the present storm with its faith in Catholicism intact. You try--humiliatingly--to figure out how to tell your little boy that it can be dangerous to his body and soul to trust priests, the foremost icons of Christ in the daily lives of Catholics...When considering how this intolerable state came to pass, all roads lead to Rome. In Catholic teaching, the chief responsibilities of a bishop, including the Bishop of Rome, are to teach, sanctify and govern. John Paul has taught and sanctified zealously; his evangelical travels have inspired millions, and his writings about the nobility of human love are a treasure for all mankind. Yet this pope has largely failed ..."
That about sums up the depths of this crunchy double-talking mimic. Have I left anything out? Give him a granola bar, allow him the great courage to denounce Enron's "materialism" (though not materialism's philosophers of economics), and he thinks he will now be, er... hip. Doesn't that say it all?
Ping!
Mr. Hand's review comes across as petty jealousy.
He is to be pitied.
Yes, you forgot to mention that Dreher is right in everything just quoted.
Pyro7480 also forgot to mention that on Stephen Hand's home website, Traditional Catholic Reflections, there's a great big fat Impeach George W. icon.
Jus' sayin' ...
I didn't understand a word of this. Bunch of in-crowd argle-bargle.
I'm not particularly a fan of Rod Dreher, but at least he's intelligible.
Hand has gone well over the edge lately...alienating people that were his allies and now writing stuff that deserves a pancake award.
It's difficult to respect the written opinion of someone who writes no better than your average 8th grader. I hope those the 8th graders out there who can write paragraphs better than this clown will accept my apology.
Poor Mr. Hand. I did like him quite a bit years back. This scattershot review confirms his decline.
Hand has alienated many orthodox Catholics and, sadly, he invenets a lot of "material" he then references to attack opponents of his personal opinion.
Hand's recent antiwar antics tend to obscure a lot of good writing he has done previously. I wonder if there is mental illness involved? Seriously.
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