Rod Dreher Quotes

• I quite often feel that my greatest task as a father is to raise children who love what is good, true, and beautiful, and who are therefore aliens in this popular culture.

  Rod Dreher

  Beautiful, Children, Father

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• There are three kinds of people who run toward disaster, not away: cops, firemen and reporters.

  Rod Dreher

  Running, People, Three

  "Boston Reporters Join Long List of Heroes" by Stephanie Slade, www.usnews.com. April 16, 2013.

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• It's not easy being a green conservative, but if we conservatives want to be true to our principles we have to move in that direction. It is morally right. It is religiously correct. It is economically prudent. It strengthens national defense. And it makes a better world for our children, and our children's children.

  Rod Dreher

  Children, Moving, Principles

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• Sex and commerce are fine things, but man cannot live by Viagra and the Dow Jones alone. A life led collecting things and experiences in pursuit of happiness is not necessarily a bad life, but it's not a good life either. Too often, the Democrats act like the Party of Lust, and the Republicans the Party of Greed. Both are deadly sins that eat at the soul.

  Rod Dreher

  Sex, Good Life, Party

  Rod Dreher (2010). “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots”, p.12, Crown

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• Ideology is a partial truth masquerading as the whole truth.

  Rod Dreher

  Ideology, Partial Truth, Whole

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• The cacophony of contemporary popular culture makes it hard to discern the call of truth and wisdom. There is no area in which practicing asceticism is more important.

  Rod Dreher

  Important, Cacophony, Culture

  Rod Dreher (2010). “Crunchy Cons: The New Conservative Counterculture and Its Return to Roots”, p.2, Crown

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• What happened to that man I was seven autumns ago? What happened to that country? Time heals, yes - and thank God the pain and terror of that time has abated, at least for most of us. In that sense time is a mercy. But time also obscures the life-giving truths we perceive in the light of the shadow of death. In that way, time is a curse.

  Rod Dreher

  Country, Pain, Autumn

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• If you believe that man is inherently flawed-what religious people call 'original sin'-it follows that man, if left to his own devices, will tend towards ego-driven disharmony. Traditionalist conservatives know that absent the restraining hand of religion, tradition, or the state, there is nothing to prevent human beings from acting in ways contrary to their own best interests, or those of the community.

  Rod Dreher

  Religious, Believe, Men

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• As it turns out, the ecological catastrophe Kirk feared that would be the consequence of our impiety appears not to be one of radically diminished resources, but of potentially catastrophic climate change. It comes from an arrogant refusal by a modern consumerist society to accept limits on its desires. Kirk's idea of the "eternal society" evaporates before the insatiable demands of the Everlasting Now.

  Rod Dreher

  Ideas, Desire, Limits

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• At some point in this death-penalty debate, the sanctity of innocent life demands that men and women of conservative conscience have to say: Enough.

  Rod Dreher

  Men, Demand, Death Penalty

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• ...whatever the self-righteous excesses of the environmentalist left, it is impossible to be true to traditional conservative values (to say nothing of the Christian faith conservatives like me profess) and hold laissez faire attitudes about the use and abuse of the natural world.

  Rod Dreher

  Christian, Attitude, Self

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• Watch the speech. Really, watch: if this man gets his party's nomination, he's going to be the next president. By a landslide. And he is going to transform this country. If I were a Republican, I'd be very, very afraid. Oh wait, I am a Republican.

  Rod Dreher

  Country, Party, Men

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• As both a conservative and a Republican, I confess that we deserve to lose this year. We have governed badly and have earned the wrath of voters, who will learn in due course how inadequate the nostrums of liberal Democrats are to the crisis of our times. If I cannot in good faith cast a vote against the Bush years by voting for Obama, I can at least do so by withholding my vote from McCain.

  Rod Dreher

  Years, Wrath, Voting

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