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From, and having to do with, this book.

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.”

I've followed the development of this book, even from its conceptual beginnings as presented at The Corner several years ago. I'm more than a little interested in this hybrid, which to some extent integrates ideas commonly tagged "conservative" and "liberal", especially on the cultural dimension. As a guy who was outwardly crunchy in college (and inwardly to this day) and who has adopted ideas both Right and Left for quite sometime, my beliefs might not be so far off from those of a crunchy-con—as labels go, anyway. I don't get into any of the "saving Republicans" part of this. I've long argued for an "open-minded skepticism" and "planet-centric conservatism", and this book, or at least its manifesto, seems in that general ballpark.