Liberal Votes, Traditionalist Victories: Ogunquit
Not in Ogunquit !Sometimes a town just has to stand up for itself, to stand against the tide of change - even if that change comes from the "creative destruction" of capitalism.
Lost in the idiotic talk about what a Governor's race in Virginia means for the national GOP, Ogunquit Maine passed a resolution to ban chain restaurants. Ogunquit is probably not very conservative. It is one of the youngest towns in Maine is a "resort town". It seems to have a thriving gay night life. We all know how I feel about Maine eateries and conservatism.
Ogunquit's conservatism is that of John Lukacs who said “You cannot be conservative and be on the side of the concrete pourers and the cement mixers.” The most fundamental definition of conservatism is resistance to change. Citizens of Ogunquit see the cultural and economic effects of these chain stores and rise up nearly four to one to repudiate them. They built this city and it will not be conquered - not even by commerce. They built a city and want it to remain their own rather than see it turned into a place just like everywhere else. It does not take much to imagine a future in which the big-box-chain-store-strip-mall model of architecture is looked at in the way we look at Soviet style housing projects. They also probably want to keep their local economy in tact rather than open up a worm-hole which transports their money from local owners to people in places of the country they've never been.
Someday soon I'll get to writing that brief essay on my love/absolute-hate relationship Applebees. In the meantime - three cheers for Ogunquit!
Michael Brendan Dougherty
in Politics, Culture
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What a difference from the already jaded wage slaves at the Boston Market just off exit 44 on the Mass Turnpike! I couldn’t at that young age, articulate the pull of mass culture on me and the feeling of liberation to be outside of it. I couldn’t express its corrosive effect on local culture or even its ugliness. I just knew that what it had replaced almost everywhere else was not as good as what was in Maine. Somehow all of this made my brain turn off whenever someone waxed rhapsodically about -
The seaside town of Ogunquit is the latest place to ban chain restaurants. A local referendum to prohibit so-called "formula" restaurants passed by a vote of 506-207.
Reader Comments (5)
Well in that case, it certainly is good that I'm a Catholic and not a conservative. Why anyone would prefer to be a conservative as opposed to being a Catholic has always intrigued me, but no doubt some people prefer the one to the latter.
Perhaps it is because conservative is an open ended term which allows for the grossest of sins while masquerading as virtuous living because it has the appearance of virtue via it's harkening to past civic life. Would any Catholic in his right mind desire to be a conservator of the sodomite night life in Ogunquit? Lot's wife looked back longingly desiring to conserve the most unnatural of civic life which Ogunquit has also desired and made steps to conserve.
I have no love for chain restaurants because they disrupt our capacity to recognize and incorporate the beautiful into our lives. We are continuously throwing ourselves in mud puddles and then turning around and wondering why our vision is blurred. Which in turn causes me to be still more intrigued, why is it that sodomites can throw themselves in cess pools and yet have the capacity to see the beautiful while Catholics often cannot?
No school incorporates the beautiful as Waldorf does. Rudolf Steiner may have been seriously off spiritually, but yet he understood very well how to incorporate the beautiful into children's lives. I knew a girl in college who had an artistic demeanor like no one I had known before. and it was later that I found out she had gone through Waldorf schools. Her thesis on T.S. Elliot was a wonder to behold in its playfully delicate penetration.
Other than the Caelum et Terra types who never got past desiring to be hipsters living in communes in the spirit of Whole Earth catalogue and Foxfire, where do we find Catholics attempting to embrace the beautiful as a civil endeavour?
My point in bringing up the gay scene in Ogunquit is to show that their vote to discriminate against against chain-eateries reflects a deeply conservative impulse - despite the fact that it is most likely not a town that would describe itself as conservative. It may even identify "conservatism" with the rapacious chains they just rejected. No matter - their story is a good occasion for reflecting on the nature of conservatism and its relation to enterprise, culture, beauty, community etc etc.
Generally I believe "conservatism" is a good thing. But have I really given the impression that it is the ultimate good? Or that "conservative" is some magic adjective that is a substitute for "good?
My point is that, whatever the faults of Ogunquit - this vote is a good thing. Sheesh!
No, you have not.
The former is so much nicer than the later, prompting my observation that when choosing places to vacation, follow the queers.
"Follow the queers" did you say?
You know what they say: "If you desire a blazing conflagration, choose well your faggots for the bonfire."
As for me, I'll choose my walks elsewhere than on the wild side. A stroll down a domesticated wooded lane with my little ones tumbling about is a fare I much prefer.