The Book that got us thinking:

Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher

A good friend of mine told me about this book four years ago, and it took me another two to finally order it from Amazon.com . After it arrived in the mail, I could not put it down. I felt like Crunchy Cons really put into words so many ideas that had been aimlessly floating around my head and even threw out a few reasons as to why I might have been feeling the way I did. Rod Dreher and his book just got me thinking and gave me confidence in my own ideas.

From the back cover of the book, A Crunchy-Con Manifesto:
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."

There's a little peak into Crunchy Cons, but I'll let you read all the nutty goodness between the binding for yourself. Happy reading!