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Which 20th century classic of American conservative political thought has held up best?
We discussed this question over a group dinner Tuesday night. I opined that none have held up particularly well, mostly because they underestimated the robustness of the modern world and regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be.
By stipulation, this universe of books does not include Milton Friedman or pure economics. It does include Russell Kirk, John Flynn, Richard Weaver, Robert Nisbet, and William F. Buckley, among many others. You can nominate grumpy Brits and Europeans who settled in the United States, so yes Road to Serfdom is a contender, even though its main empirical point (socialism leads to loss of political freedom) would seem to be refuted. You can try Albert Jay Nock or Eric Voegelin but Rothbard and Rand do not count as conservatives. Your answer cannot come before the 20th century, so no Federalist Papers and no Tocqueville.
Leave your answer in the comments and also say why. At some point I'll offer up my pick as well.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 28, 2008 at 07:42 AM in Political Science | Permalink
Comments
Michael Oakeshott seems to be gaining popularity lately. But he doesn't have a blockbuster work. Regardless, I nominate "Rationalism in Politics".
Posted by: thehova at Feb 28, 2008 7:49:32 AM
"You can count grumpy Brits and Europeans who settled in the United States..."
I apologize on my pick. tough question.
Posted by: thehova at Feb 28, 2008 7:53:33 AM
Great question, but it is wrong to include Hayek or Nock. Neither was very religious or concerned over whose penis was going where.
Posted by: Daniel Klein at Feb 28, 2008 7:56:35 AM
I think Mr. Klein has "conservative" and "reactionary" confused in his head (again?)...
That being said, I would nominate Kirk's "The Conservative Mind" for that honor. Maybe Barry Goldwater's "A Choice, Not An Echo" as a particularly powerful piece among conservative grassroots (although not so much the Washington establishment).
Posted by: Michael Fisk at Feb 28, 2008 8:15:59 AM
Rationalism in Politics.
Posted by: John Goes at Feb 28, 2008 8:20:42 AM
I have to say that Oakeshott, and thus Rationalism in Politics, does not count as American...
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 28, 2008 8:47:08 AM
The most relevent conservative writer today is: George Will.
Posted by: Travis Walker at Feb 28, 2008 8:47:57 AM
Two nominations: Anarchy, State and Utopia and everything by Richard Epstein
Posted by: Jonathan at Feb 28, 2008 9:01:37 AM
Anything by Murray perhaps?
Thomas Sowell's "Cultures and Conquests" is like "Guns Germs and Steel" with MUCH better analysis and written earlier, but not really conservative.
Posted by: michael vassar at Feb 28, 2008 9:01:49 AM
I just have to nominate this one, just for the heck of it ;)
None Dare Call It Treason
by John A. Stormer
or
None Dare Call It Treason... 25 Years Later
by John A. Stormer
Florissant, Missouri: Liberty Bell Press, 1990.
Posted by: ZBicyclist at Feb 28, 2008 9:12:14 AM
I don't think the main point of the Road to Serfdom is that socialism leads to loss of political liberty nor that that point has been empirically refuted. I think the main point of the Road to Serfdom is that socialism leads to loss of civil liberty first and, ultimately, political liberty.
From what evidence do you conclude that socialism DOES NOT lead to loss of political liberty?
Posted by: Kevin Nowell at Feb 28, 2008 9:22:25 AM
Milton Friedman wrote the foreward in the version of the Road to Serfdom that I have. His comment was that in the 70s you could tell the communist countries from the non-communist countries by looking at the border guards: In the non-communist countries, the border guards had their guns pointing outwards, defending the borders from outsiders. In the communist countries, the border guards had their guns pointing inwards, making their citizens virtual prisoners.
Posted by: david at Feb 28, 2008 9:32:02 AM
Road to Serfdom's "main empirical point (socialism leads to loss of political freedom) would seem to be refuted".
Refuted by whom? Castro, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Hugo Chavez? Or by the US and Western Europe growing government control over the economy, but apparently not creating government agencies to regulate the media, regulate free speech and campaign finance, centralizing control over education and curriculum, removing religion from the public sphere, and creating taxpayer-funded marketing/media/propoganda.
As for my pick, Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative is still very relevant (though if I had liberty to make my own stipulation, I would choose Capitalism and Freedom).
Posted by: Nathan Benefield at Feb 28, 2008 9:42:06 AM
I have not read much conservative literature. I probably would share Tyler's dim assessment. But keep in mind that most of the 20th-century focus of conservatism was on anti-Communism. If that does not hold up well, it is only because Communism has become less interesting. So perhaps we are being unfair in our disparagement.
Or, to put it another way, which left-liberal or progressive classics hold up well?
Back on the conservative side, Jonah Goldberg made a list .
His #1 is George Nash, The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America.
His #2 is Russell Kirk, The Portable Conservative Reader.
I have read almost nothing from Goldberg's list, although I have read some Hayek and some Sowell.
Posted by: Arnold Kling at Feb 28, 2008 9:43:37 AM
How about George Will's Statecraft as Soulcraft? I recall liking it, although that was as a young teenager some 20 years ago.
Posted by: Stuart Buck at Feb 28, 2008 10:04:16 AM
Hayek saw himself as applying Tocqueville's insights, which were developed a century before. There is basically nothing in Road to Serfdom that is not in Tocqueville.
Therefore I nominate Tocqueville as the thinker who made the greatest contributin to understanding the 20th century, or Hayek as a proxy for Tocqueville.
Second choice: Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History. Strauss made the best diagnosis of the characterictic philosophical disease which gave birth to the evils of the century, historicism.
Posted by: Kent Guida at Feb 28, 2008 10:06:36 AM
If it counts as conservative and classic I nominate Virginia Postrel's "The Future and its Enemies".
Posted by: John B. Chilton at Feb 28, 2008 10:14:46 AM
I'd say that several schools of conservatism have held up pretty well.
First, there's Edward Banfield and his students like James Q. Wilson, who have been so entirely vindicated that people forget how revolutionary they initially were.
The same is true of Joseph Schumpeter.
Then you have Leo Strauss and his progeny (Bloom, Jaffa, Mansfield, Fukuyama, Berns, Will, etc..) -- some would say that the jury is still out on this, but much of what Strauss has at least transformed the nature of public debate to the extent that his current supposed opponents have unknowingly adopted many of his premises. Of course, WFB was in no way a Straussian, but the question was about conservatism, and the Straussian movement certainly owes much to National Review for their prominence.
The impact of Eric Voegelin is less celebrated, but no less important.
CS Lewis has been hugely influential in shaping modern American Christianity in a conservative direction.
Whittaker Chambers has certainly been vindicated.
Samuel Huntington's influence has been particularly significant (especially Political Order in Changing Societies after Iraq). He's not really a Buckleyite, but is certainly a Burkean conservative.
And if you're talking about Buckleyite conservatism, Hayek certainly would count within that -- his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative" explicitly stipulates that he is a conservative in the sense that the term is understood in the US.
Not all of these people were directly pushed by Buckley (Irving Kristol arguably did more intellectually), though he certainly beat a track which made it easier for them to move forward.
Posted by: Chris at Feb 28, 2008 10:15:19 AM
The examples you are looking for I am sure were meant to be non-fiction tracts. However, may I suggest two (related) fiction novels that at least have elements of Conservatism in them; "1984" and "Brave New World". While neither is of course a conservative polemic, both share a concern that underly a basic tenent of conservatism; the corrosive power of state control.
If nothing else, both books have become a party of our own culture in ways that exceed almost any Conservative book I can think of. Who today does not know what someone is refering to when the term "Big Brother" is used?
While "1984" has become the more famous novel, I would argue "Brave New World" is more relevant. The receding threat of Communism diminishes the explicit threat of political control put forth in "1984". The threat posed by "Brave New World" however seems even more pervasive then in 1930's. The corrosive power of consumerism on culture and values is something written about almost everyday in newspapers and books. I understand that today, conservatives are the defenders of the free market that allows such consumerism to thrive. Nonetheless, it is often conservatives who argue today's culture is corrupting our mores and destroying our traditional values (an argument more in line with Buckley perhaps). Just a little curveball to the discussion I guess.
Oh, and has far as influence, name a conservative book more read in high schools across the country more read then either of these two novels.
Posted by: Colin at Feb 28, 2008 10:18:24 AM
My nominations:
(1) "The Conservative Mind" by Russell Kirk; arguably the book that started it all.
(2) "A Program For Conservatives" by Russell Kirk. Kirk's most applied work.
(3) "The Ethics of Rhetoric" by Richard Weaver
(4) "The Constitution of Liberty" by Hayek. The book contains his essay "Why I Am Not a Conservative."
Ironic for this list. But he thought of conservatism in its Middle European sense, not its Anglo-
American sense. He once described himself as a Burkean Whig; so is Kirk.
(5) "Witness" by W. Chambers (Andre Gide told Chambers 'you have not come back from Hell empty handed.'
(6) "Scientific Man Vs. Power Politics" by Hans Morgenthau. (He thought of himself as a liberal, but
this realistic take on modern liberal politics is conservative in effect. He is the anti-Rawls.) Like
so many good books, it is out of print.
(7) "The New Science of Politics" by Eric Voegelin (a refugee from Hitler to the US)
(8) "Natural Right and History" by Leo Strauss (a refugee from Hitler to the US)
(9) "The Death and Life of Great American Cities" by Jane Jacobs. She might not describe herself as
conservative, but this work is a direct hit on moderal liberalism in urban planning and architecture.
James Burnham described himself as a Man of the Right, rather than a conservative. Fair enough.
But he wrote for National Review. I suggest "Suicide of the West."
Posted by: B.H. at Feb 28, 2008 10:28:51 AM
Hayek's The Fatal Conceit is both better and more "conservative" than The Road to Serfdom. The Fatal Conceit does a better job of explaining why free markets are generally superior to centralized planning. In addition, Hayek's treatment of evolutionary psychology has held up well, and I think his appendix on religion shows that Hayek had developed a more "conservative" temperament after the publications of The Constitution of Liberty and The Road to Serfdom.
If our definition of "conservative" is broad enough to include libertarians, then I would say Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia has held up better than even the best of Friedman's non-economic work and Hayek's more libertarian writings.
Posted by: at Feb 28, 2008 10:49:13 AM
I think Tyler's point is well taken -- that modernity has held up better than many thought, particularly given the dire warnings of those writing immediately after WWII, the Holocaust, and the onset of the Cold War. They were understandably morbid but in fact have been proven wrong.
I would argue this is what's wrong with the contemporary conservative movement. They have taken their beliefs and policies largely from the handful of books that have been mentioned (Kirk, Weaver, etc.), but which are in many ways irrelevant and premised on assumptions about modernity that have not proven to be true. Conservatism at its best applies perennial truths and insights about man to new and different political and social conditions. When it doesn't do that (like now), it becomes ossified and reactionary. That none of these books have really held up, and yet they are still "must read" conservative books, says volumes about where conservatism is at.
I only want to add that Oakeshott, even though he doesn't count, would have been my choice (I mentioned this at the dinner in question). Its telling that our smartest and most interesting contemporary conservative, the one most able to adapt to modernity, is Andrew Sullivan, whose dissertation on Oakeshott is sitting here on my desk.
Posted by: Matt S. at Feb 28, 2008 10:57:57 AM
The Fatal Conceit is even more impressive today now given the latest evidence from cognitive psychology, neuroeconomics and evolutionary biology. A masterful work .
Posted by: Sunset Shazz at Feb 28, 2008 11:01:05 AM
Richard Posner's work (collectively) -- I would argue far greater political impact than Hayek or Nozick, though under the radar for most non-lawyers;
Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (as described above);
Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State (though "Clash of Civilizations" in Foreign Affairs is looking more and more prescient).
Posted by: M.D. Fatwa at Feb 28, 2008 11:05:00 AM
Okay, Hayek fan-boys, please explain in what way Sweden *doesn't* refute Hayek's thesis.
Posted by: Mark at Feb 28, 2008 11:14:08 AM
George Stigler comes out on top.
Posted by: andreas at Feb 28, 2008 11:20:52 AM
I'll pick Edward Banfield, *The Moral Basis of a Backward Society* as my choice.
Posted by: Tyler Cowen at Feb 28, 2008 11:25:23 AM
Mark, Sweden only appears free. The only reason they have no border guards with machine guns pointing inwards is that it is completely surrounded by other communist countries, so there is nowhere to run. Basically the same reason Belarus didn't have a Berlin wall.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 28, 2008 11:36:05 AM
For the religious leaning conservatives, Mere Christianity by CS Lewis would probabally be on top of many lists.
But a sleeper pick (mainly becuase it is so recent) is Robert Bork's "Tempting of America."
Conservatives come in many stripes, but the ONE thing that unifies them all is summarized by Robert Bork's view of the role of the Supreme Court.
Posted by: dave smith at Feb 28, 2008 11:42:38 AM
On the point that many works did not hold up well, "mostly because they underestimated the robustness of the modern world and regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be," I would like to comment that this is, of course, dependent on your view of certain developments.
To many conservatives, millions of abortions annually, euthanasia, and destructive research on humans are quite evil developments. To others, the first 2 are fundamental rights and the third is simple experimentation on non-human cells. My point here is not to argue, but simply to note that warnings that moral decay would lead to horrific results have come true for some people, depending on your starting principles. The possible relationship between the growth of (1) sexual freedom and (2) the welfare state is a topic that even (at least some) libertarians find troubling. I could perhaps make a longer list, but these make the point.
Further, that society is functioning, or even perhaps flourishing otherwise, does not prove conservatism wrong, or that these practices are not harmful. Numerous civilizations have flourished with practices and institutions that we now consider evil, including some such as human sacrifice or slavery, that are today considered evil by pretty much everyone.
Again, I'm not arguing that the values of today's conservatives will become equally universal, or that this observation proves Tyler wrong. He's undoubtedly correct based upon his premises. I do think it is important to acknowledge, however, that, based on other premises, some early warnings have held up pretty well.
Posted by: mgarbowski at Feb 28, 2008 11:46:02 AM
Well, if I have to pick (aside from Oakeshott), I think I've learned a great deal about American Politics from Willmoore Kendall's Contra Mundum. His essay, "The Two Majorities in American Politics" is quite prescient, as is his broader analysis of the relationship between Congress and the Presidency. The collection I mention, Contra Mundum, contains a number of essays that are gems. He's the conservative "founder" (i.e. taught Buckley at Yale, was a senior editor at NR) that everyone has forgotten, but also the one who actually still has the most to teach us.
Posted by: Matt S. at Feb 28, 2008 11:53:36 AM
"creating government agencies to regulate the media, regulate free speech and campaign finance, centralizing control over education and curriculum, removing religion from the public sphere, and creating taxpayer-funded marketing/media/propoganda."
One of these things is nto like the others.
One of these things just doesn't belong...
Posted by: josh at Feb 28, 2008 11:56:42 AM
Mencius Moldbug, without a doubt
http:\\unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com
Although I am forced to admit his classic status is known only to a select few, as-yet.
Posted by: BGC at Feb 28, 2008 11:57:55 AM
Mqarbowski, your point is probably important, but you can't ignore that the 'doomy' side of conservatism also thought that moral weakening would lead to a more general, structural weakening of society. Views on marriage are a clear example: people who critize unmarried parents or gay marriage mention intrinsic moral reasons, but often they also claim that a weakening of the institute of marriage will harm society in the long run.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 28, 2008 12:08:34 PM
Mqarbowski, your point is probably important, but you can't ignore that the 'doomy' side of conservatism also thought that moral weakening would lead to a more general, structural weakening of society. Views on marriage are a clear example: people who critize unmarried parents or gay marriage mention intrinsic moral reasons, but often they also claim that a weakening of the institute of marriage will harm society in the long run.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 28, 2008 12:09:25 PM
There is a variety of good recommendations listed. I second the citation of "Witness" by Whitaker Chambers. If you accepted the conventional wisdom, Whitaker Chambers was a third-rater who sullied the reputation of Alger Hiss. I did at on time. After reading Witness, I realized that Chambers was a sophisticated, literate man who gave a first hand account of what it meant to be a communist operative. Chambers was too pessimistic about the West's prospects versus communism, but his story and the eventual unmasking of Hiss are instructive even today. The big lie was a staple of communist propaganda, but is still employed by the left today.
Posted by: Rich Berger at Feb 28, 2008 12:29:25 PM
If Nock is in play, is Mencken a possibility as well?
I suspect that Posner has staying power, and that he'll increasingly have a cult following among non-lawyers in the way writers such as Hayek and Rothbard have developed a following among non-economists.
Posted by: Ned at Feb 28, 2008 12:31:28 PM
I'll second the nominations of
1) Nozick - Anarchy, State, and Utopia
2) Huntington - Clash of Civilizations
Distinguishing American Conservative thought from American Liberal thought, the two have similar goals in terms of political freedoms,* so 1984 doesn't really make sense as a conservative rather than a liberal tract. It's far more of an anti-Fascist tract, which is neither conservative nor liberal in their contemporary sense.
Brave New World, however, does count in terms of its sexual and drug morality. As well as its focus on government intervention making the population artificially stupid. So put that as #1, just because every high schooler reads it.
I will admit that I have not read most of the nonfiction on the list.
*Though maybe different opinions on the "equitable distribution" thereof, with respect to wealthy citizens and institutions having a greater ability to get their voices heard
Posted by: David at Feb 28, 2008 12:33:31 PM
"Okay, Hayek fan-boys, please explain in what way Sweden *doesn't* refute Hayek's thesis. "
Hayek's point was that if the government controlled the country's resources, then they effectively had control over the population. His point was that you cannot have political freedom without economic freedom.
Sweden is not a centrally planned economy. The have a robust private sector (think Ikea, Volvo, Ericsson, Electrolux, Saab), with high taxes and lots of social safety nets.
Posted by: david at Feb 28, 2008 12:39:16 PM
"The Dream and the Nightmare" still holds up.
Posted by: sourcreamus at Feb 28, 2008 1:04:43 PM
This is an easy one. Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind. Why? Because it’s timeless. Unlike most of the other plausible candidates, it was not bound to the controversies of a particular day. Instead, it went back to first principles to provide a comprehensive overview of conservative thought and, in so doing, laid the intellectual foundation for the modern conservative movement. More at my blog.
Posted by: Stephen Bainbridge at Feb 28, 2008 1:15:38 PM
Tom Wolfe
Posted by: Rue Des Quatre Vents at Feb 28, 2008 1:16:39 PM
Brave New World and 1984 are based on " We" by Zemiakin a russian disident.
A New Visit to Brave New World is a liberal work thah is ENVIROMENTALISM , demographig explosion, nuclear warfare and the like.
What abot Mises, a classic liberal , so a conservative according to the anglosaxon definition( Spencer).He called Hayek, Friedmann ,Stigler and Knight, socialists.
Or Buchannan?
Or Julien Simon?
Raoul Berger is worldwide known and quoted by people who never read him
Posted by: karl at Feb 28, 2008 1:26:35 PM
Nobody else has mentioned them, so I'll go with three by P. J. O'Rourke:
Parliament of Whores
Eat the Rich
Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut
To those now wondering if I am on drugs (nothing stronger than caffeine, honest!), I would point out that of all the literature on The Irish Question, only "A Modest Proposal" seems to have survived.
Similarly, I make a claim that when much political theory has faded, lively writing will survive.
In "Eat the Rich" there is a quartet of essays ("Good Capitalism," "Bad Capitalism," "Good Socialism," "Bad Socialism") that glibly but concisely summarizes the most fundamental political debates of the 20th century (social and economic statism...or not) with four travelogues.
Posted by: Ryan Cousineau at Feb 28, 2008 1:27:05 PM
It's interesting that TC's pick, Moral Basis of a Backward Society, was published in 1958, and another Strauss associate, Harry Jaffa, published Crisis of the House Divided in 1959. Unfortunately, conservatism went more in the direction of Jaffa (absolutism of principles of Declaration of Independence) and moved further away from the empirical moralism of Banfield, Wilson, et al.
Posted by: bjk at Feb 28, 2008 1:38:01 PM
To answer Mark a while back, I'll paraphrase something Charles Murray said.
What we can learn from Sweden proves that any system of government can work for a while, if you are governing Swedes.
Posted by: Odin's Beard at Feb 28, 2008 1:42:25 PM
I think Tyler is a little unfair. Intellectuals, left and right, tend to be overly pessimistic. But the fact is that marriage is unequally distributed in society, so there is a married middle class and an unmarried underclass. This may not lead to the general breakdown of society the way conservatives may have predicted, but it is a tremendous social problem with real social costs.
I disagree with the commenter who held up C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity as an example of a religious conservative book that has held up. I would instead offer more serious philosophy. Just about everything by Alvin Plantinga has held up: reformed epistemology, the free will defense against the logical problem of evil, criticisms of classical foundationalism, and comparing arguments for the existence of God to other basically unsolvable philosophical issues such as proving that other conscious minds exist. His attacks on naturalism have been less successful.
Perhaps the real credit goes to William James, his 1956 "The Will to Believe" laid some of the early groundwork in challening logical positivism and other atheistic theories of knowledge, and it has held up quite well. The gist of James' point being that atheistic theories of knowledge are based on the a priori (and hence unproven) belief that false beliefs are so bad that they are worse risking the loss of true knowledge.
Posted by: Justin at Feb 28, 2008 1:43:36 PM
Oh, and cast my vote for The Conservative Mind. Even though I'm growing farther and farther from Burkean Conservatism.
Posted by: Odin's Beard at Feb 28, 2008 1:44:04 PM
Tyler dismisses Buckley too quickly also, which is surprising given his comments about Buckley in a recent post. Like Tyler, I never became a "Buckleyite" but was influenced early on by Firing Line. It would be hard to characterize WFB's work as tending toward despair. It also had a lasting impact. John Fund in today's WSJ Political Diary offers this observation:
"In an interview with Buckley in 2005, conservative columnist George Will told him: "Without Bill Buckley, no National Review. Without National Review, no Goldwater nomination. Without the Goldwater nomination, no conservative takeover of the Republican Party. Without that, no Reagan. Without Reagan, no victory in the Cold War. Therefore, Bill Buckley won the Cold War."
Maybe the Cold War victory is overstated, but the rests seems on the mark. Fund adds that he is part of a 3rd generation influenced and inspired by WFB, not only because of his writing but because of his "unfailingly polite and helpful" disposition.
Posted by: Brian at Feb 28, 2008 2:04:40 PM
What fun! I nominate Mises' essay on bureaucracy. Nothing before or since has put the point so succinctly.
Posted by: Larry Glenn at Feb 28, 2008 2:06:01 PM
Sowell's A CONFLICT OF VISIONS. Not a classic yet, but a classic-to-be!
Posted by: Dan G at Feb 28, 2008 2:09:57 PM
How about Thorsten Veblen-- Theory of the Leisure Class. Conservative in the "Who are these vermin in my garden?" sense.
Posted by: MattF at Feb 28, 2008 2:16:10 PM
The Decline of the West?
Posted by: x at Feb 28, 2008 2:32:52 PM
If I can't have Uncle Miltie, I'd vote for The Captive Mind. Refuting certain styles of liberal thought (the thinking of the dominant culture), or something like that, is the most valuable thing conservatism does.
Along the same lines, Michael Kinsley has been vastly superior to George Will. And I like the Orwell suggestion.
Posted by: anon/portly at Feb 28, 2008 2:38:20 PM
I agree with the Nozick nomination: Anarchy, State and Utopia.
Posted by: rj at Feb 28, 2008 2:47:59 PM
Mark, Sweden only appears free. The only reason they have no border guards with machine guns pointing inwards is that it is completely surrounded by other communist countries, so there is nowhere to run. Basically the same reason Belarus didn't have a Berlin wall.
Uh, I'm calling bullshit. Sweden is free in all the important ways. People can come and go as they please, they have freedoms of speech, religion, association and freedom to work where they wish.
They pay a lot in taxes, yes, but that is by the general consent of the people of Sweden who elect their governments.
Posted by: TW Andrews at Feb 28, 2008 2:52:44 PM
A conservative work? By somebody arguably American? That has held up well? This is going to be difficult.
The Russell Kirk brigades lose, because modern conservatism is so corporate. If libertarians are conservative, the Russell Kirk brigades are not. Buckley? An astonishingly good writer, but not (IMO) much of a thinker. The Straussians? Maybe. But they're kind of hermetic, and thus unlikely to be intellectually all that influential.
Uh. What about Garry Wills' "Confessions of a Conservative"?
Posted by: Joe S. at Feb 28, 2008 3:02:27 PM
Justin: William James died in 1910. Logical positivism as a movement didn't really exist until the 1920's.
Posted by: Bryan at Feb 28, 2008 3:18:24 PM
I think conservatives are generally stronger as cultural critics than policy analysts, so my pick would be Hugh Kenner's The Pound Era, a great book of literary criticism. And really anything Kenner wrote is worth reading.
Most conservative writing, aside from Kenner, doesn't stand up as scholarship. Generally, these are people who are worth reading because they articulate a point of view that has had an impact, but the ideas by themselves don't have much value, I think. Having said that, here are some runner ups:
Leo Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern.
Harry Jaffa's Crisis of the House Divided (perhaps the only work by a Straussian that has value in and of itself, not just because it's part of a larger school).
James Burnham's The Machiavellians and Congress and the American Tradition.
Willmoore Kendall's The Conservative Affirmation and Willmoore Kendall Contra Mundum.
Guy Davenport's The Geography of the Imagination.
Posted by: Jeet Heer at Feb 28, 2008 3:25:54 PM
If conservatism consists in regarding depravity as a problem, then I'll nominate English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit by Martin Wiener (NB: an American). Whatever the flaws of this book, and it certainly has its fair share, few other books have had a comparable influence on my way of thinking.
Posted by: Arthur at Feb 28, 2008 3:29:20 PM
Brave New World, however, does count in terms of its sexual and drug morality. As well as its focus on government intervention making the population artificially stupid. So put that as #1, just because every high schooler reads it.
I'm not so sure about this. For one thing, the sexual and drug morality in Brave New World is ultimately cast in a different light by Huxley's later works, culminating in his death-bed written "utopia' Island where drug use is in fact prevalent and where open relationships are also part and parcel of the social landscape. What has changed is their purpose or their impetus. For instance, the drug use in Brave New World is something done to escape the world, it is something frivolous and ultimately meaningless; it does not bring anybody closer to anybody or anybody closer to truth concerning the world. The drug use of Island clearly reflects Huxley's own experimentation. Drug use for mental exploration is seen as a good thing. This is hardly a conservative viewpoint (at least as Conservativism is understood in America).
The same is true with sexual morality between the two. The narrator encounters a couple who are currently monogamous; however, one is going to Europe to study and it is understood that he will have other partners, while remaining engaged to the woman he has left behind. Similarly, adolescents are trained in the sexual arts by older women so that they care about and know how to please their partners. Once more, the contrast is clear and depends upon the usages of sexuality.
In both cases, however, the "good" uses of sexuality and drug use are hardly conservative. Or, at the very least, one would hardly find them championed by what we think of as conservative writers.
As for the government making people artificially stupid--this elides the central insight of Huxley's book: that the new totalitarianisms will be chosen by their slaves. Indeed, at the end of the book the World Commander (I believe that was his title) recounts how the current world was formulated. The people chose security over liberty--it was not enforced. This is the marked difference between Orwell and Huxley--in the former the cage is forced around you while you squirm, whereas in the latter you either choose it or don't even see it coming because you're so busy popping soma. It is difficult then to envision that as a screed against government intervention, rather than a crucial insight about individual human preferences (security, pleasure, amusement) in the modern world.
Posted by: Josh R. at Feb 28, 2008 3:35:45 PM
Regarding Swedish democracy: when they hold a national election, it's pretty certain who actually won. Can we say that about recent US national elections? Oops, the Russian national election this weekend is going to produce a clear winner that will reflect the sentiments of the vast majority of the population. Does this imply that considerable government control of the economy is necessary to get elections that reflect the clear will of the populace/
Posted by: mike at Feb 28, 2008 3:52:48 PM
Wow. Road to Serfdom was refuted? Count me among those unaware.
To me it is pretty obvious that is has been proven again and again and again. Note the strong correlation between economic and political freedom.
One major prediction was the during crisis and wartime, a government will try to restrict major economic freedoms first and then keep them around and restrict political ones too- that if not stopped it will keep going until it is socialism and is totalitarian. This happened during the Depression and WWII. It was, thank goodness, stopped - in no small part because of people like Hayek. In countries where this power grab hasn't been curtailed you see exactly what Hayek predicted.
The central thesis of Road to Serfdom is as important and empirically supported today as the day it was written.
Posted by: liberty at Feb 28, 2008 4:17:08 PM
Tom Wolfe
Thomas Sowell
James Q. Wilson
Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray
George Gilder's forgotten book "Visible Man"
Edward O. Wilson
Possony & Pournelle -- The Strategy of Technology
As an artist, Evelyn Waugh's reputation is now sky-high compared to when Buckley first started promoting Waugh a half century ago.
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 28, 2008 5:09:53 PM
American schmamerican.
Posted by: John Goes at Feb 28, 2008 5:35:13 PM
If Friedman is excluded, Nozick and Hayek should be, too. Yes, communism vs. capitalism was a preeminent conflict of the twentieth century, and in that conflict libertarians and social conservatives were on the same side. But Tyler's question calls out those who see depravity as a central problem, which means people who think society should enforce a moral order. Ideally, we are looking for people, like Buckley, who explicitly repudiate libertarianism.
I nominate Charles Murray. Not a grand thinker, but a practical student of policy grounded in empirical work.
Posted by: David Wright at Feb 28, 2008 7:21:55 PM
As long as it is understood that conservative books are not necessarily written by conservatives: John Dewey (1916) Democracy and Education; Walter Lippman (1938) The Good Society; Robert K. Merton (1949) Social Theory and Social Structure; Aaron B. Wildavsky (1966) The Politics of the Budgetary Process; Charles E. Lindblom (1968) The Policy-making Process; and Robert A. Nisbet (1969) The Quest for Community
Posted by: Fred Thompson at Feb 28, 2008 7:23:08 PM
Almost all the books people have proposed are either flat-out bad or at least really, really mediocre. Buckley, Charles Murray, and Sowell may be entertaining, or at least incendiary, but profound thinkers? C'mon. What this list chiefly goes to show is how intellectually weak American conservative thought is.
The book most likely to be remembered 100 years from now has only been mentioned by one person: Jacobs' Death and Life of Great American Cities (and I'm not sure it really qualifies as a work of "American Conservative Political Thought"). Oh, and I expect people will still read Oakeshott's "Rationalism in Politics" and Hayek's "The Use of Knowledge in Society" (though one author's not American and the other not precisely conservative).
Posted by: monboddo at Feb 28, 2008 8:29:30 PM
Tyler asserts that conservatives:
"regarded depravity as more of a problem than it has turned out to be."
Yes, now, in the wake of the Sixties, we only have to keep 2 million men in prison all the time to avoid having massive problems with depravity.
So, no problem!
Posted by: Steve Sailer at Feb 28, 2008 9:16:42 PM
Hayek is not a conservative. He's a libertarian.
I really don't like it when Hayek is referred to as a conservative. Being a libertarian myself, I feel dirty when Hayek ( or any libertarian) has the C word attached to him.
If conservatives agree with libertarians like Hayek, then it because they agree with some libertarian ideas....not vice versa.
On that note, I agree that "The Fatal Conceit" may be one of the best libertarian works of the 20th century. Masterful. If conservatives like it, great.
As for a conservative work? I don't know. I've never read any.
Posted by: EconViewSnooper at Feb 28, 2008 9:32:11 PM
Sweden is less a socialist country than an ethnic enclave.
Posted by: Hovie at Feb 28, 2008 9:50:13 PM
Nelson W. Aldrich
From Wikipedia
In 1909, Aldrich introduced a constitutional amendment to establish an income tax, although he had declared a similar measure "communistic" a decade earlier. In 1908 he became the chief sponsor of the Aldrich-Vreeland Act which created the National Monetary Commission, forerunner to the Federal Reserve system.
Taxes, Federal Reserve...there you have it...
Posted by: Pitt at Feb 28, 2008 9:56:30 PM
In addition to James Burnham's Suicide of the West, his book The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom remains worth reading. Although people have mentioned Charles Murray, nobody has specifically mentioned his book Losing Ground. And what about Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn? An honorary American conservative, at least; don't forget he lived in the United States for 20 years.
Posted by: Kurt Schuler at Feb 28, 2008 11:54:24 PM
re EconViewSnooper
How can one possible read 'The Fatal Conceit' and not grasp that Hayek had become significantly more conservative since the publication of 'The Constitution of Liberty' and 'The Road to Serfdom.' Hayek was an early adopter of evolutionary psychology, and it clearly made his work take a more Burkean, less "libertarian" turn. While though both the early and the late Hayek believed free markets to be extremely important, the later Hayek came to value longstanding, socially-evolved institutions, much as Burke had two hundred years prior.
Posted by: at Feb 29, 2008 12:05:44 AM
James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense
Glazer & Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot
Edward Shils, Center and Periphery
Posted by: Patrick Molloy at Feb 29, 2008 12:36:00 AM
James Q. Wilson, The Moral Sense
Glazer & Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot
Edward Shils, Center and Periphery
Posted by: Patrick Molloy at Feb 29, 2008 12:38:07 AM
I haven't read it, but I was under the impression that in "The Road to Serfdom" Hayek endorsed the welfare state. What he was worried about was central planning leading to totalitarianism, as in interwar Europe.
Charles Murray wrote a book called "What it Means to be a Libertarian", because he considers himself one. He does lean toward a 70's style domestic neo-conservatism with much more communitarian tendencies than most libertarians. Edward O. Wilson is a standard academic liberal.
Mencius Moldbug lists here the books that might comprise a "reactionary theory of modern history":
* Edmund Burke - Reflections on the Revolution in France.
* Henry Maine - Popular Government.
* W.E.H. Lecky - Democracy and Liberty.
* Walter Lippmann - Public Opinion.
* Edgar Lee Masters - Lincoln the Man.
* Albert Jay Nock - Memoirs of a Superfluous Man.
* John T. Flynn - As We Go Marching.
* Bertrand de Jouvenel - On Power.
* Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn - Liberty or Equality.
* James Burnham - Suicide of the West.
Also namechecked is James Stephen's Liberty, Equality, Fraternity
Posted by: TGGP at Feb 29, 2008 12:54:50 AM
The Way Things Ought to Be, by Rush Limbaugh.
:-)
And Thomas Sowell is one of the most reasoned, logical thinkers I've ever come across, like a real-life Vulcan or Sherlock Holmes. He astounds me in everything he's written and every interview he gives.
Posted by: Jacob Oost at Feb 29, 2008 3:49:17 AM
Mark, Sweden only appears free. The only reason they have no border guards with machine guns pointing inwards is that it is completely surrounded by other communist countries, so there is nowhere to run. Basically the same reason Belarus didn't have a Berlin wall.
Posted by: greatzamfir at Feb 28, 2008 11:36:05 AM
No really. I burst out laughing. This is satire, right?
A consultation of maps finds that Sweden's neighbours are:
- Norway - a plural democracy
- Denmark - via the Malmo Bridge - another plural democracy (with a right wing government, these days)
- Finland - another plural democracy
- across the Baltic (if you must) - Germany (democracy), Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia (tick)
Sweden doesn't share a border with any of the world's remaining 'Communist' countries (Cuba, North Korea?) or even the very socialist ones (Algeria, Libya, Syria). Nor even the former communist countries like the USSR.
Are maps so hard to find in America?
Posted by: Valuethinker at Feb 29, 2008 7:49:16 AM
I'm not from the US and not nearly well read in conservative political thought as most of the people here, but I was wondering why "The Closing of the American Mind" by Allan Bloom doesn't qualify?
Answers?
Posted by: Diogo at Feb 29, 2008 8:32:45 AM
Witness - Whittaker Chambers.
Posted by: Alex J. at Feb 29, 2008 9:44:53 AM
If we're taking cultural depravity/decay as the locus point of what conservatism means in this discussion, then why not a work like Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman? Especially in that his glare is turned backwards pining for a lost world...
Posted by: Josh R. at Feb 29, 2008 10:14:56 AM
I left out the most important: Max Weber's the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
The book has had its critics. Capitalism is probably not simply the result of the anti-consumption elect having nothing to do with their surpluss money but to invest it. But that misses the deeper points that Weber developed, such as the role of religion in breaking the narrow bonds of family and creating a larger moral community. This theme has been developed by Banfield, Harrison, Fukuyama and many others.
Posted by: Justin at Feb 29, 2008 10:31:25 AM
Too much equivocation on "conservative." Some commenters are using it very broadly so as to include libertarianism - but in that case, Tyler's question isn't even interesting; there are dozens of candidates. Tyler's question is a very good one, OTOH, if he meant conservative _as opposed to_ libertarian. Taking that interpretation, I think you need to go with something like MacIntyre's After Virtue, or maybe Robert George's Making Men Moral.
Posted by: Aeon J. Skoble at Feb 29, 2008 12:49:08 PM
Although it not by any stretch of the imagination a "classic of American conservative political thought", a 20th-century conservative work by an American-born author that may deserve mention is T.S. Eliot's Notes towards the Definition of Culture (of which Google offers a generous preview).
Needless to say, it is well-written and acutely intelligent. Much can be found to disagree with, but if my highly imperfect recollection is any guide, it is not particularly dated after sixty years.
Posted by: Giacomo at Feb 29, 2008 1:07:26 PM
A sleeper is "Victory of Reason" by Stark. He rejects the idea of a protestant ethic in favor of the Christian ethic, which was way before the Reformation. He maintains the Protestant ethic is a myth...
Also, You can't "Go Home Again" by Thomas Wolfe a fiction work but relevant today.
Also, Capitalism and Arithmetic: The New Math of the 15th Century, Including the Full Text of the Treviso Arithmetic of 1478, Translated by David Eugene Smith. The effect of mathematics on commerce.
Against the Gods by Bernstein. Profund influence on risk and business.
Posted by: jorod at Feb 29, 2008 4:27:37 PM
If you have Lippman, you should have V O Key "Public Opinion.
Posted by: jorod at Feb 29, 2008 4:33:39 PM
To follow up on my colleague Aeon Skoble's comment, there are economic, political, moral, and cultural conservatives. The problem, then, is that some of us may have been looking in too many different directions at once.
Announcing in advance which of these one has in mind in answering Tyler's question might help to clarify matters since, as has been pointed out, being conservative in one of these respects does not necessarily make one conservative in all the others. A "conservative" classic will contrast not only with a "libertarian" one, but also, and more fundamentally, with a "progressive" one. MacIntyre's _After Virtue_ would qualify on that score, but for the fact that he is not American-born. Given the hydra-headed character of the conservative perspective in America, my own suspicion is that we will find its classic expression in a work that transcends the "political" in a narrow sense, and in this sense Whitaker Chambers's _Witness_ may endure.
Posted by: Steven M. Sanders at Feb 29, 2008 6:04:26 PM
The Trouble With Nowadays by Cleveland Amory.
Posted by: don at Feb 29, 2008 7:36:58 PM
(on road to serfdom) "refuted by whom? Castro, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Hugo Chavez?"
Nehru, perhaps.
Posted by: Deane at Mar 1, 2008 4:33:35 PM
I know I'm late to the conversation, but I'm really suprised by the lack, nay, absence of works by Clinton Rossiter.
Rossiter's "Conservatism in America" is a great work, it's somewhat similar in nature to Kirk's "The Conservative Mind". Nevertheless, if you're looking for a more conservative-tract, as opposed to a history of conservatism, look to Rossiter's "Marxism: A Viewpoint from America".
I'm not sure if you'd classify Charles Murray ("In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government") as a libertarian, but his works have stood up fairly well. As well, work by the philosopher Robert P. George lends support to many of the foundations of social conservatism.
Posted by: Lance Cahill at Mar 2, 2008 11:16:15 AM
Tyler,
Is depravity not a problem? 1% of the American adult population is in prison. Towns where people used to leave doors unlocked and keys in the ignition aren't that way any more.
Posted by: Randall Parker at Mar 2, 2008 2:19:32 PM
Stealing from Matthew on Ross Douthat's post on this matter:
Schumacher, Small is Beautiful; Belloc, The Servile State; anything by Wendell Berry.
My own left-field thoughts: Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities, which found its way on to ISI's Fifty Best Works of the Twentieth Century. Not work of political conservatism, it never the less espouses a clear Burkean attitude toward change in the city, and projects incredible skepticism toward the urban planning field (which I, for some strange reason, in no little part thanks to Mrs Jacobs, intend to enter) and government intervention. And she was just so damn right
Butterfield's The Whig Interpretation of History?
Posted by: Nathan P Origer at Mar 3, 2008 2:16:19 PM
Ooh, didn't realize I'm the first to suggest Jacobs, but glad to see it!
Posted by: Nathan P Origer at Mar 3, 2008 2:18:30 PM
I think, perhaps, the logic of my suggestions wasn’t entirely clear. I was looking for influential books that are in the spirit of Burke – respectful of tradition, conscious of the limits of human reason, concerned with unintended consequences, skeptical of hasty action, respectful of legal rights, obligations, and processes, conservationist, pragmatic, and keen on debate, dialogue, and compromise -- that continue to be widely read and cited by intelligent readers. Hence: John Dewey (1916) Democracy and Education; Walter Lippman (1938) The Good Society; Robert K. Merton (1949) Social Theory and Social Structure; Aaron B. Wildavsky (1966) The Politics of the Budgetary Process; Charles E. Lindblom (1968) The Policy-making Process; and Robert A. Nisbet (1969) The Quest for Community -- American Tory classics, if you will.
At the same time I wanted to conform to Tyler’s rules: Americans, no libertarians, etc. and to avoid nostalgics, racists, and strict preservationists. If it weren’t for his carping, crankiness, I might have included Joseph Wood Krutch’s Human Nature and the Human Condition, for example. Krutch’s anti-technology, anti-consumption message still plays well, as does his offhanded secularism, but not generally with folks who now call themselves conservatives. His influence, such as it is, is probably greatest with environmentalists and preservationists, who, like most of the rest of us, are now put off by Aldo Leopold’s and Madison Grant’s anti-semitism and enthusiastic endorsement of eugenics.
Posted by: Fred Thompson at Mar 3, 2008 6:20:49 PM
"Robert A. Nisbet (1969) The Quest for Community"
A great book, but it was published in 1953.
Posted by: ben tillman at Mar 4, 2008 12:32:35 PM
Thanks for the correction. I wonder why so many more readers of this blog have commented on conservative classics than on liberal classics? Just timing or something else?
Posted by: Fred Thompson at Mar 4, 2008 12:48:45 PM
