The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers

by Chilton Williamson

Book Overview

Self-proclaimed conservatives abound in politics, on the news and the political talk shows, on the editorial pages of major newspapers and on the bestseller lists-but what, precisely, is a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806525371
• ISBN13: 9780806525372
• Release Date: October 2004
• Publisher: Citadel Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 1.60 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 6.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Samizdat for paleocons

This is a book that desperately needed to be written. Although many will disagree with the author's specific definition of conservatism, and many will quibble with this or that selection or omission, the books on this list represent what was generally considered to be orthodox conservative ideology before the neocon takeover. At one time, every conservative who considered himself politically aware would have read a good number of these books and been familiar with most of the rest, at least by reputation. Now, in a "conservative" movement whose flagship periodical runs articles praising TROTSKY (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-schwartz061103.asp), the old canon has become something of an embarrassment to the neocon putschists who- like their communist forebears- have rewritten the history books to convince us that the face of conservatism has_always_resembled the ugly mugs of an Irving Kristol or David Frum. Mr. Williamson's book- and the foundational texts referenced therein- are a standing rebuke to the neocons' mendacious revisionism. Likudniks whose life's work is to instigate endless war for the sake of Israel don't want us to read Edmund Burke, Garet Garrett or Joseph Maistre. Trotskyites who glory in social upheaval and moral revolution want to efface from memory the names of people like Russell Kirk, Phyllis Schlafly and the Southern Agrarians. Holocaust cultists who promote a Third World invasion of America to ensure that "it can't happen here" would love for us to have never heard of names like Jean Raspail, Pat Buchanan and Sam Francis. Jewish nationalists who despise the crucified God, except when he can be utilized to corral Christian cannon fodder into neocon wars, react like vampires to holy water when confronted with the Christian foundation of conservative thought. In short, the neocon regime now at the helm of conservative media and politics would love to ban most of the books on Williamson's conservative bookshelf, if they had the power. That's why these books, which were at one time promoted as close to holy writ in the conservative movement, seem so subversive and heretical today. Neoconservatism is a radical apostasy from traditional conservatism. I think the distinguishing principle at the heart of true conservatism is a deep knowledge of history and a sober acceptance of its frequently disheartening lessons about the limitations of men. Liberals, neocons and other juvenile fanatics want reality to conform to their wishes and thus convince themselves that the right combination of persuasion, coercion and government programs can do things like bring democracy to the Mideast or make the lion lay down with the lamb. Conservatives need to know the history of their own ideology to see where we came from, where we got hijacked and why we need to regain control. This book is a must-read for those conservatives who know that something has gone wrong.

The Conservative Bookshelf: The Title Says It All

~The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers~ put together by conservative writer Chilton Williamson, Jr. encompasses a broad overview of conservative classics through the ages. By classic works, Williamson is certainly not referring to Ann Coulter, David Frum, Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh. Williamson writes in the introduction, "High-powered, high-pressured modern society has largely succeeded in reducing conservatism from a broadly informed religious, intellectual, moral and aesthetic tradition to a narrow and shallow party politics that often amounts to nothing more than the party line." Obviously, Williamson, a one-time book review editor at National Review, and presently senior editor at Chronicles, knows the difference between genuine conservative thought and the partisan rants of the defend-the-GOP-come-hell-or-highwater crowd. Williamson is conscious in his effort to omit the so called neoconservative thinkers from his book. "Neoconservatives are distinguished from traditional conservatives not least by their determination to deny notions of peculiar national and cultural identities, which they seek to replace with the fantasical one of the First Universal Nation. Most important, neoconservatives have relentlessly promoted the secularization of government and of society to an extent that is wholly at odds with the explicitly Christian character of the Western tradition." For Williamson, neoconservatives represent an anti-Western trojan horse, that may laud the idea of the West, but it is the secularist Enlightenment West. With its pagan Machiavellian, Neo-Jacobin power politics and universalism, the neocon zeal for making the world safe for ideological abstractions is fundamentally counter to the historic pattern of conservative thought through the ages. But that the neoconservatives came from the political Left ought to suffice to explain that they are aliens to historic conservative thought. The conservative classics he suggests are broad in scope, and start with classical figures from hollowed antiquity like Cicero and St. Augustine, progressing onward to Edmund Burke, C.S. Lewis, and Michael Oakeshott. In contemporary times such stalwart figures as Patrick Buchanan and Russell Kirk get honorable mentions.

Guaranteed to give you something to think about!

I found this book a fascinating introduction to paleoconservatism. I consider myself quite conservative in some respects, and quite liberal in others. I have always had trouble understanding where neoconservatives like George Bush were coming from, since their actions so often seemed to throw the best conservative principles out the window. After reading this book, I find that my views match much more with the paleoconservatives. I certainly don't agree with all of the ideas presented, but I found several books that I definitely plan to read. What more can you ask of a survey book like this? I was surprised to see environmentalism classed by Williamson as a naughty liberal idea. As Williamson says, conservatism is about preferring the familiar to the unknown, the tried to the untried. Williamson has missed the essential conservatism of environmentalism. Since we don't have a spare planet to live on, we should be quite cautious about accepting innovations that will destroy the natural resources our lives depend on. This is true even where those innovations date back some decades, such as the auto-centered culture of modern America. It is true that some environmental proposals are naive, but environmentalists aren't alone in making naive proposals. (The neoconservative idea that America should accept an unlimited number of immigrants strikes me as more naive and stupid than anything the environmentalists have come up with.) Having a stable, sustainable economy with a stable population size is a thoroughly conservative idea--and that's really what environmentalism is about.

The Paleoconservative Bookshelf

Mr. Williamson goes over 50 books he considers most strongly reflects his view of what being a true conservative means. The 50 books are organized into several subjects in rank of decreasing importance with religion on top, then politics, society, economics, the prophetic artist (works of fiction), and the present day. Each book is summarized in a four to ten page chapter with Mr. Williamson often commenting on the work's importance in today's world. The one central key to understanding Mr. Williamson's compilation is the selection is heavily biased towards a traditional view of conservatism or in today's political lingo Mr. Williamson is a paleoconservative. One can view today's conservative movement in the US as being made up of three pillars: traditional conservatives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians. Each strain of conservatism is represented by a major political magazine. The National Review might be the most representative of traditional conservatives (although neo-conservative views are well represented), the Weekly Standard is dominated by neo-conservatives, and Reason magazine takes a libertarian position. Mr. Williamson does not hide his preference for traditional conservatism and his disdain of neo-conservatives. In reading this book one is not sure if Mr. Williamson has more hatred of the left or the neo-conservatives. Mr. Williamson would describe a true conservative as being the conservatism that grew out of the 19th/early 20th centuries. I believe that Mr. Williamson would be much more a fan of late 19th century populist William Jennings Bryant than say Theodore Roosevelt. To Mr. Williamson true conservatism is embodied with respect for tradition, distrust of big government and large corporations, faith, love of country, isolationist foreign policy, pragmatism, distrust of one size fits all theoretical solutions, and acceptance that each nation will have its own peculiar culture and institutions worth defending. Mr. Williamson summarized these as the values of "small town" America. Mr. Williamson does not include a single writer from the neo-conservative movement, except perhaps Ann Coulter, ignoring the Kristols, David Horowitz, etc. He basically ignores the libertarians although he does include Hayek's Road to Serfdom. This bias against libertarians and neo-conservatives can be shown most illustratively in his exclusion of any writings from Milton Friedman in the Economics section, or Ayn Rand from his selection of fictional works. I would recommend this book as it does go over some important works that might led to further exploration. But one has to keep in mind this is a work concentrating on one strain of the conservative movement. This branch of conservatism has seen its influence decline tremendously with the rise of the neo-conservatives. One can feel Mr. Williamson's anger and bitterness as he see his movement being hijacked by imposters or more dangerously a wolf in sheep's clothing.

Be A Thinking Conservative

Long-time conservative book reviewer Chilton Williamson discusses 50 books "that impact today's conservative thinkers." The books date from the Bible to Thomas Fleming's 2004 THE MORALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE. He provides an overview of each work, discusses its author and, when appropriate, relates it to contemporary issues (such as the neocon/paleocon dispute). The books are divided into religion, politics, society, literature, economics, and present day disputes. I should note that the "texts" under consideration are serious works and not a collection of anti-Clinton screeds written by second-tier neoconservatives. If you've always wanted to know what works elaborate on the essentials of conservative thought, Mr. Williamson is a sure guide. If you don't want to know why Burke was a Rockingham Whig instead of a Tory, then look someplace else. Ten of the 50 books are works of fiction. I don't have a problem with that, but as a result there are some important thinkers who are not mentioned that most would consider "essential" to contemporary conservatism (such as Eric Voegelin and Christopher Dawson). I also would have liked to see a little more interaction with libertarianism. Von Mises and Rothbard are mentioned only once. While Von Mises was not a conservative in the contemporary sense of the word, every conservative should read HUMAN ACTION. In addition, the section on religion is quite slim, and it would have been a good place to mention Dawson.