Resources

The Old and New Testaments The history of Western civilization starts in Jerusalem and runs through Athens, Rome, Paris, London, Berlin, and, ultimately, Washington, DC. If the Biblical narrative is to be believed, this history will end once again in Jerusalem. It is only in light of the Judeo-Christian moral and intellectual tradition that we can understand the rise of the Hebrew nation, the meaning of the ancient oriental empires, their connection, and that of Rome and Athens, to the rise of western European civilization, Jesus of Nazareth, the fall of Rome, the Middle Ages, the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic counter-reformation, the Renaissance, the French Revolution, the American Revolution, Charles Darwin, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, on-going conflict in the Middle East, "the Jewish question," the Nazi and Soviet movements, the modern American culture wars, and September 11, 2001. The Old and New Testaments are foundational to the conservative understanding of the world and of the American idea. Any revival of widespread conservative statesmanship will require widespread revival of sound Bible scholarship and wisdom. The Federalist Papers, by Hamilton, Madison, and Jay (1787) The authoritative commentary on the U.S. Constitution by those who helped draft it and promote its ratification. The Federalist was written for the average American farmer of 1787, and its deep insight into the nature of man and government remains an enduring testament to the wisdom of the American founding generation and the true nature of the American experiment. Witness, by Whittaker Chambers (1952) Chambers was a member of the Communist underground in New York and Washington during the late 1920's and 30's before converting to Christianity and breaking with the Communist Party in 1939. Ten years later, he rocked the nation by announcing that Alger Hiss, a high-level State Department official and key architect of both the United Nations and the Yalta Agreement, was a Communist spy. The ensuing trial by the U.S. House and a New York grand jury, amidst media fanfare and distortion, as well as attempts at cover-up within government and personal destruction of Chambers, proved Chambers was telling the truth, leading to Hiss' conviction and imprisonment and Richard Nixon's rise to national fame. It also led to the conviction of several other spies who had served at high levels during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. This book is a poignant story of political espionage, treason, spiritual awakening, hope, and the reality of good and evil. A must-read for any modern conservative statesman or informed activist. The Conservative Mind, by Russell Kirk (1953) Along with Witness, a basic resource for the modern conservative. Dr. Kirk's profound and scholarly exploration of the roots of western conservative thought, from Edmund Burke to T.S. Eliot. Conservatism is "the preservation of the ancient moral traditions of humanity," Kirk wrote, and the degree to which conservatives today are able to resist the forces of social and cultural destruction depends in large measure on the degree to which we understand our heritage. A seminal work by a seminal thinker. God and Man at Yale, by William F. Buckley (1953) Another key element of the post-war conservative renaissance. Buckley wrote upon graduation before heading to New York to found the magazine National Review. He documents here the entrenched liberal/radical bias in the modern American academy, which presumes God does not exist and educates accordingly--as if the human mind is a mechanical device and knowledge is merely a social construct and a cloak for a power agenda. The result is low-quality education even at distinguished places like Yale, intellectual prejudice, and suppression of legitimate intellectual inquiry. In his early 20's at publication, Buckley shows in this work the precociousness which led him to become over subsequent decades America's leading conservative intellectual. The Way the World Works, by Jude Wanniski (1977) As a key influence on Ronald Reagan and a direct challenge to the monetarist economic school which rose to asendancy during the high-inflation 1970's, this highly original work applies classical theories of money and political economy to the economic upheavals of the 20th century. Though the general political and economic philosophy (expounded in the first three chapters) is shallow, the book's original and sound explanation of the causes for both the stock market crash of October 1929 and the Great Depression (expounded in chapter 6) are alone worth the price of the book. We have not been able to find a better analysis of the Depression anywhere. Indeed, Wanniski seems virtually alone in connecting these events to the classical theories of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, which tie the '29 crash to bad tariff policy and the Depression to bad tax policy. Theories of "excess credit" by the Federal Reserve, says Wanniski, ignore the gold standard of the time, which made monetary error impossible. Excessive tariffs and taxes were the problem, and the Depression thus foreshadowed the destructive economic policy which would pervade the rest of the 20th century. Given the Depression's formative influence on today's economic policy and analysis, as well as its impact in creating the New Deal, the Great Society, and the American welfare state, every serious conservative should be familiar with this book. One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich, by Alexander Solzhenitsyn (1962) This haunting work by the former resident of the Soviet gulag frightened the western world into facing the reality of Soviet oppression. Anyone who believes Ronald Reagan was extreme in his 1983 denunciation of the Soviet Union as "the locus of evil in the modern world" should read Solzhenitsyn's account of one day in a Soviet labor camp. Indeed, the book helped bring about public, posthumous denunciations of Stalin by Soviet leaders, though in their failure to see the fundamental evil in the Soviet idea, they also showed their failure to grasp either Stalin or Solzhenitsyn. The latter went on to win the Nobel Prize in 1970, despite a reluctant Nobel committee afraid of offending the Soviets. In this work of deep pathos and understated eloquence, Solzhenitsyn indicts Soviet communism in a way that would be surpassed only by his indictment of western complacency and incompetence to deal with the Soviet threat. In his call to western conservatives to understand the spiritual nature of communism, and the necessarily spiritual nature of the force required to defeat it, Solzhenitsyn incarnated the conservative idea and left a prophetic spiritual legacy that is without equal since. Anything by Solzhenitsyn is worth the price. The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien (1950's) Besides the Bible, the best-selling book of the 20th century. Tolkien's epic tale of good and evil, wisdom and folly, mercy and justice, temptation and righteousness, captures the conservative idea of the world as a living, heroic myth. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, by T.E. Lawrence ("Lawrence of Arabia") (1922) Eight copies of this masterpiece were published by Oxford University in 1922, followed by a second private run of 200 in 1926, leading to multiple large-scale runs in 1935. The type of work described by critics as "highly literate," "epic," and "monumental," meaning it is told with a novelist's eye for geographical detail and with a sensitivity to both the human condition and the larger ideological and spiritual forces driving the Arab experience during World War I, this book has become a classic of 20th-century English literature. Having grown up in an English family which made him "a standing civil war," the Englishman Lawrence became an Arab leader against the Turks, helping to set the stage for post-war European occupation of the Fertile Crescent, the creation of the modern states of Iraq and Jordan, the Balfour Declaration foreshadowing the future creation of the state of Israel, and political trends which shape the Middle East to this day. Basing his title on King Solomon's 900 B.C. personification of true wisdom, the highly literate Lawrence tells a unique story from the vantage point of an experience not duplicated before or since. Words like these capture the essence of Lawrence's pathos and the plight of the modern conservative: "There are no lessons for the world, no disclosures to shock peoples. It is filled with trivial things, partly that no one mistake for history the bones from which some day a man may make history." A Colorado History, by Ubbelohde, Benson, and Smith (1965) Solid one-volume introduction to the history of the Centennial State. The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith (1776) The definitive work in any language on market dynamics and moral enterprise.