21 Comments
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Jay W Watson's avatar

Great list, CJay. Thank you. It was good to see the "Southern Agrarians" and also Thomas Fleming.

Josh's avatar

Thanks so much for doing this C.Jay. This is huge for me. Starting with Caldwell's book. Please release as many of these lists as possible.

Dassin Dassin's avatar

Yawn. Racists peddling racists, pretending they have an actual intellectual tradition to defend. LOL Dodo meet T Rex.

Rob Schade's avatar

How, there is a lifetime of reading here!

Clifford Angell Bates, Jr's avatar

Generally this is an exhaustive list that perhaps include way too much that messes a clear understanding up a bit. I think Parvini's book doesn't belong because its not really either conservative or even truly a voice of the right.

Capt. Seth Keshel's avatar

I used to be one, but I got too skinny.

The Elder of Vicksburg's avatar

A damned fine list! Appreciate the Agrarians especially.

urutrad's avatar

Conservatives today are yesterday's liberals.

The only thing they conserve is the revolution’s gains.

Julian Coppede's avatar

Do you happen to know any serious studies of communism from a conservative perspective? I’m looking for one book in particular. I remember some of its concluding remarks. To the effect that it is indecent or criminal to attempt to remake human beings into something they aren’t. I wish I could remember the title of the book:/

Sebas's avatar

Very based. Thank you.

L.J.Garcia's avatar

Hey thank you for this, I am new to this whole understanding of Paleo Conservatism, years ago I bought the book Death of the West by Pat Buchanan I only got a couple chapters in and got sided tracked, what books out of this list would you recommend as a new comer to the Old Right? Appreciate your writings a lot

C.Jay Engel's avatar

I’ll have a guide to prioritizing this list in a day or two!

Von's avatar

How would you classify Thomas Sowel?

C.Jay Engel's avatar

He’s a tough one. I don’t think he’s a paleo, and paleos have generally refused to place economic concerns above the integrity of Order and culture. But he’s also a good sociologist with libertarian leanings. The thing about Sowell is that he’s really not an idealist-universalist as, say, the neocons are. This makes him somewhat more useful than they are. I’d say he’s solidly a West-Coast straussian type, who seeks to maximize individual liberty for reasons of prosperity and human flourishing, but since he holds rights to be more fundamental than the concerns of politics, formal speaking, he’s not in the same mold as the Paleo-conservatives, or even the traditionalists like Russell Kirk.

Von's avatar

Interesting. Now since my foundation for my understanding of him is 'Conflict of Vision' I tend to place him firmly as a paleo.

C.Jay Engel's avatar

That book is definitely paleo-leaning in that it stresses the importance of the organic developments of a social order. But the paleos are more liable to employ power when the political threats call for it.

Von's avatar

So... Chesterton's fence... paleo?