June 29, 2010

tothesource: Why did you write 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read?

Dr. Benjamin Wiker: Well, there are several reasons. First of all, it's a follow-up to 10 Books That Screwed Up the World. The first 10 Books dealt with those books that have really caused monumental damage to our world—Machiavelli's Prince, Marx's Communist Manifesto, Darwin's Descent of Man, Hitler's Mein Kampf, to cite some examples. The world would be a lot better place if they'd never been published. But one very insistent comment by readers and interviewers was, "What about the good books?" So here they are—the 10 Books that could make the world a whole lot better.

tts: Actually, it's more than 10…

Wiker: Yes, as with the first 10 Books, readers get a bonus! In the first 10 Books, I actually treated fifteen. In 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read, I offer the reader fourteen good books, and one impostor.

tts: Who's the impostor?

Wiker: Ayn Rand's immensely popular novel, Atlas Shrugged.

tts: That's bound to create some controversy!

Wiker: Good controversy, I hope. I want to make clear, up front, that I affirm what is good in Ayn Rand, but she's also got some significant defects that can't be overlooked and simply aren't reconcilable with true conservatism. I go into quite a lot of detail in the book, not only about the philosophical foundation of her views, but about the darker aspects of her personal life that illustrate what Rand meant by championing selfishness as the greatest virtue. It should also be pointed out that Rand herself rejected both conservatism and libertarianism. Rand's is the last book I treat, so by then I think it will be very clear to the reader that she really doesn't belong among the books conservatives should heartily affirm.

tts: I see that you begin rather far back historically, all the way to the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Wiker: That's important. Conservatism has very ancient roots, and I consider Aristotle's Politics to be its founding book. The Politics is a book everyone who calls himself conservative really must read.

tts: Sounds a bit daunting—especially compared to conservative books on today's bestseller list.

Wiker: Not really. Of course, I'm acting as a guide to these great works, bringing out the main points and implications for today. But Aristotle has always been known as the philosopher of common sense, a man with his two feet firmly planted on the ground. He gives us some of the most important conservative starting points: the family as the moral, social, and economic foundation of society; the centrality of moral virtue; the ways to distinguish a good government from a bad one; and many more. I use Aristotle's Politics at the beginning, along with several others—including C. S. Lewis' Abolition of Man and G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy—to help come to a good definition of "conservatism."

tts: Why is it important to define conservatism?

Wiker: They need to think about it on a deeper level. There is a significant conservative upswell now that is largely a negative reaction to the direction our government has been taking. There's a lot of zeal, but not enough attention to the deeper understanding of conservatism that could help guide a negative reaction into becoming a positive rebuilding of American society. I think that can happen if people, all across the nation, and read and discuss these great conservative classics.

tts: You've also got some obvious picks—Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, Tocqueville's Democracy in America, The Federalist Papers, and the Anti-Federalists.

Wiker: Right—classics on everybody's list. But even here, there's a whole lot more gold than people suspect, and a few very important surprises.

tts: Such as?

Wiker: Here's one: the importance of the Anti-Federalists. Many regard the Constitution as an essentially conservative document. But in the debates about the ratification of the Constitution, the conservatives of the time, the Anti-Federalists, considered the Constitution to be a radical document, one that gave far too much power to the federal government. They lobbied for the Bill of Rights as a protection against the powers granted to the federal government in the Constitution. The situation we've got today is not, as many conservatives argue, the result of ignoring the Constitution, but cutting it loose from the Bill of Rights.

Any conservative today reading the Anti-Federalists will feel a kindred spirit—much more so than in reading The Federalist Papers. That's because the Anti-Federalists predicted so accurately the limitless growth of federal bureaucracy, federal taxation, and the welfare state. They were really quite prophetic!

tts: Which sources provide insight into economic issues?

Wiker: One of the books I treat, Fredrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom, has been the number one selling book on Amazon.com now for about a week. That's extraordinary—a book written over fifty years ago, warning about the degradations of socialism and the welfare state is outselling vampire romances, diet books, political potboilers, and business success books! That tells you something about the mood of the country.

tts: I see that you also go beyond books specifically on politics and economics, and treat literature. Wiker: Yes, I think conservatives can tend to focus too narrowly on politics and the pressing news of the day. But true conservatism is deeply thoughtful—broad and deep—taking into account the entire richness and complexity of human beings and human life. The proper nurturing and formation of the imagination is a forgotten and essential aspect of conservatism, and this neglect of the imagination would have horrified great conservative thinkers of the past like Edmund Burke and C. S. Lewis. So I treat such great conservative literary classics as Shakespeare's The Tempest, Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility, and J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. It should be a source of pride that three of the greatest writers in the English language were conservatives in the classic sense, and those convictions come through very clearly in their literary works.

Responses to Hurt by the Church:

EXCELLENT -- I enjoy all of your articles SO MUCH R. S.