As for books and authors that do hold up - well, Cowen says that we can include grumpy European emigres, so I'd have to vote for the collected works of Leo Strauss (you can't pick just one!), who should be required reading whatever you think of his disciples' influence on contemporary politics. Speaking of his disciples, I'd also vote for Allan Bloom's Closing of the American Mind. (Contrary to what you may have heard, the second half of the book is better than the first: The critique of student life is curmudgeonly; the critique of the academy as a whole is brilliant.) A variety of neoconservative works, from Edward Banfield's The Unheavenly City to Charles Murray's Losing Ground to almost anything by James Q. Wilson, all hold up quite well in hindsight, and so do the classic Catholic-neocon books, Richard John Neuhaus's The Naked Public Square and Michael Novak's The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism. (Novak has been rather too carried away over the years by his enthusiasm for the affinity between Christianity and capitalism, but his early writings on the subject are very good.) And while I know Francis Fukuyama no longer calls himself a neocon, his The End of History and the Last Man remains a brilliant diagnosis of the politics of late modernity, however its prognosis ends up being remembered.The Philosopher, who is not a Straussian, nonetheless praises Strauss's work, at least on certain points. As for the Straussians, theocons, and neocons on this list... it wasn't what I expected from Mr. Douthat. Then again, I'm not very familiar with his basic worldview.
As I'm still learning from the 19th century Southern political tradition I would hesitate to suggest anything from the 20th century--there's Kirk, Davidson, Weaver, Bradford, and others. At least they address the various political, social, and moral crises facing this country, and are not simply anti-Communist or nationalist, accepting the status quo as the best of all possible worlds.
No comments:
Post a Comment