Rightwords... Prudent Conservatism

The good and the bad exist in our society and in our government.

What we have now in our government is a clash of visions as Tom Sowell defines it in his book Intellectuals and Society. The current dominant vision is that of what was labeled "the vision of the anointed". In this vision, elites, largely self-anointed,  hold the principle influence and direction of our government across a wide swath of issues. I called this the "authoritarian vision" in a recent post, because the elites want what amounts to expanded, even dictatorial, powers to use their presumed knowledge and superior intellect to create laws and govern the nation. In this anointed vision, our current Constitution is merely a hindrance to the objectives of the elites, and it needs to be changed to suit their unique and not publically voted upon vision.

The opposing vision is labeled by Sowell the "tragic vision", which is the "traditional vision" I defined earlier, that most of us hold dear. This vision considers the basis of our government to be contained in the Constitution and civil or common law, and which makes effective representation of the people, checks and balances throughout government and our mediating institutions central and indispensible features to counter the potential excesses of those in power. The written Constitution ensures that every citizen knows the fundamental law of the land.

It is a tragic vision simply because it recognizes the tragic need for protection of the people from the elites and the power-hungry progressives--- those who would be king---and those that would make drastic changes to our government in the name of their anointed vision of efficiency and amorality! Tragic also because it recognizes that all men are fallible, and a fallible man or group of men with power to dictate laws and sweeping regulations is a serious existential problem for this democratic republic.

The good things in our society are from the traditional, tragic vision for our democratic republic.

The bad things are from the vision of the self-proclaimed intellectual anointeds which is an anathema to our way of life.

For a more complete listing of the good and bad ideas prevalent today see my post of July 18, 2014 entitled Conservatism: Simple to Complex.

Tom Sowell wrote 669 pages with notes in his book Intellectuals and Society to explain why intellectuals and their "vision of the anointed" (and my version of the authoritarian vision) are highly detrimental to our nation and to individual citizens as well. So I strongly suggest that everyone reads this masterful work.

 

  

 

A Consequential Library

In order to obtain a solid background in conservatism, I decided to develop a comprehensive library of books by important writers, both for conservatism itself and for the deeper philosophy it entails, as well as other issues that came to me as I read. As of now, that library has the following list of books and their authors. I heartily recommend all of them for they each have an important message to give.

The problem this list presents is endemic to any textbooks of deep significance; to master the material requires reading and rereading perhaps two or three times.  Even then, a further time is needed to absorb the work more fully, and relate it to the rest of your thinking.  In my case, this list took the better part of 14 years of study for several hours daily for me to feel comfortable with the material.

All but one of these books are now in my private collection. The list follows: