I know Lemmy isn’t normally the best place to search for this, but are there any high-quality right-wing explainers, or modern books, or media outlets?
I myself am ultra-left (quite literally communist, to the dictionary sense of the word), but I’d like to quit the bubble that inevitably forms around and look at good arguments of the opposing side, if there are any.
Is there anything in there beyond temporarily embarrassed millionaires and fears that trans people will destroy humanity? Is there rational analysis, something closer to academic research, behind modern ideas of laissez-faire capitalism and/or political conservatism?
I’ve tried outlets like PragerU, but they are so basic they seem to target a very uncritical audience.
I’d like to see the world in the eyes of an enlightened right-winger, and see where they possibly fail (or if suddenly they have valid arguments).
Frankly, anything explicitly marketed to American conservatives these days is mostly ragebait for stupid people and I doubt you’ll find any of it the least bit convincing. As other have mentioned, Thomas Sowell is a great place to start if you want something serious but modern and clearly written. Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom are both widely recommended classics. If you managed to read Marx without dying of boredom you should also be able to get through Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action or Socialism.
Thomas Sowell is a great place to start
My man was churning out ragebait before ragebait was cool.
Milton Friedman’s Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom are both widely recommended classics.
Mr. Pencil Man, the guy who was convinced a command economy couldn’t churn out writing implements because they had too many parts.
If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara Desert, in 5 years there’d be a shortage of sand.
Is one of my favorite Friedmanisms. My guy simply could not conceive of a central authority doing anything right (unless that thing was standing up military juntas in formerly democratic Latin American and Middle Eastern states).
If you managed to read Marx without dying of boredom you should also be able to get through Ludwig von Mises’ Human Action or Socialism.
He’s got some bangers.
Applying our theory to parents and children, this means that a parent does not have the right to aggress against his children, but also that the parent should not have a legal obligation to feed, clothe, or educate his children, since such obligations would entail positive acts coerced upon the parent and depriving the parent of his rights. The parent therefore may not murder or mutilate his child, and the law properly outlaws a parent from doing so. But the parent should have the legal right not to feed the child, i.e., to allow it to die.
Fair enough, don’t start with that article! Pinning his guy’s mistakes on the other guy is not a great look. I should have specified that his books on economics are where someone should look first, not his tabloid opinion columns. Friedman’s point about pencils was not that a command economy would be unable to produce them but rather that the free market produces them spontaneously, at low cost and in great quantity, of good quality and variety, with everyone along the way acting voluntarily and better off for having participated in the process. I don’t think an offhand comment about sand is really the best representative of his work. I think the quote from Children and Rights might actually belong to Murray Rothbard, but either way I disagree with whoever wrote it and think it’s a perfect example of someone following a generally good principle off a cliff.
I haven’t seen anything about children that insane since I saw that libertarian article pleading the case that we should be allowed to buy and sell children on the free market.
Mises’ Socialism and the economic calculation problem threw me for a loop for a while. It really rocked my preference for socialism at the time. Then I realized modern corporations with modern computing power are doing exactly what Mises says a theoretical central planner can’t do.
That’s funny, I see large corporations as being similar to a planned economy, but bringing the same problems. Corruption is widespread and gets worse the more layers of middle management there are. Economies of scale are what save them. Internal goods and services are mispriced and misallocated because political considerations replace the price mechanism. Man, I really hated that part of my life.
Thanks! Marx is sometimes tough indeed, but readable :D
Describes PragerU. I follow their YouTube and Instagram accounts and it’s almost exclusively bad faith arguments or rage bait.
99% of the comments buy into it as well. I wonder if they’re quick to clean up (read:remove) dissenting voices or if it is actually an echo chamber.
Are you punishing yourself for something?
Haha. Just want to better understand how the other side sees the world.
Just to have bias confirmed that these clowns are inteletually bankdupt bootlickers?
Wish they’d prove me wrong! So far… they haven’t.
I only saw a YouTuber make fun of their “Christopher Columbus did nothing wrong video” (not the actual title).
Their argumentation is terribly weak.
an enlightened right-winger
If they still exist they aren’t putting themselves in the (probably literal) crosshairs of the conservative/christianist goofballs.
It’s been actual decades since the right wing was anything approaching sane. The left is following suit lately too.
Ahh yes, a classic “both sides” argument.
Please, explain how the left has gone crazy with their ideology, because leftists don’t have much political power to actually mess anything up with, unlike conservatives.
A lot of the academics associated (formerly or currently) with Chicago Booth are highly respected as economists but highly conservative. As influential and famous they may be, their personal blogs and twitter account are yikes.
E.g. Harald Uhlig, Joch H Cochrane
If youre being honest, then youre going to need to look at historical material like Locke & Hobbes to get a foundation.
Modern conserativism… aggitation… can bw traced through Gingrich in the House in the early 90s, I cant think of the book off the top of my head but theres a pretty decent record of how he did manipulative things with unmanned cspan cameras at the time.
Gingrich’s “Contract With America” book was such word salad. Every other page contradicted the others.
For Gingrich, you can read his memo Language: A Key Mechanism of Control.
This. Perhaps even some “Wealth of Nations” and similar.
Adam Smith is less right-wing than the cargo-cultists think.
I’m not sure of you’ll find the academic research you are looking for, at least out of the US, since the modern Conservative movement seems to have eschewed academia as filled with Liberals.
I haven’t read this book yet, but I’d recommend Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about JD Vance’s life in Appalachia, It came out in 2016, and I recall folks thinking that it was a good read, even if they didn’t agree with Vance’s politics, and partially explained Trump’s appeal to rural voters whose lifestyle bears no resemblance at all to Trump. The book has to be somewhat compelling, since Ron Howard made a movie out of it. And Vance parlayed it into a Senate seat, after all.
Interesting! Thank you
Foundations of geopolitics by Aleksander Dugan. This is the basis of modern European, conservative actions and the Russian playbook for the last 30 years.
The Road to Unfreedom: Russia, Europe, America https://a.co/d/5pCJwnr
This would probably be better for an american reader. Theyre not gonna get the cultural underpinnings of ‘Foundations’ without reading an analysis and I dont think this is what OP is looking for. Foundations is Russian international relations theory.
You mean Dugin? Heard of him a lot lately.
Yup that’s him. A Russian ultra nationalist who essentially wrote a game plan for Russia to dismantle the liberal world order of the west, and was/is highly popular in russian political and military leadership. Many of his suggestions are part of russian doctrine today (like the notion that Ukraine has no cultural identity or value and should be taken over). Quite eye opening.
This is not a right wing resource, but if you’re interested in learning about the arguments and historical evolution of ideas that underpin economic liberalism/neoliberalism, I highly recommend Geoff Mann’s Disassembly required : a field guide to actually existing capitalism. It’s concise, relatively short, and treats the ‘other’ side like rational actors (which is important for understanding, I think).
Ofc this would only help understand people who are quite well informed.
Thank you!
Ayn Rand is where modern right wing ideology started. You really don’t need to read a whole book, she beats you over the head with the message repeatedly.
Fast forward to the Rush Limbaugh talk show and listen to some of his monologues.
Then jump back to Mein Kampf to see the future of the right wing.
It’s all bullshit, and it’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of right wing talking points. Ask critical questions like what happens to the most vulnerable populations under that system and you realize quickly that it’s Sparta all over again and they will be actively killed because they believe in eugenics.
If you really consider reading Mein Kampf, don’t.
Hard disagree with Rand, thats just a libertarian circle jerk.
Better would be anything from Jefferson. If you really want to get into the weeds, the Anti-Federalists from the 1790’s opposing the Constitution in favor of keeping the original Articles of Confederation that governed the US right after independence.
Jefferson sounds like a barely relevant choice from a very distant time, something that an average libertarianist will shove in people’s faces without telling it fails to describe shortcomings of capitalism highlighted by later thinkers.
But as a starting point, I see how that may be useful. Thank you!
If you’re looking for credible conservatives who actually confront the shortcomings of capitalism, I can’t think of any. But these early writings were pretty well-thought out and are foundational to later ideas, so I think they’re worth reading.
I thought your review of conservatism was very fair and balanced. I give it a perfect 5/7.
The first name that came to mind was Thomas Sowell
Yes! I’ve been on this journey!
Thomas Sowell’s bibliography is easily the best starting place. Just pick something and have at it. As a prominent conservative economist, his books actually make good arguments. It takes actual effort to deconstruct his arguments and identify where he’s wrong. He’s widely and highly respected in conservative communities and tackles a lot of the common cultural war issues.
Then there’s granddaddies Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. Also economists, they were directly impacted by the Cold War, and make intellectual cases that capitalism is the only economic system that leads to real individual freedom. And they also try to prove why the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and every lesser species of it undermines liberty. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom are staples.
Castigated by modern conservatives because they’re not serious about anything, sociology’s Emile Durkheim is a cornerstone of the discipline. I’ve never read it, but his book *Suicide *concerns individuals within community and the institutions of it. He talks about a type of suicide derived from moral disorder and lack of clarity, anomic suicide.
One book that I found incredibly insightful was Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. This book is genuinely fair to both sides, and it shows the historical roots of conservatism and its relation to the French Revolution, when the right and the left as political stances first became a thing.
OP, this guy has given you an honest answer that is actually good material.
Seconding these recommendations.
Love the name
And they also try to prove why the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and every lesser species of it undermines liberty.
Proving totalitarianism undermines liberty seems pretty trivial to me. An attempt to prove that communism must necessarily be totalitarian would be much more interesting.
Yeah, that’s what they do and say.
Thomas Sowell is an american pseudo intelectual…
A lot of his analysis doesn’t hold any water if reviewed in context of the world.
He is essentially doing the bidding for the regime which I guess what “conservatives” do but he is disingenius IMHO sort of Ben Shapiro type of lapdog telling working peasants sucks to suck, git gud.
While I don’t disagree exactly, the way he puts his arguments is far better than Shapiro. Reading or listening to Sowell is a lesson in uncovering sophisticated conservative arguments. It took me a while to understand how Sowell reasoned, so that’s why I include him and think he’s a great example of conservative thinkers.
Wow, thank you for such a detailed response!
I’ll check out the sources you’ve given.
iirc Friedman changed his mind about the welfare state later in life
I don’t know if you like podcasts, but Know Your Enemy is a take on the right from two leftists who used to be conservatives who approach it from an intellectual POV.
I linked to the political magazine that helps support them since it gives some rundowns of their topics that might give you some of the sources that can be read instead of listening to their podcast, if you’d prefer.
I find the Austrian School of Economics really interesting.
Particularly books written by American economist Murray Rothbard, who talks about free markets, government (particularly government intervention) and inflation.
There’s a very short book you can read called "What has Government Done to Our Money?”
Not a right-wing source in and of itself, but Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind explores the history and philosophical underpinnings of conservative thought from Burke/Hobbes on through the 21st century, on a variety of different topics. It’s a serious engagement with the ideas, and attempt to understand them and their origins
Here’s an audio copy of Murray Rothbard’s Man, Economy, and State. Murray is basically the father of “right wing” libertarianism (insofar as right v left is individualism v collectivism, not “right=racism is good,”) he seems to fit the description you seek. Not saying you’ll agree or love him, but he isn’t some “lets kill the gays” nonsense.
Also try Milton Friedman, and Lysander Spooner. They’re more “anarchism” or “libertarianism” as well, from that same individualist, rather than collectivist, standpoint.
I’m not here to love these people, I’m here to hear them out :D Thanks!
Please dont have sex with milton, ok?
It partly depends on whether you want to understand pre-9/11 “reasonable” conservatism or the more recent Tea Party and Trump conservative populism.
Ayn Rand expresses the fairy tale version of romantic, rugged individualism, which is pretty important to understanding modern right-wing politics, especially in North America. I think the main idea conservatives take from her work, directly or indirectly, is that progress is driven by individual work and achievement, and that any kind of forced wealth re-distribution (through social programs, for example) is effectively theft, and therefore immoral.
The modern populist right-wing movement was originally driven and disseminated by right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. So, listening to right-wing talk radio or podcasts is also a good window into the modern movement. It puts on full display the resentment felt by modern right-wingers.
If you would rather not experience right-wing media directly, but would rather read rational analysis about it, then one good choice is David Frumm. He is an old school Reagan/Bush conservative, and has lived through the transition of the Repubs to populism. He is very critical of Trumpism, like most people, but he comes from the perspective of a reasonable and well-informed conservative insider.
Fareed Zakaria has a new book called Age of Revolutions, which views modern conservative populism as a very significant political re-alignment with similarities to various revolutions of the past, both successful and unsuccessful. Fareed talks about the conditions that lead to populism. In that sense, he treats Trump’s popularity as a symptom and outcome of specific underlying societal problems.
Thank you! I’d like to understand both, really, though my first concern is about modern, “Trump” conservatism.
