The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers [Hardcover]

Chilton Williamson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0806525371 | ISBN-13: 978-0806525372 | Publication Date: October 1, 2004 | Edition: First Printing

The Conservative Bookshelf - Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative ThinkerChilton Williamson

Editorial Reviews

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One doesn't have to read much of this excellent book to wonder whether its subtitle is wishful thinking. Many of the works discussed are demanding, the likes of Augustine's City of God, Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, and Richard M. Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences--hardly books that Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, or David Brock might curl up with. But as Williamson elucidates in the introduction, these books reflect conservatism, not the neoconservatism of current Republicans. And what is conservatism? "Man's willingness to discern for himself, and to accept from God, a fundamental, practical, just, human, and unchangeable plan for man--and to stick with it," Williamson says, later distinguishing two branches of conservatism, one "founded on eternal principles" and one "that appeals to historical context and the status quo, prudence, and pragmatism." Williamson presents 50 selected books in declension of categories, beginning with theology and ending with contemporary affairs. Book number 1 is the Bible; book 50 is Treason, by Anne Coulter, despite her support of the Bush administration. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Citadel; First Printing edition (October 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0806525371
• ISBN-13: 978-0806525372
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,627,462 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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36 of 39 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Be A Thinking Conservative, November 11, 2004

By 

Steve Jackson "stevejackson100atyahoocom" (New England) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers (Hardcover)

Long-time conservative book reviewer Chilton Williamson discusses 50 books "that impact today's conservative thinkers." The books date from the Bible to Thomas Fleming's 2004 THE MORALITY OF EVERYDAY LIFE. He provides an overview of each work, discusses its author and, when appropriate, relates it to contemporary issues (such as the neocon/paleocon dispute). The books are divided into religion, politics, society, literature, economics, and present day disputes. I should note that the "texts" under consideration are serious works and not a collection of anti-Clinton screeds written by second-tier neoconservatives. If you've always wanted to know what works elaborate on the essentials of conservative thought, Mr. Williamson is a sure guide. If you don't want to know why Burke was a Rockingham Whig instead of a Tory, then look someplace else.

Ten of the 50 books are works of fiction. I don't have a problem with that, but as a result there are some important thinkers who are not mentioned that most would consider "essential" to contemporary conservatism (such as Eric Voegelin and Christopher Dawson). I also would have liked to see a little more interaction with libertarianism. Von Mises and Rothbard are mentioned only once. While Von Mises was not a conservative in the contemporary sense of the word, every conservative should read HUMAN ACTION. In addition, the section on religion is quite slim, and it would have been a good place to mention Dawson.

30 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Paleoconservative Bookshelf, July 13, 2005

By 

Michael Kim (Elk Grove, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers (Hardcover)

Mr. Williamson goes over 50 books he considers most strongly reflects his view of what being a true conservative means. The 50 books are organized into several subjects in rank of decreasing importance with religion on top, then politics, society, economics, the prophetic artist (works of fiction), and the present day. Each book is summarized in a four to ten page chapter with Mr. Williamson often commenting on the work's importance in today's world. The one central key to understanding Mr. Williamson's compilation is the selection is heavily biased towards a traditional view of conservatism or in today's political lingo Mr. Williamson is a paleoconservative. One can view today's conservative movement in the US as being made up of three pillars: traditional conservatives, neo-conservatives, and libertarians. Each strain of conservatism is represented by a major political magazine. The National Review might be the most representative of traditional conservatives (although neo-conservative views are well represented), the Weekly Standard is dominated by neo-conservatives, and Reason magazine takes a libertarian position. Mr. Williamson does not hide his preference for traditional conservatism and his disdain of neo-conservatives. In reading this book one is not sure if Mr. Williamson has more hatred of the left or the neo-conservatives. Mr. Williamson would describe a true conservative as being the conservatism that grew out of the 19th/early 20th centuries. I believe that Mr. Williamson would be much more a fan of late 19th century populist William Jennings Bryant than say Theodore Roosevelt. To Mr. Williamson true conservatism is embodied with respect for tradition, distrust of big government and large corporations, faith, love of country, isolationist foreign policy, pragmatism, distrust of one size fits all theoretical solutions, and acceptance that each nation will have its own peculiar culture and institutions worth defending. Mr. Williamson summarized these as the values of "small town" America.
Mr. Williamson does not include a single writer from the neo-conservative movement, except perhaps Ann Coulter, ignoring the Kristols, David Horowitz, etc. He basically ignores the libertarians although he does include Hayek's Road to Serfdom. This bias against libertarians and neo-conservatives can be shown most illustratively in his exclusion of any writings from Milton Friedman in the Economics section, or Ayn Rand from his selection of fictional works.
I would recommend this book as it does go over some important works that might led to further exploration. But one has to keep in mind this is a work concentrating on one strain of the conservative movement. This branch of conservatism has seen its influence decline tremendously with the rise of the neo-conservatives. One can feel Mr. Williamson's anger and bitterness as he see his movement being hijacked by imposters or more dangerously a wolf in sheep's clothing.

15 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars An Eclectic Take, November 20, 2006

By 

thisisgibbie (Indianapolis) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Conservative Bookshelf: Essential Works That Impact Today's Conservative Thinkers (Paperback)

I find it strange that many in Europe and other parts of the world see the US as a right wing nation, far from it (besides, the term is outdated and belongs to the French Revolution). "The Conservative Bookshelf" by Chilton Williamson, Jr., is an eclectic take on American conservatism.

In this book, which is a commentary on selected works and people that have and may have influenced American conservatism, Williamson lays down his observations in his Introduction, where he tries to define conservatism and the political zeitgeist. He defines conservatism as "man's willingness to discern for himself, and to accept from God, a fundamental, practical, just, human, and unchangeable plan for man - and to stick with it." While Williamson plays into the language of many traditional conservatives, who are infact religious and put up with unclarified statements of religious sentiment, the question behind this quote is - what is the unchangeable plan for man? It should be noted that Williamson is a National Review "conservative" and a "conservative" Catholic of the National Review variety.

Being a Protestant, from a Whiggish Anglo background, I gravely dislike the subversive tendency by Williamson and other "conservative" Catholics (e.g. Neuhaus, though himself probably still a neo-con), who draw from American conservative history, subvert Protestants to make themselves look the right and try to co-opt the history for their own position (e.g. p. 85, 136, 159, 187, 298, etc.). Not understanding the full cultural history within its own context, Williamson is the outsider trying to play the insider (The great tragedy of contemporary Protestantism is that while its churches are going through an identity crisis, it is allowing others to write its history and change the story). I would point you to Williamson's review "Catholic Intellectuals and Conservative Politics in America: 1950 - 1985" from the National Review in 1994 for a more clarified reading on this man's position (It is also on the Web). One fatal error he makes is to position Patrick Buchanan as a mere pragmatist rightist. In fact, I think Buchanan, who is also Catholic, has a more proper understanding of the conservative American context and Constitutionalism, closer to Russell Kirk than the writer, and not a sentimental one like Williamson, who appears to be a rightist himself.

Williamson is closely tied to the group of "conservative" Catholic thinkers who took over The Chronicles magazine. Their philosophy comes from the minds of Thomas Fleming, John Lukacs, etc., who draw their conservatism more from Pope Leo XIII, John Courtenay Murray, Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and William F. Buckley, who is not really a paleocon, but mixes Burkian reflections with pre-modern continental yearnings (read European). True American conservatism has its roots back through the Republican, Whig and Federalist parties, the American British colonial period, which has its roots in Whiggish and Puritan England and back to the times of the Tudor and Elizabethan settlement. It is not continental conservatism of the Hapsburg variety. What Williamson and others miss is that the anti-Catholicism of the old days was a real concern for Protestants, particularly in England, who were conspired against by pope, Jesuits and others (not mere irrational bigotry). The threat was real. This ended in America, at least for liberal Protestants, when JFK announced that his loyalty was first to the country and not the pope - he then won West Virginia, Texas and the country in 1960. For conservatives, this tended to end with the co-struggle against the Stalinist anti-religion grip of America by the left and the endemic problem of abortion in the 1970s and 80s. You see, the outcome was political and not religious, which still is a dividing problem for orthodox Catholics and Protestants. Religion must be based upon orthodoxy, but this is a struggle in a pluralist society. Early America was by and large pluralist Protestant. A lack of definition by the Founding Fathers has both helped and hindered this situation.

Today, there is so much flip-flopping it is hard to tell who is what? Most are in the squishy mixed-up middle trying to get by in life. Traditionally, the laws of a people are grounded in religion, which is what Williamson really seems to be getting at but won't state it as the categorical solution. He most likely would want an American republic reconstituted away from traditional Protestant and 16th - 18th century British and American thought (particularly John Locke) to one redefined by Aristotelian logic and John Courtney Murray revisionism.

To give him credit, Williamson starts with The Bible as the first text in religion and then notes Cicero's Republic, Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Federalist Papers and lists those whom I would call really the last of the Old Conservatives: Garet Garrett, Whittaker Chambers, Samuel Francis and the last of the Old Conservative presidential contenders Robert Taft, who passed away in the gray suit years of the 50s (no these were not the conservative halcyon days that liberals falsely pose, with McCarthy on the brain). Read the chapters about Garet Garrett, Samuel Francis, and Patrick Buchanan for cultural clarifications. Another point that should be noted in the undertow is the isolationism of the old conservatives was not a "stay the heck away from me", head in the sand view that the Roosevelt Democrats projected onto them, but a long held principled view that went back to John Quincy Adams on not intervening around the world in a quagmire attempt to make other nations like us. Calmly consider this in juxtaposition to Buchanan and other's critiques of the current administration's seeking to democratize problem spots around the world. Conservatives must look at the muddling of this position with honesty. Yet, there is more than meets the eye in Iraq.

In addition, please read the review by Paula Craig, who represents the views of many people in contemporary America, a mixture of different positions - see how she wrestles with Williamson's anti-environmentalism and her own conservatism. This is not to say she is wrong, but to reflect how there are a variety of "conservative" and for that matter "liberal" social platforms today, a confederation of worldviews. This is due to the erosion of traditional culture and multi-culturalism, among other social changes. Besides, shouldn't conservatives be concerned about conservation?

Also read, Michael Kim's review, which shows how many today read conservatism. He is pretty accurate in his approximations. The neo-cons (or should I say, the neo-traditional liberals) and the Ayn Randian libertarians have also had their influence, but are not truly conservative, yet may hold to some sentiments. David Horowitz provides an important addition to the mix; I would call him a heterodox conservative. While not true to doctrine, he certainly is true to sentiment. His insight is important if you want to see how the far left think and act and how someone tries to make amends after being a destructive radical.

While this book lacks a true meta-narrative, it should still be a lesson and observation on political and worldview positions, without fear of politically correct repercussions, to teach one to read broadly and seek to understand other views, so that one can understand one's own position within an historical context; so that one can be consistent within one's own position. Williamson's book is a contemporary observation looking back on a worldview that is getting harder and harder to discern.