The Unholy Trinity of American Conservative Books
There are three essential texts that I recommend people read to help them understand what real American conservatism means. These books are not nearly as offensive as they might seem at first glance, but to the average American on the right they contain lots of ideas that challenge a standard understanding of our history and its meaning. They are all available on Amazon relatively cheaply.
The Southern Tradition: The Achievement and limitations of American Conservatism by Eugene Genovese
It’s hard to explain exactly what this book is about, or why it’s so important. Genovese was a towering intellect and everything he wrote is worthy of consumption. This small book is a succinct distillation of what a real conservatism looks like in US history. We tend to identify conservatism with fusionist ideology instead of real things like land and culture. But there was a real conservative tradition, and it was an authentic culture. It’s mostly gone now but you can find it if you look, you just need to know what you’re looking for. One of the big problems is that Conservative Inc has been heavily influenced by Yankee ideology and has distanced itself from the South. This book is a good antidote to that.
The Glittering Illusion: English Sympathy for the Southern Confederacy by Sheldon Vanauken
This book is entirely forgotten and its viewpoint is highly controversial. The author also wrote a much more famous book entitled “A Severe Mercy.” But this small tome is basically about why the English upper class didn’t intervene in the US Civil War. As far as I can tell his thesis is correct but basically ignored in discussions about the English and the war for southern independence. This book helps contemporary readers understand what was really at stake from a conservative perspective. Many leftists will laugh at that and say “see we told you, Conservatives are racist.” But the real problem with so much of the left/right culture war isn’t race, it’s natural hierarchy vs ideological equality. This isn’t a book about the lost cause, rather it’s about how traditional conservatism had its last stand against Lincoln. The English understood what was at stake, and it wasn’t racism, what was being fought for was more complicated than that. Yes the southern hierarchy was in part racist, but ultimately what can’t be countenanced from the left is any form of hierarchy. This book is helpful for reframing our history from a more conservative vantage point.
The Confederate Constitution of 1861: An inquiry into American Constitutionalism by Marshall DeRosa
This is a very important book for understanding our own constitution. DeRosa makes no apologies for slavery or racism, what he does is explicate the truth about what these men believed concerning politics, power, and government. He’s completely honest about the issues regarding slavery. None of these books purport to be lost cause works, they don’t romanticize the old south or try to pretend that slavery and racism aren’t in play. They are in play, that was what happened. But DeRosa helps us get a clearer vision of what a Conservative American politics looks like philosophical. And this vision could help us make real progress in our own day, it’s much more rigorous in its consequential thinking about political order. This is something we rarely do anymore, if at all. Our political thinking is mired in what we want rather than what is, there is relatively no contemplation anymore just reacting. The CSA constitution was one of the most important documents in our history, whether we like it our not and understanding it helps us better understand ourselves.
If you don’t have time to collect and read those books you can essentially pick up what you need to from one book: the politically incorrect guide to the constitution by Kevin Gutzman.
The politically incorrect guides typically are good popular level introductions to their subject matter, by Gutzman did an incredible job making a concise guide that explains pretty much everything the contemporary right and left get wrong about the constitution.