Intellectual Takeout is probably one of my favorite mental punch-outs on social media — quick blurbs, thought provoking, and easily shared. This evening’s edition as I smoke my pipe tobacco, sip on a scotch and read Gordon’s Wood’s The Creation of the American Republic? Six Books to fix the West, based on a 1993 talk by none other than Catholic apologist Peter Kreeft:
1. The Abolition of Man, by C.S. Lewis
2. Lost in the Cosmos, by Walker Percy
3. Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis
4. The Everlasting Man, by G.K. Chesterton
5. Orthodoxy, by G.K. Chesterton
6. Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley
Truth be told? I wouldn’t assign any of these books… not a single one.
If you haven’t figured this part out yet, there’s a certain ennui among conservatives nowadays as they watch what they had thought to be assumed canon crumble between the twin weights of progressive socialism on the left and populism/nationalism on the right. Conservatives — long thinking they were the inheritors of three ancient traditions: classical liberalism, agrarianism, and traditionalism — are discovering that we are indeed a minority in a sea of appetites.
Hell. As I’m writing this, what are people watching? Wrestlemania. Go figure…
So which six books would your humble writer recommend (barring the obvious choices such as The Bible)? If someone had to really pin me back, it would be these… and in this order:
1. St. Thomas Aquinas on Politics and Ethics, trans. by Paul Sigmund
The cord that links the Scottish Enlightenment to the late Catholic Scholastics is a slender but firm one, one that refuted the “divine right of kings” and positive law in favor of the natural law. Rights are not civil rights, but natural rights, stemming from one’s Creator rather than held as a gift of a king. It was St. Thomas Aquinas who crystallized the concept of natural law against positive law:
On the other hand laws may be unjust in two ways: first, by being contrary to human good, through being opposed to the things mentioned above–either in respect of the end, as when an authority imposes on his subjects burdensome laws, conducive, not to the common good, but rather to his own cupidity or vainglory–or in respect of the author, as when a man makes a law that goes beyond the power committed to him–or in respect of the form, as when burdens are imposed unequally on the community, although with a view to the common good. The like are acts of violence rather than laws; because, as Augustine says (De Lib. Arb. i, 5), “a law that is not just, seems to be no law at all (lex iniusta non est lex).” Wherefore such laws do not bind in conscience, except perhaps in order to avoid scandal or disturbance, for which cause a man should even yield his right, according to Matthew 5:40-41: “If a man . . . take away thy coat, let go thy cloak also unto him; and whosoever will force thee one mile, go with him other two.” (ST, I-II, Q96, A4)
Other thinkers such as John of Salisbury and Duns Scotus would refine the Thomistic concept of rights in a polity, but it would be Aquinas who would offer the foundations that men such as Suarez, Grotius, Locke, and the Scottish Enlightenment would all build upon.
2. Reflections on the Revolution in France, by Edmund Burke
Once upon a time, it was remarked to me that if you have not read this book, you are not a conservative. I bristled… mostly because I do not self-identify as a Burkean. That having been said, the comment spurred me to re-read this remarkable book. He was right, especially as the progressive movement rose to replace the sclerosis that has come to represent modern halfway-house liberalism.
To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of power; teach obedience and the work is done. To give freedom is still more easy. It is not necessary to guide; it only requires to let go the rein. But to form a free government; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought, deep reflection, a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind. This I do not find in those who take the lead in the National Assembly. Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient as they appear. I rather believe it. It would put them below the common level of human understanding. But when the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people. If any of them should happen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly limited, and defined with proper qualifications, he will be immediately outbid by his competitors, who will produce something more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be raised of his fidelity to his cause. Moderation will be stigmatized as the virtue of cowards; and compromise as the prudence of traitors; until, in hopes of preserving the credit which may enable him to temper, and moderate, on some occasions, the popular leader is obliged to become active in propagating doctrines, and establishing powers, that will afterwards defeat any sober purpose at which he ultimately might have aimed…
3. Common Sense, by Thomas Paine
It might surprise folks to learn that — by the numbers — Common Sense remains the single greatest bestseller in American history. Of a population of 2.5 million, Paine’s pamphlet sold over 120,000 copies in the first three months and 500,000 copies in Europe and America. To date, it still holds the pound-for-pound championship for the best selling American book.
How influential was it? Before January 1776, the word “independence” barely escaped the lips of even the most hardened patriot. George Washington still toasted the British king before his officers in the Continental Army. Most Americans wanted reconciliation with the Mother Country rather than outright separation — a restoration of their rights as Englishmen. Paine destroyed all hopes of reconciliation among those who earnestly believed that their rights required the final argument of kings… and in the American instance, the argument of republics. In mere weeks, patriots went from being excessive in their patriotism to being castigated by citizens for moving too slowly towards the inevitable. Thus the power of an idea whose time had come:
Immediate necessity makes many things convenient, which if continued would grow into oppressions. Expedience and right are different things. When the calamities of America required a consultation, there was no method so ready, or at that time so roper, as to appoint persons from the several Houses of Assembly for that purpose; and the wisdom with which they have proceeded hath preserved this Continent from ruin. But as it is more than probable that we shall never be without a CONGRESS, every well wisher to good order, must own, that the mode for choosing members of that body, deserves consideration. And I put it as a question to those who make a study of mankind, whether representation and election is not too great a power for one and the same body of men to possess? When we are planning for posterity, we ought to remember that virtue is not hereditary.
4. The Law, by Frederic Bastiat
There is frankly no better one-volume to define the role of liberty in the face of its enemies than Bastiat’s short pamphlet on the matter. Paraphrasing the words of Ludwig von Mises, one is either a socialist or an individualist — there is no in between.
Socialism, like the ancient ideas from which it springs, confuses the distinction between government and society. As a result of this, every time we object to a thing being done by government, the socialists conclude that we object to its being done at all. We disapprove of state education. Then the socialists say that we are opposed to any education. We object to a state religion. Then the socialists say that we want no religion at all. We object to a state-enforced equality. Then they say that we are against equality. And so on, and so on. It is as if the socialists were to accuse us of not wanting persons to eat because we do not want the state to raise grain.
5. The Constitution of Liberty, by Frederich von Hayek
More than Hayek’s perhaps more famous The Road to Serfdom which argued that nationalism was not a mere argument against socialism, but a natural slide when the precepts of classical liberalism are eroded (and merely a question as to whom the collective Leviathan will benefit), the Constitution of Liberty was Hayek’s later and more intensive study on the topic. Not a short book… but then again if you’ve stuck with the program this long, you can hack at this without much of a problem.
The argument for liberty is not an argument against organization, which is one of the most powerful means that human reason can employ, but an argument against all exclusive, privileged, monopolistic organization, against the use of coercion to prevent others from trying to do better. Every organization is based on given knowledge; organization means commitment to a particular aim and to particular methods, but even organization as the knowledge and beliefs on which its design rests are true. And if any facts contradict the beliefs on which the structure of the organization is based, this will become evident only in its failure and supersession by a different type of organization. Organization is therefore likely to be beneficial and effective so long as it is voluntary and is imbedded (sic) in a free sphere and will either have to adjust itself to circumstances not taken into account in its conception or fail. To turn the whole of society into a single organization built and directed according to a single plan would be to extinguish the very forces that shaped the individual human minds that planned it.
6. The Decay and Restoration of Civilization, by Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer is an early read in my formative years. His Reverence For Life — “I am life that wills to live in the midst of life that wills to live” — is a profound thought indeed, and has informed much of my own pro-life activism and my political thought. Schweitzer was a Protestant thinker, though perhaps not a theologian, but a man who chose to live apart both from German militarism under the Kaiser and National Socialism under Hitler. The man was truly a polymath, a Renaissance man well beyond his era. Schweitzer had a profound insight on the problems facing modern man, years before Fr. Romano Guardini identified the same problems in his The End of the Modern World. Schweitzer’s solution was simple… almost too simple:
Another great difficulty in the way of regeneration of our civilization lies in the fact that it must be an internal process, and not an external as well, and that, therefore, there is no place for healthy co-operation between the material and the spiritual…. The renewal of civilization has nothing to do with movements which bear the character of experiences of the crowd; these are never anything but reactions to external happenings. But civilization can only revive when there shall come into being in a number of individuals a new tone of mind independent of the one prevalent among the crowd and in opposition to it, a tone of mind which will gradually win influence over the collective one, and in the end determine its character. It is only an ethical movement which can rescue us from the slough of barbarism, and the ethical comes into existence only in individuals.
…and there it is. Hold firm, remain in prayer, find like minded friends, take up your pen and write.
So those are my six. Feel free to share yours!
