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).
Going to Lemmy and asking this is like going to Truth.Social and asking about resources for helping trans teens.
No… Around here people will actually talk shop on doctrine…
Truth social is where red blooded strong american men jerk each others dicks to maintain hi T levels.
We are not the same,jpeg
True, which is why I started my first paragraph with this :D
I came to Lemmy since it’s the only such platform I trust to be inhabited by real benevolent people with useful recommendations. But the bias is obviously there.
Still, I got a lot of useful reads.
I think this is a little disingenous. Plenty of leftists are academics who have studied economic/political theory. If you’re already willing to put yourself through reading Marx, you’re probably also the type who’s willing to read Milton.
Others have weighed in on the academic, but a lot of the American conservative braintrust is (literally) in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, John Birch Society, etc. These organizations vary from “pretty right wing” Heritage to “nearly literally fascist” John Birch Society, and they put out a LOT of papers and material they use to…I’ll generously say “inform” the public discourse.
Thanks! Will check them out. Useful to get closer to sources everyday conseratives lean to
Have you already read through Plan 2025? It’s kinda the latest huge report from the Heritage Foundation, and I’d say it does a pretty good job of outlining modern right-wing ideology. It can definitely be a hard read though, some of the things they want are really stomach churning to me.
Planned to go take a read, didn’t do it yet
Oh, you wanted that, too? Shoot, I’ll save you some trouble:
- These three below are the academic powerhouses of conservatism. The Heritage Foundation (and their news arm, The Daily Signal) are your standard rage-bait, but they still put out influential stuff)
- Heritage Foundation (Project 2025 folks)
- Cato Institute—Actually more Libertarian, and has praised Biden before, but generally sides with conservatives
- American Enterprise Institute
- Family Research Council—They hate abortion and everything to do with it. The Washington Stand is their news arm.
- Alliance Defense Fund—Current Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, used to work for these ghouls as a lawyer.
That’s all I got off the top of my head. I used to have RSS feeds of all of these organizations, but reading their headlines was infuriating. It was like a shot of hate every time they popped up. So, if I’m looking for arguments, I know where to go, otherwise, out of sight out of mind.
Thanks! Yes, I see how this might be infuriating Took a glance over Project 2025, it’s not just wrong and dystopian, it’s literally self-contradictory, sometimes in the same paragraphs.
Like when they say that free competition generally reduces costs of healthcare, but then the literal next paragraph saying government should allow prices to soar to “foster innovation” - like, make up your mind! And then proceeding to say that insurance ends up in a lot of “unnecessary” appointments and that healthcare should be everyone’s own financial responsibility.
And a lot of similar examples of self-contradictory and dystopian stuff carefully covered in positive wording.
- These three below are the academic powerhouses of conservatism. The Heritage Foundation (and their news arm, The Daily Signal) are your standard rage-bait, but they still put out influential stuff)
There’s an episode of Behind the Bastards touching on the subject - “How Conservatism Won”. Not a right-wing resource at all, obviously, but that’s where a lot of the money goes indeed.
Yep it’s a great one. Knowledge Fight talks about JBS all the time as well
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
Great! Something to definitely check out Thanks
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!
Maybe check out Matt McManus’s work, he’s a professor at the University of Michigan.
Thanks!
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.
I will have to preface this with the fact that I have not read any of his books, but former British politician Rory Stewart is one of the people that comes to my mind when reading your description. I don’t think that he comes to the right policy positions, of course, but whenever I listen to him he does seem to at least have a degree of empathy for all people. He seems to at least generally see the problem even if I think that his solution wouldn’t work. He has an effective way with words in interviews and his writing is generally very well reviewed too.
Might be useful when taking popular side of it, thanks!
He isn’t really right wing though, he is from a different Tory faction which failed to tap into much of any power in the past few governments. Politics on the Edge gave good insight into his time as an MP and his roles during the period, but he didn’t justify or go into much detail about what being on the right (centre right for him, really) truly means.
I’m not sure that makes him not right wing, surely that just means he wasn’t the kind of right wing that succeeded in the political landscape of the UK in the past 20ish years? His voting record is generally in favour of less regulation (outside of a few issues), lower taxes, military intervention, isolation from the EU. He’s pro-environmentalist, but that hasn’t always been an exclusively left-wing thing. Similarly, anarchists and Marxist-Leninists are both left wing, even if they wouldn’t necessarily get along well in a single political party together
There are many left-wing people who were for leaving the EU, so I wouldn’t use that as a measuring stick of left/right.
His voting record is something he has covered; a lot of these votes which make him seem particularly bad (I’m not a big fan of his, despite having read The Place In Between - before I knew who he was - and Politics on the Edge) but from times when people were whipped or ‘encouraged’ to vote a particular way. We found out what happened when he did go against the whip, with even Nicholas Soames feeling that wrath.
Edit: my first sentence in my previous post can be misinterpreted. My meaning is that he isn’t very (strongly) right wing, not that he isn’t right wing at all, as he clearly is centre-right at his most ‘left’.
Fair enough. The whip is a reasonable point to bring up, though I would suggest that if it bothered him that much he wouldn’t have stayed in the party for ten years. After all, he had switched parties beforehand. I get where you’re coming from though.
The first name that came to mind was Thomas Sowell
Second time I hear this name, should check out! Thanks!
Probably more right-wing than you’re looking for, but The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt. Insightful on how these people think, and much more readable than works by some Nazi philosophers I could mention. Also if you’re interested in a good deconstruction of far right views, I highly recommend Neoreaction a Basilisk by Elizabeth Sandifer
Thanks!
If I recall from the Alt-Right Playbook’s Origins of Conservatism video, some of the early founders of conservative thought you might want to read include:
- Edmund Burke
- Thomas Hobbes
- Joseph DeMaistre
Thanks!
All of that guys videos are extremely well sourced. You can find a lot of good links in the descriptions of his videos.
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
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
Thanks! If I’m not mistaken, Thomas Sowell, who is often cited under the post, changed to the right-wing after discussions with Chicago students - must be quite solid.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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?
inteletually bankdupt
Sounds about right, misspellings and all.
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.
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.
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.
OP, this guy has given you an honest answer that is actually good material.
Seconding these recommendations.
Love the name
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
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.
