I decided to embrace my newfound identity as a conservative, which, for me, means finding a reading list and ploughing through it. In my searches for lists, I have come across this brilliant syllabus for a course titled “Conservatism in America” by a professor at Appalachian State University.
You can see this is a great prof by looking at how many office hours he has and when they are scheduled. Appalachian State had really good professors in the Humanities. There’s something deeply great about their hiring policy.
Clarissa's Blog 
The father of a longtime friend of friend of mine taught English at Appalachian State, until his death in 1965. I am glad that they still take Humanities seriously there.
Sadly, I learned this morning that Howard University is shutting down their Classics program, which gave us Toni Morrison.
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That’s so sad! I thought Howard was very good. What’s happening?
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American higher education seems to be in decay.
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Clarissa. I think you would enjoy G. K. Chesterton. He was someone who did literary criticism and detective stories. Also, his brand of conservative did not fit into the obvious categories. He is one of those writers whom I am never really sure what position they are going to take.
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I love Chesterton! He was a permitted author in the USSR, strangely enough.
I discovered Russell Kirk a few days ago. What a brilliant writer!
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Hart’s Making of the Conservative Mind (which is listed) is very worthwhile for its insider account of the politics of National Review. I just finished reading Robert Bork’s Slouching Toward Gomorrah. It is frightening how well Bork understood, back in the 90s, what it would mean that every person should be able to define their own existence and have it accepted by society.
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Oh, this looks like just the kind of reading I’m looking for! Thank you, it’s going on my list.
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You are absolutely right, it’s a most excellent reading list. I’ll get to it, right now.
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I’d be really interested in what you think about Eric Voegelin’s work. He’s perhaps too ancient for your tastes, but far as I know, he’s ground zero for the “modern politics is religion” line of critique, and has a really interesting line of thought that attacks the subject as religion rather than as hipocrisy.
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