Summer Reading List

 Now that summer is winding down, the days are shortening, and Labor Day is around the bend, it’s a good time to take stock of where we are.  On one of her recent podcasts, Megyn Kelly mentioned that she thought that Labor Day was a better day for a fresh start than New Year’s Day.   Those of us still stuck in the circadian rhythm of an academic calendar so many years later tend to agree.  Labor Day marks a “back to business” turn of the calendar after barbeques, beaches and long, soft, languorous evenings.

And as we head into fall, it seems that our society as we once knew it is being shaken to the core, values are being inverted, the elite and the criminal class are being protected, encased in protective cocoons, while the rest of us are being bullied, taxed, intimidated, and, in our inner cities, actually assaulted be the criminal class.  Institutions that we thought inviolate—the F.B.I., CDC, and our school systems from K-12 to higher education have been hijacked.   Drag queens and school librarians, and the medical profession sexualize our young children, and in the most egregious government absurdity, millions of illegals cross our border unimpeded and with them loads of deadly fentanyl while New York makes it illegal for anyone under 21 to purchase whipped cream in a canister.

There are days, I am sure, that, like me, you are trying to figure out what, exactly is going on.  These are the books that I recommend to help sort things out and restore your sanity—or at least help you understand that your disorientation is warranted.

The War on the West by Douglas Murray

Douglas Murray has emerged as a leading public intellectual and a worthy heir to the position left void after the death of William F. Buckley.   I find it terribly ironic that the leading intellectuals defending Western democracy and culture are NOT American (see Yoram Hyzony below).   I list Murray’s short, succinct and very readable book as indispensable for an understanding of what we are up against—a serious attack on the West as we have seen since WWII. 

               “In other words, it may be worth recognizing what we are up against when we hear the critics of the West today.  For just as we are not up against justice, but rather up against vengeance, so we are not truly up only against proponents of equality, but also against those who hold a pathological desire for destruction.”

If you only have time to read one, this is it.

The Dying Citizen: How Progressive Elites, Tribalism, and Globalization are Destroying the Idea of America by Victor Davis Hanson

Hanson has been deeply concerned about this revolutionary movement, a Democratic party that resembles the Soviet apparatus more closely than the working man’s Democratic party of a generation or two ago.  He cites the globalist pretensions of the elite, the open and unsymmetric trade with China, open borders and a huge unelected and powerful bureaucracy as some of the forces that are eroding America’s uniqueness. 

               “When American companies outsource their jobs overseas, the American worker usually becomes weaker, not stronger.  When elites enjoy trillions of dollars in joint-venture investments in China, they are less, not more, likely to speak out against authoritarian Chinese anti-Americanism.  When the international community seeks to establish climate change canons for the United States without a constitutionally mandated treaty, the US Congress becomes weaker, not stronger.”

Hanson’s book, along with his podcasts, keep you anchored and aware of how far we have drifted from our unified sense and purpose as a nation, as well as from Constitutional norms.

Conservatism: A Rediscovery by Yoram Hazony

Hazony’s book is among the most thought provoking and enlightening to me.   I’ve struggled to decide whether I am a conservative or a libertarian, a conservative with libertarian leanings, or a libertarian with conservative leanings, and I suspect I am not alone in that regard.  Hazony, an Israeli, helped me clarify those issues and makes a compelling case as to why Jeffersonian liberalism left the door open to this neo-Marxist wave we are experiencing.   Hazony emphasizes the need for the US to return to its Christian roots (with accommodation for Judaism) a premise with which I agree.  The erosion of Christianity has allowed Wokeism to move in as a competing religion.

Live Not by Lies: A Manual for Christian Dissidents by Rod Dreher

Dreher’s book is also very short and readable.  The title taken from the quote by Aleksander Solzenitsyn, Dreher warns of the soft totalitarian encroachment by the radical Left.  Like Hazony, Dreher sees a return to Christianity as a pillar against this encroachment:

Communism had a particular ideological vision that required it to destroy traditions, including traditional Christianity.  Nothing outside the communist order could be allowed to exist…. This is why Hannah Arendt described the totalitarian personality as “the completely isolated human being.”  A person duc off from history is a person who is almost powerless against power.

Reading Dreher, you will see why the neo-communists are eager to rewrite history (The 1619 Project) and tear down and deface our statues.

Now, it you’d rather ingest this by way of fiction, there is none other than Lionel Shriver.  She is far and away my favorite living fiction writer.

The Mandibles: A Family 2029-2047 by Lionel Shriver

Published in 2016, before COVID and the coming of the Biden, her novel centers around a US debt crisis, and collapse of the US economy, and the ensuing social collapse and rise of an authoritarian government.  It is frighteningly prescient as some people escape to outlying states (Nevada) to attempt to put themselves beyond the reach of an authoritarian US government.

While I highly recommend The Mandibles, Should We Stay or Should We Go and The Motion of the Body Through Space also are excellent products of Shriver’s sharp, incisive mind.

I know I may have gotten this backwards---putting out the summer reading list at summer’s end, but these selections promise to enlighten you in the coming chilly autumn evenings.