Commentarama Reading List (Part 1)

Today we unveil part one of the Commentarama Reading List. These are the top conservative/liberal fiction books you should know. Next time, I’ll do nonfiction books. Then we’ll finish with books you should know to be well-versed in our culture. Today’s list contains thirteen conservative and eight liberal fiction books that best represent the ideologies. These are well-known/influential books with strong messages about liberal and conservative principles -- even if that wasn’t the author’s intent. A couple will surprise you.

Interestingly, finding books that genuinely belong on the list was difficult. Lots of books include political messages on particular issues, but few truly represent the ideology. Also, breaking these down as liberal or conservative proved difficult, particularly as many authors intended something other than the message they ended up creating. So feel free to disagree with my selections and let me know what you think should be added or subtracted.... maybe we can get the list to 25? FYI, check (HERE) to see my criteria for separating them.

The Conservative Books

1. 1984, George Orwell (1948): Number one has to be 1984. Although Orwell was a socialist with communist sympathies, 1984 became the seminal anti-collectivist, anti-big government book. No other book so clearly expresses the nightmare of all-powerful government crushing the individual. 1984 also was ahead of its time, foreshadowing everything from political correctness to doublespeak to thoughtcrime to the surveillance society. . . Big Brother is watching. This is a must read for conservatives.

2. Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand (1957): A capitalist opus, Rand’s Shrugged graphically portrays the destruction of society by a government that takes from those who can to prop up those who can’t. If economic equations can be expressed as plot points, this novel does that. Singing the virtues of capitalism, competition and self-interest, this book proved prophetic as leftists have systematically tried to repeat the acts of her villains, always with the consequences she predicted. Shrugged is also unapologetic about the fact that socialism is not noble, it is theft and oppression.

3. Brave New World, Aldous Huxley (1931): Huxley is a bit of a contradiction. An extreme critic of the utopian visions of the 1930s, he was also an LSD user who fell for every whacko and mystical idea. Nevertheless, Brave New World is an essential companion to 1984. BNW replaces Big Brother’s government with a corporate “The World State,” but the effects are just as onerous as individuality is crushed to serve the collective good. Yet, unlike Orwell’s 1984, this crushing isn’t done by the government stick, it’s done by an endless supply of government carrots that placate and sedate the public. As Huxley explained, the civil libertarians who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

4. Animal Farm, George Orwell (1945): Animal Farm is an attack on Stalinism (which Orwell described as “ceaseless arrests, censored newspapers, prowling hordes of armed police”), but inadvertently tells us why no collectivist society will ever work. Without the possibility of personal profit, the animals become indifferent free riders who don’t work but expect to receive the benefit of everyone else’s labor. And the collectivist leaders quickly set themselves above the law, keeping the spoils of society for themselves and using cold-blooded murder to eliminate their opponents and suppress the population. All animals are equal, but some animals are indeed more equal than others.

5. The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand (1943): Rand’s Fountainhead brought the concept of objectivism to life. This book teaches that the only way for mankind to achieve its potential is to free individuals from the sabotaging/protectionist efforts of others. This is brought home brilliantly as a bevy of lesser architects struggle to prevent genius Howard Roark from achieving his potential and thereby exposing their own lack of talent. In essence, Rand argues that society should let people exercise their talents without restraint and let them succeed or fail on their own merits.

6. Lord of the Rings, J.R.R. Tolkien (1955) and The Chronicles of Narnia, C.S. Lewis (1950): I’ve lumped these together because they’re on the list for the same reasons. Both LOTR and Narnia are favorites of religious conservatives, though some groups complain about “pagan imagery.” But they make our list because they are more than just religious allegories: they advocate classic heroic/ethical values, i.e. the stuff the Greeks described as the noblest parts of humanity -- belief in honor and duty, self-sacrifice, friendship, loyalty, and staunch opposition to evil without trying to justify it as shades of gray. These books define the “personal responsibility” portion of conservative thinking.

7. To Kill A Mockingbird, Harper Lee (1960): Listing this as a conservative book may seem counter-intuitive as the Civil Rights Movement has been defined by the left as a liberal idea. But the values taught by Lee outline the conservative view of civil rights -- equality under the law for all individuals combined with moral persuasion to end discrimination. . . not the group rights of liberal thinking. Thus, this book's philosophy does not fit with liberal thinking. Indeed, if this book were published for the first time today, I suspect liberals would attack it as Uncle-Tom-like because of its passive acceptance of the world as it is, i.e. its failure to advocate a government solution.

8. The Trial, Franz Kafka (1925): Kafka is another socialist who gives us a reason to fear the consolidation of power. In particular, The Trial warns us against abandoning the rule of law. In this case, a man is arrested and prosecuted by a government which refuses to show itself to him and which refuses to reveal to him the nature of the crime for which he is being charged. This is more real than you would think.

9. Harry Potter, J.K. Rowling (1997): Yep. The Harry Potter series is packed with conservative themes. And while this isn’t a social commentary per se, it does a heck of a job promoting conservative values. For example, as I’ve noted before, the Harry Potter series promotes families, capitalism, individual responsibility, and it shows government to be bureaucratic, corrupt, abusive, manipulative and evil. The series also clearly recognizes the difference between good and evil and doesn’t fall into shades of gray or excusatory psychobabble. These books may not have the gravitas of Lord of the Rings, but their pro-conservative politics are even stronger and more obvious.

10. Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (1902): A deeply conservative writer, Conrad hated both socialism and direct democracy. Darkness is Conrad’s attack on colonialism and is about good and evil and the dangers to our souls of doing evil deeds. While modern liberals like to lump colonialism in with other supposed “conservative” crimes, its actual roots were liberal -- a utopian belief that government force used benevolently could make natives better people. That’s the same belief that later powered socialism.

11. Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury (1951): The left loves to accuse the right of book burning, primarily because the Nazis burned books and religious groups periodically try to ban one thing or another. But the Nazis were left-wing and the communists were equally guilty, though they were quieter about it. And in terms of modern thinking, it is the left that seeks to ban politically incorrect books, words and ideas from society. Thus, Fahrenheit is a conservative book as it attacks over-bearing governments that control their people by controlling what ideas they can know about.

12. Catch-22, Joseph Heller (1961): An anti-war novel about the marginalization of the individual, this book defined the modern view of bureaucracy. Unlike the darker 1984 and The Trial, Catch-22 explores the circular reasoning and absurdity of bureaucracy as the heroes encounter “no win situations” and “double blinds.” This book does have a counter-culture feel however, and could also be seen as liberal, but its theme is conservative.

13. The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, Robert A. Heinlein (1966): A novel about a lunar colony’s revolt against rule from Earth, with themes of “rational anarchy” and seeing government as non-existent except as the acts of self-responsible individuals, Heinlein’s Moon is considered one of the most influential libertarian novels of the last century. This book is credited with coining the phrase “there’s no free lunch.”

The Liberal Books

1. The Jungle, Upton Sinclair (1906): Jungle defines progressive politics as it exposes the corrupt practices of the American meatpacking industry and complains about the lack of social programs for the poor. Originally published in a socialist newspaper, Sinclair hoped this would encourage a welfare state. Much to his chagrin, the public focused only on his safety complaints about the meat packing industry and ignored his concerns about the poor.

2. All Quiet On The Western Front, Erich Maria Remarque (1928): As mentioned the other day, this book is liberal not because it’s anti-war, but because it’s anti-society. This book is anti-officer, anti-family, anti-church, and anti-traditional “heroic” values like honor, duty, self-sacrifice, courage, and friendship. It is the ultimate expression of selfishness, right down to the indifference to the suffering of their comrades. But this is also an excellent book and it became the prism through which modern society would see war.

3. Ulysses, James Joyce (1922): A retelling of the The Odyssey by avant-garde stream of consciousness writer Joyce, Ulysses dwells on the squalor and monotony of life in 1920s Dublin, Ireland. Originally banned as obscene because a character masturbates, this book was the crown jewel of the modernist movement which revolted against realism, tradition, the Enlightenment, and belief in God.

4. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (1939): The story of sharecropping “Okies” from Oklahoma who flee to California after the dust bowl, this story is leftist propaganda about the idealized working poor being exploited by the demonized rich. It advocates unions and the New Deal, though it complains that not enough money was spent by the benevolent government. Still, it’s a good book for understanding the historical context of the New Deal.

5. The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown (2003): On the surface, Code seems like nothing more than conspiratorial fiction. But this book highlights the recent style of attacks on traditional values by the left. This book takes a provably wrong theory that insultingly cuts to the core of Christian belief and presents it as fiction “based on” truth, i.e. it pretends it’s true without saying so. This book is the latest form of soft propaganda.

6. A Doll’s House, Henrik Ibsen (1879): Ibsen’s House is not only feminist propaganda, but it heralds the truly selfish thinking that dominates liberal thinking. Ibsen’s heroine not only rejects traditional society, but she walks out on responsibilities she’s undertaken, i.e. her children. Ibsen says he wasn’t trying to create “propaganda” for “the women’s rights movement,” but was instead trying to show the need of every individual to become the person they really are. And apparently that means abandoning your family to find yourself. Welcome to the 1960s. . . one hundred years early.

7. The Stand, Stephen King (1990): The Stand appears on some conservative book lists, but I suggest they look closer. The Stand is anti-capitalist, anti-American-society and deeply anti-military, which it shows to be enthusiastic murders. And while many Christians mistake its message for being pro-Christian, it actually advocates liberalism combined with meekness and mysticism as a substitute for religion.

8. Lord of the Flies, William Golding (1954): Conservatives believe people are good and can be moved to improvement with moral persuasion. Liberals believe people are evil and must be controlled by force. Flies makes the liberal list because it tells us that left on their own, children will become murderous animals for no particular reason, i.e. it views humans as inherently violent and evil.

Thoughts? Additions? Subtractions? Corrections?