Now that the semester is almost over, a brief follow up to the discussion about the place of conservatism in the university . . . . . . reading this piece about Donald Livingston and the Abbeville Institute got me thinking: what new books about conservative thought would it be beneficial for interested students to read? I’m going to give these a shot over the next month: The Tyranny of Liberalism, Reappraising the Right, and The Conservatives. And don’t miss Professor Livingston’s article about David Hume and the conservative tradition. This is his contention: “conservatism is a critique of ideology in politics, or what Oakeshott called ‘rationalism in politics,’ and that Hume was the first to offer a systematic philosophical critique of ideology. He was also the first to explore its dynamic in an historical event.”
