The December 19th issue of National Review was a special 50th anniversary issue and included reviews of ten books that "advanced the cause of conservatism and of freedom in general." Here's the list:
The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom
Suicide of the West by James Burnham
Free to Choose: A Personal Statement by Milton and Rose Friedman
Crisis of the House Divided : An Interpretation of the Issues in the Lincoln-Douglas Debates by Harry V. Jaffa
Modern Times Revised Edition: World from the Twenties to the Nineties by Paul Johnson
Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 by Charles Murray
Rationalism in Politics and Other Essays by Michael Oakeshott
The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles by Thomas Sowell
The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe
Richard Pipes pens the review of Suicide of the West and includes this gem:
Liberal philosophy, which originated in the Enlightenment era, produces "ideological thinking," the distinguishing quality of which is to regard those who oppose it as either stupid or malicious. For a liberal, if doctrine and reality clash, reality "must give way." Hence no true dialogue with a liberal is possible: His thinking cannot be refuted either by logic or by evidence.
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