Conservatism 101
“[They] play a highly focused game of intellectual entrepreneurship.
By strategically leveraging their resources... [they have] engineered
the rise of a right-wing intelligentsia that has come to wield enormous
influence in national policy debates.”
~David Callahan, “Liberal Policy’s Weak Foundations,” The Nation,
November 13, 1995
Welcome to the Horn Online Library of Traditional Conservatism!
Like the rest of RyanHorn.com, this area of my site is meant to serve as a
resource to guide young people (or anyone) in their self-education of
classic conservative thought. It is to help us better understand the
economic, political, and spiritual values that sustain a free and
virtuous society.
Put more succinctly, our mission is to make Mr. Callahan’s paranoid
fantasy a reality.
What you will find below is a simple and general course of study,
accompanied by links to resources that are essential to preparing a
conservative mind for the 21st Century. I call it simple because it is
easy to follow, and general because the specifics on how to proceed can
be adapted to fit the individual student. Because of this, what you get
out of it depends entirely on you.
Where to begin:
Before you go to the library or used bookstore to hunt down a
first edition of Barry Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative,
visit the Leadership Institute and read Morton
Blackwell’s famous
speech “Read to Lead.”
Morton lays out the best case I have seen, not only for why
learning the classics is so important, but also how to begin. It is a
quick read too. I read it in his office lobby as I waiting to meet him.
Next, take a moment to read Mortimer Adler’s article “How to Mark
a Book.” It tells you how to get the most out of your
reading. It’s similar to the system
I used to retain what I read in The
Federalist Papers, and to stay
awake during I Rigoberta Menchu.
At some later date, you might also consider a taking a look at
the Adler Archive
or some
of his other books.
For 60
years Adler was America’s leading educator and a founder of the Great
Books Program.
Enroll at “Conservative University”
The American Conservative Union Foundation (ACUF) provides one of
the best online classrooms for conservative thinking. It also offers
for-credit courses and a discussion forum.
There is no need to replicate the whole thing here so my advice