I know Lemmy isn’t normally the best place to search for this, but are there any high-quality right-wing explainers, or modern books, or media outlets?
I myself am ultra-left (quite literally communist, to the dictionary sense of the word), but I’d like to quit the bubble that inevitably forms around and look at good arguments of the opposing side, if there are any.
Is there anything in there beyond temporarily embarrassed millionaires and fears that trans people will destroy humanity? Is there rational analysis, something closer to academic research, behind modern ideas of laissez-faire capitalism and/or political conservatism?
I’ve tried outlets like PragerU, but they are so basic they seem to target a very uncritical audience.
I’d like to see the world in the eyes of an enlightened right-winger, and see where they possibly fail (or if suddenly they have valid arguments).
Yes! I’ve been on this journey!
Thomas Sowell’s bibliography is easily the best starting place. Just pick something and have at it. As a prominent conservative economist, his books actually make good arguments. It takes actual effort to deconstruct his arguments and identify where he’s wrong. He’s widely and highly respected in conservative communities and tackles a lot of the common cultural war issues.
Then there’s granddaddies Milton Friedman and F.A. Hayek. Also economists, they were directly impacted by the Cold War, and make intellectual cases that capitalism is the only economic system that leads to real individual freedom. And they also try to prove why the totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and every lesser species of it undermines liberty. Hayek’s Road to Serfdom and Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom are staples.
Castigated by modern conservatives because they’re not serious about anything, sociology’s Emile Durkheim is a cornerstone of the discipline. I’ve never read it, but his book *Suicide *concerns individuals within community and the institutions of it. He talks about a type of suicide derived from moral disorder and lack of clarity, anomic suicide.
One book that I found incredibly insightful was Yuval Levin’s The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left. This book is genuinely fair to both sides, and it shows the historical roots of conservatism and its relation to the French Revolution, when the right and the left as political stances first became a thing.