So the 2023 Christmas season is about to do the annual post-Christmas fade.

Which in turn means the New Year arrives with a whole year ahead in which, this presidential election year of 2024, to read or re-read some of the classic tomes of conservatism.

My list:

1. Where’s the Rest of Me? The Ronald Reagan Story by Ronald Reagan and Richard G. Hubler.

Designed to introduce then-actor Reagan to the public as a political figure in advance of his 1966 race for Governor of California, this is Reagan’s autobiography up until that time. Included are his years growing up in small-town Dixon, Illinois, his time at Eureka College and a recounting of how his radio broadcasting career began. The latter leading eventually to movies and a Hollywood career. It not coincidentally covers his discovery of conservatism and his path to the political right. The title of the book comes from a line of Reagan dialogue in the movie King’s Row, where his character awakens to find his legs missing, yelling “Where’s the Rest of Me?”  Since the book was published in 1965, there is no reference to what Americans and the world now know of what would follow in Reagan’s then already remarkable career. (READ MORE from Jeffrey Lord: Colorado’s Fascist Four Unify GOP Behind Trump)

2. The Conscience of a Conservative by Senator Barry Goldwater. 

This was the instant classic from 1960 when the Arizona Republican Senator was on the rise. Having, unsought, been put into nomination for president at the 1960 Republican National Convention that was overwhelmingly for then-Vice President Richard Nixon, Goldwater was granted speaking time from the podium to address the delegates and the nationally televised audience beyond.

Writing in National Review in 2018, NR’s Neal Freeman recalled that moment and wrote:

Fifty-eight years ago this summer, delegates to the Republican National Convention were jolted to their feet not by their ideologically hermaphroditic nominee, Richard M. Nixon, but by a handsome, jut-jawed senator from Arizona named Barry M. Goldwater. His words rang through the hall and across the country and then down through the years: “Let’s grow up, conservatives,” he growled.

The campaign that began that night and culminated four years later with the capture of one of the world’s great political parties was, from the beginning to almost the end, a National Review production. Brent Bozell, my predecessor as NR’s Washington correspondent, ghostwrote Goldwater’s book, The Conscience of a Conservative. It became the best-selling campaign book of all time and gave Goldwater a national persona. Our publisher, William Rusher, became the indomitable force behind the Draft Goldwater Committee. (For more than six months, every time I ran into Goldwater he would bark at me, “Freeman, tell Rusher to knock it off.” Bill Rusher, even his warmest friends would agree, was not a man to knock things off: Indeed, one of the most-quoted of Rusher’s Rules for Living decreed: “When you find a good thing, run it into the ground.”) William Buckley, known around the office with only a dash of irony as Fearless Leader, became the most compelling public advocate for our occasionally inarticulate and more than occasionally gaffe-prone candidate.

Conscience of a Conservative was an instant classic. And as the 2024 election season begins in earnest with a mega-battle for the GOP nomination, it is decidedly worth the read.

3. The Road to Serfdom by F.A. Hayek.

Initially published in 1944 when Socialism was seriously in vogue, Hayek and his staunch support for classical, free market economics was quite notably standing against the flood times of the left. There were a pauper-like  2,000 editions first published, which were, tellingly,  instantly sold out. Amazon says

within six months more than 30,000 books were sold. In April 1945, Reader’s Digest published a condensed version of the book, and soon thereafter the Book-of-the-Month Club distributed this edition to more than 600,000 readers. A perennial best seller, the book has sold 400,000 copies in the United States alone and has been translated into more than twenty languages, along the way becoming one of the most important and influential books of the century.

4. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman.

Over there at Amazon Friedman’s classic is described as follows:

One of the most significant works of economic theory ever written, from the “outstanding [and] unfailingly enlightening” Milton Friedman (Newsweek).

One of Time magazine’s All-Time 100 Best Nonfiction Books

One of Times Literary Supplement’s 100 Most Influential Books Since the War

One of National Review’s 100 Best Nonfiction Books of the Century

One of Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 50 Best Books of the 20th Century

How can we benefit from the promise of government while avoiding the threat it poses to individual freedom? In this classic book, Milton Friedman provides the definitive statement of an immensely influential economic philosophy — one in which competitive capitalism serves as both a device for achieving economic freedom and a necessary condition for political freedom.

First published in 1962, Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom is one of the most significant works of economic theory ever written. Enduring in its eminence and esteem, it has sold nearly a million copies in English, has been translated into eighteen languages, and continues to inform economic thinking and policymaking around the world. This new edition includes prefaces written by Friedman for both the 1982 and 2002 reissues of the book, as well as a new foreword by Binyamin Appelbaum, lead economics writer for the New York Times editorial board.”

5. Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis by Ludwig von Mises.

Amazon describes this classic from a central figure in the famous school of Austrian economics this way:

This masterwork is much more than a refutation of the economics of socialism (although on that front, nothing else compares). It is also a critique of the implicit religious doctrines behind Western socialist thinking, a cultural critique of socialist teaching on sex and marriage, an examination of the implications of radical human inequality, an attack on war socialism, and refutation of collectivist methodology. In short, Mises set out to refute socialism, and instead yanked out the egalitarian mentality from its very roots. For that reason, Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis led dozens of famous intellectuals, including a young F.A. Hayek, into a crisis of faith and a realist/libertarian political orientation. All the collectivist literature combined cannot equal the intellectual achievement of this one volume.

There are other classics out there like these five. Plenty to keep a reader busy in 2024. But without doubt, having a real understanding that what is written in these classics will play a very real role in the arguments surrounding the 2024 presidential election and its candidates is seriously important.

Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year — and Happy Reading!

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