I realize that there is a lot to know that I don't.....

Don't be conservative, just be Catholic.

Check out Belloc's The Servile State.

Thank you for that reminder. Not all conservative positions are compatible with the truth of the Church.

Is this a request for some suggestions?

GKC

Yes, please GKC.

Right Gherkin.
I'm not seeking to modify my position overall but am simply curious..... I'm rethinking Crunchy Cons by Rod Dreher and he makes some historical claims I wan't to verify.....

I tend to run to the classics.

You don't get more classic than Russell Kirk's THE CONSERVATIVE MIND. Seminal, from a traditionalist who became RC.

While I have some other systematizing approaches toward conservationism, that center more on the European sphere, I don't know where they are. I don't know where lots of things are.

With a focus on American conservatism, Nash/THE CONSERVATIVE INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENT IN AMERICA, East/THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT, Hart/THE MAKING OF THE AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE MIND. Of possible particular interest, Allitt/CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS AND CONSERVATIVE POLITICS IN AMERICA, 1950-1985.

Meyers (ed.)/WHAT IS CONSERVATISM is a short, useful collection of topical essays from a range of conservative perspectives. Wittonski/THE WISDOM OF CONSERVATISM, 4 vols, is a huge collection of the same, far more wide ranging and with a very useful introduction. Buckley (ed.)/DID YOU EVER SEE A DREAM WALKING is similar, on a smaller scale, and with a useful annotated bibliography, and a very useful suggested further readings, grouped topically. Much of what I might suggest will be found there.

But Kirk, above all.

GKC

Kirk, most definitely! I would also add as part of the canon of the modern American conservative movement, books such as Witness, by Whittaker Chambers and The Conscience of a Conservative, by Sen. Barry Goldwater. Some of the references in these works may seem a bit dated but they are still relevant to what you are interested in.

As a side note: To be Catholic is to be a conservative. There is no incompatibility between the two. Even within our more Anglo-Saxon idea of conservatism, the basis remains one of the defence of order, tradition, & morality, that the natural law given us by our Creator, demands. The problem in our political spectrum is that we share space, (and one of the major political parties), with other groups such as libertarians and "neo-conservatives" who are often at odds with basic conservative philosophy.

Would anyone recommend Allan Bloom's "The Closing of the American Mind"?

Edward Feser's blog referenced an article to it and it seems like an interesting read.

According to Feser's linked article; some view Closing of the American Mind as the first shot in the "culture war".

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/ ... ?nopager=1

No, the first shot in the culture war was fired with the legalization of contraception in 1962. The left started the culture war, it may be true that it wasn't until the 80's that the right started fighting back, but the war was started as a war of aggression by the left not the right.

I second Kirk, at least for an American brand of conservatism.

François-René de Chateaubriand I personally hold as an essential. And not only because he coined the term "conservative" in its political sense, but because he really holds to the very heart of conservatism, which is a belief in something very organic, with roots. It is communitarian, not individualist or collectivist.

His Essays on the Revolution are good, as is his "On Buonoparte and the Bourbons", his "Genius of Christianity", He also pulled a de Tocuqeville and wrote a "Voyage in America" but I haven't read that.