F.A. Hayek: need Freeper advice on where to start

[KC Burke]

HI corny,
Yes, good old chapter four.

When I first read that Chapter, I then realized why Kirk in the Politics of Prudence wrote so glowingly about the commonality of the Old Whig thread that unites almost all the great conservatives of the middle twentieth century.

I guess the with the possible exception of Richard Weaver and, possibly, Tate, they all have the same sense at their deepest level.

In each we get a different angle or nuance, but the effort that most of them made in their closing years to show respect for each other, even when great differences had occurred over the years, is an eye opener.

I have to admit, that I sometimes just take down this chapter from the shelf and read it to center myself. Likewise with certain parts of Reflections on The Revolution in France, the introduction to Ideas Have Consequences, The Politics of Prudence and some of Sowell, Smith and Babbit.

I know that growing in our ranks are those that will fill their giant shoes that have yet to come into full flower -- I watch for them and see some possibilities in the pages of Modern Age and elsewhere.

I quoted Isaiah Berlin's "shining armor" passage about Churchill on another thread a day or two ago and that expansion to our souls as conservatives that those that mobilize the language can give is needed now.

[conservatism_IS_compassion]

The Road to Serfdom

(Link to the Readers' Digest Condensed Version in PDF!)

[headsonpikes]

“One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose”, and “one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberativeness; one for trail and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern.” It is the second view, as J. L. Talmon has shown in an important book from which this description is taken, that has become the origin of totalitarian democracy.

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Jacob Talmon is absolutely brilliant on the subject of the French philosophical origins of XXth Century Communism and other totalitarian disorders.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacob_Talmon

I highly recommend his works.

[FreedomPoster]

When Hayek says “Liberal”, he means a classical liberal, which is, to a modern American, a conservative.

See the 3nd quote on my FR home page, the two-paragraph one by Hayek, for an example. He talks about “the liberal of the old type” “who really believe in individual freedom”.

[KC Burke]

Russell Kirk made extensive use of Talmon in "The Errors of Ideology" which was his chapter two in The Politics of Prudence

[Deb8]

I read Road to Serfdom about 10 years ago. It was great. Just remember that the word “liberal” means “conservative” at that time. The left is called “central planners.”