Witness by Whittaker Chambers "One of the few indispensable autobiographies ever written by an American - and one of the best written, too… It deserves to be recognized as a first-class achievement."      -Hilton Kramer, The New Criterion "It throws more light on the conspiratorial and religious character of modern communism, on the tangled complex of motives which led men and women of goodwill to immolate themselves on the alters of a fancied historical necessity, than all of the hundred great books of the past combined."      -Sidney Hook "Whittaker Chambers has written one of the really significant American autobiographies. When some future Plutarch writes his American Lives, he will find in Chambers penetrating and terrible insights into America in the early twentieth century."      -Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. "No other book about the great case is likely to be so widely read or long remembered. It is written with extraordinary intensity and power. It is filled with the drama of action, scene, and soul. It contains passages of rare eloquence. Dealing with the raw stuff of history and the mounting crisis of our times, it offers a challenge to the Western world to find in its own freedom and faith a ‘reason to live and a reason to die’ at once more valid and more potent than the Communist’s."       -The Yale Review The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk RUSSELL KIRK (1918-1994), historian of ideas, critic, essayist, editor, and novelist, was the author of thirty books. Among them are The Roots of American Order, America’s British Culture, The Politics of Prudence, Eliot and His Age, Enemies of the Permanent Things, Edmund Burke, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, John Randolph of Roanoke, and five works of fiction. He edited numerous books, including The Portable Conservative Reader. His memoirs, The Sword of Imagination, were published posthumously. He held the highest earned arts degree of the senior Scottish university doctor of letters of St. Andrews and was the only American ever to have obtained that distinction. He received twelve honorary doctorates from American universities and many awards, including the Presidential Citizens Medal. For six generations his family has resided in the village of Mecosta, in Michigan’s stump country, where Dr. Kirk and his wife Annette raised their four daughters. They also hosted seminars for hundreds of students over three decades in an effort to enkindle an interest in the permanent things among the rising generation. The recently founded Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, based in Mecosta, continues this work today. The Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith Volume II in the Conservative Leadership Series Everyone knows Adam Smith the economist, but what about Adam Smith the moralist? Few people know that Adam Smith’s thinking stretched far beyond his classic economic primer The Wealth of Nations that Smith was, in fact, a moral philosopher concerned not only with how people prosper, but also with how they should live. Smith’s answer: Through the strenuous exercise of moral virtue and by the example of noble-spirited men. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments Smith assigned himself a difficult and dangerous task: to establish for educated men in an increasingly revolutionary age the reasonableness of morality and the necessity of the fruits of virtues illustrated by the wisdom of the classical authors of antiquity. This book, Adam Smith’s first, is, then, proof to skeptics of the importance of morality; and an antidote to those who think that free-market economics can be divorced from a moral society. Smith’s success can be measured by the praise offered by the famous British historian Henry Buckle, who held The Theory of Moral Sentiments as of equal importance and value to Smith’s landmark treatise The Wealth of Nations. As Buckle said, to understand the philosophy of this, by far the greatest of all the Scotch thinkers, both works must be taken together, and considered as one; since they are, in reality, the two divisions of a single subject. That subject is the subject of every conservative man, and how he can live a free and moral life. The second volume of the Conservative Leadership Series, The Theory of Moral Sentiments is the original Book of Virtues with Smith’s thoughts on the nature of propriety, duty, merit, virtue, and much else. It is must reading for anyone wanting to understand the true Adam Smith. God and Man at Yale by William F. Buckley, Jr. The Fall of 1951 was for Yale University a time of triumph. For in that year Yale celebrated with much pomp and ceremony the 250th anniversary of its founding. Not among the foreign and domestic dignitaries present at that auspicious occasion was a recent graduate and former chairman of the Yale Daily News, a young man who that October was catapulted into the public spotlight, becoming in a few months’ time a celebrity in his own right and a public embarrassment to his Alma Mater and the academic establishment. The "violent, unbalanced, and twisted young man"- to borrow the words of one unenthusiastic observer- was William F. Buckley, Jr., twenty- four years old, and instructor of Spanish at Yale, unknown outside the walls of that ancient university. The event that went off like a bombshell at the height of the birthday celebration and sparked such a flood of intemperate words was the publication of his book, GOD & MAN AT YALE. "I propose, simply," wrote Buckley, "to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible educational attitude that, under the protective label ‘academic freedom’, has produced one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of these supporters to be atheistic socialists." The reaction from the academic elite was conducted, in the words of one reviewer, "with all the grace and agility of an elephant cornered by a mouse." It was not enough to call Buckley "unbalanced," "twisted," a "bigoted boy"; his ideas were labeled "intolerant dogmatism," "pure fascism," "ignorant attack," "philistine crusade"; even his religion- his "special allegiance"- was dragged in. The elephant’s reaction was so violent that the words of one Buckley attacker- a man who professed tolerance- take on an ironic twist: "God and Man at Yale, indeed, is almost a textbook case of what happens when a frightened plutocracy, suddenly aware that its ideas no longer carry conviction, makes a desperate resort to power in order to stamp out all forms of intellectual challenge. A quarter century has passed since the first appearance of GOD & MAN AT YALE. Both Yale University and William F. Buckley, Jr., are still very much around, and the latter at least- to judge by his brilliant new Introduction (included in this new edition- is as vigorous and irreverent as ever. The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith With the classic, long-missing introduction, Why Read Adam Smith Today? by the great Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. Volume III in the Conservative Leadership Series With the publication of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith launched the other Revolution of 1776. No book has done more to instruct, enlighten, and inform conservatives about economics than Adam Smith’s undisputed classic An Inquiry Into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations. Published in 1776, The Wealth of Nations was the intellectual counterpart to the volleys fired at Lexington and Concord stirring cry for economic freedom that resonates to this day. It is the very basis of contemporary conservative economic thinking. A clear line can be drawn from Adam Smith in the 18th century to Henry Hazlitt, Milton Friedman, and Ronald Reagan in the 20th. Adam Smith’s own thinking stretched far beyond economics. He was, in fact, a moral philosopher who looked beyond the world of strict economics to examine how people function in a society, how they should live. Adam Smith helped open history’s eyes to the realization that economics and morality are two sides of the same coin. Here, then, is the complete and unabridged Wealth of Nations in one volume. Included is the classic, long-missing introduction, Why Read Adam Smith Today? by the great Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises. In this volume you can find Adam Smith’s mature thoughts, which unite economic and moral conservatives and continue to exert worldwide influence. Regnery Publishing is proud to present Smith’s classic volume in this magnificent cloth-cover edition, made available only to Conservative Book Club members as the third volume in CBC’s Conservative Leadership Series. Celebrated British historian Henry Buckle said of Adam Smith that this ordinary Scotchman has, by publication of this one single work [The Wealth of Nations], contributed more toward the happiness of man than has been effected by the united abilities of all the statesmen and legislators of whom history has presented an authentic record. Few books merit such praise. More than two centuries after its publication, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations still points the way forward and explains the world and our place in it. Adam Smith was born in 1723 in Kirkcaldy, Scotland. In 1759 Smith published The Theory of Moral Sentiments, earning him international recognition. His Wealth of Nations, arguably the most famous and influential economic treatise ever written, was published in 1776. Two years later Smith was appointed commissioner of customs in Edinburgh. He died there in 1790. Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) ranks as one of the 20th century’s most eminent and important economists. Leader of the famed Austrian school of economics that included F.A. Hayek, Mises wrote and lectured on both the moral necessity and practical efficacy of free markets. The Anti- Federalist Despite their name, the Anti- Federalists did share in the American consensus demanding Republican government respectful of inherited individual and state rights, but they opposed the Constitution, because they believed it would destroy the freedoms all Americans cherished. And the Anti- Federalists were effective in their cause. Indeed, their opposition to the Constitution’s original draft produced the Bill of Rights- ten amendments whose collective purpose was the protection of inherited individual and states rights from federal incursion, and whose inclusion drastically altered the original composition and purposes of the new governing document. In other words, the Anti- Federalist writings reveal strands in the American political tradition that are not well known but should be, given their formative impact on that tradition. Moreover, the grounds of the Anti- Federalists’ fears, expressed forcefully and eloquently in their writings, remain highly relevant. The Anti- Federalists generally agreed that the Constitution made unnecessarily radical changes to the Articles of Confederation. By giving the central government taxing powers and giving federal judges life tenure, they argued, the Constitution ensured that the federal government would destroy state sovereignty. In an era of bloated national government, the Internal Revenue Service, and judicial supremacy, the writings of the Anti- Federalists indeed provide timely, uncanny insights into the nation’s political ills, and perhaps, therefore, offer means by which the American political tradition may be reinvigorated. Bruce Frohnen is the author of Virtue and the Promise of Conservation: The Legacy of Burke and Tocqueville and The New Communitarians and the Crisis of Modern Liberalism. He is also the author, with George Carey, of Community and Tradition: Conservative Perspectives on American Experience. Joseph Sobran is a nationally syndicated political columnist and author. The Federalist edited by John Church Hamilton A special volume derived from the rare 1864 edition Volume IV in the Conservative Leadership Series The clearest insight into what the Founding Fathers really meant... The Federalist you hold in your hands is the most important American political document after the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence. These essays, written anonymously by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay to drum up popular support for the proposed Constitution, are invoked nearly everyday in the halls of Congress, on the Sunday talk shows, in classrooms, in political campaigns, and in rulings from the bench more than 200 years after they first appeared. When the Constitution was up for ratification, these three men took their case to the people. It was common in the 18th century for writers to take as pen names the names of famous orators from Roman antiquity. Publius Valerius and Plutarch Publius were Roman defenders of freedom, and Publius thus became the pen name of Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. Their arguments not only secured public support for the Constitution, but have also helped succeeding generations understand the original intent of the Founders: an intent and design based on timeless principles. Regnery Publishing is proud to present this essential volume of American political philosophy in a magnificent cloth-cover edition, made available to Conservative Book Club members as the fourth volume in the Conservative Leadership Series. This special volume is taken from the rare 1864 edition edited by John Church Hamilton, Alexander Hamilton’s son. It includes a number of Hamiltonian documents, including his Continentalist essays, which served as a precursor to The Federalist, as well as his plan for the new government. The brilliant Alexander Hamilton (1755Ð1804) served as one of General George Washington’s chief aides while still in his early twenties, and served as the new nation’s first Secretary of the Treasury. James Madison (1751Ð1836), our nation’s fourth president, is known as the Father of the Constitution for his efforts in drafting the document defended in The Federalist. John Jay (1745Ð1829) drafted the New York state constitution and served as the first Chief Justice of the United States. Best of Burke by Edmund Burke Does Edmund Burke still speak to us today? Consider these excerpts from The Best of Burke: On Tradition: We are afraid to put men to live and trade each on his own private stock of reason; because we suspect that the stock in each man is small, and that individuals would do better to avail themselves of the general bank and capital of nations and of ages. A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views. People will not look forward to posterity, who never look backward to their ancestors. On Religion and Society: We know, and, what is more, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good, and of all comfort. Nothing is more certain than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles, and were, indeed, the result of both combined: I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. On Property Rights: [Men] have a right to the fruits of their industry, and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents, to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring, to instruction in life and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. In this partnership, all men have equal rights; but not to equal things. On Liberty: It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters. On the Modern Age: But the age of chivalry is gone. That of sophists, economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of exalted freedom! The unbought grace of life, the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is gone! It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of honor, which felt a stain like a wound, which inspired courage whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled whatever it touched, and under which vice itself lost half its evil by losing all its grossness.