Posted on 12/26/2013 12:00:48 PM PST by jazusamo
This is Week 12 of Season 3 in my 13 Weeks of Wild Man Writing and Radical Reading Series . Every week day I try to blog about compelling writers, their ideas, and the news cycle’s most interesting headlines. This Top 10 list is the series’ climax for this year, a project I’ve been planning since first asking the question December 5, 2012 .
What is the future of conservatism? Which voices should define the priorities of the movement in the coming decades? Who are its most skilled proponents today? How should the movement evolve to face the threats most endangering America?
This list is my effort to advocate for both my favorite writers contributing to answering these questions and the ideas they champion.
5 quick ground rules first:
- I’m being strict with the “columnist” title – no bloggers, journalists, or feature writers. A “columnist” is one who writes a 700-1400+ word polemical article on a regular basis for an established publication or syndication.
- I’m likewise being strict with the “conservative” title – other various right-of-center ideologies (neoconservatism, libertarianism, Christian theocrats, and paleo-con conspiracists) warrant their own lists. (Which perhaps they might get next year as I continue mapping out today’s most important ideological advocates in the contests of politics, ideas, and culture…)
- In selecting these individuals, I am including them and the ideas they champion in what I’m calling Conservatism 3.0 . This isn’t just a stand-alone list, it’s part of the bigger, ongoing project of my attempt to encourage ideological debate and dialogue. The columnists on this list each write books too and I’m adding their titles to my reading lists at the Freedom Academy Book Club . In next year’s installment of my “radical reading regimen” I’ll blog through their titles too.
- I’m excluding writers that I edit. All of PJM’s columnists and freelancers have been going on a separate list of my favorite writers, which I’ve been accumulating over the last six months and you can read on the last page of this post. And as an extra mention I have to go out of my way to recommend Instapundit Glenn Reynolds’s USA Today columns too. Blogging isn’t the only medium that Glenn’s mastered.
- I’m including excerpts from some of my favorite columns. Fair warning: this article today is over 13,000 words, highlighting some of the year’s best op/eds. (UPDATE: And apparently that means it’s too big for the view-as-single-page or print-this-post feature to work. I’m sorry. I assure you that was not intentional.) It’s really more of a free online e-book — a late Christmas present to all the readers, writers, activists, and patriots who have inspired and encouraged me in my own journey across the political spectrum…
10. Ross Douthat
9. Frank Gaffney
8. Daniel Pipes
7. Rich Lowry
6. Jonah Goldberg
5. Mark Steyn
4. Dennis Prager
3. Ben Shapiro
2. Thomas Sowell
1. Ann Coulter
Pelham, I’ll over look the sarcasm because I know you know the true story of Charles’ conversion. :-)
I was a liberal in High School esp when chasing a liberal girl.
By college I was pretty much conservative.
We all convert. We all grow up.
Wasn’t David Horowitz a rabid liberal? I suppose you don’t accept him either?
I look for Kristin Powers next to convert.
Just want to get a plug in for Mona Charen.
Mark Steyn ping. Notice he is number 5 on the list above. If you click on his name, you get in part:
“5. Mark Steyn
So just how magical is pretty writing? Even if people don’t like something about what you’re saying you can seduce them into reading anyway.
Confession: of the 10 columnists on this list Steyn is probably the one I’ve resisted the most over the years and read the least. Why? It’s nothing against him personally, I’m just already overdosed on his style of Gen-X-leaning Boomer doom and gloom.
I hear enough worries and arguments about approaching armageddon coming from colleagues that do I really need to spend 436 pages of After America to hear about how we’re all gonna die? (As much as I’m happy to borrow many of the musical and cultural stylings of the generation younger than my parents and a decade or two older than me, I draw the line at indulging in their apocalypticism.)
That was my thinking on him for a number of years but I’m over it now that I’ve spent more time reading Steyn’s work closely and seeing that it’s not just Chicken Little-ism. So all of Steyn’s books go onto the 2014 to-read agenda, finally.”
Cleick here:
http://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2013/12/26/the-10-best-conservative-columnists-of-2013/6/
or above for the rest. Steyn is way under rated on this list in my view, but different people have different views.
Freepmail me, if you want on or off the Mark Steyn ping list.
Mark Steyn and Dan Greenfield should be at #1 and #2.
I have decreed..:-)
Once again I made top of the list at 0.
Agreed.
I’d maintain the order if #1 factor is considered educational value, reverse them for enjoyment.
I don’t see how he could have left off Daniel Greenfield. I put Steyn and Greenfield at #1 and #2 respectively.
Steyn does cast a lot of doom-and-gloom, but no one does it with more wit and no one else makes me laugh while reading it. He should be Number 1 on any such list....
Can’t argue with Coulter and Sowell as Nos 1 and 2. After that I would have Mark Steyn.
Victor Davis Hanson appears on PJMedia and is thus ineligible for the author's list.
Swindle stated that he excluded all PJM columnists (VDH).
my vote
10. Thomas Sowell
9. Thomas Sowell
8. Thomas Sowell
7. Thomas Sowell
6. Thomas Sowell
5. Thomas Sowell
4. Thomas Sowell
3. Thomas Sowell
2. Thomas Sowell
1. Thomas Sowell
anyone else would number 11 or higher
No worries. But like you, I admire VDH greatly.
Reference Bump
Reference Bump
Ann has been a brilliant attack dog for the last 15 years saying to their faces what most conservatives on TV have never had the fortitude and vision to declare. She gets a lot of credit for that.
That out of the way, the true brilliance and the mover of minds is Thomas Sowell. His books in depth, his columns with their easily accessible style and his research and common sense have no equal.
After decades of reading his wonderful output, I finally got around to his short biography last year. It made me respect him all the more after reading what he had created in a life well lived. With me he stands up there with Edmund Burke — he is the Burke for this age.
Coulter writes some kick-a#$ columns and is on target re: amnesty now, but after her Romney and Christie love, I don’t think she’ll ever actually be trusted by the right again.
Definitely in the top ten. I want her to replace Peggy Noonan at the WSJ.
David Horowitz was raised in a for real Communist household, but my impression is that he’s always more thoughtful than rabid. He left the Left when one of his good friends was murdered by the Black Panthers, who were of course darlings of the Left.
There’s a lot that I like about David and I’ll accept him as an ally, but I’m loathe to hold up as a conservative icon anyone whose instincts were on the Left. One glaring example of this is Michael Medved, whose “conservative” conversion seems more and more thin these days- his idea of a conservative runs to Karl Rove and John McCain. Basically Medved spends his time trying to push the GOP to the left.
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