At The University Bookman, Joseph P. Duggan has suggested reading for conservative exiles and all others who might need to be reminded of what, exactly, a conservative is.

These are classic writings that invite readers to think deeply and to learn by contending with the authors’ provocations. They are not, it should be emphasized, indoctrination manuals. They are not right-wing; fascists and Nazis were right-wing but were enemies of conservatism, enemies of truth. These are thoughtful works that may help us become conservative thinkers in the true sense. These are antidotes to ideology and propaganda. In our coming political exile, we will have a long time to read, and re-read, these and other essential works, and to think things over.

Here are some of the books from the complete list that I can second, heartily.

The Roots of American Order, by Russell Kirk. He who fails to learn the history of what happened before he was born will remain forever a child, said Cicero. This, therefore, is adult reading about the mainsprings of our civilization.

Slouching Towards Gomorrah: Modern Liberalism and America’s Decline, by Robert H. Bork. Profoundly insightful as to the perils of corrosive ideologies, notably those threatening the institutions of marriage and the family. (Bork should write a sequel about the twelve years since Slouching was published. He should call it Sprinting Towards Gomorrah.)

From Under the Rubble, edited by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Essays written by Solzhenitsyn and other persecuted Russian authors envisioning, during the darkest days of the Brezhnev tyranny, a post-communist Russia. Our situation, of course, is not quite like theirs, but they can teach us profound lessons about the moral clarity and strength that we will need to overcome the dictatorship of relativism.

Understanding Media and The Classical Trivium, also by Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan was a scholar of medieval and Renaissance literature who had profound insight into how new media and new technologies—being extensions of man—change people. The Classical Trivium is an excellent history and interpretation of great tradition of the liberal arts—the arts of being free. Both books can help us recover our equilibrium in a dizzying technological environment.

The complete reading list is here, and would be a suitable syllabus for starting a discussion with intelligent people about the complicated ideas of classical conservatism.