by Mike Gray

On WND, Ellis Washington highlights an English liberal with conservative inclinations:

Every major question in history is a religious question. It has more effect in molding life than nationalism or a common language. – Hilaire Belloc

Continuing our article series on Benjamin Wiker’s 10 Books Every Conservative Must Read, we come to Part III: The Place of Economics for Conservatives and Chapter 9, “The Servile State” by the Anglo-French writer and historian, Hilaire Belloc, who countered the homo economicus of Karl Marx’s view that every aspect of human nature, from morality to art, philosophy, religion, law and all parts of our political life was reducible to economic modes of production for each society.

By contrast, Belloc is out of the intellectual lineage of Aristotle who viewed man as a political animal, but also as a rational, moral and religious animal whose rich complexity animates his own trenchant conservatism. Belloc also echoes Tocqueville, who warned America about falling into a soft despotism where citizens become willing slaves of a centralized power in exchange for comfort and security.

Read the rest of Washington’s article here. Belloc’s The Servile State (1912) should be available online here.