# Give Me an Example of Conservative Political Fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 7, 2013, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397 "2013-01-07T21:21:54Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/41 "2013-01-08T03:15:47Z")
> [@gaffa](#): > > Update: I checked. His Wikipedia article says he served, but there are not references to confirm it. Pournelle served in the Army and is a Korean War veteran. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/42 "2013-01-08T05:32:10Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Pretty much anything by John Ringo. I’d expand on that and say that every author who writes military SF is conservative. Or at least, every military SF author that I’ve read. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/43 "2013-01-08T06:08:05Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Pournelle served in the Army and is a Korean War veteran. Think Burns, not Hawkeye. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/44 "2013-01-08T06:28:45Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Think Burns, not Hawkeye. 😉 No, think Humpty Dumpty. Pournelle was a Lieutenant in the artillery. ---
**Author:** ![Shakester](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shakester/32/437_2.png) [@Shakester](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shakester)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/45 "2013-01-08T11:04:54Z")
[QUOTE=George Orwell] Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and **for democratic socialism** , as I understand it. [/QUOTE] From **Why I Write** (1946). You can find the entire article online. I’m guessing that Orwell had problems in his own lifetime with conservatives and right-wingers trying to co-opt his work, which is why he wrote such a straightforward definitive statement of his political position. He lived and died a socialist. ---
**Author:** ![JLRogers](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ce73a5/32.png) [@JLRogers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JLRogers)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/46 "2013-01-08T12:00:56Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Pretty much anything by John Ringo. Especially the **Ghost** series. It’s terrifying. Also, I would suggest **Unintended Consequences** and the **Enemies Forgien and Domestic** series. Note that I don’t actually recommend these books, but if one wants a look into the mind of the Right it’s an unpleasantly eye-opening experience. ---
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/47 "2013-01-08T14:20:27Z")
Taylor Caldwell’s works- specifically- CAPTAINS AND THE KINGS- An Irish immigrant rises to build a Kennedy-esque dynasty, only to defy the Conspiracy that sponsored his rise to power. A PILLAR OF IRON- A defender of the Republic defies the forces of Collectivism & Imperialism that threaten it (respectively- Cicero, the Gracchi, Julius Caesar & Marc Antony). THE DEVIL’S ADVOCATES- A weird novel about a secret society of Constitutionalists who infiltrate the People’s Republic of America & enforce its Leftist agenda so ruthlessly as to provoke the people to rise against the PRA. The ‘heroes’ gladly give their lives when they are convicted of crimes against the people by the newly restored Republic. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/48 "2013-01-08T14:27:06Z")
Tom Clancy’s novels have a Conservative bias. in most of them it’s not excessive, nor does it lead to eye-rolling excess. But in **Rainbow Six** you really have to wonder if he took the eco-terrorists seriously, or was deliberately going over the top. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/49 "2013-01-08T14:48:29Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > What what what? Read most of Heinlein’s works, specifically _The Moon is a Harsh Mistress_, which is worth reading no matter what your politics are. Read Pournelle’s works, if you can. There are any number of speculative fiction writers who are conservative and write about how the world would be better if everyone was conservative, and the Evils of Liberalism. In particular, [_Fallen Angels,_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallen_Angels_(science_fiction_novel)) by Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven, and Michael Flynn. No subtlety at all in this one, the message pounds you on the head – liberals and environmentalists have turned American into an anti-scientific dystopia where superstition is rampant and human slavery is making a comeback. Meanwhile, a new Ice Age has rendered Canada uninhabitable – an entirely natural process, but anthropogenic global warming could have **stopped** it if it weren’t for those meddling environmentalists! ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/50 "2013-01-08T14:50:51Z")
Michael Crichton’s [_State of Fear_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_of_Fear) is all about [climate-change denial](http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Climate_change_denial) and demonizes environmentalists as eco-terrorists. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/51 "2013-01-08T15:32:13Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’d expand on that and say that every author who writes military SF is conservative. Or at least, every military SF author that I’ve read. Lois McMaster Bujold. ---
**Author:** ![pravnik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/8edcca/32.png) [@pravnik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pravnik)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/52 "2013-01-08T16:09:05Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Or not. I know _The Overton Window_ [was ghostwritten](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-kelly/glenn-becks-new-novel-abo_b_613861.html) – not only that, but the ghostwriter simply took a book he had recently self-published and changed the political POV around. I’m shocked. Okay, if you prefer: Agenda 21 and The Overton Window “by” Glenn Beck. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 4:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/53 "2013-01-08T16:12:07Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > I’d expand on that and say that every author who writes military SF is conservative. Or at least, every military SF author that I’ve read. John Birmingham, John Scalzi, and Joe Haldeman are at least partial exceptions. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/54 "2013-01-08T16:23:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **Reyemile** : > > The character Honor Harrington never struck me as particularly conservative, but every novel I’ve read in the series has had at least one strawman liberal giving her trouble. And I recall one of the massive plots she foiled be ultimately motivated by an intergalactic empire needing more money to pay for its welfare system. Eh, she has even more trouble from strawman conservatives. And in later novels in the series, the Liberal Party is taken over by a sympathetic character and turned in a direction that’s unambiguously good but still recognizably liberal. Most of the “good guys” in the book are militaristic, of course, but I think that’s the only real element of conservativism that comes through (assuming you consider militarism to be conservative). ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/55 "2013-01-08T17:08:52Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Look, here’s the thing. Conservatives, per se, don’t generally write about things _politically_, although we do think and write about _politics_. I would definitely say that people who are conservative, even in a vague sense, find politics unhealthy and unpleasant and try to separate that as much as possible from their actual lives. There’s nothing I find so obnoxious as to be reading a book, article, or even editorial and suddenly be told how cool the author is for being a Liberal (or Progressive, or whatever). But I watch for similar notions in conservatives and generally don’t find them - and I don’t think it’s just bias. This is so far from being the truth it is laughable. There are people who are conservative and try to write apolitically, just as there are people who are liberal and try to write apolitically, but it’s not correlative. To the OP: I never finished Anthony Burgess’s\* 1985\*–I found the non-fiction first part more engaging–but its second part seemed to be trying to describe a social-liberal dystopia, with oversexualized youth and economic domination by a coalition of labour unions. That might fit what you’re asking. I don’t know aught of Burgess’s politics, but it suddenly occurs to me that his particular sort of literary insanity is perhaps explicable as auxiliary to a far-right [edit: maybe just strongly center-right, maybe just odd] viewpoint. I haven’t read it, but I think maybe Neil Gaiman’s run on\* Miracleman\* is partly supposed to be a nightmare of liberal extremism as well, but with superhumans and stuff. I don’t know. The bit I have seen excerpted (where a schoolkid says, “How can you have sex education without having sex?” pulls the same trick of mocking sexual liberalism, though it comes off at this late date as a joke on the conservative understanding of liberal sexuality. In fact, by one definition of conservative, a lot of dystopian fiction is conservative, in the sense of “Don’t go here.” On the other hand, there are right-wing power fantasies, like\* The Turner Diaries\*, which roars past revenge fantasy and power fantasy into extermination fantasy. But conservative hardly seems the right word at that point, even if it’s rooted in an extreme culturally conservative (or partially culturally conservative) bias. That’s properly\* supremacist\* fantasy, not conservative as such. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/56 "2013-01-08T17:33:30Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Tom Clancy’s novels have a Conservative bias. in most of them it’s not excessive, nor does it lead to eye-rolling excess. But in **Rainbow Six** you really have to wonder if he took the eco-terrorists seriously, or was deliberately going over the top. Eh, except for their ability to pull the plan off that part wasn’t so over the top; people who think like that exist. The bias was in the explicit portrayal of that kind of ruthlessness being unique to the left. Clancy portrays a willingness to look at people as just abstract pawns in the service of an all-important ideology as something invented by Marxism, and a willingness to destroy humanity in the service of a belief system as something unique to environmentalist fanatics. An _especially_ glaring bias in a country with millions of pro-Apocalypse Christians. As for Clancy himself, I actually use in my head the term “Clancy Republicans” for a certain variety of right winger; someone who is mostly in theory well meaning and tolerant and so on, but whose worldview and decisions are mostly based on a fantasy where America is “the best country in the world” in all ways, where the Republicans adhere to their values and not those of plutocrats & theocrats & bigots, where religion (especially Christianity) is much more benevolent and less destructive than it is, where we are far more competent & benevolent than we actually are, and our actions are entirely different than the ones we actually perform. I’ve actually found a lot of his works enjoyable enough, if read as an alternate universe story. It doesn’t match up to reality very well though. David Weber IMHO is another author in much the same vein. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/57 "2013-01-08T18:34:59Z")
Yes, Clancy can be pretty condescending. He acts like Conservatives are the grown-ups who understand what’s really happening. Depending on what book he’s writing, Liberals are either treated like children who he excuses for not knowing any better (and expects will eventually grow up enough to become conservatives) or teenagers who he gets annoyed at when they argue with the adults that obviously know more about how the world works than they do. ---
**Author:** ![SecretaryofEvil](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e95f7d/32.png) [@SecretaryofEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SecretaryofEvil)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/58 "2013-01-08T18:51:17Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I think Huxley’s _Brave New World_ is a better example of a liberal dystopia (i.e. closer to what conservatives would think liberalism run amok would look like). I see where you’re coming from based on the lack of religion and all the promiscuous sex and drugs, but Brave New World also featured an aggressively capitalist (or at least consumerist) heavily stratified society where the best people, who were born the best, rule over the lesser people, who were born lesser but are content with their menial existence because of the endless supply of material comforts they could acquire by doing their jobs and knowing their place. ---
**Author:** ![Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a88e4f/32.png) [@Eleanor\_of\_Aquitaine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eleanor_of_Aquitaine)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/59 "2013-01-08T19:05:26Z")
Michael Flynn is a conservative Catholic, and writes pretty good stuff with a strong libertarian slant. Firestar is his near-future (rapidly becoming alternate history) series about a private space program initiative. I don’t know anything about this “Libertarian Futurist Society” or their Prometheus Award, but I ran across [their list](http://lfs.org/awards.shtml) of libertarian fiction. Lots of Heinlein, of course. Some Vernor Vinge. A Neal Stephenson novel. A Terry Pratchett novel. Joss Whedon’s _Serenity_. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 8, 2013, 7:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397/60 "2013-01-08T19:14:04Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Eh, except for their ability to pull the plan off that part wasn’t so over the top; people who think like that exist. The bias was in the explicit portrayal of that kind of ruthlessness being unique to the left. Clancy portrays a willingness to look at people as just abstract pawns in the service of an all-important ideology as something invented by Marxism, and a willingness to destroy humanity in the service of a belief system as something unique to environmentalist fanatics. An _especially_ glaring bias in a country with millions of pro-Apocalypse Christians. > > . It’s not just that they could pull it off – it’s that you have that extreme a group that’s that large, organized, and technically capable – all prerequisites for being able to “pull it off”, but an unlikely combo for extremist nuts of any stripe. “Want to kill off 99% of humanity so we can start over in a “reasonable” world (as defined by us)” isn’t a platform that will attract a majority of people, and especially technically competant people. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/give-me-an-example-of-conservative-political-fiction/646397.md?page=4)