Turning Point USA

1. Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Gulag Archipelago is a non-fictional account of Solzhenitsyn’s experience in the brutal and murderous Soviet forced labor camps of the 1940s. For anyone interested in politics, it’s important to be educated on the very predictable outcome when government corruption and totalitarian power take over. 

Soviet Society was built to fail. People lived in constant fear, they could be imprisoned for any cause deemed threatening by the government, and lying became the way of survival for many Soviets.

Corruption in society comes as a result of individuals themselves becoming corrupt while others refuse to push back and stand up for what is right. History serves as a great reminder of this, from Mao’s China and Pol Pot’s Cambodia to Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Russia, the more we know about these historical tragedies the more equipped we will be to avoid them. Our Founding Fathers stood up for what is right and rebelled against King George III, and because of their bravery and total intolerance of tyranny, the first benevolent and free superpower was born.

2. The Book That Made Your World by Vishal Mangalwadi

Mangalwadi’s writings in The Book That Made Your World is an assessment of how the Holy Bible influenced Western culture. It discusses twenty key areas, including the ideas of liberty, education, science, morality, and language, and it is a clear indication of how the Bible ultimately inspired the Founding Fathers to write our Constitution.

It’s important to not only understand the founding of the greatest country in the history of the world, but also to grasp the philosophies and ideals that framed it. America was the ultimate experiment. Nothing like it had ever been tried before, and the Founding Fathers knew that. But they also knew that our individual liberties were given to us by God and not the government, therefore, the government could not take them away.

I was honored to have Vishal Mangalwadi on my podcast back in September. You can listen to that episode here!

3. Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg

Liberal Fascism highlights the common misunderstandings of fascism and argues that fascism is not a phenomenon of the right, but instead, the left. Liberalism in America stems from progressivism–which ultimately shares more commonality with Mussolini and Hitler than conservatism does. This book does a great job of emphasizing how everything most of us have learned about fascism is flawed. Progressives typically seek to develop a utopian nation and global state with a centralized power. This ideology is totalitarian at its core. It brings every aspect of life under the full control of its leaders while simultaneously demonizing all who disagree. Unsurprisingly, most progressives actually agreed with fascist policies leading up to WW2 and later distanced themselves from it and in a classic attempt at revisionist history, worked to associate it with the right. For anyone interested in politics, understanding the true history of the American left is essential to fighting back against their radical ideas.

4. Discrimination and Disparities by Thomas Sowell

This series of essays by the great economist Thomas Sowell brilliantly addresses questions regarding social disparity and success. In more recent generations, economic disparities and discrimination have been hot button topics for many in politics. Using empirical evidence, Sowell deconstructs and debunks the narrative that economic outcomes can be explained simply by discrimination, exploitation, or genetics. This book is simple enough for people with no previous knowledge of economics to understand, and it is an important read for anyone who may engage in discussions regarding economics disparities and race. While the book itself does not necessarily provide a solution to disparities, it does clarify why so many prescribed policies have turned out to be counterproductive and exposes common fallacious arguments used to defend these policies.

5. Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman

This is a classic book on economics which argues that competitive capitalism serves as a necessary prerequisite to achieve both economic and political freedom. The author, Milton Friedman, is arguably one of the most important economists in the Western canon who played an integral role in providing the foundation for millions of entrepreneurial Americans to understand the values of freedom and free markets that underpin American society. Capitalism and Freedom helps readers understand what’s most important for protecting one’s liberty and outlines the government’s restrained role in economics. It also reveals how monopolies produce poorer living standards and why inequality results from over-involvement by politicians in the economy. Friedman successfully outlines why a country is most productive when political entities are small and removed from the flow of money in a country. 

For any aspiring politician, political thinker, or economist, this book is absolutely essential.