BOOK TIDBITS

On the nature of things / Lucretius ; translated, with introduction and notes, by Martin Ferguson Smith

 This was written in or about 59 BC and contains an early description of the Darwininian concept "survival of the fittest" and extinction. From Book V:

850 For we see that the ability of creatures to propagate and perpetuate their species is contingent upon the conjunction of many circumstances: first there must be a supply of food; then there must be a channel by which the generative seeds throughout the body may issue from the slackened limbs; and for the female to be united with the male, both must have organs for the interchange of mutual delights.

At that time, too, many species of animals must have perished and failed to propagate and perpetuate their race. For every species that you see breathing the breath of life has been protected and preserved from the beginning of its existence either by cunning or by courage or by speed.
860 There are also many that survive because their utility has commended them to our care and committed them to our guardianship. In the first place, the fierce breed of savage lions owes its preservation to its courage, the fox to its cunning, and the deer to its speed in flight. On the other hand, the light-slumbering and loyal-hearted dog and every kind of beast of burden, as well as the fleecy flocks and horned herds, are all committed, Memnius, to the guardianship of human beings. They were glad to escape from the wild beasts and seek peace and the plentiful provisions,
870 procured by no exertion of theirs, which we give them as a reward for their utility. But those animals that nature endowed with none of these qualities, so that they were unable either to be self-supporting or to render us any useful service, in return for which we might allow their kind to have sustenance and security under our protection, were of course an easy prey and prize for others, shackled as they all were by the bonds of their own destiny, until nature brought their species to extinction.

The spirit of liberalism / Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr.

Mansfield is a professor of government at Harvard and has mentored a number of prominent neo-cons, William Kristol being the most prominent. This is how the Harvard Crimson describes Mansfield's flight from liberalism:

Then, in the late 1950s, Mansfield recalls—employing a phrase coined by the neo-conservative thinker Irving Kristol—getting “mugged by reality.” His transformation came in two parts. First, Mansfield discovered Leo Strauss, a Jewish-German political philosopher who has had a sustained impact on Mansfield’s scholarship and worldview. Strauss’ views on history and the classics naturally translated into a conservative school of thought, Mansfield says. Second, the protests that erupted in America and on Harvard’s campus during the Vietnam War shaped his political perspective forever.

The second point means that like many other neo-cons, he was terrified by the hippies. In his case, it also means he has a warped view of the Vietnam War (Ch. 2, Defending Liberalism):

LYNDON JOHNSON'S death on the day before the peace settlement in Vietnam was announced gave Richard Nixon the opportunity, while making the announcement, of vindicating Johnson against his critics. It was a chance befitting the course of events, for Nixon's policy has rescued Johnson's, and with it John­ son's supporters, the liberal Democrats whom he inherited.

Even McNamara admitted that nothing can justify Vietnam.

Mansfield does make a very interesting point about Edmund Burke (Ch. 5, The Right of Revolution):

One objection to Burke's thought, and one that has often been raised, is that he has no response to the fact of revolution, that he cannot accommodate a break in the inheritance that constitutes society. He can accommodate such a break as a tremendous ac­cident or a decree of Providence,  but not as a human choice. Consequently, while one may both admire Burke and salute the Declaration of Independence, one cannot claim that they are consistent with each other.