[Serious] Any high-quality right-wing media, books, explainers?

Frankly, anything explicitly marketed to American conservatives these days is mostly ragebait for stupid people and I doubt you'll find any of it the least bit convincing. As other have mentioned, Thomas Sowell is a great place to start if you want something serious but modern and clearly written. Milton Friedman's Free to Choose or Capitalism and Freedom are both widely recommended classics. If you managed to read Marx without dying of boredom you should also be able to get through Ludwig von Mises' Human Action or Socialism.

If youre being honest, then youre going to need to look at historical material like Locke & Hobbes to get a foundation.

Modern conserativism... aggitation... can bw traced through Gingrich in the House in the early 90s, I cant think of the book off the top of my head but theres a pretty decent record of how he did manipulative things with unmanned cspan cameras at the time.

It partly depends on whether you want to understand pre-9/11 "reasonable" conservatism or the more recent Tea Party and Trump conservative populism.

Ayn Rand expresses the fairy tale version of romantic, rugged individualism, which is pretty important to understanding modern right-wing politics, especially in North America. I think the main idea conservatives take from her work, directly or indirectly, is that progress is driven by individual work and achievement, and that any kind of forced wealth re-distribution (through social programs, for example) is effectively theft, and therefore immoral.

The modern populist right-wing movement was originally driven and disseminated by right-wing talk radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh. So, listening to right-wing talk radio or podcasts is also a good window into the modern movement. It puts on full display the resentment felt by modern right-wingers.

If you would rather not experience right-wing media directly, but would rather read rational analysis about it, then one good choice is David Frumm. He is an old school Reagan/Bush conservative, and has lived through the transition of the Repubs to populism. He is very critical of Trumpism, like most people, but he comes from the perspective of a reasonable and well-informed conservative insider.

Fareed Zakaria has a new book called Age of Revolutions, which views modern conservative populism as a very significant political re-alignment with similarities to various revolutions of the past, both successful and unsuccessful. Fareed talks about the conditions that lead to populism. In that sense, he treats Trump's popularity as a symptom and outcome of specific underlying societal problems.

Others have weighed in on the academic, but a lot of the American conservative braintrust is (literally) in think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, Federalist Society, John Birch Society, etc. These organizations vary from "pretty right wing" Heritage to "nearly literally fascist" John Birch Society, and they put out a LOT of papers and material they use to...I'll generously say "inform" the public discourse.

Here's an audio copy of Murray Rothbard's Man, Economy, and State. Murray is basically the father of "right wing" libertarianism (insofar as right v left is individualism v collectivism, not "right=racism is good,") he seems to fit the description you seek. Not saying you'll agree or love him, but he isn't some "lets kill the gays" nonsense.

Also try Milton Friedman, and Lysander Spooner. They're more "anarchism" or "libertarianism" as well, from that same individualist, rather than collectivist, standpoint.

Foundations of geopolitics by Aleksander Dugan. This is the basis of modern European, conservative actions and the Russian playbook for the last 30 years.

This is not a right wing resource, but if you’re interested in learning about the arguments and historical evolution of ideas that underpin economic liberalism/neoliberalism, I highly recommend Geoff Mann’s Disassembly required : a field guide to actually existing capitalism. It’s concise, relatively short, and treats the ‘other’ side like rational actors (which is important for understanding, I think).

Ofc this would only help understand people who are quite well informed.

https://archive.org/details/isbn_9781849351270

an enlightened right-winger

If they still exist they aren't putting themselves in the (probably literal) crosshairs of the conservative/christianist goofballs.

It's been actual decades since the right wing was anything approaching sane. The left is following suit lately too.

If I recall from the Alt-Right Playbook's Origins of Conservatism video, some of the early founders of conservative thought you might want to read include:

• Edmund Burke
• Thomas Hobbes
• Joseph DeMaistre

I find the Austrian School of Economics really interesting.

Particularly books written by American economist Murray Rothbard, who talks about free markets, government (particularly government intervention) and inflation.

There's a very short book you can read called "What has Government Done to Our Money?”

I don't know if you like podcasts, but Know Your Enemy is a take on the right from two leftists who used to be conservatives who approach it from an intellectual POV.

I linked to the political magazine that helps support them since it gives some rundowns of their topics that might give you some of the sources that can be read instead of listening to their podcast, if you'd prefer.

I'm not sure of you'll find the academic research you are looking for, at least out of the US, since the modern Conservative movement seems to have eschewed academia as filled with Liberals.

I haven't read this book yet, but I'd recommend Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir about JD Vance's life in Appalachia, It came out in 2016, and I recall folks thinking that it was a good read, even if they didn't agree with Vance's politics, and partially explained Trump's appeal to rural voters whose lifestyle bears no resemblance at all to Trump. The book has to be somewhat compelling, since Ron Howard made a movie out of it. And Vance parlayed it into a Senate seat, after all.

Robert Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia is a solid philosophical foundation for a lot of right wing thought. If you want to engage further you can follow up with Michael Otsuka's critique in Self-Ownership and Equality: A Lockean Reconciliation.

Nozick provides an underpinning for what many think of as traditional conservative American values, without basing it in Christianity.

Then of course there's the Chicago school of economics (Friedman et al), which is just a somewhat naive and more it less completely discredited take on how the economy works. It's fundamental for understanding American politics the previous half century, but their ideas are not really worth interacting with unless you're particularly interested in economics. It's not like the idiot politicians who push it in front of them understand the theories either.

Thsee theories is not far right; there's no salvaging the far right, and their ideological basis is mostly just bigotry. You could read Ayn Rand to try to understand which hole these idiots crawled from. Or better, don't waste your time.

I will have to preface this with the fact that I have not read any of his books, but former British politician Rory Stewart is one of the people that comes to my mind when reading your description. I don't think that he comes to the right policy positions, of course, but whenever I listen to him he does seem to at least have a degree of empathy for all people. He seems to at least generally see the problem even if I think that his solution wouldn't work. He has an effective way with words in interviews and his writing is generally very well reviewed too.

Probably more right-wing than you're looking for, but The Concept of the Political by Carl Schmitt. Insightful on how these people think, and much more readable than works by some Nazi philosophers I could mention. Also if you're interested in a good deconstruction of far right views, I highly recommend Neoreaction a Basilisk by Elizabeth Sandifer

Not a right-wing source in and of itself, but Corey Robin’s The Reactionary Mind explores the history and philosophical underpinnings of conservative thought from Burke/Hobbes on through the 21st century, on a variety of different topics. It’s a serious engagement with the ideas, and attempt to understand them and their origins

The first name that came to mind was Thomas Sowell

Maybe check out Matt McManus's work, he's a professor at the University of Michigan.

Maybe read something from Jordan Peterson? He's conservative, against gender politics or modern life. Sells 'simple truths' that look well reasoned if you're not too intelligent (or don't believe in equality...) I think he wrote several books and has lots of YouTube videos available.

Mein Kampf

A lot of the academics associated (formerly or currently) with Chicago Booth are highly respected as economists but highly conservative. As influential and famous they may be, their personal blogs and twitter account are yikes.

E.g. Harald Uhlig, Joch H Cochrane

So I'm going to interpret your request broadly and recommend a couple podcasts. They aren't necessarily right-wing (honestly, probably center left to center right), but they're probably outside of what you'd normally consume and may challenge or intrigue you.

1. The New Liberal Podcast New liberalism is a rebranding of neoliberalism. I'd start by listening to a couple mailbag episodes and his past best books of the year episodes.

2. Conversations with Tyler Tyler Cowen is a conservative economist at the University of Chicago, but you don't actually hear his opinions that often on his podcast which consists of interviews with an eclectic variety of folks from a homeless man to a Calvinist theologian, from music producer Rick Rubin to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. He has a unique interviewing style that consists of a series of disjointed questions. He often poses challenging questions, but he gives them plenty of space to answer and doesn't debate. I would suggest skipping interviews with people you know you're going to hate (e.g., Peter Thiel), but instead look for interviews that pique your interest.

Going to Lemmy and asking this is like going to Truth.Social and asking about resources for helping trans teens.

Ayn Rand is where modern right wing ideology started. You really don't need to read a whole book, she beats you over the head with the message repeatedly.

Fast forward to the Rush Limbaugh talk show and listen to some of his monologues.

Then jump back to Mein Kampf to see the future of the right wing.

It's all bullshit, and it's easy to fall down the rabbit hole of right wing talking points. Ask critical questions like what happens to the most vulnerable populations under that system and you realize quickly that it's Sparta all over again and they will be actively killed because they believe in eugenics.