I agree that there's a personal conservative orientation, although I think the core of it is the so-called authoritarian personality. It's not prudence as an end in itself, but prudence if it means returning to a more traditional (animalistic) society, one with more pronounced dominance hierarchies (social asymmetries between genders and various social classes).

So I say the primary choice is between humanism and animalism. Animalism is untenable when it's expressed in philosophical terms, of course, because those terms will be implicitly humanistic, in that they'll speak to our skills (reason, autonomy, creativity) which make us people rather than animals. That's why I say there's no such thing as conservative thought or philosophy.

I haven't read Sowell, though, so I'll check him out.