29-511: Russell Amos Kirk (October 19, 1918 – April 29, 1994) was an American political philosopher , moralist , historian , social critic , literary critic , and author , known for his influence on 20th-century American conservatism . His 1953 book The Conservative Mind gave shape to the postwar conservative movement in the U.S. It traced the development of conservative thought in the Anglo-American tradition, giving special importance to
58-631: A M.A. at Duke University . During World War II , he served in the American armed forces and corresponded with a libertarian writer, Isabel Paterson , who helped to shape his early political thought. After reading Albert Jay Nock's book, Our Enemy, the State , he engaged in a similar correspondence with him. After the war, he attended the University of St Andrews in Scotland. In 1953, he became
87-413: A Christian civilization. You have to be part of it or you're not really fit to conserve anything. That's an old line and it's very ignorant." Samuel T. Francis called Kirk's "Tel Aviv" remark "a wisecrack about the slavishly pro-Israel sympathies among neoconservatives." He described Decter's response as untrue, "reckless" and "vitriolic." Furthermore, he argued that such a denunciation "always plays into
116-581: A stereotypically "conservative" voting record. In the 1944 presidential election, Kirk voted for Norman Thomas , the candidate for the Socialist Party , rather than choose between incumbent Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Republican candidate Thomas E. Dewey . In the 1976 presidential election , he voted for Eugene McCarthy . In 1992 he supported Pat Buchanan 's primary challenge to incumbent George H. W. Bush , serving as state chair of
145-430: A version of federalism that was based on premises that differ in part from those of the founders and other conservatives. Kirk further believed that territorial democracy could reconcile the tension between treating the states as mere provinces of the central government, and as autonomous political units independent of Washington. Finally, territorial democracy allowed Kirk to set out a theory of individual rights grounded in
174-500: The classic tradition of Sheridan Le Fanu , M. R. James , Oliver Onions , and H. Russell Wakefield . He also wrote other admired and much-anthologized works that are variously classified as horror , fantasy, science fiction, and political satire . These earned him plaudits from fellow creative writers as varied and distinguished as T. S. Eliot , Robert Aickman , Madeleine L'Engle , and Ray Bradbury . Political philosopher Too Many Requests If you report this error to
203-636: The Buchanan campaign in Michigan. Kirk was a contributor to Chronicles . In 1989, he was presented with the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Ronald Reagan . The Conservative Mind , the published version of Kirk's doctoral dissertation, contributed materially to the 20th century Burke revival. It also drew attention to: The Portable Conservative Reader (1982), which Kirk edited, contains sample writings by most of
232-578: The Republican Party must lose its former good repute for frugality, and become the party of profligate expenditure, " butter and guns ." And public opinion would not long abide that. Nor would America's world influence and America's remaining prosperity. Yet presidents of the United States must not be encouraged to make Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, nor to fancy that they can establish a New World Order through eliminating dissenters. In
261-557: The South African commonwealth." Late in life, Kirk grew disenchanted with American neoconservatives as well. As Chronicles editor Scott Richert describes it: [One line] helped define the emerging struggle between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives. "Not seldom has it seemed," Kirk declared, "as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States." A few years later, in another Heritage Foundation speech, Kirk repeated that line verbatim. In
290-630: The Twentieth Century (1972), The Roots of American Order (1974), and the autobiographical Sword of the Imagination: Memoirs of a Half Century of Literary Conflict (1995). As was the case with his hero Edmund Burke , Kirk became renowned for the prose style of his intellectual and polemical writings. Beyond his scholarly achievements, Kirk was talented both as an oral storyteller and as an author of genre fiction , most notably in his telling of consummate ghost stories in
319-400: The United States. Kirk also argued that libertarians "bear no authority, temporal or spiritual" and do not "venerate ancient beliefs and customs, or the natural world, or [their] country, or the immortal spark in [their] fellow men." However, Kirk's view of classical liberals is positive. He agrees with them on " ordered liberty ", as they make "common cause with regular conservatives against
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#1732780375283348-658: The above. Biographer Bradley J. Birzer argues that for all his importance in inspiring the modern conservative movement, not many of his followers agreed with his unusual approach to the history of conservatism. As summarized by reviewer Drew Maciag: Harry Jaffa (a student of Leo Strauss ) wrote: "Kirk was a poor Burke scholar. Burke's attack on metaphysical reasoning related only to modern philosophy's attempt to eliminate skeptical doubt from its premises and hence from its conclusions." Gerald J. Russello argues that Kirk adapted what 19th-century American Catholic thinker Orestes Brownson called "territorial democracy" to articulate
377-488: The case of South Africa "this degradation of the democratic dogma, if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization." Kirk wrote that "the 'European' element [makes] South Africa the only 'modern' and prosperous African country." He added that "Bantu political domination [of South Africa] would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues" and that "Bantu and Coloreds and Indians must feel that they have some political voice in
406-603: The hands of the left, which is then able to repeat the charges and claim conservative endorsement of them. Toward the end of his life, Kirk was highly critical of Republican militarism. President Bush , Kirk said, had embarked upon "a radical course of intervention in the region of the Persian Gulf ." Excerpts from Kirk's lectures at The Heritage Foundation (1992): Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson were enthusiasts for American domination of
435-530: The ideas of Edmund Burke . Kirk was considered the chief proponent of traditionalist conservatism . He was also an accomplished author of Gothic and ghost story fiction. He is often considered one of the most significant conservative men of letters of the twentieth century. Russell Kirk was born in Plymouth, Michigan . He was the son of Russell Andrew Kirk, a railroad engineer, and Marjorie Pierce Kirk. Kirk obtained his B.A. at Michigan State University and
464-607: The individual human mind, of rationalism itself. Jacob G. Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation also responded to Kirk. In a column in The National Review on 9 March 1965 entitled "'One Man, One Vote' in South Africa," Kirk wrote that the U.S. Supreme Court's jurisprudence on voting "will work mischief—much injuring, rather than fulfilling, the responsible democracy for which Tocqueville hoped," but in
493-489: The libertarian movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating." He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct." He included libertarians in the latter category. Kirk, therefore, questioned the "fusionism" between libertarians and traditional conservatives that marked much of post-World War II conservatism in
522-520: The many books, academic articles, lectures, and the syndicated newspaper column (which ran for 13 years) by which he exerted his influence on American politics and intellectual life. In 1963, Kirk converted to Catholicism and married Annette Courtemanche; they had four daughters. She and Kirk became known for their hospitality, welcoming many political, philosophical, and literary figures in their Mecosta house (known as "Piety Hill"), and giving shelter to political refugees, hoboes, and others. Their home became
551-425: The menace of democratic despotism and economic collectivism." Tibor R. Machan defended libertarianism in response to Kirk's original Heritage Lecture. Machan argued that the right of individual sovereignty is perhaps most worthy of conserving from the American political heritage, and that when conservatives themselves talk about preserving some tradition, they cannot at the same time claim a disrespectful distrust of
580-585: The only American to be awarded the degree of Doctor of Letters by that university. Kirk "laid out a post-World War II program for conservatives by warning them, 'A handful of individuals, some of them quite unused to moral responsibilities on such a scale, made it their business to extirpate the populations of Nagasaki and Hiroshima ; we must make it our business to curtail the possibility of such snap decisions.'" Upon completing his studies, Kirk took up an academic position at his alma mater, Michigan State. He resigned in 1959, after having become disenchanted with
609-412: The particular historical circumstances of the United States, while rejecting a universal conception of such rights. In addition to bringing public attention to Anglo-American conservative principles, Kirk described his perception of liberal ideals in the first chapter. Kirk identified these ideals as the perfectibility of man, hostility towards tradition, rapid change in economic and political systems, and
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#1732780375283638-406: The rapid growth in student number and emphasis on intercollegiate athletics and technical training at the expense of the traditional liberal arts . Thereafter he referred to Michigan State as "Cow College" or "Behemoth University." He later wrote that academic political scientists and sociologists were "as a breed—dull dogs". Late in life, he taught one semester a year at Hillsdale College , where he
667-658: The second century before Christ, the Romans generously liberated the Greek city-states from the yoke of Macedonia. But it was not long before the Romans felt it necessary to impose upon those quarrelsome Greeks a domination more stifling to Hellenic freedom and culture than ever Macedon had been. It is a duty of the Congress of the United States to see that great American Caesars do not act likewise. Kirk's other important books include Eliot and his Age: T. S. Eliot's Moral Imagination in
696-768: The secularization of government. Kirk developed six "canons" of conservatism, which Gerald J. Russello described as follows: Kirk said that Christianity and Western Civilization are "unimaginable apart from one another" and that "all culture arises out of religion. When religious faith decays, culture must decline, though often seeming to flourish for a space after the religion which has nourished it has sunk into disbelief." Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Kirk grounded his Burkean conservatism in tradition, political philosophy, belles lettres , and
725-493: The site of a sort of seminar on conservative thought for university students. Piety Hill now houses the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal . After his conversion to Catholicism Kirk was a founding board member of Una Voce America . Kirk declined to drive, calling cars "mechanical Jacobins ", and would have nothing to do with television and what he called "electronic computers". Kirk did not always maintain
754-441: The strong religious faith of his later years, rather than libertarianism and free-market economic reasoning. The Conservative Mind hardly mentions economics at all. In a polemic, Kirk, quoting T. S. Eliot 's expression, called libertarians "chirping sectaries," adding that conservatives and libertarians share opposition to "collectivism," "the totalist state," and "bureaucracy," but otherwise have "nothing" in common. He called
783-609: The wake of the Gulf War, which he had opposed, he clearly understood that those words carried even greater meaning. Kirk also commented the neoconservatives were "often clever...seldom wise." Midge Decter , Jewish director of the Committee for the Free World , called Kirk's remark "a bloody outrage, a piece of anti-Semitism by Kirk that impugns the loyalty of neoconservatives." She told The New Republic , "It's this notion of
812-576: The world. Now George Bush appears to be emulating those eminent Democrats. When the Republicans, once upon a time, nominated for the presidency a "One World" candidate, Wendell Willkie , they were sadly trounced. In general, Republicans throughout the twentieth century have been advocates of prudence and restraint in the conduct of foreign affairs. Unless the Bush Administration abruptly reverses its fiscal and military course, I suggest,
841-509: Was distinguished visiting professor of humanities. Kirk frequently published in two American conservative journals he helped found, National Review in 1955 and Modern Age in 1957. He was the founding editor of the latter, 1957–59. He was later made a Distinguished Fellow of The Heritage Foundation , where he gave a number of lectures. After leaving Michigan State, Kirk returned to his ancestral home in Mecosta, Michigan , where he wrote
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