Heritage Foundation has a lecture posted on Russell Kirk and American history. Kirk was one of my defining influences growing up, so it's always nice to see a tribute to the old fella. It's my great regret never having visited him at the gatherings he held at his home in Mecosta, MI. It would have been something of a pilgrimage.
A good starting point for exploring Kirkian thought is The Roots of American Order, one of the early attempts to trace both the origins of American culture and a conservative pedigree within it.
"Historical consciousness gave him a broad, capacious vision, which always insisted that the civilization we enjoy has deep living roots. Those roots of American order extend back in time not only to 18th- century Philadelphia, but further back, to London, Rome, Athens, and Jerusalem. Virtually everything he wrote testified to his intense awareness of the immanence, inescapability, and indispensability of the past, and not only the past of the previous generation or two, but the distant past. . ."
"What struck many readers as mannered or affected diction in Kirk was actually something quite different. It was evidence of his strong conviction that words, like people, are living things, bearing living pasts deserving of recognition and respect. That was typical of him. He had the ability to make even the dullest things gleam with the luster of historical imagination. . .
In particular, Kirk lamented the deification of progress, the cult of absolute equality, the advance of the Leviathan state, the licentiousness of the autonomous self, the transvaluation of values, and other such modern abstractions that have transformed and eroded the American republic."
Posted by Discoshaman at novembre 20, 2005 12:17 AM | TrackBack