The following essay appears in the final chapter of Russell Kirk’s textbook Economics: Work and Prosperity (Pensacola, Fla.: A Beka Book Publications, 1989), pp. 365–368. Some people would like to separate economists from politics, but they are unable to do so. Another name for economics is political economy. As we mentioned in earlier chapters, a [...]
A Michigan farmer, some years ago, climbed to the roof of his silo, and there he painted, in great red letters that the Deity could see, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” These words are on that roof yet. When in his cups, which was often enough, that farmer thrashed his [...]
Russell Kirk by Russell Kirk The…conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of spirit and character—with the perennial problem of the inner order of the soul, the restoration of the ethical understanding and the religious sanction upon which any life worth living is founded. This is conservatism at its highest.—The Conservative [...]
Mantel in Russell Kirk’s Library The moral imagination is the principal possession that man does not share with the beasts. It is man’s power to perceive ethical truth, abiding law, in the seeming chaos of many events. Without the moral imagination, man would live merely day to day, or rather moment to moment, as [...]
Russell Kirk The primary purpose of a liberal education, then, is the cultivation of the person’s own intellect and imagination, for the person’s own sake. It ought not to be forgotten, in this mass-age when the state aspires to be all in all, that genuine education is something higher than an instrument of [...]
by Russell Kirk Russell Kirk At the back of every discussion of the good society lies this question, what is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition, or success or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead [...]
Russell Kirk by Russell Kirk Great states with good constitutions develop when most people think of their duties and restrain their appetites. Great states sink toward their dissolution when most people think of their privileges and indulge their appetites freely. Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. The [...]
Russell Kirk at Piety Hill At the back of every discussion of the good society lies this question, What is the object of human life? The enlightened conservative does not believe that the end or aim of life is competition; or success; or enjoyment; or longevity; or power; or possessions. He believes, instead, [...]
The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Santayana, by Russell Kirk (currently entitled The Conservative Mind: from Burke to Eliot). Books on the topic of this essay may be found in The Imaginative Conservative Bookstore. The Imaginative Conservative applies the principle of appreciation to the discussion of culture and politics—we approach dialogue with magnanimity rather than with mere civility. Will [...]
One hundred fifty years ago today, the Union—or, what was left of it—was in an uproar. Two days earlier, after three days of debate, the South Carolina Convention declared itself independent of the American Union. Never before or since has a greater threat existed against the cohesiveness and integrity of the United States of America. [...]
In the early to mid 1950s, especially after publishing The Conservative Mind, Kirk began to develop his own own three pillars of a good society, "Order, Justice, and Freedom" as he would frequently put it in the 1970s and 1980s. In this 1954 article (excerpts below), published in the University of Notre Dame's Review of [...]
by Russell Kirk To speak of American conservative action…may seem a contradiction in terms. The instinct of the conservative, as Lord Hailsham observes, is to enjoy life as he finds it, not to mold society nearer to his heart’s desire; nor does he think of practical politics as the end and aim of being. Family life, [...]
In the 1950s and 1960s, Kirk wrote frequently for the New York Times. In the following excerpted article, “The Aim of the Conservative is to Keep the Best in Life,” (NYT, March 4, 1956, pg. SM6), the 38-year old Michiganian proclaimed his allegiance to the timeless principles of Socrates, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and C.S. Lewis. The [...]
In neither his private correspondence nor his books or articles did Dr. Kirk write much regarding the so-called Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s. As some of his critics have gleefully noted, Russell Kirk seems to have simply let “McCarthyism” slide by, thus neither attempting to stop nor even to attenuate it. As one [...]