Today is the 30th anniversary of the death of a conservative icon, Russell Amos Kirk, labeled the “Father of American Conservatism” by The Atlantic. Kirk’s magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, “gave American conservatives an identity and a genealogy and catalyzed the postwar conservative movement,” the NYT reported in 1953, the release date of the seminal work. Yet, few people outside of the intellectual conservative sphere know about Russell Kirk, much less give him the laurels he so deserves, making today well ripe to continue his legacy. Kirk, who often depicted himself as a knight errant brandishing his Sword of Imagination, gives us much in the ways of both leading by example and by his well-reasoned beliefs.
Born in 1918, Russell Kirk was the son of a train conductor. He began publishing pieces nationally at the age of 17 and received degrees from Michigan State and Duke before a short stint in WWII, recording information for chemical testing.
After the war, he finally attended St. Andrews, Scotland, where he achieved his Doctorate of Letters, the only American to do so, and published The Conservative Mind. Shortly after he settled in his ancestral home atop Piety Hill in Mecosta, a small town in central Michigan, where shortly after he married Annette Courtemanche Kirk and had four daughters. From here he lived the true life of a man of letters, spending his time reading in his expansive library, writing for countless periodicals, publishing numerous books, including biographies, gothic fiction, an economics textbook, and other seminal works such as Roots of The American Order. He also traveled the country lecturing to tens of thousands of individuals, as well as hosting thousands more in his Mecosta home. Everyone from Ethiopian refugees to single mothers to a wandering hobo, Piety Hill was always awash with menagerie characters, all welcomed at the Kirk home.
The story of the Kirk family hobo, named Clinton Wallace, perfectly encapsulates how Kirk viewed his duty to help others in this life. Wallace, who had either spent his life on the streets or in prison, lived in Kirk’s house for six years, until his death in a snowstorm. Wallace was a gentle, large man prone to reciting poetry. He loved entertaining Kirk’s four children and spent his time reading in Kirk’s library or helping out in maintaining the busy happenings at Piety Hill. This drifting soul, who had not known stability for the near entirety of his life, found a home in Mecosta, Michigan, simply through an invitation to lunch and then a phone call.
Kirk did much to keep his grounds as the “Last Homely House,” a place of refuge from those who seek to destroy what T.S. Eliot calls “the Permanent Things.” It’s in his living that we see examples of the important acts that we can all do: support those in need, keep good friends, and continually strive to keep alive the fire of civilization that has been passed to us so that future generations may inherit it. It’s hard not to be inspired to carry on the good fight after time spent at Piety Hill.
Yet, for most, it is not the physical manifestations of Kirk’s lifelong charge most conservatives are familiar with, but instead his scholarly ones. His most famous work, The Conservative Mind, is the reason why millions of Americans use the word conservative to describe themselves. Before Kirk, terms such as individualist or classical liberal were used, while after Kirk, conservative became the title for those who championed the Permanent Things.
Once Kirk named the movement, he stressed that conservatism is not an ideology, but instead a series of prudent beliefs that can guide one’s actions and thinking in life. Ideology, Kirk says, “is a political formula that promises mankind an earthly paradise; but in fact what ideology has created is a series of terrestrial hells.” Kirk details in his many writings that ideology is the narrow-minded focus on principles that the ideologue takes as absolute truth; thus, any deviation from their truth is ontologically evil. This legalistic thinking leads to schism, strife, and despair. Kirk instead calls for the “prudential politician,” a term synonymous to conservative in Kirk’s writings. The conservative dictates their actions by adhering to their prudent principles, being willing to compromise in the public sphere when necessary, and recognizing the impossibility of an earthly Utopia. Conservatism, in this respect, is simply the “negation of ideology.”
Kirk does not leave us ignorant regarding what principles to pursue. In the countless failed attempts at defining what a conservative is, Kirk perhaps gets the closest in his principles of conservatism. These ten principles are exceptional guides both as general life reminders and as a means to clarify for all conservatives what exactly these internal yearnings and beliefs are in an explicit manner. This allows these tenets to be integrated into their actions and beliefs. These 10 principles are as follows:
- The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
- The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
- Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription.
- Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.
- Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
- Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.
- Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
- Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
- The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
- The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.
Every one of these principles will be generally found, in one sense or another, among those who call themselves conservatives, even if they sometimes stray from them. Each of these principles deserves an essay or more on its own. To hear more in Kirk’s own words see here, but there are a couple that I wish to highlight a few below.
The first is the belief in an enduring moral order, that there exists something beyond our earthly realm that directly impacts us here. Something that we base our ideas of morality and justice on, and how any deviation from this moral order leads to the ruin of society that we have witnessed the past few centuries. This tenet also refers to the private balance of the soul, that when an individual falls out of sync with the moral order, that they will be unable to be satisfied in life, leading to internal strife that perpetuates into society.
The other major principle is continuity and permanence. Conservatives recognize the struggle of thousands of years of human society and the need to slowly build upon what we have been given. That we stand on the shoulders of giants, who have gifted us a delicately crafted system that gets many things right. To tear it down like some people suggest, with no regard for its stability, is akin to tearing out random walls of a house and being surprised when the whole thing crumbles down.
The last thing that Kirk gives us is works spurring the “Moral Imagination”, the battle of good and evil in the mind, the expression of morals through stories and tales. The Moral Imagination allows man to see the importance in the courage of the heroic knight saving the day and the wickedness of the evil wizard attempting to destroy mankind and everything in between. Kirk contributed to the Moral Imagination in many ways, primarily through his gothic horror fiction, mostly in his haunted short stories or one of his three novels, with his Old House of Fear as his most popular book of all time. However, he saw all of his works as wielding his Sword of Imagination, whether that was recommending a book in one of his numerous articles that would influence a child, or with his Halloween storytelling, animatedly narrating a ghostly happening while dressed as the Great Pumpkin.
Kirk’s impact on the modern day, three decades past his death, is still apparent to intellectual conservatives, both budding and old. His mountain of works gives us some guiding principles, vices to avoid, virtues to pursue, and even the name that we call ourselves. Kirk shows us both a logical and imaginative sense of conservatism through his fundamental truths and powerful stories. Both of these live on in his works, keeping him as an essential staple in any conservative studies. On this day of remembrance, we honor Kirk in promoting him among those who have not heard of him, providing them the opportunity to learn both from his chivalrous example and his enduring words.
Cover photo used with permission of Russell Kirk Legacy LLC
