Quote of the Week: Russell Kirk
“This Protestant cast of mind and social view would dominate England’s Thirteen colonies. Did the Protestant spirit then create American civilization? One must beware of possible exaggeration. Had the bulk of the early settlers on the Atlantic seaboard been Roman Catholics rather than Calvinists and Anglicans, would the shape of American society have been unrecognizably different? The Catholic minority in Maryland, or the French Catholics of Canada whom British victories brought within Britain’s colonial structure, did not live an existence radically dissimilar from that of the dominant Protestant colonists.
Suppose that massive Catholic Irish migration to America had occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than in the nineteenth; suppose farther that this transplanting had been conducted under English law and within the frame of English political institutions, the Irish Catholics nevertheless being accorded complete religious toleration–as, after the English victory at Quebec, the British government would extend such toleration to the Catholic French of Canada. In such hypothetical circumstances, would not America then have developed socially much as it actually did develop with a Protestant population? Economic growth might have been somewhat slower in such conditions, and surely New England’s republican tendencies would have been less pronounced; still, perhaps these hypothetical colonies, by 1775, would have become rather like the actual Protestant colonies in 1775.
So it is somewhat more true to say that the Christian spirit, rather than the Protestant spirit only, helped to create American civilization.”
Russell Kirk. The Roots of American Order. 4th ed. (Wilmington: ISI Books, 2003), p. 237.
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To treat Kirk’s rhetorical question (In such hypothetical circumstances, would not America then have developed socially much as it actually did develop with a Protestant population?) as if it were a genuine query, I would have to respond in the negative. No, America would have looked much different in terms of its socio-economic make-up. Of course, the question itself and my answer both presuppose a rather naive view that the diversity of colonial American life pre- and immediately post-Revolutionary War was itself negligible.
For the record: I had to stop reading Kirk’s book after I read this paragraph, because it upset me so much. I’m halfway through it and he basically does a historical survey of American roots from Ancient Israel onward. The book has been relatively decent up to this point (besides the rambling), but when he made the point above, I just could not go any further. How can one take seriously someone who does a historical survey and then makes conclusions based on “hypotheticals”? He had not done that throughout the book, but he gets to this point and he does this. How can one be more obvious in trying to fit one’s agenda into history? I have no desire to continue the book, because I just can’t take seriously what he has to say, but I have to continue reading it for my class. Ok, there goes my bi-monthly rant :)
Well, I think there is a seduction that many intellectuals fail to resist and that is to see the genesis of their own ideas in the great sweeping historical movements of Western civilization. Instead of rooting the conservative movement in the Scottish Enlightenment and Burke, Kirk thinks he can trace it to the Israelites, ancient Greeks, and early Christians. Those who do not read the Enlightenment thinkers, the Greeks, and the early Church writings may believe and cling to Kirk, much like we see with respect to the fans of hacks like Michael Novak.
Of course, scholars of the history of these peoples have done the real research, and they provide the proper refutation of the Kirk’s, Buckley’s, and Novak’s. But will Kirk, Buckley, and Novak disciples read these scholars for themselves? That’s a query I would like to see answered.
Well it is a interesting thought what he says. I have often said that the problem of American History is they just look at Catholics through the process of immigration.
THe problem with that is something called the Louisiana Purchase which had a ton of Catholics in it that has roots that rivaled the Colonies. The purchase very much increased the number of Catholics of course but their influence and growth while a tad slower shows some pretty remarkable similarities to the original 13 especially when you look at areas like Biloxi, New Orelans , Natchez, and many others and that is just in in the lower South.
If one wanted to do a study a look of those lands in 1804 and in comparison with the the United States in 1804 as to all those factors would be a place to start.
jh:
Yes, but the culture of New Orleans is starkly different from that of say Shreveport. It is undeniable that the cities founded as Catholic cities are shaped much differently. I think his example about the Catholics in Maryland is false; they came as a minority and remained a minority. If the masses of Irish Catholics had come, forming a majority from a majority, then America would look more like Southern Louisiana (and thus have immensely better food)
Katerina:
I’m glad I saw your comment, because I was confused when I saw you had put this up here. I was thinking “Katerina agrees with this? Did I miss something?”
Policratius:
Quite true. I don’t know how familiar you are with Leo Strauss or Eric Voegelin, but those are two thinkers desperate to trace their enlightenment thinking back to the Greeks, resulting in a mangling of poor Aristotle and Plato, not to mention what happens to Aquinas in the chaos
And some try to tell us Kirk is anti-ideology. He isn’t, and anyone who has any philosophical background can detect all kinds of problematic ideologies underlying Kirk’s readings. This passage is a good example of it.
Michael
“Yes, but the culture of New Orleans is starkly different from that of say Shreveport. It is undeniable that the cities founded as Catholic cities are shaped much differently. I think his example about the Catholics in Maryland is false; they came as a minority and remained a minority. If the masses of Irish Catholics had come, forming a majority from a majority, then America would look more like Southern Louisiana (and thus have immensely better food)”
Well most Cities in the U.S are different than New Orelans Of Course Shreveport was not founded till much later and was a quite different town back then also. It was pretty much a laweless frontier town on the border of AMexico A better example might be city just a hour south of it like Natchitoches which is older than New Orleans.
It is tought to use New Orelans as example of what might have been because well so many factors have a strange influence on it
I fail to see what is upsetting about this passage. Kirk here makes the very modest point that the American civilization can be attributed to more than just the Protestant spirit. He poses a few hypothetical circumstances to make that point. Personally, I think he could have made the point more persuasively by citing a few examples of how the Catholic spirit contributed to the American order. A few examples would have sufficed to show that the American order doesn’t have its roots exclusively in Protestantism. For whatever reason, Kirk chose instead to pose a few hypothetical situations, which he admits are hardly conclusive, and to draw a conclusion from those. He didn’t give us the strongest argument for his point, but that doesn’t mean he or his point shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Henry,
What is the ideology – as Kirk defines the term – in this quote?
Kyle
Look at how he embraces “American civilization.” What exactly is it for Kirk? When one examines this, one can quickly find the ideology which lay behind his sentiment. Any emrbace of any civilization has political-ideological consequences. That is the problem.
Post-modernism is not really about the denial of ideologies; indeed, it is impossible to overcome them (it would be an ideology to suggest we can have none). Rather, it is the realization we have them and so to know what lay behind our thoughts and how they limit us and what we have to say. To deny we have them is very modern, not post-modern. When one discusses the other as the ideologue without recognizing oneself as such, then you have entered the realm of propaganda. And that is very ideological!
And thus, when you study Kirk in full, you get ideological positions which he claims are not ideologies, and he provides excuses like, “In fine, the diversity of ways in which conservative views may find expression is itself proof that conservatism is no fixed ideology.” Well, the same could be said for “liberals,” since “liberals” also have “diversity of ways in which views may find expression.” It’s not that there is no ideology, it is that the LABELS conservative and liberal fluxuate as to what ideologies they are interested in at a given time; to find the ideology you look in context, otherwise, you will find, there is no “essence” of either conservative nor liberal which can be universal, and so one would better say there is no such thing as either. But to define oneself as a conservative, to give elaboration of “principles” and then say “but there is no ideology” is just a farce.
Just one more thing; so much of what he says reminds me of the turn of the century movement in various Christian circles for people to say “religion is evil, and Christianity is not a religion.” And as much as I have a problem with those who try to say Christianity is not a religion, I have a problem with anyone who works hard to denounce ideologies without recognizing it makes them into an ideologue just to do so.
Kyle I agree with youto a degree
It is a question I have sort of pondered. What if the various Catholic crowns had not so mismanaged their possessions over periods of times the big what if. Sort of like if the Czar had taken advantage of their opportunitys in Alaska and saw the the great potential of California what if.
That brings up the question of What Kinds of Catholic Colonist because the main American Catholic families (Acadian, French, Spanish, Irish, and Italian) have all contributed some distinct things.
I am of the opinion that the land and the distance from Europe had a similar effect regardless if one was Catholic or Protestant. The excitement of the new land coupled with the fact you often facing dangers of real death sort of fostered a Independent spirit. There are many factors going on.
As to what Kirk is saying about a Generall Christian Spirit well I too would like to know what he is talking about.
jh:
Fair enough. What about Lafayette? I think the whole of South Louisiana stands as a rejection of Kirk.
OK, there is a lot here to unpack. I’ve read a pretty good amount of Kirk, and Katerina I think it’s great that he is assigned. His influence is too often overlooked. I’ll address some of these points in the next “A Postmodern Conservatism?,” (hopefully) but you raise an interesting concern. Now…
How can one take seriously someone who does a historical survey and then makes conclusions based on “hypotheticals”? He had not done that throughout the book, but he gets to this point and he does this. How can one be more obvious in trying to fit one’s agenda into history?
Kirk favored an “imaginative” reading of history, meaning that he took historical actions and figures and held them up as examples of a more properly ordered sentiment of moral order. So it’s not too strange that he would engage in hypotheticals…that is part of his writing style. I don’t think this is trying to “fit his agenda into history” because he does not consider himself a historian. Never claimed to be one. He views himself more like a doctor who uses history to identify and correct a problem – fundamentally, a problem of a rejecting the transcendent and the wisdoms of the past in favor of the new and the exciting and the empty pursuit of pleasure.
This takes us to Henry’s point about ideology: W. Kendall and Kuehnelt-Leddihn and (sort of) Richard Weaver and other critics of the Right made similar charges against Kirk. Look at how he embraces “American civilization.” I don’t think they hold….
What exactly is it for Kirk? When one examines this, one can quickly find the ideology which lay behind his sentiment. Any emrbace of any civilization has political-ideological consequences. That is the problem.
But does that mean he engages in ideology? It’s easy to make this claim, especially indirectly (a consequence), but much harder to draw out any manner of ideology from his writings. Kirk pretty emphatically rejected efforts to construct a set of aims based on ideas.
Post-modernism is not really about the denial of ideologies; indeed, it is impossible to overcome them (it would be an ideology to suggest we can have none). Rather, it is the realization we have them and so to know what lay behind our thoughts and how they limit us and what we have to say. To deny we have them is very modern, not post-modern. When one discusses the other as the ideologue without recognizing oneself as such, then you have entered the realm of propaganda. And that is very ideological!
I don’t think Kirk would disagree with this. Peter Lawler, a follower of Kirk, makes somthing like this point all the time. But your last two sentences here don’t follow. Your assumption that one who discusses ideology has ideology needs to be proved using their writings, after you have defined ideology.
And thus, when you study Kirk in full, you get ideological positions which he claims are not ideologies, and he provides excuses like, “In fine, the diversity of ways in which conservative views may find expression is itself proof that conservatism is no fixed ideology.” Well, the same could be said for “liberals,” since “liberals” also have “diversity of ways in which views may find expression.” It’s not that there is no ideology, it is that the LABELS conservative and liberal fluxuate as to what ideologies they are interested in at a given time; to find the ideology you look in context, otherwise, you will find, there is no “essence” of either conservative nor liberal which can be universal, and so one would better say there is no such thing as either. But to define oneself as a conservative, to give elaboration of “principles” and then say “but there is no ideology” is just a farce.
Have you read The Conservative Mind all the way through? This characterization doesn’t make much sense. He does not suggest that a “diversity of ways in which conservative views may find expression is itself proof that conservatism is no fixed ideology.” In fact, he lambasts much of what passes for conservative there and elsewhere for its ideology. Russello’s The Postmodern Imagination of Russell Kirk also has a lot of detail on that.
Great topic. More later.
Jonathan
The response you give is nonsense; here’s an example: “Kirk pretty emphatically rejected efforts to construct a set of aims based on ideas.” That, however, is an aim which is based upon an idea. It’s self-contradictory. As I said, it is pure propaganda to say “everyone is an ideologue but me.” One of the key things one learns when engaging post-modernism is that we must all accept the limits within our discourse, and that ALL discourse is ideological. Without that recognition, there is no movement forward.
Without reading the wider context, it sounds to me like Kirk is arguing that while there is clearly Christian thought which went into the formation of American civilization, that it was not the specificity of either Protestant or Catholic thought that was the major formative factor so much as the experiences and way of life of the colonists, but Catholic and Protestant.
I suppose an interesting flip side question could be asked: In what sense is the French civilication which came to be through the French Revolution a decade later specifically formed by France’s Catholic history? Personally, I don’t see that the Protestantism of the colonies or the Catholicism of France were in either case the main formative factor, but I’m sure others would have different views.
Poli,
Come now. There are clearly Greek and Roman (I’d tend to say much more Roman) elements which the conservative worldview very much based itself on. The Scottish Enlightenment is clearly a factor, but to deny that many Roman authors (and quite arguably some Greek authors such as Xenophon) exhibited very much the sort of conservative tendencies that Kirk admired is to vastly over stretch your case.
Micheal,
I guess places like Lafayette bring up my point. One of the best books I read on this subject was Catholics in the Old South. Until the wave of immigration in the North and a very Irish Domination of it American Catholicsm was very southern.
Google books actually has a lot of pages devoted to Catholic immigrant experinece in the United States and South in this very good book Catholics in the Old South which is pretty fasicanting reading
http://books.google.com/books?id=N_1rzB1plukC
The book shows the complexity of the situation but makes several important points. That is there was not one particular “Catholic Culture” That is what I mean when I say in this whole what if scenario it is important to think What kind of Catholics. As the books points out the Church and early settlers were such a diverse ethnic mix that at times that was it greatest strength and its greatest weakness. In effect it a diverse group where nationality and social custom played a huge part.
As to Lafayette and that area you not only have the particular ethos of that ethnic group but a very very rural Catholicism, Rural Catholicism like rural Protestants differed in outlook and self interest from their urban counterparts.
I guess what I am saying is that the same fault lines in Protestant America can be found in Catholic America. You had Catholics for instance that very much ID’d with the South and the slave holding society and on on hand you had German Catholics (Germans being 20 percent of the Union Army and what held Missouri in the Union) were very Catholic and very anti Slavery as a whole.
Add to all this the problem of Trustism that was rampant for decades all over the United States and we just have a different animal. Trustism cannot be laid at the door of influence of Protestansts either because as you know in South Louisiana in the early 1800′s it was at its most severe.
I am not saying there was differences between Catholic and Protestant views. However the effect each had on each other also differs by geography.
Come now. There are clearly Greek and Roman (I’d tend to say much more Roman) elements which the conservative worldview very much based itself on. The Scottish Enlightenment is clearly a factor, but to deny that many Roman authors (and quite arguably some Greek authors such as Xenophon) exhibited very much the sort of conservative tendencies that Kirk admired is to vastly over stretch your case.
One very unfortunate loss is the decline of Roman civics in our education. Up until about 1960, this would have been a scandal! And as far as Roman figures influencing conservative intellectuals, Cicero would I think be tops.
The response you give is nonsense; here’s an example: “Kirk pretty emphatically rejected efforts to construct a set of aims based on ideas.” That, however, is an aim which is based upon an idea. It’s self-contradictory. As I said, it is pure propaganda to say “everyone is an ideologue but me.” One of the key things one learns when engaging post-modernism is that we must all accept the limits within our discourse, and that ALL discourse is ideological. Without that recognition, there is no movement forward.
Henry,
Well, at least we’ve gotten to the root of it quickly. I simply disagree. (And you mischaracterize Kirk with “everyone is an ideologue but me.” He held up lots of “anti-ideologies”, including Catholicism.) If my idea was “the negation of ideology in favor of sentiment and accumulated wisdom”, that may or may not be an “ideological statement” – heck, go ahead and call it one, that is not what I am arguing – but it does NOT mean that its author is constructing an ideology. As such, I do not think that all discourse is ideological, so perhaps we cannot move forward on these points.
Jonathan
But those other examples are themselves things associated with him (such as your example, Catholicism). So once again, you have not dealt with the issue. And you demonstrate the blindness of the self so much involved with modernism and how he is entirely within the modernist, not post-modernist, ideology. And yes, I say ideology. Again, the same problem with “Christianity is not a religion” is involved with the “I am not an ideologue” mentality of people who will quickly criticize ideologies. I have no problem with criticizing ideologies and looking to the limits they bring, but again, to not realize one has constructed one’s own ideologies (and one can easily find out he did) is ignorance, or to ignore it and know of it, is lying.
It’s also the same problem with people who say “I am an empiricist, and therefore, reject metaphysics.” To reject metaphysics requires metaphysics. It’s the same self-contradiction.
Thus, to conclude, it is the same root problem laying behind people who say “Christianity is not a religion” with those who say “I don’t have an ideology” and those who say “I reject metaphysics.”
Michael Denton:
Quite true. I don’t know how familiar you are with Leo Strauss or Eric Voegelin, but those are two thinkers desperate to trace their enlightenment thinking back to the Greeks, resulting in a mangling of poor Aristotle and Plato, not to mention what happens to Aquinas in the chaos
If we may generalize (perhaps a bit too much?): How ironic that many who admire Burke/Kirk and many who admire Strauss so viciously go after one another!
I understand the analogy, but it does not follow that because you can criticize metaphysics/empiricism or Marxism or athiesm in that way that you can criticize ideology. It is necessary to reason why it is ideological to state, for example, that “conservatism properly understood is a rejection of the totalizing forces of ideology in favor of more properly ordered sentiments, which can never be totalizing.” Ideology, I am saying, is totalizing, by effort or by design. Kirk’s conservatism was not.
As for your first point,
But those other examples are themselves things associated with him (such as your example, Catholicism). So once again, you have not dealt with the issue. And you demonstrate the blindness of the self so much involved with modernism and how he is entirely within the modernist, not post-modernist, ideology. And yes, I say ideology.
I cannot make sense of this so you will need to restate.
Jonathan
“Ideology is bad” is an ideology. It’s that simple. It is a totalizing sentiment. And if one looks towards what Kirk suggested are the princinples of conservativism, it is easy to see they are totalizing, universal notions. It’s quite simple. Very basic philosophical issue involved here.
“Ideology is bad” is only a part of Kirk’s argument. And its the smallest, least important part. He is stating that conservatism is the negation of ideology, and that this is not totalizing because, for example, the “moral imagination” (much of which will abide in mystery, see the link below) is, like custom, an always-present guide even as we cannot fully grasp it. If you think an “inspiration toward first principles” is totalizing, then I’m not sure we can go much further in this discussion.
http://www.kirkcenter.org/index.php/detail/the-moral-imagination/
Kirk offered no doctrine and no procedure of action by comparison to the ideologies of the 20th Century. Only be a very loose and encompassing definition could we state his ideas are ideological.,,,,,so, what is your definition of ideology?
Kirk offered all kinds of doctrines; we are talking about one of them right here. It’s quite clear, you are unable to discern the self-contradiction within the rhetoric. And it is quite clear you do not know the value of words, and how they are all constructions which bring ideological consequences just by using them; a word is making a universal statement, and it is covering up other aspects of the situation when you use it.
What is quite clear is that we need a clarity of terms. And what’s with the insults? Let’s really try to leave that junk aside.
Now what is your definition of ideology?
Henry,
Kirk defined “ideology” as a political formula that promises earthly paradise, having vices of inverted religious fanaticism and intolerance of compromise or deviation from its revelation of Absolute Truth. While Kirk embraces American civilization, he didn’t view it as an earthly paradise the rest of the world must follow. Kirk was very much against America trying to remake the world in its image or even trying to set what it considers injustices right across the globe. He called the war to liberate Kuwait a vanity and crime! While he thought that America has much good to offer the world, he also had this to say: “I am afraid that we must confess, now, that Americans have no peculiar exemption from Sin, as a people, and that pure power, in our hands, is as dreadful as pure power in the hands of any other nation.” That’s not an ideological thing to say.
Kyle
It’s still a political formula which he made as a universal, and which he used to judge all other political formulae. Once again, it is the same problem of someone saying, “I reject metaphysics.” Once you engage metaphysics to say you reject it, or once you engage ideologies to say you reject them, you have already entered what you denounce. Kirk is very ideological — he might try to hide it, but it is there for all to see. He is making universal statements as to how best to have the world. And his desire not to have the Gulf War is only saying this is not the way to get to his ideology, not that he doesn’t see a universal approach from which he is judging everything (save himself). And all you need to do is again see his “principles of conservativism” to see ideology up front and center. The one who tries to hide the fact they have an ideology instead of being up front with it is, imo, more dangerous! Just ask yourself, what would Derrida find lying behind Kirk’s views.
We need your working definition of ideology to have any sort of conversation here.
I personally view – as Kirk did – ideology to be a fairly well formulated thing, ie. Marx – economics is the engine of history – a party platform, articulated or not articulated. Kirk advocated for sentiments and habituations. You’ll need to explain why this is ideology.
Just remembered this saying: the ideologue is more concerned with horsepower than the horse.
I really do fail to see how an orientation, a habituation, a sentiment toward the good firmly against abstraction and in favor of an disorganized (that is, human) process of discovery can be thought of as an ideology.
Jonathan
Well, one definition goes like this: “a manner or the content of thinking characteristic of an individual, group, or culture.” Obviously, following that model, http://www.kirkcenter.org/kirk/ten-principles.html is easily discerned as ideology. But again, I am just working with the arguments provided here. Read my statements and it is quite clear. I don’t see how you could even claim advocating sentiments and habituations is not ideological, since everything you could label an ideology could easily say “it’s just our sentiments.”
Well, then, present is the same problem that sometimes occurs (although this is a recent phenomenon) when defining rhetoric, discourse, postmodernism, and postmodernity, among others: if it essentially means anything, then it has no definition, only a situational label.
If ideology is just a characteristic manner of thinking, then it can be stretched to nearly any definition. Yet even by this standard I still think that the term eludes Kirk: his thinking was not characteristic when he was doing it, which is why it remains so notable! As previously mentioned, he forged an imaginative, sentimental conservatism out of figures that had before then not been very near the term. His no.1 hero, after all, was a Whig!
We might ask ourselves if the Christian religion has had much real effect at all on the way our government and society is organized. Do we have a society built more along the lines of Jesus’ teaching than say, that of ancient Rome? Well, we managed to get rid of slavery about a century and a half ago, and we don’t have gladitorial games anymore (not to the death, anyhow). So there’s that.
But to what degree are most people in their daily lives guided by Christian principles? We may have good intentions, but the fact is that we live in a world where such principles are virtually irrelevant.
For example, how do I love my neighbor as myself in a business transaction? Our whole economic system is based on the assumption that I will take my neighbor for just as much as I possibly can–”whatever the traffic will bear.”
Maybe one day we will figure out on the practical level how to live pretty much like followers of Jesus, with a lot less tolerance for everyday social sin; then perhaps we will look at our present system as something akin to gladitorial combat or slavery; but I don’t see that day coming soon.
There are clearly Greek and Roman (I’d tend to say much more Roman) elements which the conservative worldview very much based itself on. The Scottish Enlightenment is clearly a factor, but to deny that many Roman authors (and quite arguably some Greek authors such as Xenophon) exhibited very much the sort of conservative tendencies that Kirk admired is to vastly over stretch your case.
Clearly a factor? Just a factor? Do re-read the history of ideas–the British/Scottish Enlightenment is the dominant basis of American conservativism. If you dispute this point, then please offer some rationale.
Which Greek and Roman authors are you referring to that had an appreciable impact on American conservativism? Is it Strauss or you who is asserting Xenophon’s influence on the movement? If so, where do we find his influence and in whom?
Poli,
It’s been a while since I’ve read or thought about this, but from what I recall, Adams and others from the post-Puritan milieu that became the Federalists had ideas of Republican virtue influenced by Cicero. They certainly read Cicero extensively.
Russell Kirk led a debate among conservatives of whether being conservative is an “ism” or an ideology. His friend, Erik Maria Ritter von Kuehnelt-Leddihn (1909-90), the last stubborn subject and living defender of the Hapsburg monarchy in America, disagreed with him. Kuehnelt-Leddihn laughed the afternoon I conversed with him at Kirk’s home, Piety Hill in central Michigan, and said that Kirk had an ideology but didn’t know it. Kirk despised ideology; Kuehnelt-Leddihn despised most of them.
What Kirk really meant is if an intellectual abstraction such as economic determinism, racial supremacy, or Marxism hammers all the world’s discordant facts into a straight steel rail, the mystery, softness, asymmetry, tradition, history, poetry, and family relations which make life worth living must be bulldozed to make way for the simple truth of the intellectual abstraction embraced as a quasi-religion.
Call it an ideology if you like, but Kirk believed that the purpose of the conservative in the modern world is remind the herd in the cloudy whirl that some things don’t change, that some truths cannot be explained using the all-encompassing logic of the latest intellectual fashion, and that the sky is not going to fall unless we are saved by politicians promising us more government for our own good. Politics and politicians won’t save what we love, but what we love, that is, the Permanent Things of literature, poetry, tradition, art, history, and so on, might save us, or at least comfort us as we prepare to meet our Maker and save our grandchildren or stepchildren.
Kirk lived his creed. Like Allen Tate, he saw the triumph of intellectual abstraction (from fascism to communism) over common sense, traditional religion, poetry, music, architecture, practical sensibility, political economy, history, and mystery as a threat to civilization. Kirk is blasted by philosophers of the right and left because he truly believed that a sword hanging over the mantle, a fire, a drink, a painting, an old chair, and a good story of moral imagination were better than all the volumes of philosophy, good and bad, ever written. As D.H. Lawrence said of Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Authors lie, but a good story tells the truth.”
I must agree, though many people of more philosophical and less mystical mind than mine will find the Kirk view disatisfying if not horrible. To you I raise a glass, recite a line of Homer, and offer a prayer.
Remembering Kirk’s “Roots of American Order,” he responded in writing to one conservative critic who didn’t think it was Catholic enough. Kirk noted that the critic only wished that America were more Catholic than it is, but America is what it is- a country whose cultural roots in the 17th and 18th centuries were largely Protestant. Kirk’s speculative statement of what if America had been more like Maryland and less like New England was meant to refute the view, common among 19th-century Protestant commentators, that Catholicism was incapable of creating a modern, healthy, and prosperous civilization. Kirk had too much humility to think he had a crystal ball, but he didn’t believe one needed to live in a Protestant country to be free, prosperous, and happy.
Kirk’s lifetime achievement cannot be denied, that is, the retracing of the steps and paths of conservative thinking in the Anglo-American tradition. Conservative thinking is not anti-thetical to Western thinking or American thinking. Conservatives have been part of the dialogue of the West. There are threads of what we modern Americans might call “conservative” thought going back to Moses, Aristotle, Cicero, and Blackstone, and from this same body of literature comes liberal and some radical thought. Nonetheless, conservative thought is indigenous to the West and to America and should not be crowded out of the academy and exiled to think-tanks.
Because Kirk and Kuehnelt-Leddihn could not agree on whether conservative thought is an ideology, I won’t weigh in too much about it. I will say this: whenever “conservative” thought became crusted, rigid, harsh, merciless, intolerant, and insistent upon political dominance to procure its ends, Kirk believed that it ceased to be conservative.
Clearly a factor? Just a factor? Do re-read the history of ideas–the British/Scottish Enlightenment is the dominant basis of American conservativism. If you dispute this point, then please offer some rationale.
Okay, a major factor. But beware of an overly classroom idea of the history of ideas. The Scottish Enlightenment was very recent history to the Founding Fathers, and it doesn’t seem at all clear to me that they saw it as a conscious movement the way that 19th century political -isms might have. So while they read the authors of the day, they rooted things in the classic texts that they had been brought up on as well. And since one of the hallmarks of the Enlightenment was a neo-classicism, it’s hardly surprising that people saw themselves as continuing in the spirit of the Greeks and Romans.
Which Greek and Roman authors are you referring to that had an appreciable impact on American conservativism? Is it Strauss or you who is asserting Xenophon’s influence on the movement? If so, where do we find his influence and in whom?
First off, I haven’t read Strauss, so it must be me. And I’m not so much asserting it as suggesting it. Now I think about it a bit more, Xenophon’s conservatism might have struck people, but especially at that time people would primarily have read the Anabasis, not his Socratic and political texts. So his conservatism probably wouldn’t have stood out to them so much.
I suppose the first question is whose influence by the Greeks and Romans we’re trying to prove. The founding was influenced heavily by British enlightenment thinking and by classical discussion of the Roman Republic and republican virtues as found in Livy (including the Roman civic mythology of Cincinnatus, Horatius, etc.), Polybius and Plutarch’s lives of the great Greeks and Romans. Cicero’s writing would also have been incredibly familiar, and formed part of the image of the Roman Republic that the founders sought to imitate.
To a lesser extent, Pericles as portrayed in Thucydides might have been an influence.
Now if you’re talking about the founders of American conservatism, you have to define who you think of as the founders of conservatism, but since American conservatism has generally seen itself as harkening back to the founding, you’ll generally find American conservatives identifying with and drawing ideas from the same classical authors whom the founders read and admired.
Katerina:
This is not related to the post, but I am a friend of Mike’s and have been trying to get a hold of him by email, but he hasn’t been very good at responding. I figured you might be a more reliable source for a response. Could you please ask Mike to email me– he has my email address. Just tell him it’s Tim from Cal Poly. Thank you so much!
-Tim