Russell Kirk Reconsidered

When Russell Kirk (1918-1994) published his magnum opus, The Conservative Mind, in May 1953, the entire landscape of the English-speaking world changed. Though originally a dissertation entitled The Conservatives’ Rout, Kirk’s book gave voice to a myriad of thinkers and thoughts previously uncoalesced but swirling—sometimes anxiously and sometimes violently and, most often, just confusedly—in the powerful desire to be something more than merely anti-communist. Did America, and by extension Anglo- and western civilization actually stand for something? It is one thing to resist and to criticize, but it is an altogether different thing to promote and to build.