Alan Wolfe's essay on Russell Kirk is a delight to read. I'll confess, though, that in an obvious way it's just playing to my prejudices since I've never read any Kirk and am eager to believe that he's worse than you'd think. So, liberals, I think you should read Wolfe's essay. And conservative, you should recommend something Kirk wrote to me that I might find impressive.
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Wolfe on Kirk
09 Jul 2007 09:25 am
Comments (13)
His article "Chirping Sectaries" on libertarians is pretty good:
http://emp.byui.edu/DavisR/202/Libertarians.htm
I have read Kirk's major works and consider myself a (very) mild fan. My libertarian sympathies and admittedly cosmopolitan lifestyle really prevent me from embracing his style of conservatism. He's too old school, and naive in many ways, blind to the realities of the modern world (which you cannot wish away).
That said, Wolfe's essay was an atrocious hatchet job riddled with ad hom attacks. It suggests a superficial reading of only sections of Kirk's impressive catalogue.
Read "The Conservative Mind" (which, I imagine, is in part the inspiration for your colleague Andrew Sullivan's "The Conservative Soul"). It's his survey of Anglo-American conservatism, but strays enjoyably from strictly political figures to touch on folks like Hawthorne and TS Eliot. Easy reading at a brisk clip. Nothing too heavy, but it gives you a prime taste of his notions.
Give it a shot, really.
It's been a long time since I read much Kirk--his columns appeared in my local paper when I was growing up, and I picked up The Conservative Mind during an undergraduate right-wing phase [forty years ago now]. I still harbor a lot of sympathy for traditionalist conservatism, but I suspect a rereading of TCM would bring out the contradictions and highlight the historical errors I wouldn't have recognized back then. Nonetheless, I agree with PP: Wolfe's piece abounds in cheap shots, and TCM is worth a try.
Wilmoore Kendall--the finest, most acute conservative thinker of the last 60 years--thought Kirk an atrocious scholar and sentimental vaporizer. And that's good enough for me.
My own intuition is that the "problem" with Kirk is not Kirk per se, but rather the use of his name to justify the various crazy ideals and atrocious policies put forth by contemporary so-called "conservatives". My own (admitedly cursory) exposure to Kirk recalls a fine mind and important thinker. In other words, somebody who would be appalled at the state of so-called conservatism.
I have to say, I didn't get any of this out of his recordings at all. I found a much more dynamic and liberal mind at work behind most of the albums he recorded in this time period and ...
what?
Oh, sorry, I thought you said ROLAND Kirk. Never mind, not interested.
Kirk wasn't a red-neck, and he presented the traditionalist position with some style, avoiding outright racism and instead speaking of attachment to the land, locality, and tradition. It's interesting his hero, Burke, generally took progressive positions in Parliament (slave trade, India, America). Burke might have agreed that forced desegration was a bad idea, but he certainly would not have been the apologist for the 1950s south that Kirk was. Burke, though, is pretty irrelevant to today's conservatism (which has become the agent of change). What's left is the common position of old and new conservatives that the Confederacy was a great idea.
Matt, Russell Kirk is as bad as you think. During the days of my misspent youth as a collegiate libertarian, I'd get free reading materials sent to me from conservative outfits like ISI [Intercollegiate Studies Institute, if I remember correctly -- very bad free swag] and from time to time I'd read Modern Age [journal that Kirk and his crowd edited] in the university library.
Even in those days, I thought the guy's work was pompous crap, and was borderline anti-American in its attempts to graft some sort of European conservatism onto American soil. Now that I'm [at least sort of a] lefty, my opinion of him has only diminished. Wolfe's article was on-target, and the only thing wrong with it is that was published about 20 years too late. It would have been good for TNR to publish it while Kirk was still alive, so as to force some response from him.
If you want to look into this some more, you might be interested to know that he always had a group of college students stay over at his home during the summer for some sort of weird conservative traditionalist nerd summer camp [no Sonic Youth or Nirvana allowed on the infernal music machine, I'm sure]. I'd be curious how many people in right-wing DC circles went to that little camp. Hopefully few, but that might be worth asking about on your part.
I probably shouldn't use brackets or parentheses so much in my postings. [It's kind of annoying to read on the screen.]
Mark,
But if you were a _libertarian_ of course you didn't care for Kirk. Kirk's got the number of libertarians, and has no use for them. Can't see why they'd have much use for him (well, as a political thinker -- I can think of major fiction writers who are libertarian or left-wing who adore Kirk as a ghost story writer). Kirk thinks leftists, liberals, and libertarians are mostly (en masse -- he had good words for Norman Thomas and Eugene McCarthy, you know), Godless, rootless, dangerous and utopian creeps, hostile to the Good. He's _right_, but I can see how that point (repeated in sometimes beautiful and sometimes tedious writings), when rooted more in imagination and emotion than in the kind of point-counterpoint reasoning that appeals to the limited in imagination, would inspire distaste.
Kirk will appeal to traditionalist conservatives of a romantic inclination. I am such. Ross Douthat is sort of such, but has more interest in medium-term political practicalities and is a bit less inclined to prattle about the numinous than Kirk, so doesn't like him THAT much. Willmoore Kendall will find his thought an irritating fog, which by Kendall's lights (close analysis of American majoritarianism and heavy theory) is quite right. But that's not the game Kirk plays, and he plays _his_ game well. Of all people, Alan Wolfe, who wouldn't know imagination or the numinous if they bit off his head, should not be reading Kirk. Nor should Ayn Rand or most libertarians. If "the Good" sounds like nonsense to you, don't read Kirk. If you think anyone who believes in ghosts nowadawys is either ignorant or a fool, don't read Kirk. That's all.
Also, I like "borderline anti-American" -- God forbid that someone suggest that, while there is much in America to admire (which Kirk could go on about at great and sometimes boring length) the American order is not perfect or properly to be cleansed from all thoughts arising on (gasp) other continents, far from our purple mountain's majesties.
Comments closed July 23, 2007.
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Heads in the Sand
Sorry, I'm not aware that Kirk ever wrote to you.
Posted by T | July 9, 2007 9:50 AM