“The Conservative Mind”

Russell Kirk means nothing to most, but his thinking was profound. Kirk was a thoughtful historian of the 1950s, respectful of English and American traditions. He wrote a thick book called  The Conservative Mind in 1953. It is worth recalling.

The book is an extract of conservative thought, hardly an easy read or smooth drink. It summarizes conservative history – religious, philosophical, moral, and practical, the big people, places, times, and life implications – all in one place.

Kirk’s capacity to understand the whole picture, then put it between book covers, was amazing, influenced William Buckley and Ronald Reagan, and still sings out.

Wrote Alfred Regnery 60 years later, the book was “the catalyst that began the transformation of a band of disparate conservative critics … into the political, cultural, and intellectual force that it is today.” In short, Kirk was the Edmund Burke of our time.

So, as we look for light under cumulous clouds of uncertainty, watching our world deconstructed – words like God, man, woman, justice, freedom, democracy, socialism, communism, and fascism – boldly, communistically redefined, Kirk’s words are worth rehearing.

Wrote Kirk, in essence, we should respect our past, a collection of truths, understandings, lessons learned at enormous sacrifice, invaluable, worth treasuring. Change for change is folly.

“Men cannot improve a society by setting fire to it: they must seek out its old virtues, and bring them back into the light,” he wrote. The individual – and his conscience – are God’s creation. A true republic is based on these God-given rights, or natural law.  “If you want to have order in the commonwealth, you first have to have order in the individual soul.”

Kirk identified “six canons” – rules of “conservative thought.”

First, “belief in a transcendent order … natural law, which rules society as well as conscience,” adding “political problems, at bottom, are religious and moral problems” and “narrow rationality …  cannot … satisfy human needs. True politics is the art of … applying the Justice which ought to prevail in a community of souls.”

Second, w “affection for the … mystery of human existence, as opposed to the narrowing uniformity … of most radical systems.” In other words, we need “a sense that life is worth living,” to embrace the good fight as part of the good life.

Third, conviction that “civilized society requires order…” and that we each have “ultimate equality in the judgment of God.” That is conservative.

Fourth, the belief that “freedom” and “private property” are “closely linked.” Concentrated power is an enemy of political and economic freedom, “Leviathan becomes master of all.” Put differently, “economic levelling…is not economic progress.”

Fifth, “faith” means “distrust of sophisters, calculators …who would reconstruct society upon abstract designs. Custom, convention, and old prescription are checks upon man’s anarchic impulse and … the innovator’s lust for power.”

Finally, the conservative understands “change may not be salutary reform,” and “hasty innovation may be a devouring conflagration, rather than a torch of progress.”

To make all this practical, Kirk said: “A statesman must take Providence into his calculations, and a statesman’s chief virtue, according to Plato and Burke, is prudence.” Put differently, wise leaders are motivated by respect for the past, not a quest for power.

All this sounds hard put into practice, in the end, it reduces to respect for our past, for faith, freedom, family, and the fight to keep all of them from those who crave power.

It means respect for individual liberties and “eternal vigilance” against those who would reduce them, being on constant guard against those who seek to concentrate power.

It means having faith in God, from whom all  “natural law” flows, and understanding that these rights or natural law are forever above and outrank government. It means understanding that each individual possesses gifts government has no right to take.

Sometimes, in humorous terms, Kirk spoke the truth. “I am a conservative. Quite possibly, I am on the losing side; often, I think so. Yet, out of a curious perversity, I had rather lose with Socrates, let us say, than win with Lenin.”

He was bold with cautions. “The conservative thinks of political policies as intended to preserve order, justice, and freedom. The ideologue, on the contrary, thinks of politics as a revolutionary instrument for transforming society and even transforming human nature,” warning: “In his march toward Utopia, the ideologue is merciless.”

Finally, Kirk affirmed high purpose. “The twentieth-century conservative is concerned, first of all, for the regeneration of the 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.”

As America gets buffeted by crazy, power-concentrating maniacs, irrational, faith-denying, history-denying, biology-denying, truth-denying seekers of power, we do well to reread or at least remember Russell Kirk. He knew what of he spoke, liberty.

So much of what this man wrote remains true. If we can remember it, we can keep our balance in these wild, lost, disorienting, objectively senseless times. He would ask us to.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, Maine attorney, ten-year naval intelligence officer (USNR), and 25-year businessman. He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (North Country Press, 2018), and “Cherish America: Stories of Courage, Character, and Kindness” (Tower Publishing, 2024). He is the National Spokesman for AMAC. Today, he is running to be Maine’s next Governor (please visit BobbyforMaine.com to learn more)!