Kirk's "The Conservative Mind"

I picked up a copy at the library the other day. Anyone out there interested in walking me through it?

It's been several years since I read it, but as I recall, it seems to me Russell Kirk would be somewhat appalled at the state of "Conservatism" as it stands today.

It is a substantial book, and I am not ready to return to it, though I must someday. I did not know what he was doing at first and so I misunderstood early on. It is not a manifesto.

The thinkers are representative. You may disagree with them, but you can understand the mind set. Understanding the mind sets of many thoughtful conservatives can lead you to understanding a meaningful and moral conservatism.

Some conservatism is difficult, as for example states' rights. South Carolina was especially vicious but they had some legal legitimacy backing them.

Some conservatism is wrong; we could wait until the peculiar institution collapsed of its own weight, except there were people who were held in violent bondage who needed freedom 'now.'

Kirk also edited The Portable Conservative Reader which you may be able to find; it seems to parallel the issues he considers in The Conservative Mind.

Kirk uses the word 'defecate' in an approved (by the dictionaries) but unconventional way, twice towards the end as I saw it. It was disturbing.

There is so much meat to this book that I wish more people would read it and pay attention to it. I wish you luck and hope you will comment as you find things in it.

Robert

I'm a bit confused as to the structure of the book. Should I be viewing mostly as an overview? How much of, say, Burke's thought should I assume is still owned by Conservatives today?

You're more or less wasting your time if you're trying to understand mainstream conservatism by reading Kirk's book. Kirk and his thought are given plenty of lip service by contemporary conservatives, but those who take his thoughts to heart are pushed to the fringes or purged from the movement altogether (such as Buchanan). If you want to understand contemporary conservatism, the best sources would be those works expounded by the early neoconservatives, such as Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz, as mainstream conservatism is neoconservatism.

The Conservative Mind should simply be considered a reading list. As Robert noted, the book was never meant to be a manifesto. Kirk wanted the reader to explore and read those invididuals whom he profiled.

I'm not that far into it at the moment, but there seems to be a heck of a lot of God.

Know anything about Mark Gerson's The Essential Neo-Conservative Reader, Cody?

I haven't read that, but why would you need to when you have access to the New York Times (Brooks and Kristol), The Weekly Standard, and National Review?

Jesse,

I recently read The Neocon Reader compiled by Irwin Stelzer and it was very good and covered the whole swath of neoconservatism. It's a quick read, but there's a lot of meat.

I'm not sure how different this is from Gerson's book, but Stelzer writes for the Weekly Standard so there's plenty of Himmelfarb and Kristol in the one I read.

I think that except for being dismissive, you can make what you want of his calls on a deity. He was after all a high bourgeois American of the mid twentieth century. His university was St. Andrews in Scotland. This is stick in the mud conservatism, a sort of literal take on what it means to be conservative.

Conservatives like us demand prudence, an oft repeated word, before we endorse change, but we are not reactionary; it is as radical to overhaul the system to recapture the past as it is to overhaul the system seeking utopia. Human beings are not perfectible (I struggled with that word but have come to accept it although it might be improved upon); there are inevitably unintended consequences. What works now has such complex roots that an overthrow could not consider everything that has been considered in getting here.

On the other hand, if change is called for and if we can be prudent, let us change.

One can be interested in certain kinds of values. I, for example, bill myself as a Yankee or American conservative. Liberty of many sorts means very much to me. The TSA and the war against terrorism are abominations. The sexual lives of other people is not open to public discussion; we say "Boston marriage" and move on.

Others might resent the enlightenment. We should be taking our guidance from God and from established authority. I differ adamantly, but I understand that conservatism. I can respect it if it is attentive and smart but not just because it exists.

Kirk, I think, describes my kind of conservatism even if he differs in details. He got kind of cranky in his old age according to some writing.

Conservatives of my sort are the ones who say that the "conservatives" (note the scare quotes) of today are not conservative. They are something else. It seems to be a rear guard action. Neither are we Republican party members.

So, read Kirk for his amazing intellectual compilation. It is relevant because it is intelligent and because some of us vote from that sort of constitutional background.

Robert

I'll admit that with starting the new job, I've not been able to give the book much attention. There are definitely passages that make me just have to kind of shake my head and mutter to myself, though I'm not sure whether I'm supposed to attribute these to Conservatism, Kirk, or the author that he's discussing.

Default to the author he's discussing or you will end up hating a perfectly good notion, to wit conservatism. There has been change since many of the writers wrote, and we conservatives accept that. Many of us also have different thoughts on matters; that too is permitted.

Robert