The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot | Russell Kirk

The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot | Russell Kirk | Great Book

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The Conservative M...

	The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot Russell Kirk BN Publishing, 2008 - 466 pages average customer review:based on 33 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk is arguably one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American Conservatism. Brilliant in every respect, from its conception to its choice of significant figures representing the history of intellectual conservatism, The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk launched the modern American Conservative Movement. A must-read.

Man, God, and Law

This is a very readable book of political theory, as Russell Kirk, the Scholar of Mecosta, Michigan, presents us with the great conservative thinkers since Edmund Burke and their ideas. Don't call Kirk an intellectual, which is a Marxist word; call him a cleric or a scholar.

What defines the historical conservative? I must say this conservative is different from a reactionary such Julius Evola who advocated an absolute monarchy who would be a representative of god on earth and closely connected to God to preserve the union of the state. From what I gather from this book, the conservative is for a democracy, but in a limited way, and is for change, as long as it does rock the foundations of tradition. Change is thought to be providential, although I have my doubts. The struggle for conservatives since Burke's time, around 1789, the year of the French Revolution, is to slow down change so that it reforms institutions, but does not destroy them by radical revolution. The main trouble has been that the conservatives were unable to control democracy, this bucking bronco, so that it would be limited within the boundaries of wisdom of tradition and custom, which Burke called "prejudice and prescription".

To get down to the details, arguments about who should be voting are covered. The ever expanding franchise of voting has dismayed conservatives who would rather have men of wealth, ability, and qualification voting in elections for various interests in society. These representatives are not delegates, so once they are voted in to office, do not call them with your opinion, they know better than you how to govern and you should show deference to their authority. The one man-one vote system today does not distinguish between an informed vote and an uninformed one. By limiting democracy to its best representatives, society will not be leveled down to grey uniformity of the envious proletariat who wish that no man be better than another and vote to have income stolen from the rich to give to the poor. It would be better for society not to tax the creative class, the natural aristocracy, who produce the enterprises which give the proletariat their jobs. This creative class is largely responsible for robustness of the economy, not labor. However, those who become rich should make their money in an honorable way.

Conservatives were against such intellectuals as Jefferson, Rousseau, Bentham, J.S. Mill, and Marx. One fault they found with Bentham and Mill were their tendencies to treat society like a machine; by calculating the greatest good for the greatest number, they would atomize society into making everyone just cogs in a machine. But a man is actually supposed to be more than just an unconnected individual; he must have ties to a certain class, guild, church, place, and community to be happy. The philosophies of the radicals have a dehumanizing effect on society. The argument against Rousseau and Marx is that they dream of unworkable utopias and deny the doctrine of original sin which makes it impossible and inhumane to perfect forever fallible human beings. Without taking sin and limitation into account, social policies will not work. These secular philosophers do not realize that morality is severely weakened when it has no transcendent reference to religion.

Such idealists like to talk about giving power to the people. But referring to the people as homogeneous whole is absurd. Which people are you talking about? Government can only serve people as they are grouped in different categories with differing interests. And idealists should not refer to people's rights when they are actually just aspirations or desires. The conservative wants God to save the King, the aristocracy, the country gentlemen, the middle and working classes. Each level should be granted their appropriate rights and privileges. But if we keep following the footsteps of radical democracy, we will find ourselves less free, more equal, and more miserable because we have denied the differences between men.

Another complaint from conservatives is that democratic societies have a lust for innovation by passing an overabundance of laws when it would be better not to pass any at all. In this democratic age, people suffer from impatience and will not wait for prudent reforms. Some radicals throughout history have reduced their arguments down to "Pass this law or I will slit your throat!" But this foot dragging of the conservative amuses me sometimes: As for slavery reform, a conservative before 1860 could have said "Give us more time!" Kirk mentions the joke from Ambrose Bierce's Devil's Dictionary about how the conservative is comfortable with existing evils and the liberal wants to replace existing evils with new ones. And I think sometimes a conservative may place too much faith is the wisdom of tradition, as if the tradition had some pure, infallible beginning.

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Great Book

The book is a very enlightening treatise on conservative thought and history. It is somewhat comforting as we sense that Western Civilisation, and in particular American Culture, has suffered greatly in the last two or three generations at the hands of the radicalism prevalent in this country.

Unfortunately, a page is missing in my edition and worse yet, there may be others.

The definitive text of Anglo-American conservatism as an intellectual system

This text is the definitive work on Anglo-American conservatism as an intellectual philosophy. Starting - as all true conservatives must - with Edmund Burke and working his way forward to the mid-twentieth century, Kirk traces the variants and evolution of conservative thinking over nearly two hundred years. It is an immensely valuable work for the mastery and beauty of the language Kirk uses and for the breadth and depth of his knowledge. What makes it priceless, however, is the virtuosity with which he collects the scattered threads of conservative thinking - some from places one might not expect - and reassembles them into a tightly-woven tapestry which rises to the level of ordered and intellectually consistent philosophy.

The only thing that could be said negatively about this book is this: Kirk writes at a high level and expects his reader to know something about the world and its ways before approaching the text; for this reason, Kirk has been utilized far too rarely as a pedagogical text.

Everyone - liberal, conservative, libertarian, or otherwise - who wants to understand modern conservatism and to know who really is conservative in public life today needs to make time for this book. It's well worth it.

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Be aware this older edition of the text

With all the other superb reviews posted I'll get straight to the point. This volume, by BN Publishing, even though printed in 2008, is not the most current edition of Kirk's work. TCM was first published in 1953 and the 7th revised edition (still in print) was published by Regnery in 1985. BN should make plain that their text is a reprint of an older edition.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

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