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The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot

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You don't have to be a Conservative to like this book. I found it very useful in understanding the basic worldview from which a Conservative might operate; and from that, one can make good assumptions as to how Conservatives view Liberals. Kirk's thinking is profound, his reading extensive, and his arguments well-written. The major points I took away from this discussion are:

1) The Conservative assumes that the design of the world is not by accident, but by transcendental purpose. Metaphysical, permanent standards of Right and Wrong exist: moral standards are not relative. Similarly, the structure of society is not arbitrary. We should not attempt to alter society using science or social engineering, because we are strictly human, and our understanding is limited. Change, when it happens, should be modulated in such a way as to limit its effects on society.

2) A "natural aristocracy" exists in any society. It consists of the best and brightest individuals, and perhaps those born with reserves of wealth. No legislation or voter majority can eliminate it. John Adams defines a member of the natural aristocracy (in a Democracy) as anyone who has the power to influence at least one vote other than his own.

3) Individuals are born with certain Natural Rights, consisting primarily of property rights. Government should always act to protect property rights, especially in a Democracy, where the poorest elements of society may employ their voting power to redistribute the possessions of the wealthy few. A Democracy that gives unmitigated power to the people quickly deteriorates into the worst kind of tyranny.

4) Instincts and prejudices frequently have meaning: the individual may be foolsh, but the species is wise. The thinking of a few bright persons should not take precedence over tradition.

Most of this comes out of Edmund Burke. The Natural Aristocracy theory is primarily from John Adams. The dozens of other conservative thinkers that Kirk discusses tend to modify or enhance the thinking of Burke and Adams. De Tocqueville, for example, sounds the alarm over the potential "Tyranny of Democracy", but that seems to follow from Burke's thinking on natural rights.

I had a few exceptions with some minor points. Kirk argues, for one, that the American Revolution was somehow a "conservative revolution"; but I think you could make a more convincing case that it was in fact an Enlightenment-Liberal revolution. Also, he has a tendency to lump all of the different Liberals and Leftists together into a single agglomeration of "Benthamites" (after the British utilitarian/socialist philosopher Jeremy Bentham).

On the whole, however, I can recommend this one to any reader interested in understanding how people think politically.

The book is a sort of intellectual history, each chapter summarizing the thought of one to three conservative thinkers, more or less chronologically beginning with Edmund Burke and running through poets of the mid twentieth century (T.S. Eliot and Robert Frost, among others). The thinkers discussed include intellectuals, clergymen, politicians and poets, all thinking, working and writing in the Anglo-American sphere (most are in fact British or American, but the exceptions -- Tocqueville and Santayana -- wrote in America or for American audiences). A good working knowledge of British and American history from the French Revolution through World War II is therefore a helpful prerequisite to understanding many of these thinkers.

The summaries are interesting and informative as description. Many of them (the chapters on Burke and John Adams, for instance, or the section on John Henry Newman) make great introductions to figures whose work can't be read in comprehensive political treatises and many provide intriguing introductions to writers you have probably never heard of (Sir James Fitzjames Stephen) or to the thought of people whom you don't know as political thinkers (say, John Randolph or Arthur Balfour).

Among the wealth of description, a little prescription creeps in. Kirk's heroes don't "argue" -- they "know," they "perceive," they "realize," they "understand." Kirk is highly sympathetic with the ideas he summarizes, and it is no coincidence that his final chapter, on twentieth century poets, is called "Conservatives' Promise" and contains some of the most hopeful writing in the book. "If men of affairs can rise to the summons of the poets," he writes, "the norms of culture and politics may endure despite the follies of the time." He ends upbeat, with a call to action of sorts.

Not to be missed is Kirk's first chapter, "The Idea of Conservatism," in which he spells out the fundamental tenets which unite the belief of the writers whose work he describes, as well as their photographic negative, the tenets of radicalism.

The book dovetails perfectly with George Nash's _The Conservative Intellectual Movement in American after 1945_, which, of course, begins with Kirk himself and which carries on a similar discussion (though Nash omits from his narrative the British half and focuses on intellectual figures, to the exclusion of practical politicians like, say, Goldwater).

Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is a catalog of the thoughts of men, both British and American, whom Kirk regarded as eminent (albeit sometimes obscure) conservatives. They range in historical sequence from Edmund Burke (1729-1797) to contemporary scholars. Although this book is not an instruction manual for conservative politicians and activists, it will provide conservatives with both a clear understanding of conservatism's basic principles and a cogent defense of those principles. One of the major insights that this book offered was the central role of religion in society: Revealed religion is the source of Western morality; law was created to enforce that morality; the state enforces the law, so the state is an instrument of religion. Another insight was the hubris of nineteenth and twentieth century reformers, who thought that they could legislate happiness and freedom, but who instead created industrial slums and domineering central governments. The overall tone of the work is pessimistic, often despairing: the repeated theme is that from an idyllic, aristocratic, agricultural society united under Christianity the world has decayed to a lonely, atomized, atheistic, cold-blooded industrial society. In the face of such decline, the conservative can only try to salvage or resurrect bits of traditional society -- manners, customs, faith in Providence, etc. Again, the book is of limited practical value: The author's aim is merely to define conservatism, which he does explicitly only in chapter one. He offers neither explicit criteria for distinguishing desirable from undesirable change, nor strategies for forestalling the latter. The book is difficult both because Kirk provides no biographical information about his subjects and because he assumes a detailed knowledge of history. The author's style is literary rather than academic. When he outlines another author's work, it's not always clear where the summary ceases and Kirk's comments begin. Despite these shortcomings, no one should call himself a conservative until he has read this book and understands the principles that he's defending.

Russell Kirk burst onto the scene in 1953 with the publication of THE CONSERVATIVE MIND, which helped set the course of conservative thought for years. (Murray Rothbard wrote somewhere that prior to this work, conservatives were generally called "the right.") This work went through several editions, and the final (seventh) edition came out in 1986.

The focus of this book is Anglo-American conservatism, however Tocqueville does get some attention. Kirk starts with his hero, Edmund Burke (widely seen as the father of modern conservatism) and develops the principle conservative themes down to roughly present times. I found Kirk's discussion of American history quite interesting. He sees Jefferson as a conservative thinker and views Hamilton as a liberal.

Kirk introduces you to a number of important authors who aren't generally mentioned by conservatives today. One such writer is the W.H. Mallock who wrote a number of important works attacking socialism and liberalism. Kirk's discussion of Mallock is important in that Mallock emphasized the importance of inequality. As Mallock noted, society advances when those of superior ability are permitted to utilize their talents as much as possible. The less able are in fact the principle beneficiaries of such a system. (This is what Ayn Rand called the "pyramid of ability" principle years later. Hence George Reismann, in CAPITALISM, appears incorrect in claiming that it was Rand who first identified the principle.)

Russell Kirk was a member of the Old Right (other leading representatives being Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, and Donald Davidson). It's not quite accurate to label him a "paleoconservative" because paleoconservatism has a populist bent not present in the Old Right.

An associate once said of Russell Kirk that he had the heart of a liberal which he kept in a jar on his desk. Yet "The Conservative Mind" is not stodgy nor is Kirk's view of the human condition stagnant. It is surprisingly both "liberal" and "conservative" in the traditional sense of the words. Kirk seeks to reconcile the conservative values of respect for tradition, custom, order, hierarchy, as well as awe of the divine (though he includes the freethinker Santayana in his analysis) with the liberal values of innovation, growth, and reform.

Slow change is a means of conservation, Kirk explains. A conservative is never so noble as when he acquiesces to unwanted change for the sake of general conciliation. The great 18th century philosopher and statesman, Edmund Burke, is the locus of conservative philosophy, with whom Kirk opens his study and he repeatedly compares Burke's successors with the original lodestar.

And it is noteworthy that the hidebound Tory was a staunch supporter of self-determination for the peoples of India, Ireland, and North America. This was not a break with conservatism; Burke simply felt that the same respect for liberty, as well as local tradition and custom, due British aristocracy was also due these peoples. As Kirk says, "Burke was liberal because he was conservative".

And while American liberals like to claim the American Revolution as their own, Kirk shows that it was actually a conservative rebellion against royal hegemony, in accordance with precedents set by British nobles of earlier generations.

Burke and most of his successors largely distrust democracy. Government by aristocracy is preferred, though the definition of an aristocrat is startlingly broad: anyone who can command the vote of another besides his own. It's confusing that any conservative would dignify the demagogue and the political boss with such a phrase. Kirk's yearning for aristocratic government seems to anticipate the restoration of an Adams dynasty; what he would later receive would be the enthronement of the Kennedys. Clearly, aristocracy is not always synonymous with conservative caretaking.

The post-Burke history of conservatism is largely a gloomy one. In England, industrialization, technology, massive population movements, and increased literacy shake traditional landed aristocracies and old loyalties. Popular attacks on property rights are fueled, as Marx attempts to incite radical discord.

Into the fray steps Benjamin Disraeli, whose conservative reforms alleviate material shortages and enlarge the franchise sufficient to stem the revolutionary tide while preserving as much as possible of old ties. But time marches on, and the American Civil War, in particular, does irreparable damage to the state of the nation and to the Southern half that is its repository of tradition. Kirk denounces slavery in ringing tones, acknowledging it to be a monstrous cause for the Confederacy to have based its own declaration of independence.

But Kirk is still at his clumsiest when discussing Southern conservatism. He attempts to memorialize the eloquence of antebellum conservative, John Randolph, and the ice-cold zeal of his successor, John C. Calhoun on behalf of Southern independence, while distancing himself from their viewpoints on race. In so doing, he fails to adequately address the hypocrisy inherent in Southern agitation for minority rights on a federalist scale, even as the agitators were engaged in denial of same on a local scale.

Still the Union victory produces a smug and interfering Puritan leadership class, as well as the era of the robber baron. As conservatives, Kirk and his sources are vigilant in defense of property ; yet he finds the 19th century capitalists unwholesome. The landed aristocrats that he admires, taking their wealth for granted, exercise it in a way beneficial to their rural communities. The capitalists simply engage in unlimited acquisitiveness for its own sake without regard to consequences. One can imagine how Kirk would regard today's CEO's and dot.com millionaires.

As the book draws to a close in 1953, Kirk perceives two dangers to conservatism in general and to society at large: the expansion of the managerial state (borrowing from James Burnham) and a post-war era in which gratification of the physical senses without regard to moral context becomes the predominant ethic. He sees bases for optimism that these trends will reverse, but unabashed pessimism would have proved more prophetic.

And Kirk, who lived until 1994 and never allowed a television set into his home, presumably came to realize this. If in 1953, he regarded jazz on the radio and comic books in the drugstore as cheap demoralizing sensations, one can imagine how he would regard hip-hop and unexpurgated raunch displayed in TV and movies, and their attendant consequences on human conduct.

Few conservative candidates would dare attempt today, Adams-like, to affirm the moral nature of society, as Kirk urges; for that matter, few clerics attempt to do so, their theology having been annexed by this newer creed. So much for Kirk's faith in American religious institutions. The last politician to attempt to seriously discuss values was laughed out of office. Today Republicans compete with Democrats for the MTV vote.

And the managerial state achieved its conquest with the advent of the Great Society, effectively declawing the conservative administrations which followed. The last presidential election featured the nominally conservative and liberal candidates debating over just how much the social security Ponzi scheme should expand, whose national prescription drug plan was the most efficacious, and how much wealth the state should appropriate from its subjects.

Kirk seems to be as distrustful of counterrevolution as of revolution, and as a result, he fails to leave conservatives today with a blueprint on how to respond when the hammer has fallen and Sansculotte has fully taken over. But he would regard today's world in much the same way he regards, in the first chapter, the living Irish orators in Burke's birthplace of Dublin proclaiming through amplifiers their success in increasing widows' pensions. He would sadly shake his head and deliver the epitaph of the West, proclaiming, as Burke once did, "What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!"

This is the finest extant one volume introduction to the conservative thread in English language political thought. This tradition is unjustly ignored in North America. About the only references to it in mainstream journalism are an occasional mention of Burke by George Will. If you want to know why Edmund Burke is one of the greatest political thinkers of all time and do not have the patience to read Burke himself, read the first 80 odd pages of this book. If you want to know what British humanistic luminaries such as Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Disraeli and Macauley thought about politics and society, there is no better place to start than here.

Kirk also rescued a number of dead American writers from oblivion, for which we should be grateful: John Randolph, the political writings of James Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorn, Orestes Brownson, Paul Elmer More, Irving Babbitt, to name some. While Henry Adams and Santayana are not in danger of neglect, Kirk helps keep the flame of their reputations alive.

If the book has a flaw, it is because Kirk goes for breadth and insight rather than for a deeper analysis of any given figure. I also disagree with Kirk's assertion that the modern British Conservative Party embodies Kirk's conservatism. That party has not been conservative since at least 1918. Under Margaret Thatcher, it frankly became a 19th century liberal party. Finally, this book is VERY beautifully written. We could all profit from studying and imitating Kirk's style.

Professor Kirk was an intellectual disciple of Edmund Burke and an indefatigable identifier and defender of the permanent things in our culture. He left a great body of published works. Starting with Burke, The Conservative Mind surveys the major conservative thinkers of Western civilization. Published in 1953 and updated in subsequent editions, it re-established in America the intellectual respectability of conservative principles, setting the stage for the growth of the modern conservative movement.

~The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot~ by the late Russell Kirk is arguably one of the greatest contributions to twentieth-century American conservatism. This is real conservatism, not the typical neocon tripe by David Frum or Sean Hannity that masquerades behind the appellation of 'conservative.' Kirk presents a rock-solid historical journey through the conservative mind. Conservatives are of course more sober-minded than the assorted radicals and progressives of the Left. Conservatives have a sound doctrine of anthropology, because they grasp man's nature, and are realistic about the implications of it. Whereas, the political Left has a positive view of man, and from that emanates romantic quixotic fixations that manifest themselves in repugnant ideology that seldom meshes with reality.

The vignette sketches of Edmund Burke, John Adams, John Randolph, John Calhoun, Thomas Macauley, James Fennimore Cooper, Alexis de Tocqueville, John Quincy Adams, Benjamin Disreali, Irving Babbitt, George Santayana, and other luminaries represent insightful overview of the conservative movement in all its stripes. The essence of conservatism always lingered in the American mind, but when Russell Kirk distilled its core principles in his erudite works, he reinvigorated the intellectual groundwork for its defense and continuance. "People will not look forward to posterity", Burke wrote, "who never look backward to their ancestors."

"As the prophet of American conservatism, Russell Kirk has taught, nurtured, and inspired a generation. From... Piety Hill, he reached deep into the roots of American values, writing and editing central works of political philosophy. His intellectual contribution has been a profound act of patriotism. I look forward to the future with anticipation that his work will continue to exert a profound influence in the defense of our values and our cherished civilization."
--Ronald Reagan

Excellent tome! This is THE conservative's Bible. Kirk is an historian of ideas,and more especially, the conservative ideas of 'prescription', 'prudence', and a politics that looks to a nation's ancestors for guidance in legislating for one's posterity. Kirk's classic expostion on the apostles of conservatism from Burke to our own times is an essential edition to anyone's library who regards himself as a serious student of political science. Unfortunately, the reading is monotonous at times, as Kirk's narrative is limited to discussing conservatism in different contexts. A touch of Boorstin's flair is needed. For instance, a little biography on each of the characters whom he discusses would be helpful to the general reader. Nevertheless, a great reference book for graduate students of history or political science.

Probably most people reading this already know of this book's reputation and influence, so I'll skip over both the chapter-by-chapter analysis and the praise (I'd end up in what Kirk would call "overweening" praise, anyway). But I do want to respond to a typical liberal caricature offered by a previous reviewer. The caricature to which I refer is the idea that a conservative is anyone opposed to change. In fact, the reviewer even argued that the Soviet Union could have been seen as a "conservative" system (an argument endlessly repeated in contemporary media).

Perhaps the reviewer missed or didn't understand Kirk's repeated references to conservatism as the "negation of ideology." An ideologist is anyone who tries to rubber-stamp a system of premade ideas onto a society or culture. Think of the "New Soviet Man" in the Soviet Union. Think of the "Cultural Revolution" in China. For that matter, although it wasn't imposed militarily, think of the "Great Society" in America (it worked out about as well as the first two).

The "negation of ideology," then, is the conservative idea that one takes societies as one finds them, and then tries to work out change organically from within those societies, rather than imposing it on them from the top. (Think of the current liberal infatuation with attempting to rule America through the Supreme Court for a good example of the "imposing from the top" model.) Sometimes this change can be quite radical, radical in the sense of "getting to the roots" of something, as in the American Revolution (which Kirk discusses extensively). The colonists believed that the liberty they already knew was being circumscribed, and fought to extend it.

The reviewer also slanders Kirk in implying he would be in favor of accepting slavery. No, our own Constitution details life and liberty for all, and the organic application of it (as we see in our subsequent history) extends that life and liberty to all. Even the writers of the Constitution, some of whom owned slaves themselves, knew that the Constitution's principles would lead to freedom for all. Lincoln (a Republican, let's never forget) certainly knew it.

If you really want to know about the intellectual history of conservatism, this book is where to start. Don't be put off by reviewers whose lack of sympathy for the subject leads them as well to a lack of understanding of the subject.