Customer Reviews

The Portable Conservative Reader

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Russell Kirk has followed a lifetime of insightful writing with this collection of heavyweight thinkers from across the centuries. In 700 pages of solid political philosophy, Kirk gives the reader a foundational education not always in tune with what we normally consider to be the modern conservative movement. Kirk draws on his extensive breadth literary knowledge to give us a collection of ideas guaranteed to turn our typical conception of conservatism inside out. After a taste of Burke, Hamilton, Toqueville, Disreali, Brownson, Gissing, Kipling, Santayana, Eliot, Kristol and others, a final chapter by Kirk himself is a most appropriate end to an outstanding collection. This is a long-awaited masterpiece for all who call themselves thinking conservatives

This is an anthology of conservative thought put together by the late Russell Kirk. It features a good selection of writings from such luminaries as Edmund Burke, literary genius James Fenimore Cooper, southern conservatives like John Randolph and John C. Calhoun, et al. Nothing is featured though from Richard Weaver. Also writings from prominent Federalists such as John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Fisher Ames are featured. However, there are NO strong paleoconservative arguments presented favoring the American Republic over Jacobin Social Democracy. Also, this anthology could have stood to include the writings of prominent Anti-Federalists. Why do they always get left out? Other anthologies include them. Being weary of a strong central government is a conservative tradition -is it not? Kirk isn't exactly a neoconservative revisionist.

Though this anthology culminates a diverse blend of conservative thought, it is reflective of Kirk's own unique brand of paleoconservatism. All in all, this is a good "portable" anthology of conservative thought that starts with the Burke basics. I might also recommend, Freedom & Virtue : The Conservative Libertarian Debate by by George W. Carey(Editor) and The Paleoconservatives : New Voices of the Old Right by Joseph Scotchie (Editor)

This served as my introduction to intellectual conservatism. Until I started college, my conservatism (though certainly of a traditionalist, Kirkean sort) was not well-defined, and I was completely unfamiliar with the writings of Kirk or, shockingly enough, of Burke. However, once in college, I began to associate with other conservatives, many of whom naturally gravitated to Kirk, and so I, too, gave Kirk a try. Before trying The Conservative Mind I got the reader (more because of the fact that I couldn't find the former than anything else). Nonetheless, I devoured this book, skipping from piece to piece as the whim caught me. The Burke readings, I think, are essential, and so is the Kirk piece that concludes the volume, in addition to Kirk's introduction in which he defines conservatism (to the extent that it can be defined at all). The writings in between are of varying quality, character, and density. Any conservative can surely find something that suits his fancy, though. Muggeridge's "The Great Liberal Death Wish" is a classic--I recommend it to any conservative (especially those who would consider themselves Republicans, as opposed to, say, Buchananites) who sometimes feels outnumbered by his philosophical brethren who support the free market and unregulated capitalism at all costs. There are dangers in "technology," and conservatives are rightly skeptical of industrialism and "progress." The Revolution-era pieces are intriguing and were the first to spark me into considering the true conservatism of the Founders. The selection from Michael Oakeshott, "On Being Conservative," is another interesting one, as well. In short, this is a fantastic sampling of the corpus of conservative thought and literature. More than likely, the writings in this book will send you to other books, which will send you to yet more. But that's the idea, isn't it?

The Portable Conservative Reader provides a good introduction to the world of conservative thought since Burke invented it during the French Revolution. As an avowed liberal, I bought this book for a class on conservatism, intending to 'know thy enemy'. I didn't know what to expect, but the PCR provides an extensive, if limited, compilation of the major conservative thinkers. Burke, of course, is well represented, as are James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, but Kirk (editor) gets weaker as he follows the conservative tradition through a woman's perspective (he could dig up only two of interest), then stronger again with some hilariously grumpy texts by Malcolm Muggeridge and CS Lewis - I believe Lewis was the one who said, 'I am a democrat because I believe in the fall of man' - as a liberal with a good sense of humor, I found a lot to enjoy in their perspective on the 60's. The allegorical stories by Rudyard Kipling et al. were sometimes heavy-handed.

A good start, but for a more thorough (as well as more recent) look at intellectual conservatism - a group which I do believe is a minority, even in the Republican party - you might want to add Hayek's libertarian treatise 'The Road to Serfdom', Dan T. Carter's 'Race and the Conservative Counterrevolution', and Eugene D. Genovese's 'The Southern Tradition' and Angela Dillard's 'Multicultural Conservatism in America'.

This book did not convert me but as a philosophical, not political, movement I have a greater respect for conservatism and even agree with some of its tenets. Kirk can be a pretty reasonable guy. Read this book and those recommended above and you will have a better grasp of a real intellectual movement whose influence, sadly, appears to be diminishing from the scene, judging by the 'election' of Fearless Leader.

This 700-page diverse selection of essays on the "conservative" cause is weighty and was not assembled for the timid reader. Because this text covers so much ground, it is not a trivial matter writing a review that gives justice to what the authors of the included 58 essays communicate, but in reading the other sparse reviews here it seems reasonable to provide some more substance for other potential readers. The aspect of this text that binds the essays together is the content that Russell Kirk provides in his introduction, and the brief author biographies that introduce each essay. In about 30 pages, Kirk manages to present a reasonable introduction that helps define conservative thought and differentiate it from "liberal" thinking, but what makes this happen is really the journey through the rest of the text. The unfortunate aspect of this collection, however, is that it can use some updating since first being published in 1982 due to the resurgence of the conservative cause that has helped differentiate classical liberals, also known as conservatives, from modern liberals.

The progression of the essays roughly follows a historical time line, and are grouped into 17 sections: "The Tension of Order and Freedom", "American Liberty Under Law", "The Reply of the Poets", "Southern Conservatism", "American Democratic Leveling", "Against Utilitarian Radicalism", "Progress and Human Frailty", "Legal and Historical Conservatism", "Conservative Impulses Amid American Materialism", "The Crumbling Country House", "The Fabulists", "Critical Conservatism", "Conservatism Between Two Wars", "A Bent World", "Women's Conservative Vision", "The Wisdom of Our Ancestors", and "Resistance and Hope". Judging from my dog ears, I had greater interest in the latter half of the text, but probably only because it is more personally relatable, due in large part to the strife inflicted on my family by socialist regimes following the second world war, and contrasting these experiences with the life I have been privileged to have as a first generation American citizen. As I have mentioned in some of my other reviews here, substantive texts require extensive reviews with space that only "The New Yorker" magazine can provide, but one strategy I have used in my reviews of other works containing multiple essays or interviews is to share some quotes that I especially appreciated.

John Adams, in his preface to the first volume of his "Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787): "The people in America have now the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number, since the transgression of the first pair; if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven. If there is one certain truth to be collected from the history of all ages, it is this; that the people's rights and liberties, and the democratical mixture in a constitution, can never be preserved without a strong executive, or in other words, without separating the executive from the legislative power. If the executive power, or any considerable power of it, is left in the hands either of an aristocratical or a democratical assembly, it will corrupt the legislature as necessarily as rust corrupts iron, or as arsenic poisons the human body; and when the legislature is corrupted, the people are undone."

Edwin Lawrence Godkin, in a selection entitled "Who Will Pay the Bills of Socialism?" from his work "Problems of Modern Democracy" (1896): "It is hardly necessary to discuss the chances of a 'State' composed of men of such acknowledged wisdom and goodness that nobody would dispute their ordering of his domestic concerns. But, improbable as this is, it is by no means so improbable as a State composed of men competent to meet the Socialists' demands in their business capacity. The ethical economists never go into details on this subject. They assume, as does Schmoller, that the State - that is, the small body of men charged with the enormous responsibilities of a socialist or semi-socialist community, both with its production and distribution, and the care of its health and morals - would in some manner be a sort of concentration of the virtue and morals of the whole community; that it would, in addition, have an amount of administrative power, for which railroads, mines, and mills now vainly offer almost any salary, and for which nations would give every conceivable earthly honor and reward - fame, power, money, and enthusiastic homage - could they get them for the management of their finances or the command of their armies. As this assumption is so gross and bold that there is curiously little discussion about it, and as its basis is never explained, it may be dismissed as chimaera."

George Santayana, in a selection entitled "The Irony of Liberalism", from his work "Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (1922): "When the lists are open to all, and the one aim in life is to live as much as possible like the rich, the majority must needs be discouraged. The same task is proposed to unequal strengths, and the competition emphasizes the inequality. There was more encouragement for mediocre people when happiness was set before them in mediocrity, or in excellence in some special craft. Now the mass, hopelessly out of the running in the race for wealth, falls out and drifts into squalor. Since there is liberty, the listless man will work as little and drink as much as he can; he will crawl into whatever tenement he can get cheapest, seek the society in which least effort is demanded and least shame is felt, have as many children as improvidence sends him, let himself out, as a pinch, for whatever service and whatever wages he can obtain, drift into some syndicated servitude or some great migration, or sink in solitude into the deepest misery. He then becomes a denizen of those slimy quarters, under the shadow of railway bridges, breweries, and gas-works, where the blear lights of a public-house peer through the rain at every corner, and offer him the one joy remaining in life; for joy is not to be mentioned in the same breath as the female prowling by the door, hardly less befuddled and bedraggled than the lurching idlers whom she endeavours to entice; but perhaps God does not see all this, because a pall hangs over it perpetually of impenetrable smoke. The liberal system, which sought to raise the individual, has degraded the masses; and this on so vast a scale and to so pitiable a degree, that the other element in liberalism, philanthropic zeal, has come again to the fore. Liberty go hang, say the new radicals; let us save the people. Liberal legislation, which was to have reduced government to the minimum of police control, now has overtaken public education, social reform, and even the management of industry."

C. S. Lewis, in his essay "The Poison of Subjectivism" (1943): "Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, over-arching Germans, Japanese, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If 'good' and 'better' are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words."

Irving Kristol, in chapter 7 of his book "Two Cheers for Capitalism" (1978): "It is in the nature of heresies to take a part for the whole. Thus, our version of the 'free society' is dedicated to the proposition that to be free is to be good. The New Left, though it echoes this proposition when it is convenient for its purposes, is actually dedicated to the counter-belief - which is the pre-liberal proposition - that to be good is to be free. In the first case, the category of goodness is emptied of any specific meaning; in the second case, it is the category of freedom which is emptied of any specific meaning. In the war between these two heresies, the idea of a free society that is in some specific sense virtuous (the older 'bourgeois' ideal) and the idea of a good community that is in some specific sense free (the older 'socialist' ideal as represented, say, by European social democracy) are both emasculated; and the very possibility of a society that can be simultaneously virtuous and free, i.e. that organically weds order to liberty, becomes ever more remote."

In his last word, Russell Kirk comments: "Cant and equivocation dismissed, it seems to me that there are three great bodies of principle and conviction which tie together what is called modern civilization. The first of these is the Christian faith: theological and moral doctrines which inform us, either side of the Atlantic, of the nature of God and man, the fatherhood of God, the brotherhood of man, human dignity, the rights and duties of human persons, the nature of charity, and the meaning of hope and resignation. The second of these is the corpus of imaginative literature, humane letters, which is the essence of our high culture: humanism, which, with Christian faith, teaches us our powers and our limitations - the work of Plato, Virgil, Cicero, Dante, Shakespeare, and so many others. The third is a complex of social and political institutions which we may call the rule of law, or ordered liberty: prescription, precedent, impartial justice, private rights, private property, the character of genuine community, the claims of the family and of voluntary association. However much these three bodies of conviction have been injured by internecine disputes, nihilism, Benthamism, the cult of Rationalism, Marxism, and other modern afflictions, they remain the rocks upon which our civilization is built."