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Roots Of American Order

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Russell Kirk was perhaps the most distinguished American conservative writer of the twentieth century. His life's pursuit was the question of order: how can society maintain the balance between freedom and license, community and individual. In later works, Kirk turned to the question of how modern society can retain an allegiance to the permanent things in the face of decay.

THE ROOTS OF AMERICAN ORDER is a massive study that is in many respects the culmination of Kirk's life's work. Tracing the concept of order from ancient times to nineteenth century America, Kirk highlights those thinkers and ages have provided the United States with her institutions. Starting with the ancient Israelites and ending with Orestes Brownson (the American Burke who, like Kirk, was a convert to Catholicism) Kirk distills the influence of each on American life. In a sense there are four cities that influenced America: Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London.

Kirk even claims some for the American cause that you might not suspect have a role in a conservative history of culture. Kirk rescues Hume from the caricature of the great skeptic. Instead, Hume is the moderate skeptic who demolished the rationalist pretenses of the philosophes. Kirk argues that the founders (including Jefferson) were fundamentally conservative; practical men seeking to preserve the heritage of English culture and institutions rather than create a system of government from scratch like the French revolutionaries.

This book isn't perfect. I have it on good authority that Kirk was in error in describing the levelers of Cromwell's time as egalitarians. There are some organizational problems as well, such as the section on the Crusades. How that episode of history was a factor in America's order isn't exactly made clear.

Russell Kirk is an important thinker who has certainly not been given his due, particularly by the contemporary conservative movement. Too much interested in the permanent things, Kirk's genteel writings are out of place in the "take no prisoners" world of contemporary conservative journalism. However, there are some signs of a revival of interest in Kirk's thought, most recently by Wes McDonald's recent study. A more basic statement of his creed can be found in his work THE AMERICAN CAUSE.

This edition contains an interesting, albeit too brief, introduction by the distinguished historian Forrest McDonald.

My first Kirk book, "The Roots of American Order" stands as one of the most influential books I have read, and turned me into an instant fan of his writings. In an age when citizens are searching what it is to be an American, this book describes its vast and rich history and offers remedies for the future. Its scope stretches the history of the western hemisphere but its readability is surprisingly lucid. If anyone has a chance to grab this rare document I highly recommend securing it and treasuring its infinite wisdom. This is a book I wish all I know could have a copy.

Kirk's Roots is a tour de force of the Western tradition. It is simply one of the finest surveys of the classical, religious, and European influences on American political thought ever composed. An erudite jem of prose for both general readers and scholars.

During my tenure in college (1990-94) as a history/political science major, no other book had as profound an effect on my intellectual development than Russell Kirk's The Roots of American Order. This, not the Conservative Mind, is his finest hour (alas, he died a few years back). It is an easy read but one that you will return to time and again as a reference work; it will also stimulate your interest in the works and authors discussed therein. While many liberal scholars will scoff at Kirk's wide-eyed prose and tendency towards ignoring any contradictory evidence (two of his ocasional flaws as a writer), if you are a conservative or libertarian, your intellectual mouth will water.

For its genre, it's very difficult to beat Kirk's masterful historical survey of the spiritual, intellectual, and cultural sources of American order. Spanning from the ancient Judaic roots of Western religion, through the patrimony of the artful Greeks and law-giving Romans, through the "Light of the Middle Ages" and the sources of English Constitutional Law, right up to the Founding of American Constitutionalism, Kirk's erudition is scholarly while being easy to understand. Almost like a novel at times though never trite or careless, this is an excellent summary of the high points of Western Civilization. Kirk gives the impression that he has forgotten more than most of us will ever know. This is a perfect book for home-schoolers, American history teachers, or the average layman who wishes simply to make sense of the daunting rise and fall of civilizations that has led to the founding of the United States of America.

Please read and reread this excellent book. DR,Lee Cheek has the best insight on this book, Ignore the clueless review just before Cheeks, Dr Kirk didnt fail in acedamia he left because he was fed up with what is what it was becoming, Yet he lectured for many years on may campuses aterwards with many requests, he has wriiten over 30 books and thousands of articles, He has known some of the best and the brightest read his autobiograhy. "The Sword Of Imagination" You CANNOT judge this book or its author or his MAJOR accomplishements by a flyleaf and pass judgement as the one reviewer did.

This is possibly the best educated person's introduction to the liberal arts and what it means to be conservative in the United States. Kirk intended this book as a history of what he terms the "Permanent Things" throughout the history of Western Civilization. Kirk traces the history of ideas from the Law and Prophets of Ancient Israel, the experiments with liberty and community of Ancient Greece and Rome, the Christian discovery of transcendent and intimate moral order, and the development of English common law and constitutional governing institutions in their triumph and travail. Then he analyzes how all these varied traditions congealed together in the experience of the British colonies to create a uniquely American order. This order was beautifully expressed in but not created by America's founding documents, especially the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The narrative is approachable, erudite, eloquent, and enlightening. Those looking for "hard" political science analysis might be disappointed but those looking for a refreshing stroll through Western history, especially for the first time outside of a college class, will be delighted. Highly recommended! Should be required reading in any undergraduate History, Political Science, or American studies program.

Many people in the West tend to take it for granted that some sort of order is at work in the world. So observes Russell Kirk, noting that "they assume, however vaguely, that certain principles of justice exist, and that life has purpose of some sort." In 1974 he penned "The Roots of American Order" to remind us that despite the seeming cacophony of modern times, there exists an order which has traditionally anchored the nation and given it stability. His work is timely, as rising disorder suggests that our culture, in its haste to adapt to a changing world, is hacking unwittingly at these very roots.

Kirk traces out the development of order which gradually matured through the successes and failures of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and London respectively. When America came on the scene, because of this heritage she could set for herself a noble, unprecedented goal. Kirk cites nineteenth-century American thinker Orestes Brownson, who wrote that every nation has an task given it by Providence to realize; for the American Republic that destiny was to reconcile liberty with law.

A recurring theme in Kirk's historical overview is the role religion has played in the development of order. He observes that "in the twentieth century, many people do not find it easy to understand how all aspects of a culture grow out of the cult - out of common religious convictions. Yet the Hebrew and Greek and Roman civilizations all had arisen from the soil of religion; and when the power of the cult had declined, those cultures had begun to decay." This is because religion that fails to provide an overarching metanarrative does not produce a culture that will truly bind a people together and give it coherence. Since the Greek deities were little more than official gods, "they did not speak to private conscience ... or clearly declare a norm for what men and women ought to be." Thus "the failure of the Greeks to find an enduring popular religious sanction for the order of their civilization had been a main cause of the collapse of the world of the polis."

The modern notion that America was founded to be a secular nation, where reason may be invoked but not revelation, puts at risk the whole enterprise of reconciling liberty with law. The deism of some of the founders, and the silence in the Constitution regarding the naming of God, are given as supporting evidence of this absolute separation of church and state (more accurately, of God and state). Kirk argues, however, that "the Constitution was and is purely an instrument for practical government - not a philosophical disquisition," and that "the framers of the Constitution took it for granted that a moral order, founded upon religious beliefs, supports and parallels the political order."

Ravi Zacharias, in his book "Deliver Us From Evil", extends this argument and presses the point that, putting aside the question of the orthodoxy of the founding fathers, it is clear that the fundamental precepts by which they wanted to govern, which made the task of reconciling liberty with law even intelligible, could only have been possible within a biblical framework. Only within this context, where law finds its ultimate origin in a God who loves us, can law move beyond external compulsion and work in the hearts of men. For law to truly bind a people together, there must be an inner desire to keep the law because it is good. Otherwise laws become little more than a random set of rules, and have to be multiplied endlessly. And liberty, if it also has no objective point of reference, moves from being a freedom to do what you ought, to license to do whatever you want. The only way to restrain that kind of liberty, if it is to be restrained at all, is through compulsion. What we see today, then, is that "the imprints of Athens, Rome, and London are still upon us. But the all-important endowment of Jerusalem has been tossed to the winds."

To re-embrace the legacy of Jerusalem is not to invite theocracy, for such was never the design or the outcome in early America. It is, rather, to acknowledge that Jerusalem has in fact taught us some truths about the human condition and the purpose of our existence. The modern dogma of secularism, which denies the reality of anything transcendent, is wrongheaded. A pluralistic culture means that yes, in America there is more disagreement about ultimate questions than there used to be, but to ignore those questions is not a solution. We ought to glean what is good and true from other cultures and add to the inheritance already passed down to us. Then we might realize that some of the answers to the perplexing questions that have been eluding us these past few decades, have been closer to us than we thought.

Order is organic; that which was inherited by the new American republic was the product of care, cultivation, and time. It is recklessness to quickly and radically reshape it, and still expect a just and free society. To engage the immense privilege of reconciling liberty with law we must recognize the roots of American order that have even made that task possible. Kirk's survey of history leads him to the conclusion that "to live within a just order is to live within a pattern that has beauty. The individual finds purpose within an order, and security - whether it is the order of the soul of the order of the community."

This is quite possibly the best history book of all time. As a ph.d. in history myself, I've read thousands. A handful have actually made me sit up and take note. Two or three have made me go "wow!" This is one.

Kirk is a powerful thinker, and his work deserves close reading. The rediscovery of conservative political philosophy owes much to him. But what is unique about this book?

Here's the key; Kirk's historical approach shows the importance of order as a foundational political principle. When you study him, you will realize that the constant rhetoric about personal philosophies in political life are really secondary. The crucial role of government is to protect societal order, and we are dependent on thousands of years of history in formulating our ideas of how that is done.

Anyone who wants to be thoughtful about politics should read this book. It will change your understanding of what an official is actually supposed to do, and it will guide your voting decisions accordingly.