Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello Gerald J. Russello Russell Kirk and the Critics Russell Kirk’s The Conservative Mind: From critics, the conviction grows that Kirk’s book Burke to Santayana (1953) was an unequivo- certainly warrants its status as a classic of cal challenge to Lionel Trilling’s confident conservative thought. 1950 assertion that liberalism was so domi- Some critics focused on Kirk’s alleged nant as to be the sole intellectual tradition in ignorance of the class struggle. In United America. The book unearthed a series of Nations World, Norman Thomas found thinkers who embodied a tradition opposed Kirk’s idea of a “democracy of elevation” to radicalism in all its forms—not least, wanting, because Kirk did not appreciate Kirk implied, the soft radicalism of Ameri- “socialism, the welfare state, and the in- can liberalism. The book received unex- come tax.”2 In the Western Political Quar- pectedly favorable reviews in Time and The terly, Gordon Lewis, reading Kirk “like a New York Times Book Review, transforming socialist,” complained that Kirk failed to the publication of a thick book by an ob- accept the evidence of “a growing rigidity in scure author into an intellectual event. class membership” and the emergence of Confronted with such an unexampled an American proletariat.3 (Lewis also challenge, prominent representatives of the thought Kirk did not sufficiently credit re- American liberal order responded with criti- cent sociological work demonstrating that cal counter-attacks. The New Republic pub- rationality is shaped “to a significant degree lished a review titled “The Blur of Medioc- by the sexual foundations of experience.”) rity” by Francis Biddle, who had been At- Conversely, other reviewers criticized Kirk torney General under Roosevelt and a judge precisely for his interest in class struggle: at Nuremberg. Presidential candidate Biddle understood Kirk to be endorsing a Norman Thomas, critic and poet John “pre-modern” from of hierarchy opposed Crowe Ransom, and Professor Clinton to democratic equality. Rossiter all cast a critical eye on portions of A young Peter Gay writing in Political Kirk’s argument.1 This extensive press, both Science Quarterly expressed shock over positive and negative, helped launch Kirk Kirk’s statement that the right to property as a conservative standard-bearer. could be more important than the right to Strikingly, most of the critical objections life.4 Gay was referring to a quotation from raised in contemporary reviews of The Con- Paul Elmer More that did not entirely re- servative Mind seem far more time-bound than does Kirk’s book itself. In reviewing Gerald J. Russello is a New York City lawyer who is the charges of these temporally parochial completing a book on the thought of Russell Kirk. THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Spring/Summer 2003 3 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello flect Kirk’s own view. Kirk used the quota- Burke.11 To include Eliot, Wheeler argued, tion to illustrate More’s wide-ranging cri- would transform The Conservative Mind tique of modernity, which he generally sup- from an exposition of conservative prin- ported. But Kirk himself did not endorse ciples into an “analysis of the Thomistic any unrestricted “right to property,” and he tradition in Anglo-American conserva- parted company with such conservatives as tism.” Kirk later did add Eliot, calling him a Richard Weaver who contended that prop- “principal conservative thinker” of the twen- erty was a “metaphysical right.”5 Even if it tieth century and placing him as a bookend were, Gay completely avoided the deeper to Burke.12 But instead of creating a argument that More and Kirk were advanc- Thomistic defense of conservatism, Kirk ing: that there may be principles more im- focused on the importance of the poet to portant than the preservation of life. culture. A poet is able to reconstruct order Some critics sought to undermine the through the use of imagination: “From the work by questioning Kirk’s choice of con- beginnings of European literature until this servative thinkers. Bernard Crick in the century,” Kirk would write, “the enduring Review of Politics opined that “Kirk has themes of serious poetry have been those of gathered together under the name of mod- order and permanence,” especially in times ern conservatism as weird a collection of of disorder.13 unlikelies as ever went to sea in a sieve.”6 The belated inclusion of Eliot served an- And Harvey Wheeler in Shenandoah asked other purpose as well. Eliot’s essay “Tradi- of Kirk’s account “whether more than that tion and the Individual Talent” allowed one tradition cannot be justly identified Kirk to resolve the difficult problem of the with the Anglo-American conservative relationship between individual freedom mind.” Wheeler took particular exception and the claims the larger society. Frank to the “highly selected segment of the Meyer, for example, thought that however Burkean tradition” Kirk emphasized, and much Kirk professed to favor individual he wondered at the omission of Hamilton, freedom rather than oppression, he in fact Bolingbroke, and Walter Lippman.7 It desired a form of “status society.” Thus, would take Kirk another decade to explain Kirk’s thought, “stripped of its pretensions, why Bolingbroke, though admirable, was is, sad to say, but another guise for the no conservative, going beyond his collectivist spirit of the age.”14 In The Con- unpersuasive exclusion of Bolingbroke in servative Mind, by opining with Burke that The Conservative Mind on the grounds of “the individual is foolish but the species is non-theism.8 Wheeler, however, did not wise,” Kirk lent some credence to this charge. identify his own criteria for who should be But as he developed his conservative vision, considered a conservative.9 His “argument” Kirk clearly moved away from this view. He amounted to a preference for one set of came instead to adopt Eliot’s understand- figures over another. ing that a tradition is only living when it is Wheeler referred specifically to the omis- used and adopted by individuals acting sion of Eliot as evidence of the “incompat- within a culture. ibility of Kirk’s conservatism with the doc- Moreover, an appreciation for the indi- trines of...Eliot in particular.”10 Wheeler vidual is implicit in the text of The Conser- thought that adding Eliot’s “eternal vative Mind itself. The book is, after all, a Thomism” would contradict the “value- study of particular individuals rather than free relativism of the anthropologist” that an account of abstract ideas. Kirk made this was “fundamental” to both Kirk and emphasis more explicit in his later histori- 4 THE INTERCOLLEGIATE REVIEW—Spring/Summer 2003 Russell Kirk and the Critics by Gerald J. Russello cal writings, adopting John Lukacs’ “par- Catch-22: If he acknowledged the conser- ticipatory history,” which mingles objectiv- vative acceptance of change, he would be- ity and subjectivity in the creation of his- come a mere temporizer; if, instead, he torical knowledge by placing the individual’s repaired to eternal principles he would be a depiction of reality at the center of the his- mere reactionary. Karl Mannheim provided torical imagination. Kirk came to believe the most detailed account of this dilemma that “historical consciousness necessarily is of conservatism in his essay “Conservative entwined with the mystery of personal con- Thought,” which appeared in the same year sciousness, and involves not only history, as The Conservative Mind.19 but also psychology and philosophy.”15 In The reviews also expressed a sometimes his study of Eliot, he would write that “our thinly-disguised disdain for the conserva- present private condition and knowledge tive temperament. Lewis called this Kirk’s depend upon what we were yesterday, a “impassioned nostalgia for a dead society year ago, a decade gone; if we reject the and a clever contempt for all the schools of lessons of our personal political thought” at- past, we cannot subsist for tempting to deal with another hour.”16 Because current problems. Con- of the necessity of indi- servatism is a sort of vidual action, history be- mental defect, hostile to comes infused with a the modern world and moral purpose that is ab- holding on to lost cer- sent if the historical pro- tainties without any ba- cess is external to its par- sis for doing so. The Con- ticipants. servative Mind for John Crowe Ransom Wheeler “soothes [the] identified a more central pent-up injury, forlorn- issue for Kirk to resolve: ness and frustration” of “the badge the conserva- those conservatives who tive wears must have two are left behind by mod- faces. One is resistance to ern life.20 In America, this the new event; this is the fighting face.... The claim was most forcefully advanced by Ri- other is acceptance after the event, permit- chard Hofstadter, who thought conserva- ting the expectation that when once the new tism reflected a “paranoid style.” ways are shaken down and become old ways they too will be loved.”17 Lewis found this In Karl Mannheim’s account of the con- pattern of resistance to, and subsequent servative dilemma, conservatism arose as a acceptance of, change to be the “weakness reaction to the modern world, and that of logic characteristic of all conservative reaction is expressed as a class struggle. thought: it erects a philosophy which must Mannheim argued that while “traditional- oppose fundamental change and then, when ism” is a permanent psychological trait, change has been affected by the operation conservatism is a definable social phenom- of social-cultural factors, it proceeds to in- enon that emerges only when societies are corporate its compelled accommodation to confronted by massive change.