The Godfather of Permanent Things
Russell Kirk stands alongside a pantheon of conservative thinkers and writers from the past century. His The Conservative Mind, now 70 years old, was the magnum opus…
Education and the Virtues
The difference between being educated and being schooled is the difference between being equipped to ride a horse across open country and being led on horseback around…
Russell Kirk and Reenchanting the Political Imagination
In his final collection of essays, the Italian philosopher Umberto Eco describes the current social climate as “liquid.” In using this term, he meant that postmodernism is…
Remembering the Real Halloween
As a teller and writer of ghostly tales, I celebrate Halloween with enthusiasm. Every October 31, as many as 400 trick-or-treaters have found their way to our…
The Priority of Culture: Russell Kirk’s “Concise Guide to Conservatism”
After Russell Kirk published his dissertation in 1953 under the title The Conservative Mind, it became a best-seller. Among the ranks of Robert Nisbet and Richard Weaver,…
Reflections on Russell Kirk
One hundred years ago was the birth of Russell Kirk (1918-94), one of the principal founders of the post-World War II conservative revival in the United States.[1]…
Flannery O’Connor and Russell Kirk on the Spiritual Foundation of Political Reform
Introduction Mary Flannery O’Connor (1925-1964) is best known as a Roman Catholic novelist, short story writer, and essayist. She is also known as a Southern writer who…
Eric Voegelin’s Normative Labor
In healthy reaction to the enemies of the permanent things in politics, a considerable body of serious political and historical scholarship has appeared in recent years. Some…
O’Connor and the History of Political Philosophy
In her prefatory note to the second edition of Wise Blood, Flannery O’Connor claims that she is “congenitally innocent of theory” and that her preoccupation as a…
The Baby and the Bathwater: MLK and Russell Kirk’s 6th Conservative Principle
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is an American icon and venerated hero. He bravely spearheaded the civil rights movement of the 1960s, bridging people with powerful rhetoric…
Constructive Dialogues: Understanding Sexual Assault From Both Sides of the Aisle
Some of the most contentious and unfortunate issues to surface in recent memory have related to sexual assault and sexual impropriety. Whether it is the “#me too”…
Grace in the Garden: The Fall of Man and the British Pastoral Tradition
“An intermediate nature . . . prevents the universe falling into two separate halves.” —Plato, Symposium (203b). Almost from the beginning of when human beings began to…
The Communications of Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra: Tongued With Fire Beyond The Language Of The Living
The media, colloquially referred to by some as, “the liberal media,” is widely known as one of the strongholds of the political left. Combined with the university…
Our Passions Forge Our Fetters: The Ballad of Star-Lord
Avengers: Infinity war is one of the highest grossing films of all time. The movie resides in the same cinematic universe as all the other Marvel Comic…
Russell Kirk: American Conservative
Russell Kirk: American Conservative. Brad Birzer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky. In the past decade and a half, a slew of biographies have been written about…