Russell Kirk, anyone familiar with him?

[renard_ruse]

He took apart the dangerous scourge of libertarianism that was just beginning to infiltrate the conservative movement in the 50s and 60s on into the 1990s.

...Kirk and libertarianism

Kirk grounded his Burkean conservatism in tradition, political philosophy, belles lettres... rather than libertarianism and free market economic reasoning. The Conservative Mind hardly mentions economics at all.

In a polemic essay, Kirk (quoting T. S. Eliot) called libertarians "chirping sectaries," adding that they and conservatives have nothing in common (despite his early correspondence with the libertarian Paterson). He called the libertarian movement "an ideological clique forever splitting into sects still smaller and odder, but rarely conjugating." He said a line of division exists between believers in "some sort of transcendent moral order" and "utilitarians admitting no transcendent sanctions for conduct." He included libertarians in the latter category. Kirk, therefore, questioned the "fusionism" between libertarians and traditional conservatives that marked much of post-World War II conservatism in the United States.

Kirk's view of "classical liberals" is positive though; he agrees with them on "ordered liberty" as they make "common cause with regular conservatives against the menace of democratic despotism and economic collectivism."

 

[Antoninus]

I think your fox avatar suited you better.

 

[unregistered]

 

[Squibbs]

I have his book The Conservative Mind. I have the Sixth revised addition 1978. That's probably when I read it too. I bought it new.

Quoted

 

[LiFeNdEaTh]

<-- doesn't know