The Essential Russell Kirk : Selected Essays

Preface XI Russell Amos Kirk: A Composite Chronicle xxvii A Note on the Text XLVII I. THE IDEA OF CONSERVATISM What Is Conservatism? 4 The Dissolution of Liberalism 23 Ten Exemplary Conservatives 32 Why I Am a Conservative 42 II. OUR SACRED PATRIMONY The Law and the Prophets 50 What Did Americans Inherit from the Ancients? 80 The Light of the Middle Ages 91 Civilization Without Religion? 106 The Rarity of the God-Fearing Man 115 The Necessity for a General Culture 124 III. PRINCIPLES OF ORDER Edmund Burke: A Revolution of Theoretic Dogma 138 The Prescience of Tocqueville 154 T.S. Eliot's Permanent Things 166 Eric Voegelin's Normative Labor 176 IV. THE MORAL IMAGINATION The Moral Imagination 206 Normative Art and Modern Vices 219 A Cautionary Note on the Ghostly Tale 240 Who Knows George Gissing? 245 Wyndham Lewis's First Principles 256 T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land 269 V. PLACES AND PEOPLE Reflections of a Gothic Mind 286 Eigg, in the Hebrides 305 A House in Mountjoy Square 319 The Architecture of Servitude and Boredom 324 Criminal Character and Mercy 334 VI. THE DRUG OF IDEOLOGY The Drug of Ideology 348 The Errors of Ideology 365 Libertarians: Chirping Sectaries 373 Can Virtue Be Taught? 383 VII. DECADENCE AND RENEWAL IN EDUCATION The Conservative Purpose of a Liberal Education 398 The American Scholar and the American Intellectual 408 The Intemperate Professor 418 Teaching Humane Literature in High Schools 434 VIII. THE AMERICAN REPUBLIC The Framers: Not Philosophes but Gentlemen 450 The Constitution and the Antagonist World 461 John Randolph of Roanoke: The Planter-Statesman 472 Orestes Brownson and the Just Society 492 Woodrow Wilson and the Antagonist World 502 IX. CONSERVATORS OF CIVILIZATION The Conservative Humanism of Irving Babbitt 514 Paul Elmer More on Justice and Faith 525 George Santayana Buries Liberalism 534 The Humane Economy of Wilhelm Ropke 543 Max Picard: A Man of Vision in Our Time 550 Epilogue: Is Life Worth Living? 561 Bibliography 567 Notes 575 Index 587 With Gratitude 641