Russell Kirk

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Most here know of or about Kirk, yet some may have missed his clear mind and the prose that it produced.  So here is a sampler from the Kirk Center that will refresh or inspire:

https://kirkcenter.org/selected-short-writings-of-russell-kirk/

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From his "Enlivening the Conservative Mind":

Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use the word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is no ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed. In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than “Chaos and old Night.”

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From his "Illusion of Human Rights":

By what standards are “human rights” to be measured? What, indeed, do we mean by this controversial phrase “human rights”? I offer you some reflections on this subject.

The phrase “human rights” first entered American politics, I believe, when President Woodrow Wilson opposed it to “property rights.” President Franklin Roosevelt similarly set human rights against property rights. Presumably President Jimmy Carter had in mind such employment of the term by his predecessors when he set up a bureaucratic apparatus to sit in judgment upon the nations, reproaching client states for not attaining that perfection of human rights enjoyed in the United States of America.

From the first, the odor of demagoguery has clung to the political use of “human rights” language. For all rights are human rights. Does anyone suggest a code of inhuman rights? Dogs and cats do not enjoy rights. States have no rights (despite constitutional arguments); states enjoy powers. God is above rights, and humankind can claim no rights against God.

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A virtual event from Kirk Center is coming up in July, on Adam Smith:

https://kirkcenter.org/upcoming-events-schedule/

Although Adam Smith is best known as the father of modern economics, his economic thought sits within a wider enterprise of moral philosophy. Smith’s writings on commerce and his recommendations in public policy build upon his effort to promote a social and political order that protects liberty and human flourishing.

Russell gave a speech at The Heritage Foundation in the early 1980s arguing that Smith ably “described and defended those beliefs and institutions that maintain the beneficent tension of order and freedom.” Our seminar will explore this aspect of Smith’s thought and legacy.

The course will be led by Dr. Erik Matson, Senior Research Fellow at the Mercatus Center and Deputy Director of the Adam Smith Program at George Mason University. There are few scholars in America better suited to guiding this discussion of the moral philosophy and political economy of Adam Smith than Dr. Matson.

From President Annette Kirk.