The Roots of American Order
By Russell Kirk.
ISI Books, 2003.
Paperback, 534 pages, $18.
Reviewed by Gary L. Gregg II.
I doubt any readers of this essay came to it without knowing a good amount about the work and ideas of Russell Amos Kirk. If by chance such a unicorn has stumbled upon this work, I can tell them that here in Chapter IX of The Roots of American Order, they will get a fine primer on Kirk’s larger work of preservation and renewal.
In this chapter on the founding documents of America, we meet Kirk’s major hero, the British statesman Edmund Burke. We encounter the great enemy of the French Revolutionaries. We see the great sage Montesquieu and come to understand that political order is always undergirded by religion and the moral order of the soul. Here Kirk seems to use the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution as lights through which to call attention to his favorite principles of order and their enemies, even ones far beyond the North America of the late 18th century.
For instance, when discussing the Declaration of Independence, Kirk gives his reader as much on the radicalism of the French Revolution as he does on the cultural and political context and importance of the Declaration itself. Almost half of the twenty-two pages dedicated to the Declaration focus on the French Revolution and its comparison to the American one more than a decade before. Indeed, experiencing how much Kirk focuses on the French Revolution makes one wonder how this story would look if the radicalism of the French revolutionaries had not come along to function as the great foil through which the American experience came to be understood by men like Kirk.
It is at once peculiar and entirely understandable that we tend to look at historical events in contrast to other events rather than considering them straight on. It often helps us to comprehend and consider what something is not. It often helps us to compare political figures with others. It aids us in decision-making when we consider the alternatives. It is only prudent to compare what we might lose when considering what we have to gain. And so, in prudent fashion, Kirk demonstrates what could have been lost if our founders were more revolutionary, like the French who considered our founders among their inspiration.
Kirk’s story of the Declaration of Independence is classically “Kirkian” (even if he would deny such a moniker should exist). Kirk takes on the document and its context. But one would be disappointed if they turned to this chapter for a penetrating textual analysis of America’s birth certificate. Instead, we see Kirk in vintage Kirkian armor fighting “Great Ideology.” We encounter John Randolph (the subject of Kirk’s first book) attacking demagogical understandings of equality. We find John Quincy Adams challenging Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man and “the metaphysical speculations of fanciful politicians.” We see Burke, of course, but it is an 18th-century German who Kirk turns to most powerfully in these battles. His analysis is clearly influenced by Friedrich Gentz, who wrote an essay comparing the French and American Revolutions. Gentz was also a devotee of Edmund Burke, and so Burke, through Gentz and Kirk, rides along to battle with the forces of ideology.
Kirk’s story of the American Revolution is anything but “revolutionary.” Instead, it is about recovery. It is a story of the colonies facing a distant force bringing unwelcome changes and their attempt to recover ancient principles under new, self-governing institutions.
Kirk does not give a thorough exegesis of all the charges and nuances found in the Declaration. That is somewhat surprising given that the book was timed for release during the run-up to the 200th Anniversary of that document. On the other hand, this fact opens up an important point underlying Kirk’s story of America—we are not one document or a single idea. We are, rather, a nation built out of the remnants of civilizations, both ancient and modern, that include all the complications and compromises inherent in human endeavors through time.
Though he does not dissect the document, Kirk does discuss core concepts such as sovereignty, the right to revolution, prudence, natural rights, happiness, consent, and especially equality. Kirk’s Declaration is not the theoretical work of innovative minds but the work of prudent men reacting to changing circumstances. It was the assertion of a sovereign people’s right to reform when circumstances demanded it.
When Kirk takes up the American Constitution, we see much less comparisons and more of a direct look at the Constitution and the culture from which it emerged. Kirk’s Constitution grew organically out of the culture of North America and the political experiences of the colonies and the states under the Articles of Confederation. He rightly credits the Frenchman Baron de Montesquieu for teaching the framers essential concepts like Separation of Powers. He discusses federalism, the addition of the Bill of Rights, and the core value of representation. He deals with how the Constitutional system has changed, including the rise of political parties and strong presidential power, the change in the functioning of the Electoral College, the altered election of U.S. Senators, and the rise of an activist Supreme Court.
In one interesting turn, he gives nearly as much credit to the first generations of statesmen who ruled under the Constitution as he does to those who crafted it. If they had been “mediocrities” or less upright than the likes of George Washington, the best-contrived system would still have failed. Kirk’s emphasis on the importance of public support and the character of our leaders should be timely warnings to America in the 21st Century.
What Kirk really wants to talk about in this section on the Constitution is how he understands that workable written constitutions must be based on an underlying and unwritten constitution found in the culture of the people. He begins and ends this section with just that point, and it is worth pondering in some detail here as we read this text after fifty more years of societal evolution in America.
“The true constitution of any political state is not merely a piece of parchment, but rather a body of fundamental laws and customs that join together the various regions and classes and interests of a country in a political pattern that is just,” he writes. He says the Constitution was “no abstract or utopian document, but a reflection and embodiment of political reality in America.” Later he writes that the Constitution worked because it “accorded with social realities and necessities in the new Republic.”
He then ends the chapter with a seven-page discussion of religion and its relationship to the underlying culture that supports a Republic. He quotes Hamilton, Madison, Fisher Ames, Tocqueville, and Joseph Story in his demonstration of the importance of religious belief to the working out of a free government. Formal political neutrality toward religious institutions was not intended to diminish that. He ends where one suspects he wanted to from the moment his fingers typed the first words of this chapter:
The framers of the Constitution took it for granted that a moral order, founded upon religious beliefs, supports and parallels the political order. The Constitution was and is purely an instrument for practical government—not a philosophical disquisition. Yet practical government in the United States and in every other nation, is possible only because most people in that nation accept the existence of some moral order, by which they govern their conduct—the order of the soul.
Kirk’s culminating observation should cause us great pause here as America advances through this post-modern period. If our Constitution worked at the founding because it accorded with the social realities of the 18th century, can we hope that it will still function in the 21st century? Our morals, values, education system, and culture have changed dramatically since Kirk wrote. How much more have we changed since our Washington stalked the Earth? Does our unwritten constitution still undergird our written Constitution? If we look at American history and determine that we have changed much as a people and as a culture, is it time to revisit and revise the Constitution? Or, as Kirk also hints at, has our fundamental law proven resilient even today because it is vague and flexible enough to adapt? And, we are arguably a less religious people than we were when Russell Kirk penned this chapter more than fifty years ago. Our culture has also become dramatically more coarse than it was. Do we still have the moral order (“the order of the soul”) necessary to support and parallel the political order? If so, how do we keep it? If not, what shall be done?
Some who call themselves “conservatives” today seem to have given up on the Constitution—or at least are willing to set it aside in the name of immediate political gratification. When many seem to hold perfection up as the only standard in politics and where compromise has become a dirty word, Kirk provides the antidote virtues. In Kirk’s story, “circumstances” are essential to consider when judging political possibilities. Custom and inheritance count for more than abstract political values or specific persons or parties. The heroes are not ideologically pure demagogues but “highly reasonable and prudent men who were willing to compromise with one another.” These compromises brought about a balanced system, which Kirk says is “[as] an instrument of order, the Constitution of the United States would be more successful than any other formal written device in the history of mankind.” What high praise!
With Kirk, let us seek to understand, appreciate, support, and serve our founding documents—or make the changes necessary for them to serve us all in our advanced democratic age.
Gary L. Gregg II holds the Mitch McConnell Chair in Leadership at the University of Louisville and is director of the McConnell Center. An award-winning political science teacher and expert on the U.S. presidency, Gregg has written or edited several books, including Securing Democracy: Why We Have an Electoral College.
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