The Roots of American Order as the Foundation for a New Fusionism

Dates: October 16-19, 2025
Faculty: Dr. David D. Corey & Dr. Bradley J. Birzer
Location: Mecosta, Michigan

Description

By publishing landmark works such as The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (1953) and The Roots of American Order (1974), Russell Kirk helped to shape the postwar conservative intellectual movement and establish an intellectual genealogy for American conservatism. He also traced the development of America’s civil social order within the broader trajectory of Western civilization. He argued that the American founding was, in crucial respects, a conservative achievement: one that reconciled the perennial tension between order and freedom.

Drawing upon The Roots of American Order as well as other foundational texts, this seminar considers the present challenges and future prospects for intellectual conservatism. Particular attention will be given to the enduring question of order and freedom in the American tradition: how they have historically been balanced, and how they might again provide a framework for understanding contemporary political challenges. The seminar also examines what Kirk called “the moral imagination” and its role in sustaining cultural and political life.

In exploring such ideas, this course situates Kirk’s traditionalist perspective in relation to other strands of conservative thought and considers its ongoing relevance within contemporary discussions.

This seminar is invitation-only.

Dr. David Corey is the Director of Baylor in Washington, D.C., a Professor of Political Science in the Honors Program, and an Affiliated Professor in the Philosophy Department and the Political Science Department. He earned his B.A. in Classics from Oberlin College, a B.Mus. from Oberlin Conservatory, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Political Science from Louisiana State University. He teaches courses on political philosophy, the history of political thought, and great texts. He is the author of The Just War Tradition (with J. Daryl Charles) and The Sophists in Plato’s Dialogues. He is currently writing a book entitled The Politics of War and the Politics of Peace. Dr. Corey received Baylor’s Outstanding Teaching Award in 2008 and 2018. Baylor’s Student Government has twice named him Faculty Member of the Year. He has been recognized multiple times for his excellence in teaching by the American Political Science Association and Phi Beta Kappa. To learn more about Dr. Corey’s research and teaching interests, visit his personal website.

Dr. Bradley J. Birzer is well known through his biography, Russell Kirk: American Conservative. As a result of that terrific book and his years of writing, especially as the co-founder and senior contributor of The Imaginative Conservative, Birzer is recognized as a leading scholar on Kirk and his place in American conservatism. He is also a sought-after speaker, and the range of his writing interests is truly impressive in scope. He is the author of J.R.R. Tolkien’s Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle Earth, The Augustinian Life and Mind of Christopher Dawson, American Cicero: The Life of Charles Carroll, and has co-edited a volume of James Fenimore Cooper’s The American Democrat. Dr. Birzer is a beloved professor of history at Hillsdale College, where he holds, appropriately enough, the Russell Amos Kirk Chair. He is also a Fellow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.