The Measure of Abraham Lincoln

by | Aug 23, 2010

“Whatever the result of the convulsion whose first shocks were beginning to be felt, there would still be enough square miles of earth for elbow-room; but that ineffable sentiment made up of memory and hope, of instinct and tradition, which swells every man’s heart...

Education and the Information Revolution

by | Aug 22, 2010

The major ceremonies of the academic community have traditionally been the fall convocation and the spring commencement. This year Russell Kirk, a nationally recognized historian, author, educator and political theorist, played an important role in Grand Valley’s...

Enlivening the Conservative Mind

by | Aug 22, 2010

The wittiest of our public men, Eugene McCarthy, remarked a few months ago that nowadays he uses the word “liberal” as an adjective merely. That is a measure of the triumph of the conservative mentality in recent years—including the triumph of the conservative side of...

The Revitalized College: A Model

by | Aug 16, 2010

A few years ago, a graduate of New York University brought suit against that institution. He had been induced to enter those halls (so ran his plea) by the promise that through collegiate studies he would obtain wisdom. But after graduation, he found himself as...

The Common Heritage of America and Europe

by | Aug 13, 2010

“Western civilization,” “North Atlantic community,” “the unity of the free world”—such phrases are employed nowadays by our publicists and our politicians so frequently and loosely that, to a good many of us in America, the words have ceased to signify much. Yet the...

The Best Form of Government

by | Aug 13, 2010

Politics being the art of the possible, I venture to suggest here the general lineaments of the kind of government which seems reasonably consonant with true human happiness. I think that in this problem we need to refer to two principles. The first principle is that...

Kirk in the 1950s

by | Aug 12, 2010

We have new posts of several articles of Russell Kirk in the online archive, including four from the 1950s. Kirk covers topics including tradition, revolution, the age of boredom (addressing themes that later became Eliot and His Age), and “The Inhumane...

The Inhumane Businessman

by | Aug 12, 2010

“A man is seldom more innocently occupied than when he is engaged in making money,” said Dr. Samuel Johnson. But he may be cheating himself, says an observer of modern American money-makers.American businessmen are inhumane. I do not mean that they are inhuman; they...

Friedrich Gentz on Revolutions

by | Aug 12, 2010

A little book forgotten for a century and a half, Gentz’s Origin and Principles of the American Revolution, compared with the Origin and Principles of the French Revolution, has recently been reprinted in the United States. For the revolutions of our own century have...

English Letters in the Age of Boredom

by | Aug 11, 2010

Some day I shall write a book with the title The Age of Eliot. The span of Mr. T. S. Eliot’s life, extending from the ascendancy of President Cleveland and Lord Salisbury to our present troubled hour, has been characterized by as much material change as any age in the...