The Conservative Mind

Thus, they lost their nerve and gave it up.

As Russell Kirk notes in The Conservative Mind, quote, no old dominant class ever really relinquishes power until its nerve has failed, until, losing competence in its own virtue and its own justness, that powerful order allows the scepter or the sword to slip from its grasp, mesmerized rather than vanquished, end quote.

That appears to be what happened in Britain really after the First World War.

As Kennedy notes, "...as before, politics also took time, but many patricians now had less leisure than before.

So overall, I would say it's a great shame that the British landed elite declined, fell, and largely died.

The class that experienced that word fate was the one that had done so much to build Britain.

As Russell Kirk noted in The Conservative Mind, quote, people who live upon inherited property have done more for England by far than the great bulk of self-made rich men, end quote.

Yet it happened nevertheless.

The economic element of modern conservatism comes from Friedrich von Hayek, especially The Road to Serfdom.

The historical side of it comes from Russell Kirk, especially The Conservative Mind.

You're going to find lots of other books that these guys write, and every one of them is worth reading.

But The Road to Serfdom, The Conservative Mind, and then The Philosophical Side of Conservatism, Richard Weaver's book, Ideas Have Consequences.

Everybody uses that phrase now.

That's the book that the phrase comes from, Ideas Have Consequences.

So what did you get from reading? You mentioned a bunch of the folks who were, I guess, thought of as very much in the American libertarian tradition.

But what did you get from reading folks like Russell Kirk, who are thought of as more on kind of the traditionalist end of the spectrum? Kirk, people don't know Kirk wrote the landmark book is called The Conservative Mind, which is sort of a survey of conservative thought up until that point.

Tell us about Russell Kirk and what he meant to you.

I thought that I was going to start out when I was envisioning the book I was going to write about fusionism.

So there's that.

Then there's others who say, no, the modern conservative movement started in 1951 when Russell Kirk published The Conservative Mind and argued that, you know, and this was in the early 50s.

that if things continued going the way they were, that eventually young people would not respect their elders, women would not know their place in society, and black people wouldn't know their place in society.

And when the 60s happened, all three happened, right? Young people were burning their draft cards, women were burning their bras, you had the women's movement, you had the anti-war movement.