A Healthy Sense of Evil

Russell Kirk is having a bit of a moment. Along with small “c” style conservatism gaining political and cultural momentum, there seems to be a growing interest in Kirk’s role as a prophet of its vitality. Ironically, a man who so dutifully articulated the veracity of tradition that his prose sometimes reads in sepia tone is suddenly on the sharp edge of relevance. Kirk himself would have found the humor in it, as he understood that the things he wrote about—the power of the past and our continuous struggle to remember the essential verities of human life—don’t really go in or out of fashion. They are, in fact, an alternative to fashion. Its very antithesis, even. Trends quietly echo the wild ambulations of shifting ideologies. And Kirk, of course, considered ideology the enemy of an eternally enduring moral order. It’s our responsibility to seek out the permanent things without becoming dazed by fad.