I am just finishing my first Russell Kirk book, the Conservative Mind.  Its not an easy read, but its full of pearls of widom.

Here some are Kirk quotes that are from his various works.

Ever since Paine’s “Rights of Man” was published, the notion of inalienable natural rights has been embraced by the mass of men in a vague and belligerent form, ordinarily confounding “rights” with desires.  – Russell Kirk

Fundamental rights, including the right to practice religion, freedom of speech, due process, and equal protection of the laws, that cannot be transferred to another nor surrendered except by the person possessing them.  Equal protection is certainly forgotten by our legislator’s recent “Hate Crimes” legislation.  Surely, all murder and inflicted pain is a hate crime.

Any conservative is reluctant to condense profound and intricate intellectual systems to a few pretentious phrases; he prefers to leave that technique to the enthusiasm of radicals.  – Russell Kirk

“Hope”, “Change” come to my mind.

“Workers of the world unite you have nothing to lose but your chains!” — Karl Marx

If a man has a *right* to marry, some woman must have the duty of marrying him; if a man has a *right* to rest, some other person must have the duty of supporting him. If rights are confused thus with desires, the mass of men must feel always that some vast, intangible conspiracy thwarts their attainment of what they are told is their inalienable birthright.  — Russell Kirk

This makes me think of the National Socialist (NAZI) “health care coverage” proposed by the Obama administration.  If man has a “right” to free health care, someone else has a duty to provide it.  How is this different from slavery?  Every time we expand rights to the belligerent masses, we remove incentives and freedoms from those upon which the duty must be extracted.

The perceptive reformer combines an ability to reform with a disposition to preserve; the man who loves change is wholly disqualified, from his lust, to be the agent of change.  – Russell Kirk

Liberals love “change” because they ignore (and often disdain) history and traditions.  Their world view is myopic and distorted by an ideology of government positivism (progressiveness) and social democracy (collectivism).

Majority rule is no more a natural right than is equality.  When we accept the principle of majorities in politics, we do so out of prudence and expediency, not because of an abstract moral injunction. – Russell Kirk

“Tyranny of the Majority” was expressed variously by Plato, Aristotle, Madison, Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill (among others).   If the majority rules, what is to stop it from expropriating the minority, or from tyrannizing it in other ways by enforcing the majority’s religion, language, or culture on the minority?   This is why our founders created a republic form of government not a pure democracy.  The main danger that worried Aristotle, Madison, and Mill alike was that the majority poor citizenry would vote for confiscatory legislation at the expense of the rich minority.  Is that happening now?

A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be.  – Russell Kirk

Can a democratic form of government sustain itself without a moral majority?  Would not avarice or cupidity become the driving force of the majority if morals are ignored?  Would not extirpation of the wealthy and societal leveling become the new tyrannical rule?

Fanatic ideologues in our time have drawn their strength from faith in their ideas, evil though most of their ideas have been.  When revolutionaries willing to lay down their life for their movement have more faith in their ideology than we have in our ancient principles, and when anti-American ideologies on college campuses can bewilder even American university students by their arguments, then our American cause is in peril. – Russell Kirk

What is our “American Cause” now?  The Obama administration seems to have concluded that “social justice” (an old German idea) is our cause.  In Kirk’s The American Cause he argues that America’s idea is liberty, indeed, but liberty with law, and law with liberty . . . which secures at once the authority of the public and the freedom of the individual—the sovereignty of the people without social despotism, and individual freedom without anarchy.  He understood that if freedom is not justly ordered, it degenerates either into tyranny or into anarchy.  The obligation of succeeding generations of Americans is to continue to get freedom right.

In the just state, the energetic man is protected in his rights to the fruits of his endeavors; the contemplative man, in his right to study and leisure; the propertied man, in his rights of inheritance and bequest; the poor man, in his rights to decent treatment and peaceful existence; the religious man, in his rights to worship; the craftsman, in his right to work.  The just state, in short, will endeavor to ensure that no one shall take from another man what properly belongs to his personality, his station in life, and his material interests. — Russell Kirk

Now we have progressive (graduated) income taxes rivaling the failed statist socialist utopias of Europe.  We have embarked upon a cradle-to-grave nanny state that even has a death tax — a final kick in the ass on the way out of your mortal coil.

A satisfactorily orderly society, they argued, must consist of a mixture of aristocracy and democracy, a balancing and checking and harmonizing of the influence of wealth and private ability with the influence of numbers and popular desire.  – Russell Kirk

Have we decided to punish success?  If you punish something you get less of it.  Sort of like law enforcement (which we currently DO NOT do at our Mexican border).  The in flow of a future constituency (or cheap labor for another constituency) forces our representatives to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration that is flooding our prisons and hospitals with the uninsured.

All that central political authority can accomplish is to promise not to abridge the freedoms which men have made for themselves, or which they receive as part of their birthright from God. – Russell Kirk

All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.  — Edmund Burke

May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done. (from a Franciscan Benediction)

Alpha Maser

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