America 250: Russell Kirk, Midwest Patriot

America 250 is a series by The Plains Sentinel celebrating our country’s 250th anniversary by highlighting the people, places, and events that have defined the Midwest and America.

Russell Kirk (1918-1994) is revered as the founder of modern American conservatism. He is perhaps best known for his 1953 book The Conservative Mind, which gave a name to the movement that culminated in Ronald Reagan’s election as president.

For Kirk, an authentic American conservatism was about more than preserving the economic or social privileges of a narrow class. He was concerned above all, rather, with understanding and protecting the ways that the American Founding manifested what he called the “Permanent Things” – those “those elements in the human condition that give us our nature” and that make life worth living.

For all its universality, there is nothing abstract about Kirk’s conservative vision. His defense of the Permanent Things was not a crusade to remake the world according to an “armed doctrine,” but instead a profound appreciation for the ways that particulars incarnate goodness, truth, and beauty.

Throughout Kirk’s life and work, this was evidenced by his intense loyalty to the region he called home: the Midwest. As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of our national independence amidst debates about the meaning and future of the conservative movement, there is much to learn from this local patriotism.

Kirk was born in Plymouth, Michigan, almost a month before the conclusion of World War I. The world in which Kirk was born was facing not just a political but also a technological revolution that was uprooting traditional ways of life.

Read more in the Plains Sentinel.