Modern Age - Winter 2016 - 31

THE VARIETIES OF BURKE

R

ussell Kirk wrote so extensively on Burke that there is no way
to summarize him adequately here, so I will limit my remarks
to The Conservative Mind.4 I have two preliminary comments. First,
whether or not Kirk provides the most accurate or authoritative
account of Burke, I think he clearly is the heir to Burke's rhetorical
throne among postwar American conservatives. Second, I think
a more accurate title for The Conservative Mind would be "The
Burkean Mind," for as Kirk himself readily acknowledged, that
volume was "confined to British and American thinkers who have
stood by tradition and old establishments . . . [and] is an analysis of
thinkers in the line of Burke" (CM, 5). Kirk, convinced that Burke's
is the "true school of conservative principle," excluded from consideration many who might identify themselves as conservative.
The question of whether the influence of The Conservative Mind
has unduly narrowed or misdirected efforts to understand the
origins and nature of American conservatism is certainly worth
exploring but is beyond the scope of this essay except as it is
raised by other authors I discuss.
For Kirk, there is no division between a young liberal Burke and
an older conservative Burke, for there is "a steady continuous development" in Burke's ideas from the earliest to the latest of these
crises. What did Burke seek to conserve? He "stood resolutely for
preservation of the British constitution, with its traditional division
of powers, . . . as the system most friendly to liberty and order to be
discerned in all Europe" (CM, 15). But Burke was not simply a parochial, defending merely national institutions for merely nationalistic reasons. "August church, good old prescription, cautious
reform-," writes Kirk, "these are elements not merely English,
but of general application. The intellectual system of Burke, then,
is not simply protective of British political institutions" (CM,  18).
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Modern Age - Winter 2016

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