Roots of American Order

Started by Skull, December 11, 2020, 09:51:16 AM

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Skull

This jewel from 1974 by Russell Kirk gives the historical & intellectual grounds for the founding of the USA.  It is long past time for a close study by patriots who wonder about our national rise and decline.

QuoteIn America, order and justice and freedom have developed together; but they can decay in parallel
fashion. In every generation, some human beings bitterly defy the moral order and the social order.
Although the hatred of order is suicidal, it must be reckoned with: ignore a fact, and that fact will be your
master. Half a century ago, perceiving a widespread disintegration of private and public order, William
Butler Yeats wrote of what had become the torment of much of the modern world:

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

During the past half-century, the center has failed to hold in many nations. Yet once revolution or war
has demolished an established order, a people find it imperative to search for principles of order afresh,
that they may survive. Once they have undone an old order, revolutionaries proceed to decree a new order—often an order harsher than the order which they had overthrown. Mankind cannot be governed long by sheer force.

From page 7
Be courageous; the race of man is divine.   Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Skull

QuoteAgainst this higher kind of order, there contend in our age various ideologies — fanatic political creeds,
often advanced by violence. By definition, "ideology" means servitude to political dogmas, abstract ideas
not founded upon historical experience. Ideology is inverted religion, and the ideologue is the sort of
person whom the historian Jacob Burckhardt called the "terrible simplifier." Communism, fascism, and
anarchism have been the most powerful of these ideologies. The simplistic appeal of ideological slogans
continues to menace the more humane social orders of our time.

The American order of our day was not founded upon ideology. It was not manufactured: rather, it
grew. This American order is not immutable, for it will change in one respect or another as the
circumstances of social existence alter. American laws are not like the laws which Lycurgus gave to the
Spartans, never to be altered at all. Nor do we Americans emulate another people of old Greece, the
Locrians—whose magistrates put a rope around the neck of any citizen who proposed a change in the
laws. (If the reformer convinced the people of his wisdom, honors were heaped upon him; but if he did
not persuade them that his proposals were desirable, he was hanged by the neck until dead.) As Edmund
Burke said, change is the means of our preservation.

But also we must have permanence in some things, if change is to be improvement. Americans
generally retain a respect for their old moral habits and their old political forms, because those habits and
forms express their understanding of order. This attachment to certain enduring principles of order has
done much to preserve America from the confused and violent change that plagues most modern nations.

No order is perfect: man himself being imperfect, presumably we never will make our way to Utopia.
(If ever we arrived at Utopia, indeed, we might be infinitely bored with the place.) But if the roots of an
order are healthy, that order may be reinvigorated and improved. If its roots are withered, "the dead tree
gives no shelter." Permanence and progression are not enemies, for there can be no improvement except
upon a sound foundation, and that foundation cannot endure unless it is progressively renewed. The
traveller in the wasteland seeks the shelter of living order. This book is meant to water roots, for the
renewing of order and the betterment of justice and freedom. What Patrick Henry, in 1776, called "the
lamp of experience" is our hope of order refreshed.
Be courageous; the race of man is divine.   Golden Verses of Pythagoras

Skull

#2
This small book The American Cause first came out in 1956.  Here is how Kirk begins:

QuoteIGNORANCE—A DANGEROUS LUXURY

This little book is a statement of the moral and social principles that the American nation upholds in our time of troubles. It is not a collection of slogans, nor yet a history of American politics. Intended to be an honest description of the beliefs we Americans live by, The American Cause is a brief effort to refresh Americans' minds.

Many Americans are badly prepared for their task of defending their own convictions and interests and institutions against the grim threat of armed ideology. The propaganda of radical ideologues sometimes confuses and weakens the will of well-intentioned Americans who lack any clear understanding of their own nation's first principles. And in our age, good-natured ignorance is a luxury none of us can afford.

THE MEANING OF IDEOLOGY

Our book is intended for the general reader. We try not to take sides concerning religious and political questions which are in dispute in America, but endeavor to state as simply as we can those great convictions upon which nearly all Americans seem to be agreed: to which most Americans agree, by their daily acceptance of these principles as rules of life and politics, even if they themselves cannot easily put their convictions into words. This book does not provide an American "ideology." The word ideology means political fanaticism, a body of beliefs alleged to point the way to a perfect society. Most Americans, this author included, are not political fanatics. But this book does provide, we trust, a concise statement of the beliefs that secure our order, our justice, and our freedom.
Be courageous; the race of man is divine.   Golden Verses of Pythagoras