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
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.