Posted on 08/11/2016 12:57:14 PM PDT by TBP
Do we too retain the word “republic” long after we have lost the reality? Is the American Republic beyond hope? President Richard Nixon once asked Dr. Russell Kirk if “we have any hope.” Dr. Kirk replied that “…it is all a matter of belief. If most intelligent and energetic people come to believe the prophets of despair, then indeed ruin falls upon the state, for many folk withdraw to hidie-holes, there to conceal themselves from the coming wrath.” We should ask ourselves if we encourage our fellows to have hope. Do we suggest paths to cultural renewal as often as we lament the present discontent? Or have we given in to a conservatism of nostalgia where we immerse in mourning the loss of what we can never regain? Are we prophets of despair?
Alternatively, is ours a conservatism of restoration as well as preservation? Dr. Kirk went on to tell Nixon: “But if, rather than despairing, people recognize the gravity of social circumstances and hopefully resolve to take arms against a sea of troubles–why, hope breeds hope, and a nation’s vitality is renewed…the American Republic is still young, as civilizations go, and that despite our present discontents we Americans conceivably may enter soon upon an Augustan age.”
A conservatism of hope which helps to bring about an Augustan age. I like that.
(Excerpt) Read more at theimaginativeconservative.org ...
Do we too retain the word “republic” long after we have lost the reality?
Russell Kirk always had the best definition of conservatism:
“The negation of secular ideologies (communism, socialism, fascism etc)”
Works for me.
Yes, that’s Dr. Kirk. It was a pleasure to know him.
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