I don't know what's more frightening about this thread -- that a very vocal minority (majority?!) of so-called "conservatives" seems to be rejecting the need for moral order, or that virtually none of the responders know who Russell Kirk was.
I hate to be the one to break this to you, but I suspect that most of the folks responding to you know perfectly well who Russell Kirk is, and would demonstrate as much if they were responding to a worthy debate opponent rather than amusing themselves with a troll.
Yeah, he's the guy who claimed that the Neo-Cons are controlled by the Joooooooos.
It's so frightening, you're reduced to talking to yourself.
(But please don't let that stop you from enlightening us intellectual Philistines. I'm eager to hear how my no-power party somehow had enough power to toss an election.)
"I don't know what's more frightening about this thread -- that a very vocal minority (majority?!) of so-called "conservatives" seems to be rejecting the need for moral order, or that virtually none of the responders know who Russell Kirk was."
Amen and thank you!
Russel Kirk 1988:The Neoconservatives: An Endangered Species
Be that as it may, I predict that within-a very few years we will hear no more of the Neoconservatives...........
Neoconservatives lack those long views and that apprehension of the human condition which forms a basis for successful statecraft. Often clever, these Neoconservatives; seldom wise............
I have tended to side with those moderate Libertarians who set their faces against foreign entanglements. And not seldom it has seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States .....
To expect that all the world should, and must, adopt the peculiar political institutions of the United States - which often do not work very well even at home - is to indulge the most unrealistic of visions; yet just that seems to be the hope and expectation of many Neoconservatives. Such naive doctrine led us into the wars in Indo-China - the notion that we could establish or prop up in Vietnam a "democracy" that never had existed anywhere in southeastern Asia. Such foreign policies are such stuff as dreams are made of; yet they lead to the heaps of corpses of men who died in vain. We need to ask ourselves whether the Neoconservative architects of international policy are very different from the foreign policy advisors who surrounded Lyndon Johnson.....
I had thought that the Neoconservatives might become the champions of diversity in the world; instead, they aspire to bring about a world of uniformity and dull standardization,Americanized, industrialized, democratized, logicalized, boring. They are cultural and economic imperialists.............
Kirk analyzes the loss of this recognition in this very essay:
What binds society together? The libertarians reply that the cement of society (so far as they will endure any binding at all) is self-interest, closely joined to the nexus of cash payment. But the conservatives declare that society is a community of souls, joining the dead, the living, and those yet unborn
The Libertarians Kirk attacks are fundamentally presentist. Historical knowledge and precedents are beyond their concern. They care very little for those who have gone before. Since libertarianism can be summed up in a few pithy concepts, it cannot bear very much reality not already contained by such principles. Their philistinism should be pitiable, yet being so common it is downright tragic.
Do you know the date this essay was published? Was it pre-Goldwater?
Do you think Kirk would be at home in the modern conservative movement? As stated in my comments in #91, I think otherwise.
You might be interested in Daniel Larison's comments on Kirk here and here.
Thank you for posting this essay.
What you don't understand is that a forced "moral order" is a false moral order. Your moral order splits hairs between alcohol and other mood altering drugs. It punishes some sexual impropriety (commercial sex), but leaves large swaths of sexual impropriety untouched (unmarried sex between consenting adults). You guys go for the low hanging fruit and claim moral victory. By splitting these hairs all over the place, you incorprate unjust laws into the criminal code (ie. one can get drunk every night at home and never be arrested vs. the mere possession of pot (not its usage) is punishable = unequal treatment before the law = injustice).
When you build injustice into the law, you create dis-order, as those that you seek to punish understand they are being punished unjustly. Many Chrisitans seem to have re-interpreted the saying of being your brothers keeper into being their jailers.