russell kirk was a socially awkward fellow. when conservatives and in america, not conservatism in america, a conservative mind, such a big hit he did maybe a rasping, and he quit his day job. his tradition and decided he would be an independent public intellectual and found that tough going. he was scraping by, maybe less than scraping by. buckley made a pilgrimage up to mike costa michigan and met with kirk and said to kirk i would like you to join the national review and charm tim. buckley being a dashing, and some charming guy. a short, socially awkward. shows buckley his library, a converted barn. this is a wonderful library. this is the great tavern. and for nasa review. in the sizzle of like you to write a column on educational policy. educational policy was a subject dear to russell kirk chart, important subjects. but the battle for the future of this terrorism was not to be decided over educational party -- policy. there his name was. he picks up the phone and calls buckley and he is out raised. i will not the jeep was

and russell kirk was in many ways like buckley and many ways not like buckley but he was like buckley because at a very early age in kirk's case, 35 years old, assistant professor of what's now michigan state. he wrote a book called the conservative mind from burke to elliott that became a sensation. it was really his doctoral thesis and, again, it was unlikely that such a book would become such a sensation but it caught the attention of certain editors at "time" magazine and they bally hued it in a special fourth of july edition of the magazine in 1953. and the book took off. and kirk argued that burke is the true school of conservative thought. burke argued that libertarians were too materialistic and what counted what he called the permanent things, religion, tradition, community, art, literature. .., a community park literature. and he argued that -- one of his phrases was, you know, everything is not about getting another piece of pie and another pat of butter. society in zero we are about is about more important things than just economic growth. and he was very opposed to libert

provoked pain that he he wrote the rights of man and just as rebuttal to burke and from there to russell kirk nine hundred fifty three the conservative mind which was the enemy in force for barry goldwater and william f. buckley is the is that a continuous arc and if so is it is there still some purity left to it or is it been completely distorted in the last three or four decades. well i think hobbes is a really complicated figure but the continuous thing is that he faced this extraordinarily mass mobilization from below commoners who wanted to transform the british monarchy to abolish it and to create a republic and why hobbes is so important is this he is really the first person to understand that if you're going to construct a defense of hierarchy a defense of authority a defense of power in the face of that kind of movement you can't simply state the traditional arguments he understood that the reason that did that the mass movements had triumphed was that those traditional arguments no longer worked so what he did was he took the arguments that he was of this mass movement and he tried

workers are really i think the front lines of the battle between left and right today russell russell kirk in one nine hundred fifty one hundred fifty three when he wrote the conservative mind. you know started out with burke but around that time he had given an interview in which he had basically predicted the sixty's as suggested that if the middle class america became large enough and powerful enough if if if the average person the people that john adams of america's first conservative president arguably used to refer to as the rabble if those people were given enough power you would see riots in the streets and in the one nine hundred sixty s. william f. buckley on his program firing line would frequently cite that i used to watch it and say see we're seeing the fulfillment of kirk's prediction these people have been given too much power the blacks are rising up in demanding power and now the women are burning their bras the young kids don't want to go off to war they're saying no to authority figures this is a society that is disintegrating because we've given too much power to the mi