October 21, 1953: "The Conservative Mind" Is Published

Kirk usually favored cigars, rather than a pipe, as seen here.

October 21, 1953: The Conservative Mind, edited by Russell Kirk, is published by Regnery Press, still basking in its publication, 2 years earlier, of William F. Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

A 34-year-old native of the suburbs of Detroit, Kirk was heavily influenced by Our Enemy, the State, a far-right book written by Albert Jay Nock, published in 1935. In his own book, Kirk developed what he called six canons of conservatism:

1. A belief in a transcendent order, which he described variously as based in tradition, divine revelation, or natural law;
2. An affection for the "variety and mystery" of human existence;
3. A conviction that society requires orders and classes that emphasize natural distinctions;
4. A belief that property and freedom are closely linked;
5. A faith in custom, convention, and prescription; and
6. A recognition that innovation must be tied to existing traditions and customs, which entails a respect for the political value of prudence.

Number 1 seems to suggest that, for conservatives, a belief in God, or in some form of higher power, is necessary. This would lead to the linking of conservatism and evangelical Christianity, which has harmed both the philosophy and the religion. Number 2 sounds more like a tenet of liberalism than one of 21st Century conservatism.

Numbers 3 and 4 seem to mark conservatism as a political philosophy of, by and for rich people. Numbers 5 and 6 tie in with a classic tenet of conservatism, outlined in the years leading up to the English Civil War of the 1640s, in which he would die, by Lucius Cary, 2nd Viscount Falkland, for whom the British islands off the coast of Argentina would be named: He wrote, "Where it is not necessary to change, it is necessary not to change."

In the book, Kirk included writings by Edmund Burke, John C. Calhoun and Benjamin Disraeli, as politicians whose work he considered to be conservative. But he also included George Washington, John Adams and Alexander Hamilton among their numbers, which is dubious.

He included writings by authors he considered conservative, including Sir Walter Scott, George Santayana and T.S. Eliot, which makes sense; but also Alexis de Tocqueville, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Robert Frost, which most certainly does not. (In 1961, the elderly Frost spoke at the Inauguration of President John F. Kennedy.)

Unlike Friedrich Hayek's 1944 The Road to Serfdom, and Milton Friedman's 1962 Capitalism and Freedom, The Conservative Mind hardly mentions economics at all. Kirk grounded his version of conservatism in tradition, political philosophy, literary efforts, and religious faith, rather than free-market economic reasoning.

Whittaker Chambers called The Conservative Mind the most important book of the 20th Century. Conservative newspaper columnist James J. Kilpatrick called it the best and clearest exposition of the conservative philosophy. Along with The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom, and Chambers' 1952 memoir Witness, it became required reading for right-of-center Americans thereafter.

Kirk died in 1994. The following year, the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard began publication, and started a Conservative Hall of Fame. Its 1st 2 inductees were Ronald Reagan and Russell Kirk -- before either Buckley, Hayek, Milton Friedman, Chambers or Kilpatrick.

But the times were changing: The conservative intellectual "revolution" led by House Speaker Newt Gingrich, based on the writings of Kirk and Buckley and on the 1980s' "Reagan Revolution," was about to fall apart, replaced by the evangelical conservatism of George W. Bush, and, later still, by the narcissistic kleptocracy of Donald Trump

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October 21, 1953 was a Friday. The baseball season had ended 14 days earlier, when the New York Yankees won Game 6 to clinch the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Football was in midweek. The NBA season started 9 days later. There was 1 game played in the NHL: The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Detroit Red Wings played to a tie, 1-1 at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto.