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Kirk – Luncheon Talk at the Philadelphia Society in Chicago

Annette Kirk

Russell Kirk Center

Luncheon Talk at the Philadelphia Society

Chicago, May 1, 2004


We all know that no one can stand in for Stan Evans—-so
when Bill Campbell asked me to do this, I immediately called Stan and said, “I
need a story, a quip, something
clever from you to lessen our dismay at not having you present at the luncheon!”

Stan replied, “Well, here’s a reflection that might
work. After doing research for the book I’m writing, entitled “Joe
McCarthy, The Untold Story”, my research has confirmed Evans’ Law of
Inadequate Paranoia — which reads “no matter how bad you think something is
when you look at it, it’s always worse” and you’re not now sure you agree
with what McCarthy was trying to do — but you really do like his methods.

I first met Stan in 1960 at Great Elm, the Buckley’s
family home where 100 student activists from almost every state had gathered to
form a national youth organization. Frustrated with ineffective government
programs and irresponsible spending, the erosion of cultural institutions such
as the church and the family, and with declining standards in education, the
group came together for a weekend of reflection. On Friday night and all day
Saturday, we debated the principles we wished the group to espouse and
animatedly argued over the content of the charter and even the name for the
group.

After dinner,
when we realized that we still did not have a consensus, we slowly began to
panic as the schedule said that a statement of principles was to be presented to
the group for approval on Sunday morning at breakfast.

Suddenly, at 10 PM, the door burst open and in strolled
Stan.   Weekend deadlines for
the Indianapolis News meant that he wasn’t able to get away earlier. As
the youngest editor in the country at the time, he was a star to us Young
Americans for Freedom— as we had decided to call ourselves just a few hours
earlier.

Stan sat
suavely smoking a cigarette, looking like Humphry Bogart, listening to us for
some time tell him what we wanted in our statement.
Soon, he began drolling out carefully crafted words of wisdom. We youth,
a decade younger, hung on his every word.

As secretary
for the group, I recorded his clear, concise sentences. The next morning, we all
enthusiastically approved the document as The Sharon Statement. Several in this
room were present on that occasion, including the president of this Society, Lee
Edwards.

Stan continued to serve the conservative movement both as a
wordsmith and by founding the National Journalism Center training thousands of
young, aspiring writers — among them three of our daughters.

We all owe a
great deal of gratitude to Stan for his efforts to inform and inspire the rising
generation.

Too, we are grateful for groups like the Philadelphia
Society where conservatives of all ages can gather to hear speakers, to
participate in panels and to debate the premises upon which rest our morals and
our markets.

We know that it took some years in the wilderness before
the word “conservative” came into general usage and that it only became a
movement because of the perseverance of the legions of persons and groups who
carried its banner, many of whom are present here this weekend.

Today when conservatism has become a political and economic
force and seems to be everywhere — being discussed on the airwaves and written
about in the print media,   and when
much is being made of our internal disagreements, it might be time to remember
what Russell said in 1993 at the Dearborn meeting of the Philadelphia
Society,   “Conservatism is
not merely a matter of party or faction but a state of mind, a way of looking at
reality, sustained by a body of sentiments.”

It may also be
helpful to reflect at this point in our historical journey that among
conservatismís unique and distinguishing characteristics is its concern — not
only for the mind — but for the heart and the hearth, for the moral
imagination, for the sublime and the beautiful — the treatise on
aesthetics that Edmund Burke wrote at the age of nineteen, long before he became
a statesman.

While such
humane and cultural concerns may not lend themselves to sound bites on the
nightly news, they relate to the deeper longings of humanity and are the
premises upon which most conservatives agree — even if they donít always give
them as much attention as they might.
A young man once asked: “Dr. Kirk, do you have a recipe,
a plan for political action?” Russell replied that if we wish to make
long-term reforms in society, we must turn again to “custom, convention,
constitution and prescription”.

When in 1953, The Conservative Mind was published, Henry
Regnery claimed that the book gave the growing conservative movement coherence
and identity, and provided the unifying concept for a variety of groups on the
right who in Bill Rusher’s words, “knew what they were against but not
exactly what they were for.”

Listed as the first canon of conservatism was: belief
that a divine intent rules society as well as conscience, forging an
eternal chain of right and duty which links great and obscure, living and dead.

In the seventh
and last edition, this canon was broadened to belief in a transcendent order, or
body of natural law as well as conscience.
Russell then went on to list five other canons of conservatism.

It is,
however, this first canon that continues to define traditional conservative
thought and around which we must rally if we are to maintain the vitality of our
movement.

Ten years ago on this same weekend, as the Philadelphia
Society was holding its annual meeting in Chicago,
Russell, who had been
ill for some month, left us for
eternal life.

But just days
before he died, he gathered round him our family and the Wilbur Fellows who
always lived with us, to read us
Chesterton’s “Ballad of the White Horse”.
He wished to communicate truths that he was still discovering and wanted
to share with us.

We listened in charmed awe at his dramatic reading of one
of the last great epic poems in the English language, a timeless allegory about
the ongoing battle between believers and nihilistic heathens.

The poem incorporates imagination, moral concerns,
continuity, wisdom and fancy — all the tools needed to inspire the rising
generation to reclaim the culture, “to redeem the time”.

The challenge to the present generation of
conservatively-minded young people to do this is indeed great.

Theirs is a
complex landscape to navigate in a world in which new rules are continually
being introduced concerning not only national security, the economy and
technology but in areas previously thought secure, such as gender and genetics.
Yet, if we — their mentors — teach them to love and desire to defend the
permanent things, they will take up this task enthusiastically and perform ably.
For four decades, The Philadelphia Society has provided a
forum to share such larger concerns, a place to enjoy the warmth of being with
old and new friends and an opportunity to meet a wonderful assemblage of bright
young scholars.

We are
grateful to the Society for arranging these gatherings and pray that it may
continue to prosper for many more years yet to come.

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