America's British Culture.

FOR FOUR decades, ever since the publication of The Conservative Mind, Russell Kirk has been a fixture in the conservative pantheon: the Victorian figure with the formidable brow, the watch fob, the walking-stick and cape, who lives somewhere off in the wilds of Michigan entertaining a deep appreciation for musty books, his family, a variety of disciples, and "the Permanent Things."

His latest productions are disquisitions on the nature of conservatism and the sources of American culture. The Politics of Prudence is a collection of casual essays that began as a series of talks to budding conservatives at the Heritage Foundation. Unfailingly interesting and amusing, the essays are introductions to conservative thought and culture, past and present, with chapters including "Ten Conservative Events," "Ten Conservative Principles," "Ten Conservative Books," "Exemplary Conservatives."

There is something fitting about Russell Kirk addressing the younger generation. Not just because he is one of the fathers of modern conservatism, the real thing--the res ipsa--and they need the instruction, but also because there is a remarkable youthfulness about Russell Kirk himself. Strange to say--for he is no longer young--Kirk belongs with the young. His impishness, his capacity for wonder and delight, his intellectual enthusiasm, his freedom from academic cant--all make him the ideal pedagogue for the next generation of conservatives. Because of his carefully cultivated tone and appearance, Mr. Kirk has the reputation among some as an arch fuddydud. But this is to miss the element of self-parody; besides, if you strip away the mannered style, the archaisms, the lofty tone why, you miss out on half the fun.

Indeed, if young conservatives were to be unappreciative of Russell Kirk, it would be a sign not of his failure but of his enormous success. For, almost single-handedly, he created a climate where conservative ideas could be taken for granted.

Surveying the long march of AngloAmerican intellectual history in The Conservative Mind, he pointed out a distinctive set of footprints that could only be called the "conservative tradition." Where there had been isolated insights, he created a living tradition that was an intellectual force to be reckoned with.

Early in The Politics of Prudence, Mr. Kirk spends a great deal of time contrasting the politics of prudence with the politics of ideology. For him, ideology is the death of thought, reason, and truth--the mortal enemy of conservative wisdom. It is the modern mind's impatience with reality which leads to an attempt to re-invent reality rather than be governed by it. Ideology pretends to offer a blinding insight into the nature of things that is in fact a call to arms--which is why Burke called it "the armed doctrine." In this lies ideology's main attraction. It answers the perennial question of those impatient with books: What is to be done?

The picture of the true conservative that emerges from these essays is of someone who is humble about the prospects for positive change in society, humble about the value of new insights, especially his own, and realistic about the hidden hazards of change and the inevitability of further crises.

Mr. Kirk's "Exhortatory Epilogue" is the highlight of the volume and worth the price of admission all by itself. To the rising generation, he recommends rebellion against the forces of despair and materialism. He recommends the diligent tending of that portion of the garden of creation entrusted to each person. And, as true conservatism begins in the family, he recommends parenthood as the conservative's most subversive weapon: "The best way to rear up a new generation of friends of the Permanent Things is to beget children, and read to them o'evenings, and teach them what is worthy of praise: the wise parent is the conservator of ancient truths."

The best parts of America's British Culture are Mr. Kirk's discussions of common law and the growth of representative government. Here, he stresses the powerful influence in the American colonies of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England, which was published in the 1760s. The enduring force of common law in America meant that the Constitution was not the source but the outgrowth of a living legal tradition. While focusing on the architecture of government, the framers of the Constitution were fortunately able to take for granted most of the fundamental principles of law.

Turning to representative government in America, Mr. Kirk notes that instead of replicating the local county governments of England, as might have been expected, the American colonies imitated Britain's national parliamentary system. Thus, each colony enjoyed three distinct political features: a colonial governor, a strong executive and the forerunner of state governors; a governor's council, which would later evolve into a state senate; and a colonial assembly, which would eventually become a state house of representatives.

This arrangement was to have enormous implications for American aspirations to independence, for, from the very beginning, it generated a structural rivalry between the colonial governments and the British Parliament. It is for this reason that Kirk views the rebels' cry of "No taxation without representation" as somewhat disingenuous. The rebellious colonials were never really interested in being represented in Parliament, where, in any event, they would have been hopelessly outnumbered. Rather, they wanted to represent and tax themselves through their own assemblies.

Mr. Kirk agrees with Tocqueville's conclusion that "It is their mores . .. that make the Americans of the United States, alone among Americans, capable of maintaining the rule of democracy." It is not our political theory but our way of life and customs that have kept America strong. In fact, our aversion to theoretical projects, our pragmatic bent, has inoculated us against the more violent excesses of our European friends. As Kirk points out, our mores and customs are essentially the fruit of English Christianity. These mores may persist without religion, but once lost, they cannot be resurrected without it. He writes, "Cultures cannot be deliberately created; they arise, rather, from the theophanic events that bring cults into existence." He notes it is no coincidence that "cult" the word used to describe the prescribed practices of religion--has the same origin as the word "culture."

One of the delights of reading anything by Russell Kirk is that he has done a staggering amount of reading for you and he cannot resist serving up stray bits of erudition. A typical example might be something like the thoughts of Founding Father Gouverneur Morris, from the Constitutional Convention, on qualifications for voting: "Give the votes to people who have no property, and they will sell them to the rich who will be able to buy them"--a thought that sheds a disturbing light on certain aspects of twentieth-century politics. In the end, all of Mr. Kirk's books end up resembling digests or compendia of conservative wisdom from Socrates up to ... well, Russell Kirk.

Naturally, Mr. Kirk is a master of quotation, and one of his favorite quotations--repeated throughout his work--is T.S. Eliot's line from "Little Gidding" in The Four Quartets: "the communication / Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond the language of the living."

Clearly, Russell Kirk believes this, and, with admirable consistency, he lives it. He is forever quoting the dead.

A fully annotated Kirk volume would be awash in footnotes. Every other sentence contains a quotation, paraphrase, allusion, or take-off on some famous bit of literature. Without question, the voices of the dead masters still speak loudly in the mind and echo in the writings of Russell Kirk.

As a true conservative, Mr. Kirk realizes that most of what is true has been said before--and often very well. As he himself insists, he does not write as a prophet or purveyor of fashionable pieties. Rather he is an archaeologist of sorts, uncovering neglected insights and arguments in ancient nooks and out-of-the-way places. For his indispensable labors, he richly deserves the title of the twentieth century's truest conservative-or perhaps, as he might prefer, Conservator Magnus--a champion not Of clever novelties but of the solid and true things we must not forget.