Two things are interesting when one rereads the great Russell Kirk, author of the seminal The Conservative Mind, which proved that conservatives had one: (1.) how comments he made nearly half a century ago remain current; and (2.) the startling degree to which the observations of middle-aged Russell Kirk resemble those of young Martin Luther King.
“At best, what the typical college has offered its students, in recent decades, has been defecated rationality,” Kirk stated in the 1970s. “By that term, a favorite with me, I mean a narrow rationalism or logicalism, purged of theology, moral philosophy, symbol and allegory, tradition, reverence, and the wisdom of our ancestors.”
“This defecated rationality is the exalting of private judgment and hedonism at the expense of the inner order of the soul and the outer order of the republic. On many a campus, this defecated and desiccated logicalism is the best which is offered the more intelligent students; as alternatives, they can embrace a program of fun and games, or a program of ‘social commitment’ of a baneful or a silly character, wondrously unintellectual.”
