The Portable Conservative Reader
by Various (Author); Kirk, Russell T. (Editor)Format: Hardcover
Publisher(s): Viking Adult
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Summary
The Portable Conservative Reader illuminates the meaning of the conservative cause. In one of the most wide-ranging and thoughtful anthologies of conservative thought in the English and American traditions, Russell Kirk excavates conservatism's foundations. The breadth of conservative writing reveals that, at bottom, the conservative idea is not an economic theory nor a political program but a penetrating way of looking at the human condition. Here, Kirk brings together a diverse group of thinkers and material - including essays, poetry, and fiction - that articulate the conservative imagination, its veneration of tradition, prudence, variety, and the enduring fallibility and imperfectibility of mankind. These selections set forth basic premises and principles at work in the minds of Edmund Burke, Benjamin Disraeli, and T. S. Eliot in Britain, Alexander Hamilton, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Adams, and Irving Kristol in America, and many more who have elucidated this turn of mind. This balanced and surprising collection is a landmark study of the most potent political force of our time.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | |
| The Tension of Order and Freedom | p. 1 |
| The Truth About Civil Liberty (Edmund Burke, Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol) | p. 3 |
| Liberty and Power (Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France) | p. 7 |
| Change and Conservation (Burke, Reflections) | p. 9 |
| Natural Rights and Real Rights (Burke, Reflections) | p. 13 |
| The Moral Imagination (Burke, Reflections) | p. 20 |
| Prejudice, Religion, and the Antagonist World (Burke, Reflections) | p. 25 |
| Preserving and Reforming (Burke, Reflections) | p. 35 |
| Who Speaks for the People? (Burke, Appeal to the Old Whigs from the New) | p. 40 |
| Passion and Control (Burke, Letter to a Member of the National Assembly) | p. 47 |
| American Liberty Under Law | p. 49 |
| The Prudent Constitutions of America (John Adams, Defence of the Constitutions of Government) | p. 51 |
| Ideology and Ideocracy (John Adams, Discourses on Davila) | p. 64 |
| On Natural Aristocracy (John Adams, letter to John Taylor of Caroline) | p. 67 |
| Safety in Union (Alexander Hamilton, The Continentalist) | p. 70 |
| The Spectacle of Revolutionary France (Alexander Hamilton, The Stand) | p. 78 |
| Conservative Forebodings (Fisher Ames, "The Dangers of American Liberty") | p. 84 |
| The Reply of the Poets | p. 113 |
| France: an Ode (Samuel Taylor Coleridge) | p. 115 |
| The Idea of the Constitution (Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Constitution of the Church and State) | p. 118 |
| The Sins of Manchester (Robert Southey, Letters from England) | p. 120 |
| Southern Conservatism | p. 129 |
| King Numbers (John Randolph at the Virginia Convention) | p. 131 |
| On the Veto Power (John C. Calhoun, Senate speech, 1842) | p. 155 |
| American Democratic Leveling | p. 181 |
| On Equality (James Fenimore Cooper, The American Democrat) | p. 183 |
| The New Social Morality (Alexis de Tocqueville, letter to Gobineau) | p. 202 |
| Against Utilitarian Radicalism | p. 209 |
| A Radical War-Song (Thomas Babington Macaulay) | p. 211 |
| All Sail and No Anchor (Thomas Babington Macaulay, letters to H. S. Randall) | p. 214 |
| Utilitarian Follies (Benjamin Disraeli, A Vindication of the English Constitution) | p. 218 |
| Who's to Blame? (John Henry Newman) | p. 226 |
| Intellectual Conservatism (Walter Bagehot) | p. 237 |
| Progress and Human Frailty | p. 243 |
| Earth's Holocaust (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mosses from an Old Manse) | p. 245 |
| Liberalism and Progress (Orestes Brownson) | p. 267 |
| Legal and Historical Conservatism | p. 293 |
| The Mischief of Rousseau and Bentham (Henry Maine, Popular Government) | p. 295 |
| Ruinous Taxation (W. E. H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty) | p. 309 |
| Conservative Impulses Amid American Materialism | p. 323 |
| Who Will Pay the Bills of Socialism? (Edwin Lawrence Godkin, Problems of Modern Democracy) | p. 325 |
| Corrupt Washington (Henry Adams, Democracy) | p. 340 |
| The Revolt of Modern Democracy Against Standards of Duty (Brooks Adams) | p. 350 |
| The Crumbling Country House | p. 361 |
| The Four Reformers (Robert Louis Stevenson, Fables) | p. 363 |
| The Dissolution of Faith (W. H. Mallock, The New Republic) | p. 364 |
| The Conservative Englishman (George Gissing, The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft) | p. 377 |
| Toryism (George Saintsbury, A Scrap Book) | p. 380 |
| The Fabulists | p. 385 |
| The Informer (Joseph Conrad, A Set of Six) | p. 387 |
| The Mother Hive (Rudyard Kipling, Actions and Reactions) | p. 413 |
| Critical Conservatism | p. 433 |
| Property and Law (Paul Elmer More, Aristocracy and Justice) | p. 435 |
| Burke and the Moral Imagination (Irving Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership) | p. 451 |
| The Irony of Liberalism (George Santayana, Soliloquies in England) | p. 467 |
| Conservatism Between Two Wars | p. 481 |
| Religion and the Totalitarian State (Christopher Dawson, Religion and the Modern State) | p. 483 |
| Marxist Literary Criticism (T. S. Eliot, Commentary in The Criterion) | p. 499 |
| A Bent World | p. 507 |
| The Poison of Subjectivism (C. S. Lewis, Christian Reflections) | p. 509 |
| Some Day, in Old Charleston (Donald Davidson, Still Rebels, Still Yankees) | p. 521 |
| What Must Be Developed? (James McAuley, The End of Modernity) | p. 537 |
| The Planster's Vision (John Betjeman) | p. 544 |
| Women's Conservative Vision | p. 547 |
| Choice and Toleration (Freya Stark, Perseus in the Wind) | p. 549 |
| The Angry Man (Phyllis McGinley) | p. 555 |
| The Woodpeckers and the Starlings (Jacquetta Hawkes, Fables) | p. 556 |
| The Wisdom of Our Ancestors | p. 565 |
| On Being Conservative (Michael Oakeshott, Rationalism in Politics) | p. 567 |
| The Great Liberal Death Wish (Malcolm Muggeridge, Things Past) | p. 600 |
| Resistance and Hope | p. 625 |
| Capitalism, Socialism, and Nihilism (Irving Kristol, Two Cheers for Capitalism) | p. 627 |
| The Restoration of Authority (Robert Nisbet, Twilight of Authority) | p. 644 |
| Cultural Debris: A Mordant Last Word (Russell Kirk, the Intemperate Professor) | p. 705 |
| Bibliographical Suggestions | p. 711 |
| Index | p. 713 |
| Table of Contents provided by Blackwell. All Rights Reserved. |
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