A Biography of Conservative Icon Russell Kirk

Political theorist, historian and novelist Russell Kirk was one of the most influential social and literary critics of the 20th Century. Not only did Kirk help introduce modern politicians to the political theories of Irish statesman Edmund Burke, Kirk is widely credited with launching the contemporary conservative movement. Two of Kirk's books, The Conservatives' Rout (1952) and The Conservative Mind, served as the foundation for the political ideologies of such notable conservatives as National Review commentator William F. Buckley Jr. and US President Ronald Reagan.

Russell Kirk was born in Plymouth Mich. on Oct. 19, 1918 to Russell Andrew Kirk and Marjorie Pierce Kirk. He was raised in his ancestral home, "Piety Hill," and would return there as an adult to live with his wife and daughters. Kirk earned his bachelor's degree from Michigan State College (now Michigan University) in history in 1940, and a year later, in 1941, he earned a master's degree in the same subject from Duke University. He worked briefly for Ford Motor Co., then enlisted in the US Army, attaining the rank of staff sergeant during World War II.

After the war, Kirk became a history of civilization instructor at Michigan State. In 1946, he took a leave of absence to do research at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where he studied the most important and influential conservative thinkers in England and America. In 1952, he published The Conservatives' Rout, for which he received Doctor of Letters honors from St. Andrews. The following year, at the age of 35, he published one of the most influential books in political history, The Conservative Mind. That same year (1953), Kirk resigned due to what he saw as a decay in the school's academic standards.

Following his departure from Michigan State, Kirk continued to publish work in political theory. By this time, Kirk was becoming nationally known as an important literary and social critic. Both Time and Newsweek recognized his work and heralded him as the key spokesman of the American conservative movement. Over the course of his career, he would write three non-fiction books, thre novels, three collections of short stories, more than 2,000 articles, essays and reviews and 2,687 columns. Kirk wrote for and helped found two political journals, National Review, which he co-founded with Buckley and Modern Age.

In 1963, Kirk married Annette Yvonne Cecile Courtemanche, with whom he had four daughters, Monica, Cecilia, Felicia and Andrea. The family lived at Kirk's Piety Hill home in Mecosta, Mich. (a suburb of Detroit), where Kirk wrote virtually all of his work. Piety Hill became the nerve center of the American conservative movement, as Kirk and his family befriended and offered hospitality to everyone from homeless people to T. S. Eliot. The house was often crowded with international refugees and fugitives, dissidents, travelers and university students. Kirk died on April 29, 1994.

Because he didn't participate in literary functions (Kirk didn't drive), he was often snubbed by the literary and media establishments. Nevertheless, Kirk created an informal campus at Piety Hill, and, with the help of the Wilbur Foundation (of which Kirk served as president in 1979, his legacy lives on today in the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal, which was founded after his death and is housed at Piety Hill. According to its site, the mission of the center is to foster "an appreciation of the 'permanent things' that maintain and nurture our civil social order."

Although Kirk discussed six canons of conservatism in his book The Conservative Mind, the year before his death, he published his final book, The Politics of Prudence (1993). In a chapter of that book, Kirk expands those canons to 10.

1. The conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order.
2. The conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity.
3. Conservatives believe in what may be called the principle of prescription.
4. Conservatives are guided by their principle of prudence.
5. Conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety.
6. Conservatives are chastened by their principle of imperfectability.
7. Conservatives are persuaded that freedom and property are closely linked.
8. Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.
9. The conservative perceives the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions.
10. The thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.