ABSTRACT
The conservative movement in the United States achieved a startling political success with the elections of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and 1984. Few could have foreseen twenty or thirty years ago that what seemed to be a discredited or largely ignored set of principles would become the dominant public philosophy. Russell Kirk’s rebuke of liberalism begins with his attack on the principles of the Enlightenment. He argues that the Enlightenment attempted to replace the complex structure of human relations with simple and universal formulas about the natural rights of all people. These new rights did not grow out of the long tradition of the West; they derived instead from ideas based solely on abstract notions, such as equality, liberty and fraternity. For Kirk a nation’s culture is wiser than any individual or generation. A culture is the accumulated wisdom of the ages. Through a long process of trial and error, a culture adopts those mores and habits that “work”.
