Volume 4, Number 1 · February 11, 1965
Burke and His Cult
By J.H. Plumb
Burke and the Nature of Politics
by Carl B. Cone
University of Kentucky, Vol. II, 540 pp., $15.00 the set
The world of political ideas is an odd world to move around in, and none odder than Russell Kirk's Conservative Mind, in which Edmund Burke is revealed as the great prophet of Anglo-American conservatism. Throughout this book, the implication is that radicals are addicted to non-realistic, richly sentimental, over-optimistic abstractions, whereas conservatives are down-to-earth men, whose ideas are firmly anchored in a hard-headed appraisal of human nature and a deep sense of the history of mankind. Quaint, indeed, to think that 'equality' is more abstract than 'tradition,' that 'moral essence' should mean more than 'human need,' that reverence for the past should have a higher moral value than hope for the future. Above all, there is the monumental self-deception of the conservative that anti-rationalism is wisdom: Russell Kirk quotes Keith Feiling with solemn approval:
Review, 2129 words
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