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Russell Kirk

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Understanding Guns in America: Our Inherited Rights as Free Englishmen

[dropcap]I[/dropcap]t is ironic that the most vehement opposition to gun ownership I have ever witnessed was voiced by a British citizen, because our right to bear arms here in the States is an inherited right — it was an acknowledged right of free Englishmen, which is why the colonists were so appalled when their King tried to disarm them {to say nothing of his other tyrannical acts}. Russell Kirk talks about this extensively in his Roots of American Order, which Continue Reading…
January 17, 2013
Book Club: The Roots of American OrderChapter 12

Yes, I am really still trying to finish this book. I’ve completed the reading, as I mentioned before, but thinking through the final chapter and writing about it is happening slowly. Actually, a lot of things seem to be happening slowly of late. But I digress. Kirk tells us the Alexis de Tocqueville warned against our “succumbing to a new servitude.” He {de Tocqueville} wrote: The Roots of American Orderby Russell Kirk Equality has prepared men for all this, predisposing them to Continue Reading…
June 6, 2012
Quotables: The Roots of American Order

The Roots of American Orderby Russell Kirk In every age, among every people, disorder rises up in one shape or another. {p. 441} [T]he common man of nineteenth-century America sought less earnestly after salvation of his soul than had Bunyan’s Christian. {p. 443} The growing danger to American order during that era was not political, primarily: rather, practical political measures were the mirror of an increasing confusion in the moral and the social order. {p. 443} Both Henry Adams and T.S. Eliot, Continue Reading…
June 1, 2012
Book Club: The Roots of American OrderChapter 11

I was hoping to finish up the book this week, but as you can see I still have one chapter left. Life, you know? It just keeps happening around here lately. I tried to stop it, but instead I have embodied Murphy’s Law more than anything else. I’m just saying. The Roots of American Orderby Russell Kirk So: Chapter 11. There were entire portions of this chapter {the discussion of the First Amendment and freedom of religion} that I was already pretty clear Continue Reading…
May 18, 2012