Russell Kirk - The American Cause

The idea of editing this book grew out of two conversations. The first was with Russell Kirk's wife Annette on August 1, 1998. It was a spectacularly beautiful Michigan day, not at all hot or humid, and we were enjoying lunch on the terrace at St. Ives in the Canadian Lakes (near the Kirk ancestral home, Piety Hill). I was briefing Annette and her brother Regis Courtemanche on the lectures I was developing around Russell Kirk's masterful survey of Western civilization, The Roots of American Order. Annette ventured that at some point I might be interested in editing a new edition of Kirk's earlier book called The American Cause, since it was in some ways the forerunner of Roots. I agreed that the connection was important, but was not sure when I could devote the time to tackle it.

Then came September 11th. Suddenly the timein the old Greek sense of khronos or ripenessmade The American Cause an extremely compelling book. Shortly after the tragedy Jeffrey Nelson, Russell Kirk's son-in-law and the publisher of ISI Books, proposed that we meet. We did so over dinner in East Lansing on November 5, 2001. Given the response to the attacks on America, marked by a spontaneous outpouring of love of country, Jeff sensed that college students and many others as well would be receptive to Kirk's spirited defense of American civilization in The American Cause. I agreed and was honored that he asked me to edit the dated material in earlier editions of this work, which is a short but stirring explication of fundamental American beliefs. At the core of The American Cause is a primer on the principles that underlie our nation's government, economy, and civil society. Kirk's explication of these principles, although written almost half a century ago, has never been more timely.

So for the opportunity to work on The American Cause, many thanks to Annette Kirk and to Jeffrey Nelson and to the Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal that they established and direct.

I also wish to thank several other individuals who have been helpful. Michigan Governor John Engler, who used to represent the Kirks in the Michigan Senate, sent pertinent essays and articles my way. Bradley Birzer of Hillsdale College made helpful suggestions for the bibliography, and Winston Elliot of the Free Enterprise Institute gave me a forum to test the ideas in the afterword. Kirsten Lietz, librarian with the State of Michigan, helped track down review articles. And my wife Louise, always gracious under a regime of deadlines, fostered a home environment in which I could write; even more heroically, she listened to me read and reread passages from the book. Would that every writer could be blessed with a wife like my Louise!

It goes without saying: for whatever excellence can be found in my work, I am indebted to many. Ubi veritas, Deus ibi est.

America is a great nation. But is it an exceptional nation? Does it have a unique mission in human history? Russell Kirk believed so, and nowhere in his early career did he make the case better than in The American Cause.

How this enduring primer on American civilization came about is a story in its own right. The book was not originally Kirk's idea. In 1956, he was approached by his friend and publisher Henry Regnery, who urged him to write an elementary statement of the moral, political, social, and economic principles upon which the United States was founded. The Cold War was heating up, and militant Communism was America's mortal enemy. It was crucial that Americans understand what their country stood for, how it differed from the enemy, and why it was worth defending.

Kirk, 37 years old at the time, was at first reluctant to write the primer. He was working on larger projects that had grown out of his magnum opus, The Conservative Mind. Regnery's publication of that book just three years earlier had opened up the intellectual commons to Kirk. He believed his energies could be better channeled into other book projects. He changed his mind, however, once certain disturbing facts came to light.

What Kirk learned was that many American troops who had been taken prisoner during the Korean War (195053) had been easy targets of Communist indoctrination. In fact, the chief of intelligence of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army in North Korea had written a memorandum to his superiors in Beijing in which he fairly gloated. Based upon our observations of American soldiers and their officers captured in this war, this intelligence officer wrote, the following facts are evidenced. Among other things, There is little knowledge or understanding, even among United States university graduates, of American political history and philosophy; of federal, state, and community organizations; of states rights and civil rights; of safeguards to freedom; and of how these things supposedly operate within [their] own system.

Americans were justifiably skeptical of an enemy's reportbut were later disturbed to learn that it contained more than a grain of truth. Investigation of our troops conduct and morale in prisoner-of-war camps yielded disturbing insights.

Kirk, himself a soldier during the Second World War, was also disturbed by these findings. He accepted Regnery's commission and in short order produced a 39,000-word manuscript in ten chapters. In 1957 Regnery printed 5,000 copies of the book. It sold for $3.50, and a number of copies were purchased by the U.S. government to distribute to the armed forces.

Regnery went through the initial print run. Within a decade, however, the United States found itself entangled in a new war in Asia. Communism still posed a significant threat to the United States, to be sure. But more serious challenges were arising within the nation. It was the tumultuous Sixties, and the stakes seemed higher. Among college students especially, the essential goodness of the American cause came under serious attack. At the same time, there was little evidence that American institutions had become any more successful at instilling the knowledge and values needed for the nation to fight for its principles and promise

These two early editions of The American Cause were met by quite different generations. The book's first readers were members of a generation that in youth had some memory of economic depression, world war, and Cold War. The next wave of readers might as well have been from another planet, so different were the Sixties from the Fifties. They were members of a generation that in youth caused or experienced profound cultural changes, and they were deeply skeptical of American ideas and institutionsindeed, skeptical of America itself.

Since the 1966 edition, new generations of college students have grown up among us. Once again The American Cause makes its appearance. And once again, the passage of time reveals the book to be much more than a period piece. It is not just a product of the Fifties, for Kirk focused on the principles underlying American civilization rather than on ephemeral policy debates. It seems especially to speak to Americans in the aftermath of September 11th. Citizens are once again discovering their love of country, and there is a keen desire among Americans to understand our heritage as a self-governing people under the rule of law.

Despite the interest of the Pentagon in The American Cause, it is not a government publication. Despite its friendly reception among conservatives, it is not a party manifesto. To approach the book so narrowly is to do Kirk a great injustice. As Dos Passos put it,