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Russell Kirk: The Anti-Modernist Cerberus
The author of The Conservative Mind opposed modernity in at least three ways
Russell Kirk hated modernity.
He rebelled against it his entire life. He hated the automobile, calling it a “modern Jacobin.” He wouldn’t allow a TV in his house (though he let a hobo named “Clinton” have one in his room), and once, when he found out his daughter was watching TV, hurled the set from a third-floor window. Bradley Birzer, Russell Kirk: American Conservative. 521.
He didn’t even like the radio, sharing his friend, Max Picard’s, intense dislike for “radio noise.”
But what exactly is “modernity”?
Thinkers quibble over its meaning, but I think most would agree that it was given form by the Enlightenment, reveres science, and is marked by a vague sense that the human race will have continual success in its worldly activities . . . through the exercise of reason.
Many people refer to modernity as “The Age of Reason.”
Others point out that it’s marked by “Rationalism.”
Kirk would’ve agreed.
He countered that “rationalism” is merely “defecated rationality.” Kirk, Beyond the Dreams of Avarice, “Liberal Learning, Moral Worth, and Defecated…
