A Retort to Alan Wolfe
Alan Wolfe’s second round of insults aimed at Russell Kirk irritated me enough that I had to write this counterblast, now up Taki’s Top Drawer. Check it out.
Explore posts in the same categories: Books, ConservatismAlan Wolfe’s second round of insults aimed at Russell Kirk irritated me enough that I had to write this counterblast, now up Taki’s Top Drawer. Check it out.
Explore posts in the same categories: Books, Conservatism
July 17th, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Excellent as always, but I felt there was one point you overlooked which needs stating:
The real issue in the whole discussion about Kirk and religion seems to be that Wolfe condemns Kirk precisely because he does not believe in the totalitarian concept of “civic religion”, and that the crux of his whole polemic is to condemn him for this rather than constructing one of his own as the neocons have done.
What Wolfe appears to be arguing is that for a conservative to be advocating a traditionalist theocracy is preferable to the renunciation of civic religion, for the very reason that such a testimony to truly liberal and small-c catholic values is a grave offense to Wolfe’s totalitarian liberalism.
July 18th, 2007 at 1:44 am
Dan,
Great article. I always enjoy what you write. It’s a pity Taki’s Top Drawer doesn’t have an RSS feed.
July 18th, 2007 at 7:35 am
I certainly agree with Kevin V about the need for Taki to discover RSS.
I liked your comment “Wolfe dislikes Kirk because Kirk was not a liberal and—what may be worse—because Kirk refused to pander to liberal sensibilities in expounding his own point of view.
That’s half the trouble isn’t it. Despite the broad right’s general defeat of the extremes of political correctness in recent decades, there is still a left-liberal predominance of intellectual opinion and most non-left-liberals still have to kowtow, or make some sort of supplications, to this idol in their writing. It’s always left liberal sensibilities that need to be protected with kid gloves.
July 18th, 2007 at 2:22 pm
RSS is very simple, especially with free services like FeedBurner.
No rejoinder on the John Brown dig against you?
July 19th, 2007 at 7:41 am
Thanks for the comments. I’ll see if the Takimag folks can add RSS.
Matt: You’re right, I should post something on the comments thread. My crack about John Brown was a bit of a cheap shot, even if true.