Enemies of the Permanent Things

By Russell Kirk Enemies of the Permanent Things In the 1960s, Russell Kirk lectured and debated on many college campuses, ably defending traditional ideas against various liberal and radical adversaries. Enemies of the Permanent Things, first published in 1969, is the most significant extended meditation on culture and politics to come out of the rough and tumble of those years. It is an invaluable document, articulating the response of a critical witness to the radically anti-authoritarian turn taken by the intellectual elite in that destructive decade. “‘Reading of great lives does something to make decent lives,’ writes Russell Kirk in Enemies of the Permanent Things, an unjustly neglected gem among his works. His invaluable distinction between norms and the too-often-misused word values is but one of the treasures to be found within this eminently quotable volume.” ~James E. Person Jr., author of Russell Kirk: A Critical Biography of a Conservative Mind (1999) Russell Kirk (1918–1994) is acknowledged as the founder of the intellectual conservative movement in modern America. From his family home in rural Michigan, Kirk sent forth a multitude of writings on political philosophy, literature, education, and history. His bibliography includes nearly 3,000 newspaper columns, hundreds of journal articles, and 26 books. Benjamin G. Lockerd is Professor of English at Grand Valley State University, where he has received the Alumni Association’s Outstanding Educator Award. He is the author of Aethereal Rumours: T. S. Eliot’s Physics and Poetics and The Sacred Marriage: Psychic Integration in “The Faerie Queene,” and the editor of T. S. Eliot and Christian Tradition. Lockerd has served as President of the T. S. Eliot Society and is a Senior Fellow of the Russell Kirk Center. Paperback: 334pp. ISBN: 978-1944418151