For the conservative, the real end of economic production is to raise man above the savage level, to make possible the leisure which sustains civilization, and to free man from the condition of a simple drudge. When efficiency or production becomes an end in itself, then truly technology has triumphed over humanity. —Prospects for Conservatives: A Compass for Rediscovering the Permanent Things by Russell Kirk
We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an on-line journal for those who seek the True, the Good and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, Paul Elmer More and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism. Some conservatives may look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.” The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude and prayer.
Russell Kirk believed that the economic sphere should be in the service of human flourishing, Mr. Jefferson’s “pursuit of happiness,” instead of economic rationality. His principles lead to supporting the tariff to foster and then protect American jobs. His comments on the British Corn Laws in Conservative Mind, chapter VIII show that he understood this. Wes McDonald refers to passages in Kirk’s other books advocating protectionism. (McDonald himself devotes a page to arguing against Kirk’s views.) The tariff can protect farming and industrial capitalism and provide a brake on financial capitalism, which always tends toward globalism.