Redeeming the Time

Rating:
Summary: Prospects for Redemption
Review: According to the introduction, Redeeming the Time was meant to be a companion to The Politics of Prudence, both books containing nearly the whole of Kirk's lectures to the Heritage Foundation. Some of the essays are among Kirk's last words to us, covering much ground: education, justice, architecture, fiction, multiculturalism, capital punishment, human rights, natural law, and a devastating critique of libertarians.

The autobiographical elements are among my favorites, for they demonstrate Kirk's skill as a storyteller. I enjoyed the comical story of the battle he undertook with his four daughters to keep a TV out of his household. In opposing television Kirk was taking up a truly quixotic cause. Of interest, too, was the tale of Clinton, the burglar-butler and reformed convict whom the Kirk family befriended. These anecdotes encourage the reader to pick up Kirk's fine autobiography, The Sword of Imagination.

Despite my admiration for "Criminal Character and Mercy," I had to disagree with his stance on capital punishment. While capital punishment might be an act of mercy in some cases, it assumes infallibility on the part of an obviously flawed judicial system, having no answer to the likelihood that innocent people would be put to death. Today's courtroom is a poor place for finding the truth. Capital punishment places ultimate power of life and death into the hands of that courtroom (the state) -- a tough position for conservatives to accept.

The only other disagreement I have is in the area of religion, a subject which occupied more of Kirk's writing as he grew older, not as an evangel of any particular denomination or religion, for his friendships and acquaintances were wide, his defense of plurality unwavering, but in his insistence on the connection between religion and order. The title itself, borrowed from T. S. Eliot, suggests hope for redemption and Kirk's unwillingness to leave his readers with yet another jeremiad by yet another gloomy conservative. Cheerfulness breaks in, he wrote, decadence and renewal work in cycles, and Americans themselves, through sound choice, hold the key to their own future.

Like Burke, Kirk believed in the civil use of religion in holding a society together. Order, rather than freedom, is the foundation of civilization. Order there must be, I am sure, but I am less convinced that religion is its only source. Belief in the primacy of order unites the views of Burke, Johnson, and Smith in the essay "Three Pillars of Order." I was particularly interested in how Smith might fit into Kirk's traditional conservatism.

The lecture form necessarily put limits on what Kirk could accomplish in these essays. Therefore the reader may find this volume less satisfying than more thorough treatments such as Prospects for Conservatives or Roots of American Order. Nevertheless, it remains a valuable anthology of elegant prose and clear thinking that could bring a fair amount of wisdom to readers of all political stripes.