Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics

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. As such, 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. Kirk defines “the permanent things” (a phrase borrowed from T. S. Eliot) as the unchanging norms of human nature. In a healthy society, Kirk argues, individuals will attempt to live by these permanent standards of moral action, and the laws of the land will give support to citizens as they make that attempt. Focusing on literature as well as on politics, Kirk sets forth and defends those inalterable truths of human life.