Russell Kirk: American Conservative Excerpt
600-page biography of Russell Kirk. November 5, 2015. Pre-order now.
“Kirk presented a Christian sanctification of the pagan myth of Perseus and his nemesis the Gorgon, Medusa. indeed, this myth holds the entire book together. “a man if he venerates the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods, will seek out the terror and strike with all the strength that is in him, as Perseus struck,” Kirk wrote, paraphrasing a famous lay by Thomas Babington Macaulay, the nineteenth-century British historian and poet.75 america, in Kirk’s understanding, serves as the modern Perseus, striking against the secularization and ideologization of the postwar world. like Perseus, america could turn away from its task—as the leading power of the Western world—at any moment. and like Perseus, america would need to contend with the problems of power, self, and enemy.”
–Bradley Birzer, RUSSELL KIRK: AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE (forthcoming, UP of Kentucky, November 5, 2015), pp. 144-145.
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