Russel Kirk

    “In every age, society has been changed by a few people who have been moved by the grace of God.” ~Russell Kirk

Hey guys! It’s been awhile, but I am in need yet again of a GB Favor, so it’s time for another lecture blog post! Today’s edition will be on a lecture about a man named Russell Kirk that I attended all the way back in September. Always take notes, kids, because you never know when you might need to remember a lecture from two months ago in order to post a write-up on your academic blog so that you won’t fail your favorite class. These things happen. Now, without further ado, I present my takeaway from “The Charity of Russell Kirk” by Dr. Brad Birzer of Hillsdale College.

    Russell Kirk (1918-1994) was one of the 20th century’s most influential intellectuals, even though most people now have never even heard of his name. In the 1950’s you couldn’t turn a TV on without hearing his name mentioned. He wrote multiple books and was a very influential political figure, but one of his most impactful works was a book titled The Conservative Mind. This book reformed the political views of many who read it and contributed greatly to the shaping of the post-World War II conservative movement. In his life he taught at both Michigan State College and Hillsdale College and he was in possession of a perfect photographic memory. Sometimes his students, soon before he died, would pull a book off of his library shelf, ask him when was the last time he read it, and he would respond that the last time he had read it was in college. They would open it, start reading, and he would quote the rest of the page from memory even though it had been 30 years since he had last read it. He was a very intelligent and gifted writer and wrote hundreds of letters in his lifetime to many different people of all shapes and sizes. He had a very impressive and interesting professional life, but what stuck with me even more than that was the content of his character that he portrayed in every aspect of his life, professional and personal.

    Russell Kirk was an unrealistically generous man, and this was because he knew what it was like to have nothing. Born into poverty in Detroit Michigan, as he was growing up, he would, only occasionally, be able to scrounge enough money to buy a single jar of peanut butter which he would carry around with him all day to eat as his only meal for several days. His mother brought steadiness to the family and the two most important and influential people to him growing up were his mother and his mother’s father. Two important lessons from Russell Kirk’s outlook on life that Dr. Brad presented were as follows: 1. Kirk never thought that money was that important. He knew that money is a gift just like everything else. And 2. He never forgot his mother, grandfather and the people who helped him through the Great Depression because he knew that he wouldn’t have made it without them. As a result of his experiences, he never valued money very highly and never coveted it, but rather constantly gave it away to people whom he thought could use it. He had a faith in God that impacted the way he thought of everything, even though he was not very big into going to church. He took trips to Africa and met people that he grew to love, and as a result, brought numerous Ethiopians and Cambodians to live with him and his wife. He payed for countless students to go to school and allowed them to live with him as well. His wife and he would drive around downtown Detroit, find pregnant single women living on the street, and offer them a place to stay and financial assistance if they would only agree to not get an abortion on the baby. On one occasion on a Sunday afternoon in winter, Kirk had stayed in bed and his wife had gone to church. On her way back in a blizzard, she ran into a man who was on parole for committing a petty crime who told her that he was walking in the storm because he had nothing else to do. He recited a poem to her off the top of his head and she ran to get Kirk because she knew that he would love to meet the man. They both walked back out of the house, waited for the man to walk up, and engaged in conversation with him. Kirk was taken with him and invited him into their house for brunch. After talking for awhile, Kirk called the parole officer and asked for the man to be paroled under his name, promising that he would take care of him. The man lived with them for a long time and became a very good friend.

    These are just a few of the stories and facts from Russell Kirk’s life that stuck out to me when I heard them. Russell Kirk was a very influential and intriguing man who left a big mark on the lives of many people that he touched. He was a man who was excessively generous to the point where it was borderline prodigal, and he was always willing to help someone who was in need, especially if the need was financial and he had any money at all in his pockets. He lived by the belief that society is changed by the actions and lives of a few dedicated people who have been moved by the grace of God and that a single individual really can make a profound difference in the world. When I think of Russell Kirk, the word that comes to my mind is generosity, and this applies both to his willingness to give and to his willingness to share his life with others. We can all learn a thing or two from Russell Kirk and I hope that we are all challenged by the positive examples set forth in his life. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed it! I hope you have a fantastic day and that you share part of it with someone who could use it!