[DOWNLOAD] "Modern Age As a Conservative Review, 1957-2007 (Essay)" by Modern Age # Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Modern Age As a Conservative Review, 1957-2007 (Essay)
- Author : Modern Age
- Release Date : January 22, 2007
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 166 KB
Description
THE FIRST ISSUE of Modern Age appeared in the Summer of 1957 under the editorship of the late Russell Kirk, man of letters extraordinaire. The data may now seem to be long ago and far away, but when one reads anew his "Apology for a New Review" one realizes how urgently it still speaks to us. However much time passes and lives and things change, Kirk's editorial aims remain valid and operative: to publish a quarterly review "conserving the best elements in our civilization"; to stimulate "discussion of the moral, social, political, economic, and religious questions of the hour"; and to search for "means by which the legacy of our civilization may be kept safe." He goes on to say that he and his collaborators do not have all the remedies for curing ills or ending perils. "With Burke, we take our stand against abstract doctrine and theoretic dogma. But, still with Burke, we are in favor of principle." A half century later, Kirk's prescient words also accentuate a singular danger that has a strangle hold in our present situation: the ubiquitous growth of ideology and the growing demise of first principles. Steadily, Modern Age has labored to resist the incursions if not the arrogances of ideologues on the left as on the right. It is neither immodest nor excessive to assert that Modern Age has struggled to be the moral voice of a nation in which journalism and periodic literature have turned away from axiomatic truths and sacred responsibilities. Today one rarely reads anything without encountering the unreliable presuppositions and presumptions of litterateurs, journalists, analysts, and academicians who march in lockstep as they prescribe the ideas and theories of the ideologue. One is amazed, if not repelled, by the doctrinaire pattern of their utterances, which somehow transform into public policies, foreign affairs, and socio-political strictures and antinomian behavior in a repetitive mode that eventually dictates a national consciousness and sensibility. A major consequence of this abnormity is the general weakening of the moral sense and of a true historical understanding.