The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia<\/em><\/a>\u00a0by Roger Kimball (St. Augustine\u2019s Press, 2012)<\/strong><\/p>\nRoger Kimball has long been one of America\u2019s most learned commentators on intellectual history, contemporary politics, fine art, and architecture. Longtime editor of\u00a0The New Criterion<\/em>\u00a0and more recently publisher of Encounter Books, Kimball authored two of the best expos\u00e9s of the left-wing corruption of the American university:\u00a0Tenured Radicals<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0The Long March<\/em>. The 21 essays in Kimball\u2019s new book,\u00a0The Fortunes of Permanence<\/em>, cover a remarkable range of topics: relativism, multiculturalism, radical egalitarianism, the enduring importance of tradition, the delusions of socialism, \u201cdemocratic despotism,\u201d the dangers of sentimental \u201cbenevolence,\u201d and the cultural significance of the terrorist attacks of 9\/11. The essays also discuss a wide variety of individual writers: those unfairly demonized, like Rudyard Kipling; those insufficiently well known, like Leszek Ko\u0142akowski, Richard Weaver, and James Burnham; and those familiar yet still worthy of explication and reconsideration, like G. K. Chesterton and Friedrich Hayek.<\/p>\nIn his essay on John Buchan, the now-forgotten inventor of the spy novel, Kimball shows easy familiarity not just with Buchan\u2019s novels and other writings but also with his major biographers, his letters, his memoirs, and the estimations of his contemporaries, all punctuated with samplings of Buchan\u2019s memorable prose. \u201cIt is a melancholy fact,\u201d a character in Buchan\u2019s novel\u00a0John Macnab<\/em>\u00a0says, \u201cthat, while all men may be on a level in the eyes of the State, they continue in fact to be preposterously unequal.\u201d Here is an author, Kimball makes clear, whose observations are relevant to where we find ourselves today.<\/p>\nKimball\u2019s survey articulates his two great themes. The first is the need to battle what he has elsewhere called \u201ccultural amnesia\u201d; the struggle requires recovering the great thinkers and writers of the past, \u201cthe salient figures whose works helped weave the great unfolding tapestry of our civilization\u201d but \u201cwhose voices have been drowned out by the demotic inanities of pop culture or embalmed by the dead hand of the academy.\u201d Second is the importance of \u201cdiscrimination,\u201d or what Kimball calls \u201cthe gritty job of intellectual and cultural trash collector,\u201d in which one identifies and disposes of the faddish and politicized ephemera that make up most of the art and writing celebrated by thebien-pensant<\/em>\u00a0elite. These efforts are essentially educational. As Kimball writes in his preface, today\u2019s students are taught to \u201cregard education as an exercise in disillusionment\u201d and to \u201clook to the past only to corroborate their sense of superiority and self-satisfaction.\u201d His new book \u201caims to disturb that complacency and reaffirm the tradition that made both the experience of and striving for greatness possible.\u201d<\/p>\nThe book\u2019s eponymous essay, \u201cThe Fortunes of Permanence,\u201d establishes its framework. \u201cCulture,\u201d Kimball tells us, is in fact the activity of \u201ccultivating,\u201d which is what education should do. To be successful, this\u00a0cultura animi<\/em>, the \u201ccultivating of the mind,\u201d requires \u201ctime and continuity,\u201d the \u201ctips, habits, prohibitions, and necessities that have been accumulated from time out of mind and passed down, generation after generation.\u201d In short, education requires tradition, what Kimball calls the \u201caegis of permanence.\u201d Yet we live in a time when so much militates against tradition: \u201cinstantaneity,\u201d a mania for the new and a suspicion of the past; the two-bit nominalism that argues against any intrinsic meaning in cultural products or values; the claim that truth is only a construct of power or language; and the multiculturalist claim that no value judgments can be made about different cultures. All lead not to \u201ccultural parity,\u201d Kimball writes, but to \u201ccultural reversal,\u201d the process whereby \u201cculture degenerates from being a\u00a0cultura animi<\/em>\u00a0to a\u00a0corruptio animi<\/em>,\u201d as the wisdom of the past is disparaged or forgotten. And this corruption spreads throughout the whole of social and personal life, from today\u2019s \u201cpansexual carnival\u201d to the Internet\u2019s glut of disconnected information: \u201cData, data everywhere, but no one knows a thing.\u201d The result is that we \u201cneglect the deep wisdom of tradition and time-sanctioned answers to the human predicament.\u201d<\/p>\nThe recovery of this wisdom from Western culture animates all the essays here. Such wisdom is desperately needed these days, given the expansion of state power that has attended President Obama\u2019s policies, with their explicit aim to institute radical-egalitarian \u201cfairness\u201d and to \u201cspread the wealth around.\u201d In such a fraught political moment, the essay \u201cFriends of Humanity\u201d is a timely reminder of political utopianism\u2019s destructive consequences. Kimball nimbly surveys the ideas of socialist dreamers such as English novelist William Godwin and the Marquis de Condorcet, both of whom \u201cforesaw all manner of glorious things awaiting humanity now that the \u2018priests and despots\u2019 were on their way out.\u201d Godwin\u2019s screeds against \u201cselfishness\u201d and his sentimental raptures over \u201cbenevolence\u201d are precursors of today\u2019s progressive tirades against \u201cWall Street greed\u201d and calls for \u201csocial justice.\u201d And Godwin\u2019s demonization of private property likewise finds its modern echo in the Obama administration\u2019s dirigiste inclinations, its eagerness to divest the \u201crich\u201d of their wealth and force them to \u201cpay their fair share.\u201d As Kimball dryly remarks of these eighteenth-century models: \u201cSounds pretty up-to-date, doesn\u2019t it?\u201d<\/p>\n
Kimball finds an antidote to such fatuities in the work of Godwin\u2019s contemporary, Thomas Malthus. Malthus countered the \u201cGodwin-Condorcet brand of utopia\u201d \u2014 which is \u201cessentially disestablishing of the past and its legal, economic, and religious institutions\u201d \u2014 with the sober reminder that the injustices wrought by those institutions were, in his words, \u201clight and superficial in comparison with those deeper-seated causes of evil which result from the laws of nature and the passions of mankind.\u201d As the bloody record of modern utopian political religions has shown, ignoring the irreducible complexity of human nature to construct schemes of abstract perfection always leads to slaughter of those who cling to their freedom and individuality.<\/p>\n
Kimball\u2019s \u201canatomy of servitude,\u201d as he calls it \u2014 his analysis of cultural, educational, and political degeneration \u2014 doesn\u2019t end on a Spenglerian note of inevitable decline. Such determinism would contradict the celebration of human freedom that recurs throughout these essays. We can choose a different course, and we have the resources to do so. First, there is \u201cthe depth and strength of the Anglosphere\u2019s traditional commitment to individual freedom and local initiative against the meddlesome intrusion of any central authority.\u201d Second, we can look to the new \u201crevolt of the masses,\u201d a \u201cspecter of freedom\u201d whose \u201ccore motivation centers around the rejection of the business as usual: the big-government, top-down, elitist egalitarianism practiced by both major parties in the United States.\u201d Another resource the author doesn\u2019t identify is his own work, through which readers have been broadening their understanding of the Western heritage for a generation now.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92012 Bruce S. Thornton<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Bruce S. Thornton City Journal A review of\u00a0The Fortunes of Permanence: Culture and Anarchy in an Age of Amnesia\u00a0by Roger Kimball (St. Augustine\u2019s Press, 2012) Roger Kimball has long been one of America\u2019s most learned commentators on intellectual history, contemporary politics, fine art, and architecture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[87,22],"tags":[12,1058,1023,1036,58],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-84","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-medias-racial-prison\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":0},"title":"The Media’s Racial Prison","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Frontpage Magazine Two incidents last week suggest once more that our confused, hypocritical, and politicized notions of race and relations will play a huge role in the presidential election. In the first, Virginia state senator L. Louise Lucas, part of Obama\u2019s \u201cTruth Team\u201d campaigning for the president\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":694,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-potemkin-president-disintegrates\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":1},"title":"The Potemkin President Disintegrates","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Magazine After nearly four years in office, the tinsel and cardboard persona of Barack Obama is starting to fall apart. The political unifier who claimed, \u201cThere is not a liberal America and a conservative America \u2014 there is the United States of America,\u201d has been\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8141,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-real-scandals-of-the-paris-march\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":2},"title":"The Real Scandals of the Paris March","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton \/\/ FrontPage Magazine Commentators on both the left and the right are slamming President Obama for missing the march in Paris last Sunday. Even a stalwart courtier like CNN\u2019s Jake Tapper sniffed that he was \u201cashamed\u201d that the U.S. was represented by an ambassador\u2013\u2013one, by the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The World"","block_context":{"text":"The World","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/abbas.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":11720,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-bulwark-embarrasses-itself-further-with-attack-on-victor-davis-hanson\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":3},"title":"The Bulwark Embarrasses Itself Further With Attack on Victor Davis Hanson","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Roger Kimball \/\/ PJ Media Being of a charitable disposition, I early on decided that the kindest response to The Bulwark, the NeverTrump redoubt started by Bill Kristol following the implosion of the Weekly Standard, was silence. If this tiny cohort of bitter and unhappy souls was determined to embarrass\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4096,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/slouching-toward-geezerhood\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":4},"title":"Slouching Toward Geezerhood","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton RightNetwork.com This year the oldest Baby Boomer cohort turns 65, the first of 79 million people who promise to be the whiniest and most annoying crop of geezers in history. Not all of them, of course. Just as many in the Greatest Generation weren\u2019t so great,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":5701,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tin-drum-progressive-boomers\/","url_meta":{"origin":500,"position":5},"title":"The Tin-Drum Progressive Boomers","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 6, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FrontPage Like the hero of Gunter Grass\u2019 novel\u00a0The Tin Drum, America\u2019s progressive Baby Boomers chose not to grow up. Why should they? They decided that their development was complete when they graduated from college. All they needed to do was affirm their magnificent, world-historical identity. No\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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