THE CASUAL CONSERVATIVE

I've been trying to find the historical roots of our modern wingnuts and I think Russell Kirk provides a little insight about their relative indifference to the sufferings of people who aren't like them. This passage is from Russell's "The Roots of American Order," an attempt to trace the sources of cohesion in America.

From the Declaration and the Constitution onward, the American order stood open to newcomers from Europe. The Irish laborers who crowded into New York and Boston and many other cities during Brownson's lifetime were only the first great wave of post-Revolutionary immigration. In their hundreds of thousands the Irish and the Germans came, and presently millions of immigrants from southern and central Europe, and farther afield. Except for the Irish, English, Scottish, and Welsh newcomers, few of these spoke English on arrival, or knew much of Anglo-American civilization; most were Catholics, many were Jews.

Yet with surprising speed these masses of immigrants made themselves members of the American moral and social order. Only here and there, in city or countryside, did little islands of dissent resist the attraction of the predominant American order. The new citizens accepted Declaration and Constitution, and the whole complex of social and political institutions, with readiness; sometimes they surpassed the native Americans in their knowledge of the fundamental documents of American order, and even in their new-found attachment to American principles. The Negroes, emancipated during the Civil War, labored under greater social and economic handicaps than did the immigrants, but not until the 1950's would there arise among America's black citizens any nation-wide strong protest against their condition. America's society was pluralistic and tolerant enough, generally, cemented by willing allegiance to the written and unwritten constitutions. (from Page 469)

First of all, the Irish were discriminated against and the phrase on the job poster below is now famous for those who know something about American history.

Second, even Kirk himself notes on page 434 that the established churches in Massachusetts, Connecticut and New Hampshire did not allow "Papists" liberty of conscience. As for the Jews, anti-Semitism exists to this day.

Finally, Kirk's remark about the plight of blacks in America is obviously callous but not surprising considering some of the opinions in the National Review.