NEW!    Excerpts for an interview of Ian Crowe is an associate professor of history and Edmund Burke Society director:  Prominent thought leaders such as  Winston Churchill and  Russell Kirk  were influenced by Edmund Burke's writings. What about this eighteenth-century British statesman captivates?

   I think we are back to language and imagination here: both Churchill and Kirk were craftsmen of imagination and great wordsmiths: they speak so as to hold in tension the conflicts and paradoxes of man's life in society. I think they can do this - and   Lincoln  achieved it, too - because they are able to use words and imagery that reveal the universal in the particular, and vice versa. That ability to reason and observe on two levels simultaneously, as it were, serves to rein in the impulsive energy of power, and this is why it is such an unwelcome facet of political thinking for those politicians who see short-term pragmatism on the one hand and, on the other hand, the pursuit of ideological goals (however humanitarian) as their main focus.

    To borrow from  The Enduring Edmund Burke , just how did Burke endure?  Precisely in his being an admonition to the exercise of power, while committed to political action as duty. This is the insider/outsider who, I believe, is caught so well in the writings of  David Bromwich  and Russell Kirk in particular. It echoes the inner check that civilizations require to progress or develop in a healthy way.  Interview  (Thanks, Nick)