What are the Permanent Things?

    In 1969, Russell Kirk wrote a book entitled Enemies of the Permanent Things: Observations of Abnormity in Literature and Politics. Here are some excerpts from that work, which remains relevant as we march blithely against common sense and wisdom of the ages.


      [When we speak of the "permanent things," we speak of norms.] A norm means an enduring standard. It is a law of nature, which we ignore at our peril. It is a rule of human conduct and a measure of public virtue. ... A norm exists: though men may ignore or forget a norm, still that norm does not cease to be, nor does it cease to influence men. A man apprehends a norm, or fails to apprehend it; but he does not create or destroy important norms.

   For the most part, our norms are derived from the experience of the species, the ancient usages of humanity; and from the perceptions of genius, of those rare men who have seen profoundly into the human condition -- and whose wisdom soon is accepted by the mass of men, down the generations. I turn first to custom or what we call common sense. ... [These] are the practical expressions of what mankind has learnt in the school of hard knocks. There exists a legitimate presumption in favor of venerable usages; for our or my private experience is brief and confused but the experience of the race takes into account the consequences suffered or the rewards obtained by multitudes of human beings in circumstances similar to yours and mine. Custom and common sense constitute an immemorial empiricism, with roots so antique and obscure that we can only conjecture the origins of any general habit. One we we do know: it is dangerous to break with ways that have been intertwined so intricately in human longings and satisfactions. Those who toss the cake of custom into the rubbish-bin may find themselves supper-less.  And if common sense is discarded -- why, it is supplanted not by a universal intellectualism, but by common nonsense. ...

     Real progress consists in the movement of mankind toward the understanding of norms and the toward conformity to norms.  Real decadence consists in the movement of mankind away from the understanding of norms and away from obedience to norms. The decay of the Greek civilization in the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ; the decline of the Roman order in the four centuries after Christ; the collapse of the medieval world in the fourteenth century; the decline of culture and the eruption of dark powers in our own twentieth century --- these were times in which norms were forgotten or defied. The disintegration of moral understanding was at once cause and consequence of confusion in the social order. ....

...An abnormity, it its Latin root, means a monstrosity, defying the norm, the nature of things. An abnormal generation is a generation of monsters, enslaved by will and appetite. To recover an apprehension of normality, then is to acquire an understanding of one's real nature.. The alternative to such recovery is not a piquant pose of "nonconformity," but monstrosity in the soul and in society. ...
Modern temper's inclination [is] toward the abnormal, the enormous, the monstrous -- often disguised in the garments of humanitarianism, amusing innovations or delusive security.