SOURCE: "Christian Doctrine, Economic Order, and the Constitution," in The Conservative Constitution, Regnery Gateway, 1990, pp. 174-87.

An American historian, political theorist, novelist, journalist, and lecturer, Kirk is one of America's most eminent conservative intellectuals. Kirk's detractors have sometimes been skeptical of the charges he levels against liberal ideas and programs, accusing him of a simplistic, one-sided partisanship. His admirers, on the other hand, point to the alleged failure of liberal precepts—in particular those applied in the universities—as evidence of the incisiveness of Kirk's ideas and criticism. In the following essay, Kirk discusses Brownson's analyses of the American constitution and economy.

Any political constitution develops out of a moral order; and every moral order has been derived from religious beliefs. That truth, of which we have been reminded in recent decades by such historians as Christopher Dawson, Eric Voegelin, and Arnold Toynbee, was little regarded by the...