As we gather with family and loved ones this Thanksgiving, we're thankful for your partnership.

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Dear
John,
From the drawing room at Piety Hill you can peer through the window, down the snow-covered lane, and see dozens of trees that Russell Kirk planted.

This tree planting wasn't simply a diversion, or an enlightened horticultural act for Russell. He was practicing piety.

Here in what Russell called "stump country," he was again planting trees, renewing the land, and making provision for future generations.

Russell wrote that the virtue of pietas is “an atmosphere of diffuse gratitude: gratitude not merely to the generations that have preceded us in this life, but gratitude toward the eternal order, and the source of that order, which raises man above the brutes, and makes art man’s nature."

It is an understanding that day by day, year after year, we enjoy the fruits of the intellectual, moral and physical labor of those who have come before us. And while recognizing the necessity of prudential and natural change, we have a sense of the value of continuity in civilized life both to our living community and to posterity.

It was out of reverence that Russell made cultural renewal his work, in which his public labors and his personal life were integrated.

As we at Piety Hill give thanks this week, we also want to extend our thanks to you as part of our “little platoon” in the shared endeavor of cultural renewal.

Whether your vocation is raising children or providing goods in your community, leading a classroom or congregation, healing the sick or tilling the soil—your labor is not in vain. You are part of the “contract of eternal society,” in Burke’s evocative phrase.

From Piety Hill, we send you our warmest wishes for a blessed Thanksgiving with your family and friends.

Sincerely,

Annette Kirk, President
The Russell Kirk Center for Cultural Renewal

P.S. Please keep the Kirk Center in mind next week on Giving Tuesday, December 3, 2019. Your year-end support is vital as we look ahead to new programs and outreach in 2020.
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Have you seen these recent articles drawing upon Russell’s writings to apply timeless principles to the political, moral, and social concerns of our day?
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Historian Lee Edwards writes on Conservatism: The Fusionism of Prudence ([link removed]) in Modern Age this month:

"As a first step toward conservative unity, we need a dissection of ideology, with its political fanaticism and utopian schemes. Happily, we have Russell Kirk, an apostle of prudence, to serve as our Virgil to guide us through the Inferno of today’s politics."
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James Wallner ([link removed]) asks "Has the Conservative Mind Forgotten How to Think?" in Law & Liberty:

"At a pivotal point in history, Kirk’s book helped transform conservatism from a marginalized strain of thought into a respectable intellectual tradition in its own right, capable of competing with liberalism for dominance of American politics."
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Alli Wade ([link removed]) is a McConnell Scholar studying at the University of Louisville and recent visitor to the Kirk Center:

"Strong communities consistently personify the notions that the American founders held when crafting the nation...If conservatives wish to maintain the presence of ‘ordered liberty,’ they must first maintain the presence of voluntary community association."

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