This is thinking in public a program dedicated to intelligent conversation

about frontline theological and cultural issues with the people who are

shaping them. I'm Albert

Moller your host and president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

in Louisville, Kentucky. Bradley J. Burzer holds the Russell Amos Kurt Chair

in American Studies at Hillsdale College in Michigan, where he is also director of the American Studies program.

Dr. Berger is co-founder of the online journal The Imagin

Conservative, a fellow of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, and he serves on the board of several

organizations including the Center for the American Idea, Sapientia Press, and the Mackinoff Center

for Public Policy.

He is the author of several books including J.R.R. Tolkien

myth, Understanding Middle Earth, Sanctifying the world. The Augustinian life and mind of

Christopher Dawson and American Cicero the life of Charles Carroll

his most recent book is Russell Kirk American conservative. Bradley Berzer

welcome to thinking in public. As I look back to my college years, it's hard to imagine anyone as a secular writer

who had a greater impact on my mind than Russell Kirk.

Professor Burzer, how did you come to write this, frankly, magisterial biography of Russell Kirk?

Well, thank you so much, Dr. Moller, and I'm glad to hear that you'd like Kirk for so long.

I first encountered Kirk when I was a senior in college and that would have been I was

class of 1990 so that would have been the fall of 1989 at the same time that the wall

was coming down and of course Reagan had just left the

presidency so pretty amazing I think for anyone who's conservative it's what a

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