In his speech at the Moms for Liberty, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts cited a book written by a neo-Confederate paleoconservative racist as inspiration because of course he did.

Speakers and attendees of last weekend’s Moms for Liberty conference in Philadelphia knew they were being watched and indeed they put on a show typical of such conferences. Still, while there was a lot of anti-LGBTQ+ talk on stage and in their breakout sessions, the sensationalist sound bytes of the “Transgenderism must be eradicated” variety or pictures that made them look bad on social media, although an exception can be made concerning North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson – always a reliable fountain of bad takes and crass rhetoric – doubling down in defense of the organization’s Hamilton County, Indiana using a Hitler quote on their most recent newsletter.

Much of what was place was teaching attendees political strategies in running for office, lobbying and fundraising. And the hatred and bigotry that put the spotlight on the group in the first place was on display but perhaps in one case if one knew what the speakers were saying or endorsing, it might be a greater cause for alarm than the conference itself.  

An example of that came courtesy of Dr. Kevin Roberts, the president of the prominent right wing outfit Heritage Foundation. He ascended to the top spot in October 2021 and has maintained the organization’s usual steady course of propaganda and campaigns for their right wing goals. They along with the Leadership Institute, another mainstream right wing outfit whose goal is to train young people into conservative activists, were the conference’s main sponsors. The Leadership Institute has wallowed in paleoconservatism in the past, helping its young activists create an organization called Youth for Western Civilization, which was the foundation for what would be eventually called the alt-right. In his address to the Moms for Liberty conference, Dr. Roberts revealed that he didn’t shy away from that brand of conservatism himself but again, one would have had to know what he was talking about.

Calling it “one of the best books ever written about America’s unique culture of freedom,” Roberts made note of the book Roots of the American Order by Russell Kirk, who a cursory internet search would find him being referred to as one of the most significant and important conservative figures in the 20^th Century. Roberts notes that Kirk’s book works from the premise that the only cultures that mattered in forming that American order originated four cities. One was Jerusalem, from which Roberts says America inherited “the knowledge of our good and loving God.” Athens, he said gave America democracy and while he credited the city with flourishing in art, science and philosophy Roberts noted a flaw. “Practically the only problem the Greek city-states couldn’t solve was, as Russell Kirk put it, how to live with each other in peace and justice.”

Noting this this might suggest that Roberts was recognizing the conflict the conference he was addressing had created, but he went in a different direction.

Roberts actually noted that when Ancient Greece fell to the Romans they embraced Christianity which he said created the order that the Greek city-states did not have. “Christianity, thank God, transcends politics,” he said. “On the other hand we have it on good authority that Christians are salt of the earth. Their devotion always changes cultures, converts them, you might say. Christian devotion makes societies more just, more compassionate, more charitable, and more fruitful.”  London, according to Roberts reinforced that with the Magna Carta, which he quipped isn’t taught in schools because “it takes too much time from Drag Queen Story Hour and Critical Race Theory.”

Roberts then summarizes this as being what the “woke left” is trying to stop. “With every speaker they silence, every skeptic they cancel, every book they ban, our work of art they deface…every truth they declare hate speech, the left hacks away at America’s roots in Kirk’s four cities,” he said.

Roberts was promoting the idea that Christianity should reign supreme over everything in America and citing Russell Kirk was no mistake in that regard. Roberts conveniently did not address something in particular that Kirk wrote in Roots of the American Order but one will find that despite what John 3:16 says, “whosoever believeth in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life” is not a thing to the paleoconservative writer. Instead, only certain people can be of God, not all who believe in Him. “The individual man being too weak to chose the way of Christ, God must choose him” he wrote. “Those who God redeems are the ‘elect,’ brands snatched from the fires of lust for reasons only God knows.”

Indeed, Kirk’s belief that God engages in natural selection as opposed to the Biblical standing that God has given all people free will to walk with Him would align with the author’s racist and anti-Semitic positions and his own belief in natural selection that he maintained for much of his life. He was one of the founders of the conservative magazine National Review which in its early days railed against the Civil Rights Movement in the sixties and published an articled titled “Why the South Must Prevail,” an endorsement for the efforts of the segregationists. Kirk was especially fond of the south and the old confederacy, and a March 1965 column made clear Kirk’s position on voting rights for Black people in America, which the political powers in the South fought against, as well as in apartheid South Africa. Maintaining the notion that Black people could not govern themselves, he decried the Supreme Court’s notion of one man/one vote as something that would “will work mischief-much injuring, rather than fulfilling, the responsible democracy for which (author Alexis de) Tocqueville hoped.” Whereas he thought that America would strong enough to protect itself against Black people voting however, Black South Africans voting would be another story, Kirk writing “this degradation of the democratic dogma, if applied, would bring anarchy and the collapse of civilization,” saying further that it was the European “element” that rescued the country and “Bantu political domination would be domination by witch doctors (still numerous and powerful) and reckless demagogues.”

Kirk was even more threatened by neo-conservatives whom he thought consorted with those of the Jewish faith a little too much. “Not seldom has it seemed as if some eminent Neoconservatives mistook Tel Aviv for the capital of the United States,” he said in a speech to the Heritage Foundation in 1988 and again at another speech for the group a few years later. That generated widespread condemnation from within conservative circles for it’s antisemitism, in particular journalist Midge Decter who passed away last year at the age of 94. She said that Kirk implied people like her and her husband, Commentary magazine editor Norman Podheretz, have dual loyalties, putting the interest of Israel before the interest of the United States “It’s this notion of a Christian civilization. You have to be part of it or you’re not really fit to conserve anything. That’s an old line and it’s very ignorant.” Par for the course, he was defended by prominent White supremacist writers such as Joseph Sobran – who had once referred to himself as a “counter-semite – and Council of Conservative Citizens’ Sam Francis, the latter soon joining Kirk in helping formulate writer Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign, of which Kirk would serve as its Michigan State Chair.

Kirk was also a contributor to Chronicles magazine, a publication that the The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) described as “a publication with strong neo-Confederate ties that caters to the more intellectual wing of the white nationalist movement.” The magazine’s editor-in-chief is Paul Gottfried, a college professor who coined the terms “paleoconservative” and “alternative right” or “alt-right” and has spoken at and organized several white supremacist conferences.

Russell Kirk died on April 29, 1994 at the age of 75. Since then, much of what one would find referencing him on the internet is found written by the right or published on right wing outlets. Much of society know nothing about him, and is probably to the advantage of people like Kevin Roberts and those who do not want anyone to really take a look into what really influences their ideas of Christian Nationalism.