Did Russell Kirk believe in a version of the proposition nation?

In God’s Own Good Time: Reflections upon American Order

Far from being stagnant, the American order still is developing. This word “order” implies membership: an order is something that one belongs to. All American citizens are born into this American order, or else are formally naturalized into it. Active participation in this order is both a right and an obligation, and whether this order improves or decays must depend upon the quality of that participation.

From the Declaration and the Constitution onward, the American order stood open to whomever desired to share in it, and could make his way to the United States. America’s society was pluralistic and tolerant enough, generally, but cemented by willing allegiance to the written and unwritten constitutions.


Although the tree of American order has grown mightily in height and breadth since the closing years of the eighteenth century, it could not have flourished had its old roots been unhealthy. Those roots go deep, but they require watering from time to time. Whatever the failings of America in the seventh decade of the twentieth century, the American order has been a conspicuous success in the perspective of human history. Under God, a large measure of justice has been achieved; the state is strong and energetic; personal freedom is protected by laws and customs; and a sense of community endures. The histories of most societies have been records of painful striving, brief success (if success at all), and then decay and ruin. No man can know the future, but most Americans believe that their order will continue to bring out what Orestes Brownson called “the dialectic union of authority and liberty.”

Not quite - Mr. Kirk does not reduce American culture to a list of propositions about dignity, equality, and rights and American identity to the belief in this creed. But there is more to a culture than the laws and customs of a community (even if they are an important constituent). Was the factor of communal and group identity (and its dependence upon culture) so obvious to him that he didn't consider them?

He does seem to subscribe more to a nationalist conception than to a federalist conception of the United States.