Alan Wolfe’s attack on Russell Kirk was ridiculous; his reply to his critics is little better. This line is precious: “my task was to write about his works, not his life.” That must explain why Wolfe, in the original essay, described his “vivid sense of [Kirk’s] smallness as a person” as well as why he suggested that Kirk was a secret fan of pornography.

In his reply, Wolfe accuses his critics, notably those who participated in an NRO rapid-response symposium, of failing to take on the “eleven arguments” he made against Kirk. This is rubbish. Wolfe lodged far more than eleven charges. He said that Kirk’s fiction is “dreary” — this is the claim that I chose to address in my own contribution to the symposium, in large part because Wolfe cites me with respect to Kirk’s fiction. Wolfe also called Kirk “breathtakingly unoriginal” and “prolific without being profound” (Lee Edwards tackled this allegation with refreshing succinctness), he said that Kirk had “odd ideas” about Judaism (he came provocatively close to calling Kirk an anti-Semite), he suggested that Kirk did not identify with any particular version of Christianity (even though he was a Roman Catholic convert), he hinted that Kirk was cruel to the women in his life (this would be news to Kirk’s widow and his four daughters), he said Kirk was “apologetic” about slavery (yawn), and he called Kirk’s conservatism “provincial, resentful, bigoted.” Then there’s that absurd line about Kirk’s “late-night taste in film.” The NRO symposium surely did not offer an exhaustive defense of Kirk against Wolfe’s many assaults, but it presented an effective rebuttal to Wolfe’s most provocative charges about Kirk’s “smallness as a person.”

I agree with Ramesh that so far the best response to Wolfe’s original piece is this post by Ross Douthat. I also like Kevin Holtsberry’s comments. Conservatives have spent decades arguing with Russell Kirk and about him, and they will continue to do so. Check out this obituary, written by David Frum in 1994. Three weeks ago, the Heritage Foundation hosted a talk on Kirk by George Nash, and the speech is now available here.

I’ve always enjoyed reading Kirk and reading arguments about him, including the responses Wolfe has generated. But Wolfe’s preposterous essay is impressive only for its extreme nastiness.