In the immediate postwar years, conservative-seeking editors would hear, every now and then, about a fresh work on the free market (Mises, Hayek, the cadre who formed the Mont Pelerin Society), and there was political journalism here and there of interest. But during those years there weren’t many arresting scholarly political scientists around concerned with tradition and the natural law and Western idealism, so that at national review, starting in, we were elated on enlisting the services of two to join us as columnists, appearing alongside resident Senior Editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall. They were Russell Kirk (who, to be sure, wrote about the academy and about educational policy) and Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn. Willmoore Kendall is of course dead. James Burnham suffered a stroke seven years ago and has been inactive ever since. Russell Kirk wrote regularly for us for 25 years, after which—I quote him—he said that, really, 25 years was a reasonable indenture for a writer/journalist and, to our great regret, terminated his regular column. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn is with us yet; age 76; and, as far as anyone can see, absolutely ageless.
In contemplating EKL, I think of the father in his midthirties who, pursuing his scientific curiosity, undertook one day to follow exactly the movements of his six-year-old son: every move, every motion, every turn of the head or of the foot. Some time just after noon the father collapsed from exhaustion and was taken to bed. It would be so, I warrant, if any 21-year-old undertook to follow Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn around, say for the three months he spends in the United States every year. (His lecture brochure reads in part, “For arrangements covering several days, up to a week, with three to five lectures a day, I offer a special rate.” And he lists as possible lecture topics 17 themes, which include, “Sex, Eros, Friendship, Charity,” “The Five Wounds of Latin America,” and “Work Ethics and Commercialism: A World Problem.”)
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