MECOSTA, Mich.–When this columnist was a newspaper reporter, one of the editors was fond of saying we needed to write in a way that would hold people’s attention when the kids were screaming, the dog was barking, and the television was on.

Today’s column doesn’t follow that rule.

So if the kids are screaming, the dog is barking, or–or–the television is on, please fold this newspaper open to this page and come back later.

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Thank you for heeding this suggestion.

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Just in time for America’s semiquincentennial, a collection of the works of 20th century author, lecturer, and man of letters Dr. Russell Kirk is out.

The 16 chapter book, published by Creed & Culture of Nashville, Tenn., and entitled Russell Kirk on America: How to Understand the Legacy of 1776, is edited by Michael Lucchese and has a foreword by Bradley Birzer.

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On the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, let’s have a look at Chapter 2: A Revolution Not Made but Prevented, adapted from an article Kirk wrote for the Fall 1985 issue of Modern Age.

As this columnist heard Kirk say more than once, the American War of Independence was no revolution.

Recalling the French Revolution of 1789, Kirk writes, “Not until the French radicals utterly overturned the old political order in their country did the word ‘revolution’ acquire its present general meaning of a truly radical change in social and governmental institutions, a tremendous convulsion in society that might never be undone.”

By contrast, following the American War of Independence, the “Republic of the United States was an order new in only some respects, founded upon a century and a half of colonial experience and upon institutions, customs, and beliefs, mainly of British origin,” Kirk writes. This “did not result promptly in the creation of a new social order, nor did the leaders in that series of movements intend that the new nation should break with the conventions, the moral convictions, and the major institutions (except monarchy) out of which America had arisen.

“As John C. Calhoun expressed this three quarters of a century later,” Kirk writes, “this produced no other changes than those which were necessarily caused by the Declaration of Independence.”

So why does the Declaration ring so much of the French philosophers and less of the rights of English citizens?

Kirk answers that question: “Because aid from France had become an urgent necessity for the Patriot cause. The phrases of the Declaration, congenial to the philosophers, were calculated to wake strong sympathy in France’s climate of opinion; and … those phrases achieved with high success precisely that result. It would have been not merely pointless, but counterproductive, to appeal for French assistance on the grounds of the ancient rights of the Englishmen; the French did not wish Englishmen well.”

Nevertheless, those fostering the American War of Independence “were not revolutionaries of the metaphysical sort. They had practical grievances; they sought practical redress; not obtaining it, they settled upon separation from the Crown in Parliament as a hard necessity. That act was meant not as a repudiation of their past, but as a means for preventing the destruction of their pattern of politics by King George’s presumed intended revolution of arbitrary power, after which, in (Edmund) Burke’s phrase, ‘the Americans could have no sort of security for their laws or liberties,'” Kirk writes.

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This theme continues in Chapter 7: John Adams and Liberty Under Law.

Of America’s second president–who, along with America’s third, Thomas Jefferson, died 200 years ago on July 4–Kirk writes the American War of Independence “was not an innovating upheaval, but a conservative restoration of colonial prerogatives. When a designing king and a distant parliament presumed to extend over America powers of taxation and administration never before exercised, the colonies rose to vindicate their prescriptive freedom; and after the hour for compromise had slipped away, it was with reluctance and trepidation they declared their independence.”

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Dr. Randy Elf is among the many people who had the privilege of serving as an assistant, through the generosity of the Marguerite Eyer Wilbur Foundation, to Dr. Russell Kirk and his wife, Annette Kirk, at their home–Piety Hill–in Mecosta, Michigan.

COPYRIGHT © 2026 BY RANDY ELF