On Conservatism I

Hoping I'm not violating any copyright laws, over the next ten days I'll post Russell Kirk's ten principles of Conservatism. I was a full blown Marxist at one time, one that had actually read Marx. Tried to read Lenin too, but it was an impossible undertaking. My change of thinking took about a decade, maybe closer to fifteen years. In 1980 I realized that the only thing I knew about Conservatism is what my fellow Liberals said about it; that my value of intellectual honesty dictated that I know the alternative view. The only Conservative I had read and listened to was William F. Buckley. Russell Kirk is one of the founders of modern Conservatism, and his book "The Conservative Mind" has been a best seller for decades. These principles he has modified slightly over the years. Contrary to what Liberals say, Conservatism is not a stuck ideology, but dynamic, and takes intellectual effort. It's no more easy being a Conservative as it is being a Christian. For me these two go hand in hand. They both take courage and discipline. I find it interesting that I was led back to God and the Church through political thought. In 1980 I began reading and studying Conservative writers, and in 1996 I was baptized. I doubt if that would have happened if I had remained a Marxist. Please feel free to add your comments and questions. These are general principles , and avoid application to current events as much as possible.
"First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.
This word order signifies harmony. There are two aspects or types of order: the inner order of the soul, and the outer order of the commonwealth. Twenty-five centuries ago, Plato taught this doctrine, but even the educated nowadays find it difficult to understand. The problem of order has been a principal concern of conservatives ever since conservative became a term of politics.
Our twentieth-century world has experienced the hideous consequences of the collapse of belief in a moral order. Like the atrocities and disasters of Greece in the fifth century before Christ, the ruin of great nations in our century shows us the pit into which fall societies that mistake clever self-interest, or ingenious social controls, for pleasing alternatives to an oldfangled moral order.
It has been said by liberal intellectuals that the conservative believes all social questions, at heart, to be questions of private morality. Properly understood, this statement is quite true. A society in which men and women are governed by belief in an enduring moral order, by a strong sense of right and wrong, by personal convictions about justice and honor, will be a good society—whatever political machinery it may utilize; while a society in which men and women are morally adrift, ignorant of norms, and intent chiefly upon gratification of appetites, will be a bad society—no matter how many people vote and no matter how liberal its formal constitution may be."