The Fight for the Permanent Things
By Brigadier General (Ret.) Paul B. “Trey” Chauncey III
As an old Soldier, I’ve learned that some battles never end; they simply move to new terrain. The essay “Enemies of the Permanent Things” by Benjamin Lockerd, published in The Imaginative Conservative, reminds us that one of those enduring battles is moral. The lines have shifted from fields and fortresses to classrooms, courthouses, and digital spaces—but the stakes remain the same: whether truth, virtue, and order still have a place in a civilization that has forgotten what permanence means.
Lockerd’s essay, drawn from Russell Kirk’s The Permanent Things, is not merely a meditation on conservatism—it’s a warning order. It describes an age that has traded wisdom for ideology, reverence for rebellion, and faith for scientistic arrogance. Kirk called these forces the “enemies of the permanent things”—those who would dismantle the inherited moral order in pursuit of abstract, man-made perfection. Lockerd makes clear that these enemies are not confined to a party or a generation. They are part of a recurring human temptation: to act as if man can be his own god, rewriting moral law to suit the moment.
The Nature of Permanence
Kirk understood permanence not as stagnation, but as rootedness. He believed civilization survives only by balancing continuity with prudent change—an idea we might call disciplined adaptation. That truth resonates with anyone who’s worn a uniform: tactics must evolve, but principles cannot. In war, if you lose sight of your fixed reference points—your azimuth—you drift into chaos. So it is with cultures. The moral compass must remain true, even when the terrain shifts beneath our feet.
Lockerd’s essay underscores that the permanent things are not political platforms but moral coordinates: faith, family, honor, justice, and duty. They exist beyond time and fashion, because they reflect the order of creation itself. When a society treats these as optional, it loses not just its moral foundation but its cohesion. The center cannot hold when nothing is sacred.
The Modern Offensive Against Order
Lockerd echoes Kirk’s insight that the modern attack on permanence comes cloaked in the language of liberation. Ideology, Kirk warned, promises progress but delivers bondage. It frees people from moral restraint only to enslave them to appetite, envy, or the state. The irony is that the more man tries to perfect himself through systems, slogans, or technology, the further he strays from humility—the first step toward wisdom.
In that sense, today’s ideological chaos is simply the old rebellion dressed in new armor. Where Kirk saw the ideological zealot, we now see the technocrat and the influencer—those who mistake data for discernment and visibility for virtue. Truth becomes a matter of trending consensus rather than enduring principle. As Lockerd notes, ideology in any form—be it political, social, or digital—shares the same flaw: it worships human will while denying human limits.
Moral Imagination and the Loss of Meaning
One of Kirk’s most profound contributions, highlighted by Lockerd, is his defense of the moral imagination—the faculty by which we perceive good and evil not as abstractions, but as living realities. Literature, history, and faith once cultivated that imagination, forming conscience through story and symbol. But when those disciplines are dismissed as relics, imagination collapses into appetite.
A people who no longer imagine virtue cannot sustain it. We see that everywhere—from politics emptied of principle to education emptied of truth. As Lockerd observes, ideology flattens the soul. It demands conformity rather than contemplation. The result is a generation equipped with information but deprived of wisdom—a condition I’ve called the “weaponization of information.” We built towers of knowledge and forgot the foundation of understanding.
Securing the Moral Ground
Kirk and Lockerd both call for a recovery of reverence—a return to the permanent things as the foundation of ordered liberty. That recovery won’t come from policy or protest; it begins with conscience. It demands that individuals anchor their lives to something unchanging: to God, to virtue, to the inherited wisdom of those who came before.
For the Soldier, that means discipline and duty. For the citizen, it means moral restraint. For the nation, it means remembering that freedom is not license, and order is not oppression. As John Adams warned, our Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious people.” No volume of laws can replace character, and no torrent of information can substitute for truth.
A Call to Perseverance
Lockerd’s essay ends where every enduring fight does—with a call to perseverance. The enemies of the permanent things will always adapt, because human pride always finds new weapons. But the defense remains the same: cultivate wisdom, preserve virtue, and stand watch over truth.
For me, that is not nostalgia—it’s duty. Every generation inherits the task of holding the moral line, not as reactionaries but as stewards of what endures. To surrender that ground is to lose more than a culture; it is to lose the soul of a people.
In an age that worships novelty, permanence may seem like weakness. But as every veteran knows, holding the line requires more courage than charging ahead. The moral perimeter must be manned, and manned again, until relief arrives—or until the fight is won.
