SOURCE: Kirk, Russell. “Malcom Muggeridge's Scourging of Liberalism.” In The Politics of Prudence, pp. 125-41. Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1993.

In the following excerpt, Kirk praises Muggeridge's ability to recognize liberalism's key weaknesses and powerfully point them out to his audience.

In the preceding three chapters, and in this one, I discuss eminent conservative men of letters whom I have known. They have all crossed the bar and put out to sea now. My proclivity for quoting such vanished friends provoked a certain auditor at a large gathering, a few years past, into observing aloud, “Dr. Kirk, you're an anomaly: all of your friends are dead.”

Malcolm Muggeridge, the subject of this present chapter, for decades believed himself to be tottering on the brink of eternity, but he survived most of his generation, standing at the height of his fame in his closing years. His many books...