One really misses something about William F. Buckley Jr. to not grasp that this man was a fighter. Not everyone blessed with logic lacks spirit. Monday marks the centenary of William F. Buckley Jr.’s birth. Those misled by recent mischaracterizations of the National Review co-founder might imagine a French fop’s harpsichord or Gavin MacCleod’s Love [...]
Henry Clay and Sam Rayburn fit well with Willmoore Kendall’s views of the democratic statesman. Both were skilled politicians who sought the good, avoided extremism, and consciously represented the people in Congress. For many centuries, scholars have written weighty tomes on statesmanship. In the twentieth century in particular, many students of the American political philosopher [...]
Willmoore Kendall’s support of (relative) free speech is an integral part of his view of the “deliberate sense of the community,” which in turn is informed by the “public truth,” which itself is the political expression of the particular American historical experience of transcendent revelation. “[B]ut a completely open society in which everyone does his [...]
Willmoore Kendall contended that the conventional interpretation of John Locke, depicting him as an exponent of individualism and natural rights which transcended majority sentiments, was in error. By any reasonable standard of measurement, Willmoore Kendall would have to be included in a list of the most important political scientists of the post-World War II era. [...]
Christopher Owen tells Willmoore Kendall’s story in an interesting way that keeps the reader’s attention while conveying Kendall’s struggles that led to his evolution of thought and conservative philosophy. In our time when populist ideals are on the rise, this book is required reading to understand what it means to be conservative. Heaven Can Indeed [...]
Our collective confusion about the American experience begins at the beginning. Most Americans who think about such questions imagine that they understand the Declaration of Independence, though many of them may be puzzled that it did not (and does not) produce the results one might expect from the commitments which they believe it makes. After [...]
It is from careful textual analysis of “The Federalist” that the basic symbols of the American political tradition, and indeed the conservative tradition, may be found. III In his analysis of the Socrates of the Apology, Willmoore Kendall was hinting strongly at the probability that the contemporary John Stuart Mill-Karl Popper school in the United [...]
To rebuild their movement and society, and to rebuild a viable culture, conservatives must embrace the conservative populism championed by two men: filmmaker Frank Capra and scholar Willmoore Kendall. Pursuing this path will be challenging, for populism has become a bogeyman for the powers that be. Last December, my wife and I motored a couple [...]
Complex and perceptive, Willmoore Kendall's ideas remain relevant as the most important intellectual defense of the American people’s right to rule itself rather than to submit to the tyranny of experts. He is the man who engineered the foundation, structure, and superstructure of a bridge to democracy with his own formidable intellect and tremendous erudition. [...]
Willmoore Kendall's works on political science were pathbreaking and survive the test of time. Even today, it is impossible to understand the equal democratic legitimacy of the presidency and Congress without his “Two Majorities,” or the critical role of local-based political parties without his "American Party System," or how the whole Constitution works to solve [...]
We need to develop a fully American variant of conservatism; to advance our understanding of the conservative nature of the political traditions we have inherited; and to do so with a dignity that will permit us to stand before God, the American public, and our conservative forebears. In the next century, because of both need [...]
Willmoore Kendall held that American politics is not supposed to reflect universal values expressed through the rhetoric of a single leader, but rather the values or truths that American politics expresses must become known through the deliberate sense of the community… Willmoore Kendall is one of the most overlooked founding fathers of the conservative movement [...]
(This essay is the fourth in a four-part series; the first may be found here, the second here, and the third here.) It is clear that Publius’s deliberative process, with its emphasis upon accommodation, harmony, and consensus, is antithetical to the conflict-oriented majoritarianism of the egalitarians. As a corollary proposition, it is essential to note that [...]
II The related problems of “the public orthodoxy” and “the open society” were major concerns of Willmoore Kendall throughout his professional career. In his reappraisal of John Locke in 1941, Kendall’s Locke emerged as an exponent of the public orthodoxy as expressed through the majority. As Kendall sees it, in Lockean thought, “In consenting to be a member [...]