Willmoore Kendall
Willmoore Kendall | |
---|---|
Born | Willmoore Bohnert Kendall Jr. March 5, 1909 Konawa, Oklahoma, U.S. |
Died | June 30, 1967 Irving, Texas, U.S. | (aged 58)
Education | University of Oklahoma University of Illinois |
Occupation | Political philosopher |
Known for | Founding National Review, Conservative advocacy |
Spouse |
|
Willmoore Bohnert Kendall Jr. (March 5, 1909 – June 30, 1967) was an American conservative writer and a professor of political philosophy.[1]
Early life and education
Kendall was born March 5, 1909, in
After graduate-level studies in
A liberal while studying at Oxford, Kendall strongly supported the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War and opposed Joseph Stalin.[8] In 1935, Kendall left Oxford to become a reporter for the United Press in Madrid.[8] Witnessing the Spanish Civil War caused a shift in his political views towards anti-communism.[8]
Kendall returned to the University of Illinois in 1936.[9] With Francis Wilson as his dissertation adviser, Kendall completed his Ph.D. in political science at Illinois in 1940.[10] His dissertation was titled John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule.[11]
Career
Around 1939, Kendall began his academic career as an assistant professor of political science, teaching at
Kendall joined the
In 1963, Kendall joined the University of Dallas, founding and chairing the Department of Politics and Economics at the University of Dallas.[7] He stayed at that institution until he died of a heart attack, at home on June 30, 1967.[7]
Philosophy
In the 1930s, Kendall held left-wing views, for instance supporting the proposed Ludlow Amendment that would require a national popular vote for entering a war.[9] His 1940 Ph.D. dissertation provided a unique view of John Locke. Kendall saw him more as a proto-democrat who would approve of societies governed by majority rule, rather than an individualist who wished for an aloof government as was the more common consensus view.[17]
Combined with his anti-Communism and anti-interventionism, the two years immediately preceding World War II influenced Kendall to move right politically.[18] Kendall voted for Republican challenger Wendell Willkie against Democrat and incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential election; in a letter to a friend shortly after the 1946 midterm elections where Republicans made gains in Congress, Kendall expressed hope of "a Congress really asserting its prerogatives" against the executive branch.[18] Then in 1952, after supporting Robert A. Taft in the Republican primaries, Kendall voted for Republican candidate Dwight D. Eisenhower.[19]
Kendall defended majority-rule democracy in America.[20][21] He felt that majoritarianism should come before liberalism (in the political philosophy sense of liberal democracy) and that the government should not undercut the social consensus by attempting to enforce abstract rights. On those grounds, he supported racial segregation, for example, if the society of Southern states found that acceptable to their consensus, they should be allowed to impose it. Civil rights agitators were disrupting the social consensus and group morality.[17]
After long being skeptical of religion, Kendall converted to
Additionally, in his 1963 book The Conservative Affirmation and various articles, Kendall opposed open society and moral relativism, particularly the philosophy of John Stuart Mill. According to Kendall, "any viable society has an orthodoxy—a set of fundamental beliefs, implicit in its way of life, that it cannot and should not and, in any case, will not submit to the vicissitudes of the market place."[23] Criticizing Mill, Kendall wrote: "The all-questions-are-open-questions society...cannot...practice tolerance towards those who disagree with it."[23]
On economics, Kendall was heavily influenced by the thought of John Maynard Keynes while studying at Oxford and consequently was not a full adherent of capitalism; Kendall was also critical of what he called "the bureaucratization of business enterprise" and "rise of the meritocracy."[24]
Regarding the "all men are created equal" clause of the Declaration of Independence, Kendall interpreted "equal" to refer to equality before the law rather than liberal egalitarianism in a socioeconomic sense.[25]
Personal life
Kendall's first two marriages were annulled.[26] His first marriage to Katherine Tuach began in 1935 and ended in divorce in 1951.[27] His second marriage was to Anne Brunsdale, an employee he had supervised at the Central Intelligence Group and niece of North Dakota Governor Norman Brunsdale; it began in 1952 and ended in divorce in 1956.[28] His third marriage, to Nellie Cooper, began in 1966.[26]
Legacy
He is often forgotten as a founder of the conservative movement because he never wrote a "big book," rather he put together a collection of reviews and essays.[29]
Kendall is the model for the character Jesse Frank in S. Zion's 1990 novel Markers.[30]
Bibliography
Books by Kendall
- Baseball: How to Play It and How to Watch It (1927, as Alan Monk), Haldeman-Julius Publications.
- Democracy and the American Party System (1956 with Harcourt, Brace.
- John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule (1959), The University of Illinois Press. Full text
- The Conservative Affirmation (1963) (republished in 1985 by Regnery Books).
- Willmoore Kendall Contra Mundum (1971, edited by Nellie Kendall), Arlington House (republished in 1994 by University Press of America, ISBN 0-8191-9067-5).
- ISBN 0-8132-0826-2).
- Oxford Years: Letters of Willmore Kendall to His Father, (1993, edited by Yvonna Kendall Mason), ISI Books. ISBN 1-882926-02-1
About Kendall
- Willmoore Kendall: Maverick of American Conservatives, Alvis, John, and Murley, John, eds. Lexington Books. (Review.)
References
- Sources
- Murley, John A., ed. (2005). Leo Strauss and His Legacy: A Bibliography. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books. ISBN 0-7391-0616-3.
- Nash, George H. (1976). The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945. New York: Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-01401-1.
- Owen, Christopher H. (2021). Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781793624444.
- Notes
- ^ Christopher H. Owen, Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021)
- ^ Owen 2021, p. 16.
- ^ a b c d e f Nash 1976, p. 227.
- ^ a b Davis, Jack (1992). "The Kent-Kendall Debate of 1949". Studies in Intelligence. 36 (5): 94.
- ^ Owen 2021, pp. 27–28.
- ^ Murley 2005, pp. 346–347.
- ^ JSTOR 418404.
- ^ a b c Nash 1976, p. 228.
- ^ a b Nash 1976, pp. 228–229.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 229.
- ^ Kendall, Willmoore (1940). John Locke and the doctrine of majority-rule (Ph.D.). University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
- ^ Ceaser, James W. and Robert Maranto (2009). "Why Political Science Is Left But Not Quite PC: Causes of Disunion and Diversity." In The Politically Correct University: Problems, Scope, and Reforms, Robert Maranto (ed.), Richard E. Redding (ed.), Frederick M. Hess (ed.), Washington, D.C.: The American Enterprise Institute Press, p. 219.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 230.
- ISBN 9780465037933.
- ISBN 9780465037933.
- ^ Revilo P. Oliver, Autobiographical Note.
- ^ a b c Tait, Joshua (April 30, 2021). "Why Willmoore Kendall And James Burnham Are the Prophets of Modern Conservatism". The National Interest.
- ^ a b Nash 1976, p. 232.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 233.
- ^ Havers, Grant. "Willmoore Kendall for Our Times." Modern Age, vol. 53, no. 1/2, Winter/Spring2011, pp. 121-124.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 121.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 234.
- ^ a b Nash 1976, p. 168.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 245.
- ^ Nash 1976, p. 236.
- ^ a b Owen 2021, p. 186.
- ^ Owen 2021, pp. 44–45, 87.
- ^ Owen 2021, pp. 112, 128–129.
- ^ McCarthy, Daniel (2017-03-30). "Willmoore Kendall: Forgotten Founder of Conservatism". The Imaginative Conservative. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
- ^ Hart, Jeffrey (1990). "Debts Paid in Full," National Review, Vol. 42, No. 11, pp. 52–53.
Further reading
- Alvis, John E. (1988). "Willmoore Kendall and Congressional Deliberation," The Intercollegiate Review, Vol. 23, No. 2, pp. 57–65.
- Carey, George W. (1972). "How to Read Willmoore Kendall," The Intercollegiate Review, Vol. VIII, No. 1/2, pp. 63–65.
- East, John P. (1973). "The political thought of Willmoore Kendall." The Political Science Reviewer, Vol. III, pp. 201–239.
- Hart, Jeffrey (2002). "The 'Deliberate Sense' of Willimoore Kendall," The New Criterion, Vol. 20, No. 7, p. 76.
- Havers, Grant (2005). "Leo Strauss, Willmoore Kendall, and the Meaning of Conservatism," Humanitas, Vol. XVIII, No. 1/2, pp. 5–25.
- Nash, George H. (1975). "Willmoore Kendall: Conservative Iconoclast", The Modern Age, Vol. XIX, No. 2/3, pp. 127–135, 236–248.
- Nugent, Mark (2007). "Willmoore Kendall and the Deliberate Sense of Community," The Political Science Reviewer, Vol. 36, No. 1, pp. 228–265.
- Wilson, Francis G. (1972). "The Political Science of Willmoore Kendall," The Modern Age, Vol. XV, No. 1, pp. 38–47.
External links
- Works by Willmoore Kendall, at Hathi Trust