A little while back we published a remark from Chesterton about democracy:
...We have not got real democracy when the decision depends on the people. We shall have real democracy when the problem depends on the people. The ordinary man will decide not only how he will vote, but what he is going to vote about. ...
So here's a review of a book about Willmoore Kendall. Lo and behold!!
...Kendall, Owen argues in his introduction, is a theorist of conservative populism. He “insisted that ‘we the people’ must be able to make the most important political decisions.”...
We suggest that Kendall and Chesterton were on exactly the same page, as Kendall had little use for "solutions" imposed by Presidents, Courts, and even Congress.
... Kendall’s academic output centered on theorizing the sovereignty of the people and their authority to govern themselves rather than being held as subjects fit for riding by various segments of elite power. Here is the basis for considering Kendall a populist: he articulated “a political philosophy supporting the rights and power of the people in their struggle against the privileged elite.”...
...His opponents were those who demanded comprehensive solutions to problems and whose insistence on the supremacy of their solution meant that it could not be made subject to public debate, at least of the kind that would involve legislative deliberation and compromise. These were primarily liberals, Kendall stressed, but also conservatives at times. Progressive politics “took decision-making out of the hands of the people” and dispensed with the balancing of social goods....
Gee, that sounds familiar.
... Kendall was extraordinarily effective as an intelligence officer, operating in various capacities as a propagandist for American interests in Latin America and an analyst in Washington. From these experiences he learned of the ease with which communists moved in the federal government. Progressives either did not care or were apathetic about their presence. At Yale after the war Kendall became a lightning rod for controversy as he defended what were viewed on campus as the despicable anti-communist tactics of the FBI, the House Un-American Activities Committee, and Senator Joseph McCarthy....
... communists in America preached ideas and political goals that would undermine America at a foundational level. They, too, had to be controlled. Kendall never departed from his commitment to the people’s right to govern themselves, including by providing for their security—even if it meant limiting aspects of individual freedom. Kendall viewed Joseph McCarthy’s red-hunting mission as a defense of the people not only from the communists but from those elites who failed to grasp the situation. In this, Kendall was of one mind with a star student of his at Yale, William F. Buckley Jr. He helped Buckley edit his first book, the landmark God and Man at Yale, published in 1951. Buckley attributed the book’s most “provocative” statement directly to Kendall: the view “that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. … [and] that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.”...
It goes without saying that Communism is materialist atheism. But "atheism", whether materialist, sexist, racist, or otherwise (read: LGBTQSJ, CRT/DEI) continues to struggle against Christianity, vigorously--and it deserves a vigorous and--if necessary--forceful resistance.
The conclusion of the review:
... Since Kendall’s death conservatives have in many respects opted for more ideological profiles or have sought one goal to the exclusion of the balance between several goods that Kendall believed public order required. Yet we now confront an unmistakable attempt by the left to purge core constitutional ideas and replace them with the confused theology of identity politics. We need to learn from Kendall how to defend the constitutional right of the people to govern themselves in their own name....
Amen!
No comments:
Post a Comment