Tag Archives: Political Correctness

Remembering an Academic Outlier

06 Tuesday Mar 2018

Posted by in American Education, American Federalism, Conservatism, Southern History, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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Melvin-Bradford

Melvin E. Bradford. Photo: Courtesy of the Fort Worth Independent School District.

Something got me thinking last night about  one of the nation’s late, great academic outliers and mavericks, the late M.E. Bradford, and how, if he had survived into his 80’s, would be regarded today as a pariah on most U.S. college campuses. Bradford was regarded as a “paleoconservative,” one of the leading intellectual lights of the paleocon movement.

 

He was a student of the old Southern Agrarian tradition and a vocal and intrepid defender of the Constitution and the Old Republic.  He was also a searing critic of the legacy of Abraham Lincoln and the 16th president’s efforts to consolidate the American Republic. And while in intellectual terms he was considered an outlier, Bradford was one of a number of traditionalist conservative academics who, once upon a time in America, were valued for the role they served in leavening and balancing out academic discourse. He taught at several prestigious academic institutions, including the U.S. Naval Academy, and served as president of the Philadelphia Society.

 

I cherish two of Bradford’s works – “Remembering Who We Are” and “Original Intentions: On the Making of the Constitution“ – for providing me with critical foundational bricks in my intellectual development and maturation.

 

A vocal Reagan supporter in the 80’s, Bradford was tapped to head the National Endowment for the Humanities. However, due to fierce opposition from neoconservative elements, he ultimately was passed over for William Bennett, the neocons’ candidate, but not before receiving the endorsement of U.S. Senators from every geographic region of the country as well as by a number of prominent leading conservative intellectuals, including Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, William F. Buckley and Harry Jaffa.

 
Bradford’s ignominious upending by the necons played a key role in deepening the already palpable ideological divide between paleocons and neocons intellectuals within the Reagan coalition that culminated in Pat Buchanan’s insurgent presidential candidacy against George H.W. Bush in 1992.

Bradford died while undergoing heart surgery at the relatively young age of 58 in 1993.  In a sense, he is fortunate not to have lived into his eighties to reflect on the intellectual wasteland that characterizes American academia today.

 

It’s one thing to be an outlier, quite another to be a pariah, which is precisely the way Bradford would be regarded today in America’s toxic academic environment. And this is remarkable considering that scarcely a generation ago, academic mavericks and nonconformists such as Bradford were still afforded a place, even an exalted place, in many American institutions of higher learning, valued for the role they served in refining intellectual inquiry and open discourse.

Why We Should Celebrate Columbus’ Legacy

09 Monday Oct 2017

Posted by in American History, The Passing Scene, Uncategorized

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columbusWhat I’m going to say may come as a shock to some of you: Columbus discovered America!

He did in a very real sense.

He connected the Western Hemisphere, which, for all intents and purposes, was an isolated cultural backwater, with the comparatively more open and advanced culture of the West.  By doing so, he changed the course of human history.

I tend to relate the course of human progress with the expansion of networks. Westerners are credited – at least, they should be credited – with creating the densest and, consequently, the most generative network in human history.  And many of thes achievements associated with the West stem from the courage and farsightedness of Christopher Columbus.  By connecting the Americas with the West, he ensured that the connections already occurring within the comparatively free and open societies of western Europe would occur at significantly higher volumes and faster rates.

I posted a brief tribute to Columbus on my Facebook page today and a friend pointed out that modern animus towards him reflects a wider hatred for the legacy of the West.  He’s right, of course.

All of this animus towards Columbus strikes me as nonsensical and even comedic.  But for the efforts of Columbus and the comparative openness of the culture out of which he sprang, there would be very few prosperous and literate people around to critique the explorer’s legacy.

So, Happy Columbus Day, folks.

Racism or Anti-Cultural Marxism?

08 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in U.S. Politics

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trump-rallyI’ve been intrigued by repeated media and social media outbursts about the racism in Trumpian ranks.  Certainly there is some racism in the ranks – I won’t deny that.

But much of what is perceived as racism isn’t about race per se but rather about how race and, for that matter, gender, have been used within the last quarter century as a principal weapon of cultural Marxism.

All revolutions and social struggles release a sort of nervous energy that never dissipates. The intense libertarian/Jeffersonian energy that was released during the American Revolution, while perhaps waxing and waning over the last quarter millennium, has endured and even mutated significantly. In a sense, the civil rights movement bears a striking resemblance to the libertarian/Jeffersonian tradition – not surprising given that the movement is partly the ideological offspring of this libertarianism – and, like its progenitor, released its own energy a half century ago.
To put it another way, the civil rights movement is mutating too, and one of the effect of this mutation is that racism and other forms of intolerance are being defined up, in a manner of speaking, to more ambiguous forms of human behavior. This is where it has taken on very palpable cultural Marxist hues. It’s no longer considered sufficient simply to accept Martin Luther King’s  expressed hope – now immortalized in high-school and college history textbooks – that all men and women one day will be judged by the content of their character rather than by the color of their skin. One is expected to not only to tolerate but even to embrace a whole array of attitudes now days. Many see this as a form of proto-totalitarianism that is increasingly being expressed in unusually virulent and disturbing – not to mention, Kafkaesque – ways, particularly on many college campuses.
Are the vast majority of Trump voters aware of these cultural Marxist trends?  Of course not.  But they see these disturbing social and cultural trends unfolding in society, particularly on college campuses, and they’re screaming, “Enough!” And, predictably, they are met with the charges of intolerance and bigotry.
That is one factor among several that have accounted for the Trumpian revolution – or counterrevolution – or whatever one chooses to call it.
Call me a deplorable and irredeemable bigot or whatever other term the left develops to stock its rhetorical quiver, but the majority of rank-and-file Trump voters are seeing these cultural Marxist trends playing out in society, and they are concluding that this is not the way they define being an American and living in a free country. I believe that the vast majority of Trump voters are as committed to civil discourse as anyone else, but they refuse to submit to anything resembling an Orwellian social order.
They may not be as educated as the average Hillary voter, but  they perceive emerging trends that simply do not bode well for liberty, at least, as they have understood that term all their lives. And, predictably, they’re pushing back.