Richard Weaver Research Articles

The Midwestern Tradition at Bay: Richard Weaver's The Southern Tradition at Bay

The Midwestern Tradition at Bay: Richard Weaver's The Southern Tradition at Bay

Cat's Meow, and: The Rain

Cat's Meow, and: The Rain Richard Weaver (bio) Cat's Meow made friends with a morose wire-haired terrierwho barked himself Zeke, but never answeredwhen called. He'd fetch sticks and faded tennis ballsthrown by a two-legged creature with no collarand no name who muttered to himself with breatha maggot might envy. Typical lame dog-ass couple.A perfect pair of matched a-holes. Cat's meowpromptly coughed up a hairball shaped like a bone,just to see if Zeke would bite. And how hard. Notthat it mattered. The game was not apaw. It was over.He knew the wolf within a dog was a dominant trait,and didn't need obedience school to learn what waswhat. He admitted to being a whiskbroom, onemuch sought after due to his muzzle whiskers.His vibrissae are if metaphors may be mangle,the bee's knees. The duck's quack and a frog's eyebrows.He is not someone often full of feathers, unless an obligingbird has insisted on nesting in his teeth, but admitsdogs are often as not shy of what passes for brains.That said, he is willing to befriend those who diglike undertakers during a plague, who may be dumbbut are droolingly happy and open to sharing. [End Page 24] The Rain began again its annoying staccato trying to drive nailsbelow the surface of wood and tin, convinced thatstainless steel would weather eventually, and rustwould always overcome the most stubborn metals.Nevermind the vagaries of sun and wind, and theirdistant cousin time, who always arrives after the fact.Rain it was, laying down its unkissed stranger's beat.The roof, of course, has no awareness of moistureor desire. It may live above but it always drains below.NMP it concludes. Not my problem. I do what I can.I take the brunt of it all. I accept the embrace of galeforce winds and driven rain that has no respect forarchitectural boundaries and human design. Not evennew-fangled above ground concrete bunkers. No respectfor money they have. Never a desire to compromise.Always the hard push. The eastern wedge of wind.The final shifting to catch the Insurance companieswho foolishly gamble with house chips. Rain refusesto leave home. Everywhere is its last location, andpermanent forwarding address. Turn away if you must.In uninsurable fear. If you imagine a nudge or a scintillamake a difference to any or all. All rivers will overflow.All land will freeze. They will meet in the great between. [End Page 25] Richard Weaver Post-COVID, richard weaver has returned as the writer-in-residence at the James Joyce Pub. Among his other pubs: conjunctions, Louisville Review, Southern Quarterly, Free State Review, Hollins Critic, Little Patuxent Review, Loch Raven Review, The Avenue, and New Orleans Review. He's the author of The Stars Undone (Duende Press, 1992), and wrote the libretto for a symphony, Of Sea and Stars (2005). Recently, his 190th prose poem was published. He was a finalist in the 2019 Dogwood Literary Prize in Poetry. Copyright © 2023 University of North Dakota

‘PURE EVIL!’: FRAMING BY DEVIL TERMS AND THE MAGA INSURRECTION

The article concerns the impact framing by devil terms in social media has on democratic deliberation. Daniel Kahneman and Richard Weaver have shown how terms with powerful emotional connections, what Weaver calls god-terms and devil-terms, give the readers/audience cues as to how to react to any given situation. We have applied this theoretical framework to discourses in communities supportive of Donald Trump’s election fraud narrative. Our results show how powerful framing terms were used in order to convince supporters that they faced existential threat from a de-facto coup perpetrated by a powerful and evil elite. We also discuss how such strategies may be countered in order to preserve democracies.

Arguing with Numbers: The Intersection of Rhetoric and Mathematics

Arguing with Numbers: The Intersection of Rhetoric and Mathematics

Finding Canada’s Place in Richard Weaver’s American Stereopticon: David Cronenberg’s Obscene Critique of the “Canadian Way of Life”

Richard Weaver’s theory of the stereopticon can be described as the creation of false realities through artificially produced spectacles of sights and sounds. David Cronenberg’s early-career Canadian-themed horror films view the stereopticon as completely directing evolutionary human development. Weaver bemoaned the loss of a metaphysically grounded religious world view that could hold back the obscenity of the stereopticon. Alternatively, Cronenberg dissects the obscenity of the stereopticon according to its own form and content.

Metaphors for Western Thought: Assessing the Rhetoric of One World Freedom Tower

Metaphors for Western Thought: Analyzing the Rhetoric of One World Freedom Tower On September 11th, 2001, the world was shocked by an attack carried out on the lower-west side of the New York City borough of Manhattan, at the symbolic site of the well known Two-World Trade Center. The event only lasted a short while, before resolving, and became recognized not long after by the country as a national tragedy; the world mourned shortly after as the smoke cleared. Five years following the at-tacks on 9-11, the city began efforts to construct a new tower that would be seen by all as a historic landmark, and a symbol of the country's strength and resilience in the face of those who would seek to destroy the American way of life. The monument is called the One World Trade Center, or Freedom Tower as it is now more widely recognized by those from New York and aboard. The Tower can mean many things to many people including, hope, pride, freedom, strength, resilience: symbols are often known for their ambiguous natures, and historic landmarks are no exception to the eyes of those who wish to pull meaning from an extended metaphor. This article will draw upon the earlier thoughts of Richard Weaver's theory of tyrannizing images, to reflect upon how freedom is used in the rhetoric of New York City's One World Trade Center as a metaphor embodying the American ide-ology of wealth being equivalent to salvation in the pursuit of happiness.

The Universe We Think In by James V. Schall

Reviewed by: The Universe We Think In by James V. Schall Jude P. Dougherty SCHALL, James V. The Universe We Think In. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2019. ix + 208 pp. Paper, $24.95 James V. Schall was emeritus professor of government at Georgetown University, known to generations of students at Georgetown simply as Fr. Schall. Up until his death in April of this year, he continued to write with all the verve of a young man amazed by what is going on in the world, as the title of the book suggests. The Universe We Think In is a collection of fourteen essays, plus a conclusion that brings it all together. A late essay may be found in the April 2019 issue of the New Oxford Review, where he writes under the title "Mind the Gap, On the Presence and Absence of Things." The absence is modern philosophy's propensity to neglect the innate or purposeful direction of human life. Schall was formed in an intellectual tradition represented in the twentieth century by philosophers Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, and Josef Pieper. A scholar of first rank, in the college classroom Schall was noted for bringing the abstract to earth and the abstruse to clarity. Given his omnivorous intellect there is hardly any contemporary issue of consequence that eluded his attention. He could quote Plato and Harold Berman of Harvard University on one page, and on the next, Charlie Brown and Lucy (comic strip characters created by the thoughtful Charles Schulz). In the spirit of Richard Weaver's Ideas Have Consequences (1948), Schall speaks of "the world we discover and the world we make." In the world we make we are not bound by any reality; we can make ourselves over into whatever we want to be. In such a polity, there is no accountability, no standard by which words and actions may be judged. "This is why classical metaphysics and Christian theology are so dangerous [to those who subscribe to this subjectivism] and are met with furious opposition." The multiculturalist's notion that all views of life are equally good and acceptable is a form of this subjectivism with its own consequences. A polity formed in such a light would have no interest in passing on the words and deeds of men who lived before. Schall expresses it this way: "To know who we are as a polity, we need to know what we have been and done. We need to know the record of great men and terrible tyrants, as well as the deeds and words of ordinary people." That is why we have monuments, poems, and written words. Chapter 7 is devoted to the nature of political philosophy. "Politics," Schall writes, "are concerned with human action and interaction insofar as men are organized together by custom and law to attain the common good." Politics, he finds, is a legitimate object of philosophical enquiry. "The academy is," he says, "or ought to be, a sphere in which not only politics but what is beyond politics can be freely and reasonably addressed. The good of any polity requires that it create a space for what is not just political." Only through a free and open discussion of ends does the politician come to understand the good of citizens who are to be ruled and guided by the policies he adopts, given the many options available. The temptation to tyranny lurks. If a party adopts a particular philosophy, "it then allows no purpose but itself." [End Page 809] The only way a polity can be held accountable for the acts of its leaders and citizens is if there is a standard by which all words and actions are to be measured. Aristotle tells us that politics is the highest practical science but not the highest science as such. Practical knowledge presupposes an end that is given to it, not one that is constructed or made by man. The highest science is metaphysics or ontology, whose proper object is the whole, all there is. Metaphysics opens one to the transcendent. It enables one to recognize a natural order, the immaterial component of human nature, and to speak...

Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times ed. by Richard Avramenko and Ethan Alexander

Reviewed by: Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times ed. by Richard Avramenko and Ethan Alexander * James V. Schall S.J. AVRAMENKO, Richard and Ethan Alexander, editors. Aristocratic Souls in Democratic Times. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2018. vii + 324 pp. Cloth, $72.00 Aristotle's Politics described three good regimes and three bad regimes. It indicated the virtues and institutions that went with each. In addition Aristotle identified a mixed regime that endeavored to include all the regimes in an ordered whole. This mixed regime was a checks-and-balance arrangement whereby the strength of one regime would counterbalance the weakness of the other. Modern thinking has modeled itself either on Aristotle's mixed regime or on a version of his democratic regime. The aristocratic regime, whose institutional form was a senate of the wise and experienced, was designed to keep in existence and to foster traditions and values that were not of primary interest to everyone but which were essential elements of mankind's worth. This book is not concerned with oligarchy, the deviant form of the governance of the few, usually the few rich. Rather, Avramenko and Davey's new book concentrates on genuine virtue, the kind that manifests itself in statesmanship, art, philosophy, and revelation. It is concerned with the classical forms of truth, goodness, with all those things that beautify and ennoble human life but require talent and time to achieve their objects in any reasonable measure. Edmund Burke's tradition of the value of the small platoon arose out of this spirit. Aristocracy has often been seen as elitism while its opponents have been seen to manifest an envy that was dangerous to any society. This book seeks to repropose the thinking on political life by following classical and modern advocates of aristocracy. Thus, we have chapters on Tacitus, the eighteenth-century French nobility, Louis de Bonald, Konstantin Leontiev, Ortega y Gasset, Hobbes, Burke, Nietzsche, the Eighth Duke of Northumberland, and Richard Weaver. Ethan Alexander-Davies in his introductory chapter of this book presents a brief summary of each of the authors treated. He writes that "Aristotle has the most to say about the cultural leadership of the gentleman." It is about the abiding need of such leadership that this book seeks to examine. The aristocrat was concerned primarily with honor, not wealth or pleasure. His relation to the philosopher and the prophet presents another [End Page 371] aspect of the aristocratic life, a topic familiar to readers of Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin. Aristotle's theory of revolution, moreover, had to do with the failure to recognize the worth of honor in civil society. Jay Langdale, speaking of Richard Weaver's notion of aristocracy in the American South, wrote: "This elite class was limited both in numbers and in area, but this, Weaver notes, is the very nature of genuine aristocracy. An aristocracy is an aristocracy when it earns respect, no matter how small the number. … The Southern ideal of education was therefore not adapted to the masses, but rather aimed to orient the gentleman planter towards virtue and honor." Honor meant to acknowledge what was genuinely due to deeds and words that were noble. A central issue that this book presents, one going back to the relation of modernity to the classics, is whether we can have an aristocracy without having something to be aristocratic about. Aristocracy, even more than polity and monarchy, depends on the existence and acknowledgement of an objective order to which human beings are subject. Thus in Jeffrey Church's chapter on Nietzsche, we read: "What is interesting about Nietzsche's view is that it forms community around a motivation that drives most human beings, namely, the longing to lead an excellent human life. It forms community not on the basis of abstract forms and commandments, but on the basis of concrete personalities and works of literature and art." These personalities may belong to a specific nation, but they stand for something more universal. If we deprive ourselves of abstract forms and commandments, it is difficult to see what limits the strong personalities might have. The classical aristocrat began by recognizing that the true and good were not of his own...

Sylvanas Windrunner of the World of Warcraft, Hillary Clinton, and the Rhetoric of Female Leadership

Abstract:In 2016, Hillary Clinton was nominated as the first female presidential candidate of a major party in a United States election and Sylvanas Windrunner was appointed as the first female Warchief of the Horde in the fictional land of Azeroth in which the popular MMORPG World of Warcraft is set. This article is a rhetorical analysis of how authority and ethos were constructed by, respectively, Lady Sylvanas and Garrosh Hellscream in the World of Warcraft and Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the 2016 United States election. As well as investigating issues of race and gender, it explores how these four figures deploy what Richard Weaver has termed “charismatic” and “ultimate” terms to establish the legitimacy of their actions and positions.

Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece

Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece

Plato’s ideas had consequences: appropriations of Greek thought in the post-war conservatism of Richard Weaver

Now largely forgotten outside the American conservative movement, Richard Weaver’s Ideas have Consequences (1948) was an important conservative work published after World War II, cited as a formative influence by a number of key figures on the Right. This paper examines an important but neglected aspect of Weaver’s work: his choice of Greek models, including those he idealized, downplayed, or subverted. Weaver argued that the West has been in decline since the Middle Ages due to its rejection of Platonic philosophy. In Weaver’s narrative, the consequent lack of moral absolutes epitomized modern liberalism. The symptoms of relativism were aggravated by urbanization and technological progress, and a reversion to the supposed simplicity of the past, physically and spiritually, was necessary for America’s revival. Whereas Aristotle’s ideas about democracies dominated by farmers better complemented Weaver’s agrarianism, his influence on early science made him a deeply suspicious proto-modern thinker to Weaver. Instead, Weaver appropriated Plato’s philosophy of absolutes and apparent elitism, but the seemingly communistic aspects of Plato’s Republic made him an uncomfortable fit with Weaver’s antipathy to the left. These complex classical appropriations shed significant light on a seminal thinker from the birth of modern American conservatism.

Ideas and Consequences: Richard Weaver, Sharon Crowley, and Rhetorical Politics

Although it has been ten years since Sharon Crowley called for Richard M. Weaver's exclusion from the canon of rhetorical history, Weaver's rhetorical positions have never been stronger, utilized in movements such as the Tea Party and current conservative rhetoric. While Crowley (2001) argued that Weaver's Platonism came from his reaction to Roosevelt's politics, this archival study suggests that Weaver was much more pragmatic than his political pronouncements have led scholars, such as Crowley, to believe. Before Weaver wrote polemical works such as “To Write the Truth,” he operated within the constraints of the philosophically rigid institutional culture of neo-Aristotelianism, and the archival record demonstrates his attenuation to this rhetorical situation. The implications for these findings diminish the effectiveness of his appropriation by political movements that are based in foundationalistic rhetoric. These implications also demonstrate how rhetorical scholarship has utilized the polemical nature of Weaver's writings in the advancement of the professionalization of the discipline.

Superfluous southerners: cultural conservatism and the South, 1920-1990

In Superfluous Southerners, J. Langdale III tells the story of traditionalist conservatism and its boundaries in twentieth-century America. Because this time period encompasses both the rise of the modern conservative movement and the demise of southern regional distinctiveness, it affords an ideal setting both for observing the potentiality of American conservatism and for understanding the fate of the traditionalist man of letters. Langdale uses the intellectual and literary histories of John Crowe Ransom, Donald Davidson, and Allen Tate the three principal contributors to the Agrarian manifesto I ll Take My Stand and of their three most remarkable intellectual descendants Cleanth Brooks, Richard Weaver, and Melvin Bradford to explore these issues. Langdale begins his study with some observations on the nature of American exceptionalism and the intrinsic barriers which it presents to the traditionalist conservative imagination. While works like Louis Menand s The Metaphysical Club have traced the origins of modern pragmatic liberalism during the late nineteenth century, the nature of conservative thought in postbellum America remains less completely understood. Accordingly, Langdale considers the origins of the New Humanism movement at the turn of the twentieth century, then turning to the manner in which midwesterners Irving Babbitt and Paul Elmer Moore stirred the imagination of the southern Agrarians during the 1920s. After the publication of I ll Take My Stand in 1930, Agrarianism splintered into three distinct modes of traditionalist conservatism: John Crowe Ransom sought refuge in literary criticism, Donald Davidson in sectionalism, and Allen Tate in an image of the religious-wayfarer as a custodian of language. Langdale traces the expansion of these modes of traditionalism by succeeding generations of southerners. Following World War II, Cleanth Brooks further refined the tradition of literary criticism, while Richard Weaver elaborated the tradition of sectionalism. However, both Brooks and Weaver distinctively furthered Tate s notion that the integrity of language remained the fundamental concern of traditionalist conservatism. Langdale concludes his study with a consideration of neoconservative opposition to M.E. Bradford s proposed 1980 nomination as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities and its significance for the southern man of letters in what was becoming postmodern and postsouthern America. Though the post World War II ascendance of neoconservatism drastically altered American intellectual history, the descendants of traditionalism remained largely superfluous to this purportedly conservative revival which had far more in common with pragmatic liberalism than with normative conservatism.

Allen Tate: A Study in Southern Modernism and the Religious Imagination by Joseph Kuhn

345 Book Reviews Allen Tate: A Study in Southern Modernism and the Religious Imagination. Joseph Kuhn. Series Filologia 32. Adam Mickiewicz UP, 2009. 524 pp. $45.00 paper. IT MAY COME AS A SURPRISE TO SEE A RECENT AND LENGTHY STUDY OF THE work of Allen Tate and his influence on Southern letters emerge from Poland. Joseph Kuhn is a professor in the School of English at Adam Mickiewicz University (whose press is the publisher). We who have been engaged in what Lewis Simpson called “Southern self-interpretation” take for granted much that is perhaps unfamiliar to those outside the South. Yet a shift in perspective can teach us things we ourselves are inclined to overlook. It is one of the numerous merits of Kuhn’s book that it poses questions that might not occur to a self-interpreter to ask and highlights relationships that familiarity has kept us from probing. For this reason alone, the book makes interesting reading, though it does a great deal more. After an introduction entitled “A Model of Order,” in which Kuhn explores the implications of the Old South as “a metaphor of spiritual and artistic community,” he offers four stages in the sources, development, maturation, and influence of Tate’s thought: “Beginnings in New England,” “The Two Masters,” “A Modernist Metaphysical: Tate’s Poetry,” and “The Historical Imagination.” The first section offers a good example of what commentators on Southern literature seem to have overlooked: the neo-medievalism of that class of scholars in the nineteenth century called the “Boston Brahmins,” in particular that of Henry Adams, who represented “an awkward paternity” for both T. S. Eliot and Tate. Kuhn has some very acute observations about the crisis of historical relativism that Adams addressed but failed to solve. Nevertheless, his writings provided an important,ifambiguous,precedentfor“traditionalistmodernism.”Eliot, a combination of collateral Brahmin through his New England ancestry and quasi-Southerner because of Missouri’s uncertain regional status, depicted Adams’s dilemma in his “Gerontion,” which Kuhn analyzes at some length and then goes on to explore this intellectual context and make a convincing case for its relevance. In the second section, he further examines the main components of Tate’s inheritance from his two principal literary mentors, Eliot and Ransom. He focuses on the modernist version of traditionalism proposed by the former and the “curious theology” presented by the latter in his God Without Thunder, showing in each instance how Tate built on 346 Mississippi Quarterly and—in Ransom’s case especially—modified their ideas. He challenges the notion that Tate was simply a Southern version of Eliot. In a detailed reading of Ransom’s book, he shows how the disciple diverged significantly from the master, who nevertheless showed him a way to rethink the importance of religion in culture and society and of religious myth as a critical concept—key elements in the thought of all three men. Kuhn warns that this “religious imagination” does not designate mere piety but a longing for the transcendent and the tensions, ironies, and conflicts that arise from such a quest for the whole. The central and, by far, longest section is the third, devoted to a number of close readings of individual poems, early and late, as well as to Tate’s novel, The Fathers. The organization of these pages is thematic in basis but broadly chronological. Throughout his book, Kuhn draws on key passages from the poetry and prose, reinforcing and exploring their nuances by constantly placing them in new contexts. He draws on the rich array of philosophical and literary theory at his command, from Augustine, Aquinas, and Abelard toRicoeur,Levinas,andDerrida,tosay nothing of a host of other contemporary thinkers on whom he draws tellingly to illustrate how enduring are the questions that Tate confronted during his lifetime. Those who know the poetry well will discover many insightful interpretations of individual passages and whole poems. The fourth part of the book is given over to three “Tateians”: Richard Weaver, Lewis Simpson, and Walker Percy. Kuhn does not mean to imply that these three men were necessarily disciples. Rather, he sees in them a continuation of the main concerns of a man...

Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War (review)

Reviewed by: Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War Valerie Lynn Schrader Reagan at Westminster: Foreshadowing the End of the Cold War. By Robert C. Rowland and John M. Jones . College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2010; pp 160. $40.00 cloth, $19.95 paper. With this book, Rowland and Jones once again offer a valuable rhetorical criticism of Ronald Reagan's rhetoric. Through an examination of perhaps one of the most misunderstood speeches of the twentieth century, Rowland and Jones shed light on Reagan's ideology and policy goals, as well as note how the views expressed in the Westminster Address connect to the George W. Bush administration's decision to enter Iraq. Readers of Rhetoric & Public Affairs will appreciate this book for its thorough execution of rhetorical criticism, its innovative observations about the 40th president's ideology and rhetoric, and its introduction of a new rhetorical lens that the authors call "ultimate definition." The book begins with the text of Reagan's Address to Members of the British Parliament on June 8, 1982. The strategic placement of the speech at the beginning of the book, rather than in an appendix at the end, is effective, not only inviting the reader to read or reread the text before looking at Rowland and Jones's analysis, but also allowing for easy reference, as each paragraph [End Page 575] in the speech is numbered. The introduction that immediately follows offers a convincing rationale for studying the speech in the context of events that occurred later in the 1980s, despite the tepid reaction the speech received at the time it was delivered. Chapter 1 begins by providing readers with a brief historical background of the Cold War, beginning with Kennan's Long Telegram and the Truman Doctrine, covering the policies of containment in the 1950s and détente in the 1970s, and ending with Reagan's views of communism throughout his life. This chapter provides a solid background not only of the history leading up to the Westminster Address, but also trends in Reagan's rhetoric up until the time of the address. Chapter 2 provides readers with a background in Reagan's speechwriting process. Drawing from the Speechwriting Files, Handwriting Files, and Reagan speechwriter Anthony Dolan's Files at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Rowland and Jones piece together the process used to craft the Westminster Address. They note that although much of the address was written by speechwriters Aram Bakshian and Anthony Dolan, Reagan himself either wrote or edited almost 60 percent of the speech. Rowland and Jones's research is thorough and insightful, and supports their claim that Reagan played an important role in the drafting of the Westminster Address. Chapter 3 describes the specific situation surrounding the speech and offers a unique rhetorical criticism of the Westminster Address. Rowland and Jones argue that Reagan used a dialectical reversal of a key communist argument to turn the tables in favor of liberal democracy. They suggest that Reagan used the principle of universalism to argue that the world would eventually turn to democracy, not communism, because people have an inherent desire to be free. The authors observe that Reagan labeled the Soviet Union as a totalitarian nation while praising the virtues of liberal democracy and advocating for arms control negotiations. Rowland and Jones also address the common criticism that Reagan was strictly a performer. Though they point to a number of organic and familial metaphors in the Westminster Address, acknowledging that Reagan's style and delivery played a role in the persuasiveness of the speech, they stress that the ideas expressed in the address played an even more pivotal role. One of the most noteworthy aspects of this book is Rowland and Jones's concept of the "ultimate definition" (78). Drawing from key works of Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, and David Zarefsky, as well as Robert Rowland's recent work with David Frank, Rowland and Jones suggest that [End Page 576] the "ultimate definition lies at the nexus of an operational definition within a coherent narrative, a connotative definition tied to key value terms, and an epistemic definition functioning as a worldview" (78). They observe that...

Managed truth: The great danger to our republic

French social critic Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850) once said, “The worst thing that can happen to a good cause is not to be skillfully attacked, but to be ineptly defended.”[1] During much of the history of our republic, our intellectuals and those who digest these ideas for consumption by the general public did a poor job of defending the basic foundations of our freedom. Until the 60s, it was taken for granted that private property, absolute moral principles, and free enterprise were desirable. But while these things were based on a foregone conclusion, few were adequately prepared to defend these ideas against the modern liberal intellectual assault. Those intellectuals, such as Richard Weaver, M. E. Bradford, John East and Russell Kirk, who had an intimate understanding of human freedom, did not have access to the popular media or most university curricula. The left saw this as a great weakness to be exploited primarily by attacking these institutions in the universities and colleges, knowing it would capture the imaginations of our youth during their formative years. Parents trusted these institutions to inculcate these basic ideas of freedom – they were betrayed by these institutions of learning. But two events allowed the left to instill serious questions in our youth's minds concerning these foundations: the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War. Both of these events were couched in terms not to correct social evils or perceived errors in our leaders’ judgment, but rather they were designed to attack the whole fabric of our social organization, especially our moral foundations, our economic system, and the rule of law based on natural law. As we shall see, this did not begin in the 60s, but in fact, began over two centuries before.

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our appreciation to those who supported the work on this report in addition to those included in the list of contributors. We benefited from the contributions of our colleagues, Dr. Ian Coulter, who was a co-investigator, and Dr. Sebastian Baumeister, a visiting international scholar in early phases of the Pipeline program evaluation. The work of our research assistants was essential to the completion of this report, and we are grateful to Heidi Ambrosio, Hamilton Chen, Vanessa Garcia, Jeremy Jacquot, Tram Le, Charles Mata, Marissa Opilas, Shirin Shahedi, and Sophia Young. The evaluation was supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) Grant #045592 and The California Endowment (TCE) Grant #20031951. We are especially appreciative of the support of RWJF to publish and disseminate this report (Grant #58942). For their encouragement and valuable advice during the early stages of the evaluation, we would like to thank our initial project officers, Mary Ann Scheirer and Diane Manuel with RWJF and TCE, respectively, as well as Laura Leviton, our RWJF project officer who advised us for most of the project period. We are indebted to Richard Weaver from the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) and Tom Berger from the American Dental Association (ADA) for sharing their data that was so essential to our evaluation. Thank you to Richard W. Valachovic, ADEA Executive Director, and Merideth Menken, ADEA Senior Director of Publications, for publishing and distributing the report and to the staff of the Journal of Dental Education—Olav Alvares, Editor, Lynn Page Whittaker, Managing Editor, and Judy Myers, Graphic Designer—for producing a quality product. Finally, credit should be given to the Pipeline National Program Office staff and the fifteen Pipeline dental schools and their principal investigators, faculty, and staff for accommodating our endless requests for data and information. We are also appreciative of the principal investigators and their colleagues from the schools who wrote the responses to the Pipeline program and its evaluation that are provided at the end of each case study.

The Conservative Capture of Anti-Relativist Discourse in Postwar America

As both conservatives and liberals rethought their fundamental assumptions in the wake of World War II, leaders of the conservative movement sought to combine anti-relativist cultural belifs with the traditional conservative concern with limited government. By attacking liberal icon John Dewey and his philosophy of pragmatism, conservative intellectuals such as William F. Buckley Jr., Richard Weaver, Eliseo Vivas, and Frank Meyer carried the banner of eternal truth as a right-wing rallying point. By mid-century, conservatives had captured the discourse of philosophical foundationalism for their cause and used this new principle to gain political success by ascribing societal problems to “liberal relativism.” Yet, what they gained in rhetorical advantage, they gave up in ideological coherence as postwar conservatives found themselves promoting state-sponsored truths, while also professing a libertarian belief in limited government.

“Extraordinary Understandings” of Composition at the University of Chicago: Frederick Champion Ward, Kenneth Burke, and Henry W. Sams

While Richard Weaver, R. S. Crane, Richard McKeon, and Robert Streeter have been most identified with rhetoric at the University of Chicago and its institutional return in the 1950s, the archival record demonstrates that Frederick Champion Ward, dean of the undergraduate “College” from 1947 to 1954, and Henry W. Sams, director of English in the College during Ward’s tenure, created the useful tensions for these positions to emerge.

Time-Binding Communication: Transmission and Decadence of Tradition

This article sketches a theory of time-binding communication, which is to say communication that unifies widely separated times much as space-binding communication unifies widely separated places. Drawing from the work of Harold Innis, it first describes the function and character of time-binding communication as a means to social continuity. Then, following Alasdair MacIntyre and Michael Oakshott, it explains the nature and necessary circumstances of this sort of time-binding communication, or tradition. It discusses the character, consequences, and causes of decadence—radical discontinuity—as these have been described by Richard Weaver, C. E. M. Joad, and Jacques Barzun. Finally, it turns to David Lowenthal's notion of the past as a ‘foreign country’ in an effort to explain the relations between modernity and both tradition and decadence, as well as the geography of tradition and decadence in the modern world.