Willmoore Kendall

Willmoore Kendall (1909 – June 30, 1967)^[1] was an American conservative writer and a professor of political philosophy.

Early life and education[]

Kendall was born in 1909 to a blind minister in Oklahoma. He learned to read at 2, graduated from high school at 13, from the University of Oklahoma at 18, and published his first book at 20. In 1932, he studied at the University of Oxford as a Rhodes scholar.

Kendall became a Trotskyist and went to Spain during the Spanish Civil War. His experiences with the Spanish Republic led him to renounce his former communist beliefs. In 1940, he obtained a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Illinois, learning under Francis Wilson. His dissertation was "John Locke and the Doctrine of Majority-Rule", which provided a unique view of 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.^[2] Kendall served in the Office of Strategic Services in World War II and stayed on when it became the CIA, in 1947.

Career[]

Kendall joined the Yale University faculty in 1947, where he taught for 14 quarrelsome years until Yale paid him a handsome sum to resign. In 1961, he surrendered tenure and departed.^[3] Among his students was William F. Buckley, Jr. with whom he participated in the founding of National Review; as a senior editor, he constantly fought with the other editors (it is said that he was never on speaking terms with more than one person at a time). Another student that Kendall strongly influenced on the Right was Brent Bozell, whom he also taught at Yale.^[4] Kendall also influenced Buckley's ideas in the National Review because he explained that liberals were a small minority group in the community.^[5] A friend, Professor Revilo P. Oliver, gave him credit with convincing him to enter political activism by writing for National Review.^[6] After Yale, Kendall lived in Spain and France for a time, and briefly taught at several universities in a non-tenured role.^[2]

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.^[7]

Kendall later converted to Roman Catholicism, taught at the University of Dallas, was a founder of the politics program, and was co-founder of the doctoral program there. Kendall was also the Chairman of the Department of Politics and Economics at the University.^[8] He stayed at that institution until he died of a heart attack, in 1967.

Philosophy[]

Kendall defended majority-rule democracy in America.^[9] He felt that majoritarianism should come before liberalism (in the political philosophy sense of liberal democracy) - 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 this acceptable to their consensus, they should be allowed to impose this; civil rights agitators were disrupting the social consensus and group morality.^[2]

Legacy[]

Kendall is the model for the character Jesse Frank in S. Zion's 1990 novel Markers.^[10]

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 Austin Ranney), 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).
• The Basic Symbols of the American Political Tradition (1970, with George W. Carey), Louisiana State University Press (republished in 1995 by Catholic University of America Press. 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[]

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.
• 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," Part II, 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
• Works by Willmoore Kendall, at Unz.org
• The Willmoore Kendall Site.
• The Political Though of Willmoore Kendall
• Peppe, Enrico, Review of The Conservative Affirmation (17 March 2004).