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Frank Meyer: An Intellectual in Politics
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12386 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
1 / 1987 |
3,215 Words |
| Author
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John B. Judis
John B. Judis just completed a voluminous biography of William
F. Buckley, Jr. (Doubleday, 1988). |
Today, whether the issue is arms control, school prayer, or tax reform, the most heated political battles are being waged among conservatives rather than between conservatives and liberals. There are as many factions of conservatives - new Right, old Right, neoconservative, movement conservative, moderate conservative - as there used to be factions on the Left. Beyond these divisions however, is there a common set of assumptions which is conservatism?
The most systematic attempt to define these assumptions was made by Frank Meyer, a former communist, who from 1957 until his death in 1972, was a senior editor of National Review. Meyer was the ideological godfather of the conservative organizations and politicians who got their start in the late 1950s and 1960s, from the Young Americans for Freedom to Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan.
Meyer communicated many of his ideas through countless phone calls at all hours of the night from his Woodstock, New York home. He also tried to create a philosophical synthesis of American conservatism in his writings. Meyer set out, he explained in his book, In Defense of Freedom, to "vindicate on theoretical grounds the native belief of American conservatives."
In the minds of many conservatives today. Meyer succeeded admirably. Conservative columnist M. Stanton Evans said of his work, "In the perspective of time, we shall rank his libertarian-conservative writing among the principal achievements, not only of modern conservatism, but of political thought in general." David Keene, now the chairman of the American Conservative Union and in 1969 the president of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), said, "YAF and the young conservative movement really looked to Frank Meyer of National Review as their philosophical leader." Yet neither Meyer nor his philosophy is known outside the conservative movement.
The Ultimate Ideologue
Meyer was a small, pale, gaunt man with high cheekbones, a long thin nose and protruding lips. Former New Republic editor Michael Straight, who knew Meyer as a communist in London, described him as looking like "an Aztec priest." He paid little attention to what he wore, except for his red suspenders, which are now fashionable on the Right. He was passionate and excitable: an avid conversationalist and stirring orator. He was also a notable eccentric.
For the last twenty five years
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