Reactionary Imperative

Description

The collection of political and literary essays ranged over a variety of topics, but each essay supported Bradford’s central argument, when the institutions, morals, and customs of a society degenerate into dysfunction or are all together destroyed, “conservatism” must give way to reaction, for nothing is left to conserve. Bradford observed that “reaction is a necessary term in the intellectual context we inhabit… because to merely conserve is sometimes to perpetuate what is outrageous.” The reaction Bradford had in mind was a return to the principles, customs, and traditions that shaped the American political order. Bradford’s view was informed by the long culture war in American society raging since at least the 1960s. Bradford calls for a return to the roots of American order. A return to a revised form of the Articles of Confederation is all but impossible. Hope, however, lies in a revivification of the principles of the Old Republicans of Thomas Jefferson’s day. Preface ............................................ 1 I. LITERATURE AND THE POLITICS OF CULTURE Artists at Home: Frost and Faulkner ..................... 1 The Form and Pressure of Our Time: The Social Role of Modern Drama ................. 15 The Vocation of Norman Podhoretz ................... 27 II. AN INSTANCE EXPANDED Brotherhood in "The Bear" ............................ 39 Brother, Son, and Heir: The Structural Focus of Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! ............... 47 Certain Ladies of Quality: Faulkner's View of Women and the Evidence of "There Was a Queen" ........... 67 III. POLITICS PER SE Rhetoric and Respectability: Conservatives and the Problem of Language ......... 91 On Being Conservative in a Post-Liberal Era ............ 101 Undone by Victory: Political Success and the Subversion of Conservative Politics ......... 107 Where We Were Born and Raised: The Southern Conservative Tradition .............. 115 Is the American Experience Conservative? .............. 135 IV. THE MODERN SPIRIT AND ITS ADVERSARIES "The Last Great Englishman" ........................ 143 A Lion in the North: The Persistence of Sir Walter Scott ................ 151 A Virginia Cato: John Taylor of Caroline and the Agrarian Republic ....................... 157 What We Can Know for Certain: Frank Owsley and the Recovery of Southern History ............. 177 What Made Lyndon Run: A Political Parable ........... 183 The Strange Career of C. Vann Woodward ............. 189 A Writ of Fire and Sword: The Politics of Oliver Cromwell .................. 205 Against Lincoln: A Speech at Gettysburg ............... 219 Index ............................................ 229