Confessions of a Conservative
Leo, John
Books: INTELLECTUAL FIREPOWER H ILAIRE BELLOC was so awesome in COi1FESSIOMS OF A COISERTATIVE great change. It is merely the machinery conversation that a friend...
...In IBM and Mastercharge...
...Then how does change But as his reputation has grown, so has peace, not to right all the wrongs in soci- occur...
...course, buried the man under a torrent of John Leo Wills is happy with the American Greenland arcana...
...The magazine was eral theory...
...among the elites, from the oil lobby to overweight and apparently unathletic Virtually on order from Natonal Re- Martin Luther King's crusade, yields sage of Baltimore humiliated me in five view's Frank Meyer, Wills set out to con- something for everyone with the least straight games of one-on-one...
...Society is a family that a week boning up on Greenland in hopes Doubleday, $10, 231 pp...
...And I real politics, in other words, occurs tothe right-wing theorists-and still call admire the system's workings be- tally outside politics...
...struct his conservative credo...
...What principles allow him to egg I am certainly not a liberal...
...We have here, for examTHE LIFE OF JESUS OF NAZARETH ple, the stereotypical view of idealistic Youth-an idol that Franck does not Men Poortvliet seem to recognize...
...poetry or perception would justify such an adaptation...
...For Wills the state is neither a with a smattering of church history, is political journalism...
...turn human selfishness into tal, homosexuals disrupting the filming Wills arrived at National Review in ''checks and balances" with be- of movies they don't like, or the loony 1957, fresh out of the seminary, holding nign results...
...this just doesn't wash...
...Boston feminist who shoots out store only a few stray political opinions...
...Classic re-vision EVERYONE: EveryOne, who is destined to take "a THE TIMELESS MYTH OF 'EVERYMAN' long journey...
...may be...
...ing Gilson on Augustine, interviewing that the state is founded on love, not For Wills, the American system is a the sullen Wilt Chamberlain, or upsetting justice: its primary function is to protect machine with no motor, geared only to the entire Jefferson industry...
...cause they guarantee coherence defiant of the popular will...
...Poor White hoping that Insight's lines would be an Protestants...
...ence and mute change, so it may bargain away half when the time comes...
...shared values and hold people together in prevent motion...
...Conservatives have an appropri- around and wait for the saints to come ately sluggish political machine, radicals marching in...
...His conservatism is rigorous, consistent enter the social body as nutriment, Wills realizes he is dropping many of and so personal that he is unlikely to be not as a knifeblade...
...Books: INTELLECTUAL FIREPOWER H ILAIRE BELLOC was so awesome in COi1FESSIOMS OF A COISERTATIVE great change...
...gets along through mutual deference and of besting the master just once...
...King and Muste obedience, his political thought has not heroism, and know we depend on clearly qualify...
...If EveryOne, the central character does not that sort of cliche were not enough, we go off with Death, but experiences the have the inevitable simplistic condemnatouch of mortality and achieves- tion of money: ("My job is just to KILL INSIGHT...
...The history of the cold war, skewer most of way liberal theory claims...
...Wills could be Chestertonian anti-individualism in clearer about how much disruption and 28 September 1979: 535 violence he would tolerate in the name of have the streets, and the poor liberals are prophecy...
...As a text, it is not...
...I find in them for a conservative...
...That Christian principles...
...How can he call dangerous behemoth nor an agent for that change depends on the prophets and Nixon "the last liberal" and dismiss saints among us-the William Lloyd McGovern as "a liberal of the worst Garrisons, Berrigans, A. J. Mustes and sort...
...I scorned the generwith text by Hans Bouma ous aspirations of the young," says Doubleday, $29.95, 121 pp...
...It is elitist, i.e., himself a conservative...
...I was his dialogue with Death...
...And though he has dropped voices calling for moral renewal matters, surely an unprecedented notion his "glib anti-Communism" and be- and difficult change...
...Though he amount of disruption...
...the dialogue with Insight, EveryOne has As a third chapter, Franck offers us an conversed with Death, Friends, Family, explanation of his revised myth...
...motiveless benignity" of the Sappho or Shakespeare, gently correct- From Augustine he drew his central idea McGovern campaign...
...His answer, familiar to anyone the suspicion that he is winging it in his ety...
...Vietnam was a By now his versatility and intellectual ransacked the usual sources, from Plato disaster because it threatened internal firepower are obvious enough...
...But what about antichanged very much since his mid- these...
...This is basically my political system because it functions his experience with Garry Wills...
...Their hunger for meaning, justice, Diana Culbertson their despair with a doomed and desecrated Earth, PLAYS ARE for seeing and hearing, and their horror at being condemned according to Frederick Franck, his to lives of serfdom play EveryOne: The Timeless Myth of to computers and credit cards E "Everyman" Reborn, staged in numer- I mocked and I denounced, V ous colleges and churches in North of course, invoking the highest America, has been a "success...
...EveryOne in a spasm of repentance...
...And it must This memoir-cum-apologia makes and continuity: They soften differ- be extreme, if only because the pols will clear that Wills is no political waterbug...
...It is asked to share it...
...was quietism...
...Playwright either assistance or wisdom to he is not, but his reflections on the mean...
...They blur issues and produce learned discussions of Maritain, Ezio liberals, Hapsburgian theocrats, senti- middling men, who in turn produce a Pinza and Dick Van Dyke, I suggested mental medievalizers and cold blurry, middling politics, thus assuring we step outside to settle things with a warriors-no place for an off-the-cuff continuity and coherence...
...It is rooted in religious are conservative values...
...Whereupon the distributist...
...But Franck irritates rather I HE WAS WE OF US: than inspires...
...Once, after he...
...But so, for that matter, was the equally at home reinterpreting a bit of as much as the earlier religious readings...
...Wills is to Locke, few of them seemed to impress peace...
...We know that Insight has ar- man's soul") and another slur at the berived when he (she...
...No system can automatically abortionists trying to shut down a hospitwenties...
...And this and Treasure-none of whom offers should have been the book...
...For someone works...
...Belloc, of "a modest politics...
...Elections do not matter lost 59...
...He is, I writing, chiefly Augustine, Newman and On the other hand, I admire the think, inviting us into the streets to settle Chesterton...
...Jockeying game of basketball...
...So far I way, not according to conventional libhave had 60 arguments with the man and mind, "distributist...
...Neither the Well...
...It is merely the machinery conversation that a friend once spent Garry Wills of compromise...
...And author felt compelled to manipulate the must we insist like modern manicheans 15th century masterpiece, which is, de- that credit cards and computers are evil...
...Despite his emphasis on civil diswriting a political credo, luck should obedience, the loudest message I heard have nothing to do with it...
...If Wills is right, there is Liberals are the big losers in Wills's little for us non-prophets to do but sit system...
...Come now...
...Prophets would impose their stuck with a narrow individualism and a message if they could," he writes, "so it naive belief that the electoral system is lucky that they can't...
...art-only tenuously related to the Those who have worked with YOUTH text-nor the hand lettering, can disguise know quite well that they are no more the execrable verse of this play or the horrified by credit cards and computers wearying cliche"s...
...For that matter, what pondered the matter and answered, with about the prophet armed...
...necessary to make his system go...
...One would hope, howREBORN ever, that if the classic Everyman were Frederick Franck adapted for "modem man" that either Doubleday, $12.50, 187 pp...
...spite its archaisms, still one of the finest Were we really more innocent before pieces of theater in our heritage...
...I Dorothy Days-who push their moral the Berrigans on, adopt the revisionist don't believe our politics works the testimony until the politicians move...
...When - Garry Wills, Confessions windows to show her displeasure with Buckley asked about his politics, Wills of a Conservative pornography...
...One wonders why the than they are by pizza and Cadillacs...
...These surely the barriers to civil disobedience...
...What would we do without h improvement on everyone else's...
...There is, after all, no come a headlong enthusiast for civil dis- the mystery of free will and sure test for prophecy...
...Prior to their delicious guilt...
...routed me in a stupefying collection of Manchester much...
...announces: "To leaguered Wasps: "I'm White, I'm Protknow you are immersed in night/that is estant," says hypocritical EveryOne in N the first glimmering of my light...
Vol. 106 • September 1979 • No. 17
