Mel Bradford
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Melvin E. "Mel" Bradford was a conservative political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas.
Bradford is seen as a leading figure of the paleoconservative wing of the conservative movement. He died just as the term paleo-conservative was being coined and preferred the term traditional conservative. In his preface to Reactionary Imperative he wrote "Reaction is a necessary term in the intellectual context we inhabit in the twentieth century because merely to conserve is sometime to perpetuate what is outrageous."
Bradford's conservativism was rooted within the heritage and traditions of the American South. Although from the Southwest, he saw himself as part of the greater Southern cultural milieu. He wrote his doctoral thesis under the Southern Agrarian and Fugitive Poets Donnald Davidson, and thus was admitted to the succession of this movement to recover the Southern tradition.
He was first and foremost a literary scholar and a student of rhetoric. He was known in literary circles for his work on William Faulkner, where Bradford stressed the importance of the Southern setting and the primacy of community in understanding the action of the novels and stories. Outside of literature he wrote extensively on the subjects of history, literature, and culture. Bradford specialized in the history of the American founding and Southern history in the United States. Bradford also advocated the constitutional theory of strict constructionism.
Bradford also frequently wrote for Chronicles magazine and Southern Partisan magazine.
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[edit] NEH Nomination
In 1980, Bradford was initially tapped by President-elect Ronald Reagan for chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. The selection met with intense objections from neo-conservative figures, centering primarily on Bradford's criticisms of President Abraham Lincoln. They circulated quotes of Bradford calling Lincoln "a dangerous man," and saying, "The image of Lincoln rose to be very dark" and "indeed almost sinister."[1] Their choice, William Bennett replaced him on November 13, 1981.[2]
A letter supporting Bradford’s nomination, sent to President Reagan during the controversy, was signed by John East, Jesse Helms, John Tower, Strom Thurmond, Orrin Hatch, Jeremiah Denton, Dan Quayle and James McClure and eight other Republican senators. "Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, Bill Buckley, Gerhart Neimeyer, M. Stanton Evans, Andrew Lytle, Harry Jaffa, and dozens of others” were also named as supporters.[3] Irving Kristol, Michael Joyce and William Simon were among Bennett's supporters.[4] Over two decades after the fact, the rift over Bradford's NEH nomination continues to be a major point of contention between paleo- and neo-conservatives.
[edit] Bibliography
- A Better Guide than Reason: Studies in the American Revolution (1979)
- Worthy Company: Brief Lives of the Framers of the Constitution (1982)
- Remembering Who We Are: Observations of a Southern Conservative (1985)
- The Reactionary Imperative: Essays Literary and Political (1989)
- From Eden to Babylon : The Social and Political Essays of Andrew Nelson Lytle (1990)
- Religion and the Framers: Biographical Evidence (1991)
- Original Intentions: On the making and ratification of the Constitution (1993)
[edit] Sources
- A Defender of Southern Conservatism: M.E. Bradford and his Achievements (1999) by Clyde N. Wilson (ISBN 0-8262-1208-5)
- "Culture Clash on the Right" by David Frum, Wall Street Journal June 2, 1989
