As a student at Yale University, William F. Buckley, Jr., loved the teaching and thought of Professor Willmoore Kendall, Jr., who became one of Buckley’s mentors. When Buckley started National Review, Kendall was one of his founding partners.

Christopher H. Owen, Emeritus Professor of History at Northeastern State University in Tahlequah, has written an illuminating work entitled Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall (Lexington Books, 2021). Heaven in this case is domestic tranquility. The book has become a textbook for OCPA’s J. Rufus Fears Fellowship. 

Kendall’s story illustrates a thought journey that many Oklahomans experience. The Fears Fellowship guides young leaders through their own discovery of what it means to be conservative. To that end, Fears Fellows are provided an autographed copy of Dr. Owen’s book and he speaks to each Fears cohort.

In those early Yale years, Kendall’s political philosophy was not what we now know as Reagan conservatism, nor was Buckley’s. Kendall was in a populist phase of thinking during those years. This influence can be seen in Buckley’s famous quote: “I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.”

Growing up in rural Oklahoma in the 1920s, Kendall’s story in some ways parallels Oklahoma’s story. Oklahoma was rancorous in its early days, and it has undergone major political transformations over its 100-plus years. Kendall had a very colorful past and, over the course of his career, his political thought evolved from socialism to populism to constitutionalism. He was an Oklahoma original.

Kendall was born in 1909 in Konawa, Oklahoma. His father was a Methodist minister. As was the Methodist custom of the day, the family moved around rural Oklahoma several times while Kendall was young. In the 1910s and 1920s, a rural populist-style socialism was prominent in Oklahoma. Kendall’s father was blind, socially compassionate, and preaching in rural Oklahoma. Many populist-socialistic ideals resonated with Rev. Kendall and with his son.

Young Willmoore was a child prodigy. He graduated from Mangum High School at age 13 and was recruited to attend Northwestern University in Chicago. But Kendall’s path to greatness was not a direct upward trajectory. He was not mature enough for college and he returned home to Oklahoma after a semester. He began working as a reporter at the Tulsa Tribune. After two years at the University of Tulsa, he finished his undergraduate degree at the University of Oklahoma and returned to Northwestern for a master's degree in Romance Languages. He was 19.

During this youthful period of his life, Kendall was fascinated by the equity claims found in socialism. More importantly, he saw socialism as the voice of the common man. His focus was on socialism as a populist movement. 

In 1932 he became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford. His studies and his desire for majoritarian rule led him to a unique analytical framework that critiqued both Marxism and classical liberalism. Because of his unique thought and a circuitous career path, he did not complete his Ph.D. until 1940.

After Oxford, Kendall worked in Spain for United Press International. There he gravitated even further left and at one point called himself a communist. In 1937 he began teaching at Louisiana State University. There he became more focused on majority rule. In 1942 he was hired by the CIA to write anti-Axis propaganda in Central America. He became a staunch anti-communist. 

By his early 30s, Kendall had studied at Northwestern, Oxford, and the University of Illinois. He had taught at LSU. He had been a writer for the Tulsa Tribune, the UPI, and the CIA. He had flirted with communism because of its appeal to the common man but he rejected it and became a strong advocate for majority-rule populism.

His contrarian personality and his hard-living lifestyle often resulted in conflict with those close to him.  This included his family, his liberal academic colleagues, and his fellow conservatives. 

Yale hired Kendall with tenure in 1947. His majoritarian ideals never meshed with those of his colleagues in the political science department. Their relationship was always conflictual.   

Kendall took several leaves from Yale. One was in 1950 when he worked for the U.S. Army’s psychological operations writing anti-communist Cold War propaganda. Another was to teach at Stanford. 

While preparing lectures at Stanford, Kendall recognized that James Madison did not oppose majority rule; rather, he was trying to prevent majority tyranny. This led Kendall to become a strong supporter of representative democracy.

Kendall came to focus more and more on Congress as the best expression of majority will. He preferred consensus over bare majorities, and he felt the deliberation of local representatives was the best way to achieve it. He was concerned about a popularly elected President being too powerful. And, by the early 1960s, he was convinced the Supreme Court had overstepped and was making new law every week.  Congress was where the people’s will was expressed and the people should rule. 

Owen observes, “Many have noted that Kendall’s ideas are often at odds with the best-known strains of conservatism. Kendall was not a neocon, not a theocon, not a paleocon, not a country-club Republican, not a states’ rights advocate, not a libertarian.” However, “Seeing Kendall both as a populist and a conservative makes much of his quirkiness disappear.”

Unfortunately, Kendall’s health failed and he died in 1967 at the age of 58. He ended his career at the University of Dallas, where he founded and led the Department of Politics and Economics.

Kendall’s relationship with Bill Buckley was also contentious. Buckley’s ideals and his brand of conservatism at National Review evolved over the years. Kendall’s ideals also evolved, but not at the same pace nor always in the same direction. They remained friends, even after some fiery exchanges.  But in 1963 Kendall demanded that Buckley remove him from the publication's masthead.

Perhaps Oklahoma’s most colorful political scientist, Willmoore Kendall, Jr. was a hard-living, hard-drinking, heavy-smoking, ladies’ man. His political philosophy evolved from socialism to majoritarian populism to Madisonian constitutionalism. He was a brilliant child prodigy, a beloved professor, a flawed human being, and a patriot. His career was cut short when his lifestyle caught up with him. 

Owen tells Kendall’s story in an interesting way that keeps the reader’s attention while conveying Kendall’s struggles that led to his evolution of thought and conservative philosophy. The value of Kendall for OCPA’s Fears Fellowship is in understanding how his focus on the populist ideal of majority rule led him from socialism to constitutional patriotism. It is the story of Oklahoma and many Oklahomans. In our time when populist ideals are on the rise, this book is required reading to understand what it means to be conservative in Oklahoma.

[Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons]