Rick Farmer
Christopher Owen tells Willmoore 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. In our time when populist ideals are on the rise, this book is required reading to understand what it means to be conservative.
Heaven Can Indeed Fall: The Life of Willmoore Kendall (264 pages, Lexington Books, 2021)
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.
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 quotation: “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, » Read More
https://theimaginativeconservative.org/2025/01/heaven-can-indeed-fall-willmoore-kendall-rick-farmer.html