Richard M. Weaver: What Old Issues of National Review Can Tell Us About Rhetoric and Politics Today

Although Richard M. Weaver is well known in academic circles as a rhetorician, his cultural criticism also reveals a great deal about his political philosophy and his rhetoric. Weaver, at the height of his scholarly career, was an associate and contributor to the conservative magazine National Review from its founding in 1955 until his death in 1963. Among these contributions are essays and book reviews, many of which provide insight into Weaver's rhetorical theories, yet these writings are rarely considered by academics, which is why I believe these contributions are an ideal example of the kind of neglected texts in rhetoric that are still in need of consideration. An example of this neglect is evident in The Politics of Rhetoric: Richard M. Weaver and the Conservative Tradition by Bernard K. Duffy, which does not discuss Weaver's contributions to National Review in spite of the book being devoted to Weaver's political beliefs. I do not know if Weaver's National Review essays and book reviews have been merely overlooked or, worse, dismissed as unworthy of consideration. The cause of this intellectual indifference could be based on political ideology as Weaver himself claimed in 1957, "So successful have the Liberals been in establishing [their] dogma through education, publishing, and politics that people today are literally unable to understand the language of the conservative point of view" (8 June 1957, 543).

Whether Weaver's National Review contributions are neglected because they are in a "non-scholarly" publication or because they are in a conservative publication is hard to tell. If the problem is that National Review is not intellectual enough, Weaver might have responded to this problem with the following statement, which gives us insight into his attitude toward academicians: "The common people often perceive elemental things which the overeducated cannot see" (13 July 1957, 67). Whether readers of National Review could be considered "common people" is not as much an issue as his indictment against the "overeducated." In spite of his own place in academia, Weaver often opposed much of what was being produced by contemporary intellectuals, particularly those who favor liberal ideologies.

Although today's non-conservative readers may find some of Weaver's National Review writings objectionable, it is important not to reject his ideas because of anything that one might find questionable by today's standards. In National Review, Weaver could be blunt without worrying about what the intellectual community would think. He knew what his National Review audience wanted: solid, stalwart, unapologetic conservatism.

In the mid-1990s, there was a renewed interest in Weaver and his writings as noted in the January 1996 issue of National Review. In Ben C. Toledano's review of Richard M. Weaver, 1910-1963: A Life of the Mind by Fred Douglas Young, Toledano notes,

Apparently the time has come for an overdue appreciation of an important American thinker. Yet the timing may be right, because from Weaver we can learn how and why our culture and its moral and ethical principles deteriorated and decayed. He explains not only how we came to be "moral idiots" and "ethical eunuchs," but also what we can possibly do to improve the situation.

Terms such as "moral idiots" and "ethical eunuchs" are characteristic of Weaver's writing: blunt, outspoken and sometimes enraging. One must note that Weaver made these comments in a far more conservative time. Is it possible, then, for readers of today to be able to appreciate Weaver, let alone apply his wisdom to our circumstances? To answer this question, we must examine these writings.

One of Weaver's chief concerns is that rhetoric would be tainted by what he considered to be pseudo-intellectual philosophies. To Weaver, liberalism is the greatest threat to the world of true intellectual discourse: "most Liberals today are not real intellectuals, and their lack of real intellectualism leaves then complacent where wiser men are alert and discerning" (8 June 1957, 543). In his review of The Negro and Southern Politics, he says that in Professor William G. Carleton's introduction, "the terms of the new rhetoric emerge in all their audacity" (13 July 1957, 68). To Weaver, this "new rhetoric" is the "Liberal line." To those of us who have embraced rhetoric, both its old and its new manifestations, this can either be taken as a bristling accusation or as a statement of fact, depending on whether we consider ourselves liberal or conservative.

Sometimes Weaver's life as an English professor bleeds into his work as conservative critic. In 1956, Weaver reviewed I. A. Richards' Speculative Instruments. Weaver praises Richards' earlier works as "brilliant technical treatises" (15 February 1956, 27) and Speculative Instruments as "the distilled wisdom of a life spent in the study of expression and communication." Of course, Weaver's glowing praise of Richards is prompted by the fact that this book supports Weaver's own view of language and science: "The failure of the linguistic scientist is that he [quoting Richards] 'thinks of it as a code, and has not learned that it is an organ-the supreme organ of the mind's self-ordering growth.'" This review would probably not be very helpful to someone who really wants to know whether Richards' book offers any insight into the study of rhetoric. It may be difficult to accept this review as serious criticism rather than as mere cronyism or as an occasion for Weaver to make an argument. But this type of critique is not as problematic as it would have been in a scholarly journal. In this review, we also discover that Weaver is somewhat elitist regarding his own profession and somewhat dismissive of others: "Today quite ordinary intellects can teach most branches of science, and carry forward research on some levels. It is otherwise with literature and philosophy." Weaver's assaults against science are common in all of his writings, and those found in National Review are no exception.

Toledano remarks that the "central overriding theme to be found in all of Weaver's writings [is] his belief that the worship of science, equality, materialism, and self has caused 'the loss of those things which are essential to the life of civility and culture'" (64). Those who are familiar with his essay "Language Is Sermonic" are aware of Weaver's opposition to General Semanticism because, Weaver believes, making language study a scientific endeavor will "strip words of all meaning" (qtd. in Johannesen 308) and, therefore, make language value-free and, therefore, value-less.

Weaver's greatest indictment against science is really not against science itself, but against what he perceives as non-scientific disciplines passing themselves off as science and against the purveyors of this phony science who must abuse language to achieve their suspect results. In Weaver's review of Stuart Chase's The Proper Study of Mankind, he accuses Chase of "tossing everything [specifically, kinds of knowledge and how knowledge can be obtained] into a hopper called 'the scientific method'" (9 May 1956, 20). Furthermore, he claims that "Many social scientists . . . seem to think that they can make theirs and exact science by expressing their thoughts in the form of grating neologisms" (my italics) and that "Too often the discoveries of 'the science of human relations' are but new phrases, murkier than the ones they are intended to supplant." Weaver's assertion that much scientific production amounts to little more than disguising old knowledge in new terminology or rhetoric is equivalent to his suggesting that they are just making things up.

Weaver's charges against scientism sound like a call to arms against a liberal conspiracy and Weaver would probably not argue against this charge. One outgrowth of scientism that Weaver vehemently attacks is Semaniticism. To Weaver, Semanticism is a useful tactic for liberals to escape the attacks of conservatives by confounding the public into believing that they, the liberals, are non-threatening or no different from conservatives: "it is this carbon-copy Liberalism of the 'new Republican' leadership which has lead candid observers to point out that the American people today do not have a real choice on the major issues confronting them" (8 June 1957, 543). Although Pennsylvania Senator Joseph S. Clark claims he "dismiss[es] semantics" when he defines a Liberal as "one who believes in utilizing the full force of government for the advancement of social, political, and economic justice . . .," Weaver cites this as an ideal example of misusing semantics to redefine a term that originally meant something else. Weaver argues that Senator Clark's definition of a Liberal is that which "nineteenth-century Liberals were, in the name of liberty, most opposed. (The confusion at which Mr. Clark hints is not one of semantics, but one of historical about-face.)" (8 June 1957, 541).

Certainly not everything Weaver wrote is palatable to today's audiences. His views on race relations reflect a time when true equality among the races seemed a near impossibility and efforts to create such a climate were often perceived as imposing on everyone else's rights. When Weaver says "'Integration' and 'Communization' are, after all, pretty closely synonymous" (13 July 1957, 68) the reader should be aware that he is associating what was then commonly accepted as a "devil term," communism, with a less objectionable concept, integration. To many modern readers, Weaver would appear to be a racist, yet the prevailing conservative view of the time opposed any and all government interference no matter how noble and good the objective may seem.

Although some of Weaver's conservative rhetoric may be unappealing to many present-day thinkers, others would find his unwavering beliefs and straightforward approach refreshing. It's easy to know what Weaver thinks because he plainly says so. Certainly, many of his ideas are still relevant today; for example, many Americans still have trouble telling the difference between liberal and conservative ideologies. Whether one group is more to blame for this problem than the other is another matter.

Weaver's own words should serve as a warding to anyone who would formulate an opinion of him without intense study. In his review of what was probably a piece of pop-culture psychobabble, Weaver reminds us that "a group of random observations does not constitute a philosophy" (7 March 1957, 29).Those who are interested in Weaver as a rhetorician should examine all his writing and ideas regardless of their source.