Willmoore Kendall’s Battle Lines

Few men would confuse the late Willmoore Kendall for a Southern gentleman. The son of a blind Oklahoma Southern Methodist preacher, the conservative political philosopher married three times, and carried on numerous affairs. A regular contributor to National Review, Kendall was once caught with a copy girl in the office of a colleague in NR spaces. He was an alcoholic, and occasionally appeared inebriated during courses at Yale, where he taught for fourteen years. He was notoriously quarrelsome, not only with liberal sparring partners, but his closest conservative allies. Reid Buckley, younger brother of NR founder Bill, remembered Kendall as a man who “never lost a polemic but could not keep a friend.”