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Article: The consequences of Richard Weaver.
- Article from:
- New Criterion
- Article date:
- September 1, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Foundation for Cultural Review. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The past shows unvaryingly that when a people's freedom disappears, it goes not with a bang, but in silence amid the comfort of being cared for. That is the dire peril in the present trend toward statism. If freedom is not found accompanied by a willingness to resist, and to reject favors, rather than to give up what is intangible but precarious, it will not long be found at all.
--Richard Weaver, 1962
In the great pantheon of half-forgotten conservative sages, the southern writer Richard M. Weaver (1910-1963) occupies an important, if curious, niche. I say "writer" but that is an imprecise designation. By trade, Weaver was a professor of rhetoric. He is ...