The Fourth Annual Meeting of the HL Mencken Club
Canon Wars: Rethinking the Conservative Canon
4-5 November 2011
Friday, November 4
Dinner & Banquet -
Master of Ceremonies, Richard Spencer
Postprandial Speakers
Opening Remarks - Paul Gottfried
Remembering Joe Sobran - Fran Griffin
What Should a Conservative Canon Be? - Paul Gottfried
Saturday, November 5
9:00 to 10: 30 AM - What’s Wrong with the Conservative Canon?
Moderator: Tom Piatak
The WFB Myth - Peter Brimelow
Up From Liberalism? From Anti-Communism to Democratic Globalism and GOP Drift - Paul Gottfried
Liberal Values and the Seduction of the American Right - Jim Kalb
11:00 to 12:30 PM - Lost Traditions in Foreign Affairs
Moderator: James Kurth
The Spirit of George Kennan - Lee Congdon
"Human Rights" and Endless War - Michael Desch
Carl Schmitt and the Nomos of the Earth - Keith Preston
12:30 to 2:00 - Lunch
Real Virtue: Lessons from the Ancients - E. Christian Kopff
2:00-3:30 PM - Education and Intelligence
Moderator: Byron Roth
Missing the Genetic Link - Henry Harpending
The Limits of Charter Schools - Robert Weissberg
The Impossibility of Reform - F. Roger Devlin
4:00-5:30 - The Right in a Different Key
Moderator : Paul Gottfried
Fascist Intellectuals - Stanley Payne
Spengler and the Reaction to Democratic Equality -
Thomas Bertonneau
The Other “Old Right”: The WASP Elite - Richard Spencer
7:00-9:00 - Dinner
Why Read? - John Derbyshire
Speaker Biographies
Richard Spencer, former assistant editor at The American Conservative and executive editor at Taki's Magazine (takimag.com), he is the founder and co-editor of AlternativeRight.com
Paul Gottfried, author of eight books including, After Liberalism: Mass Democracy and the Managerial State (Princeton, 1999); and Multiculturaism and the Politics of Guilt: Towards a Secular Theocracy (2002)
Fran Griffin, founder of Griffin Communications and the Fitzgerald Griffin Foundation, publisher of Shots Fired, Sam Francis on America's Culture War (2007) and an upcoming collection of essays by Joe Sobran
Tom Piatak, a contributing editor for Chronicles magazine and TakiMag.com and a regular contributor to Vdare.com.
Peter Brimelow, financial journalist, founder of Vdare.com, author of several books including Alien Nation: Common Sense about America's Immigraion Disaster (1995)
James Kalb, lawyer (J.D., Yale Law School) and author, The Tyranny of Liberalism: Understanding and Overcoming Administered Freedom, Inquisatorial Tolerance, and Equality by Command (2008)
James Kurth, The Claude Smith Professor of Political Science at Swarthmore College, widely published author on international affairs and connection between politics and religion
Lee Congdon, professor of history (emeritus), James Madison University; author of George Kennan: A Writing Life (2008), and numerous other books on central European cultural history.
Michael Desch, Associate Director of the Patterson School of Diplomacy and International Commerce and a member of the Department of Political Science at the University of Kentucky. Dr. Desch has written numerous scholarly and policy articles on international relations and national security affairs and is the author of two books: When the Third World Matters and Civilian Control of the Military.
Keith Preston, chief editor of AttacktheSystem.com, he was awarded the 2008 Chris R. Tame Memorial Prize by the United Kingdom's Libertarian Alliance for his essay, "Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy."
E. Christian Kopff, author of The Devil Knows Latin: Why Americans Need the Classical Tradition (ISI Books, 1999); Director, the Center for Western Civilization at the University of Colorado
Byron Roth, Professor Emeritus of Psychology, Dowling College and is author, most recently, of The Perils of Diversity: Immigration and Human Nature. His work has appeared in The Journal of Conflict Resolution, The Public Interest, Academic Questions, and Encounter. His books include, Decision Making: Its Logic and Practice, co-authored with John D. Mullen and Prescription for Failure: Race Relations in the Age of Social Science.
Henry Harpending, distinguished professor of anthropology and Thomas Chair at the University of Utah, and co-author of the book The 10,000 Year Explosion (2009).
Robert Weissberg, author of Pernicious Tolerance and other books; Professor of Political Science, New York University; Professor Emeritus, University of Illinois
F. Roger Devlin, independent scholar and the author of Alexandre Kojève and the Outcome of Modern Thought.
Stanley Payne, Professor Emeritus, University of Wisconsin, author of 20 books on the history of Spain and on the subject of Fascism.
Thomas Bertonneau, Visiting Professor of English at the State University of New York College, Oswego, New York. He holds a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from UCLA.
John Derbyshire, mathematician and cultural commentator will discuss his new book of the same title. He is the author of several other books including Prime Obsession: Bernhard Riemann and the Greatest Unsolved Problem in Mathematics (2003).