Anyone could be forgiven for not knowing much about Peter Viereck. The eccentric historian and poet was one of the first mid-century thinkers to robustly embrace the “conservative” label, but he fell out of favor with movement conservatives and has been largely forgotten. John Wilsey thinks that’s a mistake. He joins Law & Liberty‘s editor, John Grove, to talk about Viereck and his unique conservative manner of approaching the challenges of modern life.

Related Links

John Wilsey, “Peter Viereck’s Unadjusted Conservatism,” Law & Liberty
Peter Viereck, Conservatism: From John Adams to Winston Churchill
Peter Viereck, Conservatism Revisited
Peter Viereck, Unadjusted Man in the Age of Overadjustment
John Wilsey, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer (pre-order)
Claes Ryn, “Peter Viereck: Traditionalist Libertarian?” Law & Liberty
Robert Lacey, Pragmatic Conservatism

Transcript

James Patterson:

Welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast. I’m your host, James Patterson. Law & Liberty is an online magazine featuring serious commentary on law, policy, books, and culture, and formed by a commitment to a society of free and responsible people living under the rule of law. Law & Liberty and this podcast are published by Liberty Fund.

John Grove:

Hello and welcome to the Law & Liberty Podcast. I’m John Grove, the editor of Law & Liberty. And I’m filling in today for regular host, James Patterson. Today I’m joined by Dr. John Wilsey. John Wilsey is Professor of Church History and Philosophy and Chair of the Department of Church History and Historical Theology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He also serves as the book review editor of the Southern Baptist Journal of Theology. He’s the author of several books, including American Exceptionalism and Civil Religion: Reassessing the History of An Idea. Also God’s Cold Warrior: The Life and Faith of John Foster Dulles. And coming this April, Religious Freedom: A Conservative Primer. Last May, he contributed a piece to Law & Liberty called “Peter Viereck’s Unadjusted Conservatism,” which we will link to in the show notes. And I thought we would talk a little bit more about Viereck, who is a very interesting and unique kind of conservative. So John Wilsey, thanks for joining us.

John Wilsey:

Thanks, John, for having me. It’s great to be with you.

John Grove:

All right, so first, why don’t you tell us a little bit about Viereck, his background, his career, his influence, or maybe lack thereof, influence such as it was, and a little bit about his personality because he had a bit of a unique personality?

John Wilsey:

Yeah, he was a fascinating person. He was born in 1916, and he died in 2006. So he lived … I don’t think he made it to 90. I think he made it to 89. So he lived a long life. He was one of the first in the new conservatism movement of the postwar period. He wrote a piece for … Oh, I think it was The Atlantic. I have it somewhere. It was a piece for … I think it was the Atlantic Monthly. I could be wrong about that, but he wrote it in 1941. He was just a young man, and he said … The title of the piece was “But … I’m a Conservative.” And as you know, back in those days, he observed that the word conservative was not a term that a lot of people used to describe themselves. In fact, the term conservative was a term that was received a lot like, people might say, reactionary today.

It wasn’t a really positive term, it was kind of a negative term, but he embraced the term. And Klaus Wren, I believe, gave him the credit for sort of reinvigorating the term conservative and popularizing it so that people use it and they’ve used it for a long time since the fifties, since certainly The Conservative Mind came out in 1953. But Peter Viereck was apparently one of the very first to identify himself proudly as a conservative in the post-war conservative movement. He was a historian. He got his PhD in history from Harvard, and he wrote his dissertation on an intellectual history of Nazism.

His dissertation was published under the title of “Metapolitics.” He dedicated the work to his brother, who he says on the front matter, he says, “To my brother, who died fighting the Nazis.” So, a fascinating situation there. His brother went into the army and fought and was killed in Italy during the war. His father, George, had a really interesting background as well. George had been a pro-German figure. He lived in America, but he was very pro-German. During World War I, he was sort of a partisan for the Kaiser during World War I and during America’s involvement in World War I. And then, in the rise of Hitler, he became an apologist for Hitler and for fascism and was an unapologetic fascist all the way through the thirties and the forties, despite the fact that both of his sons had joined the army.

Peter joined the Army as well, but he never saw any combat. So, the father was actually imprisoned. I can’t remember exactly what the circumstances were, but he was imprisoned for his Nazi sympathy during World War II and suffered a great deal of disgrace in regards to that. The two were also estranged. Didn’t speak to each other for several years-

John Grove:

Can imagine.

John Wilsey:

Over this, but they did have a reconciliation. For years, Peter tried to get his father to read his doctoral dissertation, Metapolitics, and his father refused to read it, but at the end of his life, he finally did consent to reading it when he was quite old and declining in health. And he read the book … And this is all a story that Klaus Wren relates that after he read the book, he said, “Peter, you were right.”

John Grove:

Wow.

John Wilsey:

So George, the father, not only did he reconcile with his son, but he also recognized how wrong he was.

John Grove:

Well, there’s influence for you.

John Wilsey:

Yeah. Oh gosh. It’s incredible. I wish I could have such influence over my children.

John Grove:

Right.

John Wilsey:

Anyway, so his family background is quite compelling, but as I say, he was born in 1916 and died in 2006. He was a historian. He was a specialist in Russian history and also wrote on fascism. He was a continental European historian, and he taught for many years. I think he taught for just under 50 years as a full-time professor. But then he stayed and continued to teach classes at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. I think he taught for a year or two at Harvard as well when he first started teaching. But he taught the bulk of his career at Mount Holyoke. And there are really interesting stories about him at Mount Holyoke. I have two sources. One is Lisa Bradford who teaches at Seattle Pacific University. She is working on a biography of Viereck, has been working on it for quite a few years now. And she was really helpful in my research on Viereck. And then also my own freshman advisor from my undergraduate days, Marion Strobel, who took him for several classes when she was an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke.

My professor, Dr. Strobel, had him in the sixties, and then Lisa had him in the eighties. And listening to them tell stories about him as a professor was fascinating. I also got to talk to George Nash a little bit about him. George Nash was friends with Peter Viereck and George Nash has interesting insights on him as well.

John Grove:

What are some of those eccentricities as a professor because you’ve told me about these in the past?

John Wilsey:

Yeah, they were funny. And you just try to think about, “Could a professor survive today?” I don’t think he could. Okay, so he enjoyed climbing the trees on campus and the students would walk past and see Professor Viereck sitting up in a tree. He was late to class. Every time class met he was late. He was always about 15 minutes late and classes were 50 minutes to an hour or something like that. So he didn’t come for block classes. Sometimes I’m 15 minutes late to my class, but I have a three-hour class. When you have an hour class, it’s a little bit different, but he was always late. He never gave any feedback when he graded papers. He never returned any papers. Found out that-

John Grove:

You don’t get that today.

John Wilsey:

Yeah, yeah. They’ll get you on that one. You would find out how you did in the class when you got your report card at the end of the semester.

John Grove:

Yeah. I actually had a high school algebra teacher that was kind of like that, but fortunately for me, your grade was always higher than you actually deserved.

John Wilsey:

Yeah, yeah.

John Grove:

Which is probably how he got away with it.

John Wilsey:

Yeah, right. That’s exactly right. What else?