George Nash, Author

Introduction of M. Stanton Evans

The Philadelphia Society National Meeting, 

Chicago, Illinois, April 28, 2000 

When the board of trustees of the Philadelphia Society decided last year on a theme for this year's annual meeting, our choice was not a difficult one. With a new millennium approaching, the time seemed ripe for the society to reexamine its intellectual foundations in a spirit partly celebratory and partly introspective. 

In the year that has elapsed since the board's decision, our topic has acquired a timeliness bordering on urgency. We gather this weekend, it is safe to say, with a mixture of sentiments ranging from cautious millennial triumphalism to decidedly premillennial pessimism and (in some quarters) near-despair. Where, at the dawn of a new millennium, is the conservative intellectual movement going? To borrow the words of our society's president, are we entering a "period of seasoned maturity" or are we "getting a little lame"? Some among us point optimistically to conservatism's robust infrastructure and hopeful prospects for the coming elections. Others cite less promising cultural indicators, while a few on the Right assert that the conservative movement as we have known it is dead. 

Surely it is an appropriate time for the Philadelphia Society to undertake an appraisal of its own. In the next two days we propose to do just that. How firm are conservatism's intellectual foundations in the post-Cold War, post-Reagan era? How are we faring in the struggle to limit the Leviathan state? What has the conservative community's growing immersion in politics and governance since1980 taught us? And how can custodians of the “permanent things” translate our convictions into meaningful cultural reclamation and renewal?  These are some of the questions we shall address this weekend. 

To initiate our deliberations, and to provide a historical perspective forged in personal experience, we are honored this evening to have as our keynote speaker, M. Stanton Evans. As many of you know, Stan Evans is a veteran conservative advocate whose career has been nearly coterminous with the conservative intellectual movement itself. He graduated from Yale University, Phi Beta Kappa, in 1955. Since then he has worked effectively and unremittingly for the conservative cause that has defined his life. 

Stan Evans's first big break in conservative showbiz came in 1960, when the conservative newspaper magnate Eugene Pulliam selected him to be editor-in-chief of the Indianapolis News at the age of only 26. By that stroke Stan became the youngest editor of a metropolitan daily paper in the United States.  Mr. Pulliam's decision was no act of impetuosity. When Stan took the helm at the Indianapolis News, it had not had an editor for twelve years!  Said Mr. Pulliam of young Evans, “I’ve been looking for years to find a man like him. I've combed the whole...country. There are lots of good journalists around, but they're all cock-eyed left-wingers." 

Stan Evans was no cock-eyed left-winger. When questioned by Time magazine about his political views, the newly appointed editor of the Indianapolis News replied:  “I think my philosophy is pretty close to the farmer in Seymour, Indiana. He believes in God. He believes in the U.S. He believes in himself. This intuitive position is much closer to wisdom than the tortured theorems of some of our Harvard dons.” 

If Stan Evans was precocious, he has also proved tenacious.  In the four decades since he thus summarized his philosophy for Time magazine, he has expounded it in a multitude of forums. He has been a newspaper editor, a syndicated columnist, and a professor of journalism. He has been a television and radio commentator and even managed to infiltrate National Public Radio as a commentator in the early 1980s. He is the author of seven books, including, most recently, The Theme Is Freedom. He is the founder and director of the National Journalism Center in Washington D.C.  as well as a contributing editor of Human Events. He is a charter member of the Philadelphia Society and served with distinction as its president in 1996, 1997, and 1998.   If there is anyone among us tonight who claim to have been a representative voice of intellectual conservatism since the 1950s, it is he.  Ladies and gentlemen, it is with pleasure that I present to you our stalwart friend, Stan Evans.