Religion, Politics, and the American Tradition of Freedom (1995)

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Medford Stanton Evans (born July 20, 1934) is an American journalist, author and educator. He is the author of eight books, including Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies (2007). As an undergraduate, Evans was an editor for the Yale Daily News.[5] It was at Yale that he read One Is a Crowd by Frank Chodorov. In The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945, George H. Nash writes: " It was the first libertarian book he [Evans] had ever read, and [he said] it 'opened up more intellectual perspectives to me than did the whole Yale curriculum.' Evans came to believe that Chodorov 'probably had more to do with the conscious shaping of my political philosophy than any other person.'[6] " Upon graduation, Evans became assistant editor of The Freeman, where Chodorov was editor.[7] The following year, he joined the staff of William F. Buckley's fledgling National Review (where he served as associate editor from 1960 to 1973)[8] and became managing editor of Human Events, where he is currently a contributing editor.[9] He became a proponent of National Review co-editor Frank Meyer's "fusionism," a political philosophy reconciling the traditionalist and libertarian tendencies of the conservative movement.[10] Evans argued that freedom and virtue are not antagonistic, but complementary: " The idea that there is some sort of huge conflict between religious values and liberty is a misstatement of the whole problem. The two are inseparable.... [I]f there are no moral axioms, why should there be any freedom?[11] The con­servative believes that ours is a God-centered, and therefore an ordered, uni­verse; that man's purpose is to shape his life to the patterns of order proceeding from the Divine center of life; and that, in seeking this objective, man is hampered by a fallible intellect and vagrant will. Properly construed, this view is not only compatible with a due regard for human freedom, but demands it.[12] " In 1959, Evans became head editorial writer of The Indianapolis News,[8] rising to editor the following year—at 26, the nation's youngest editor of a metropolitan daily newspaper[3]—a position he held until 1974.[8] In 1971, Evans became a commentator for the CBS Television and Radio Networks, and in 1980 became a commentator for National Public Radio, the Voice of America, Radio America and WGMS-FM in Washington, D.C.[13] In 1974, he became a nationally syndicated columnist for the Los Angeles Times syndicate.[8] Barry Goldwater wrote that Evans "writes with the strength and conviction and authority of experience."[14] In a 1975 radio address, Ronald Reagan cited Evans as "a very fine journalist."[15] In 1977, Evans founded the National Journalism Center, where he served as director until 2002. In 1980, he became an adjunct professor of journalism at Troy University in Troy, Alabama,[16] where he currently holds the Buchanan Chair of Journalism.[17] In 1981-2002, he was publisher of Consumers' Research magazine. Evans expressed his journalistic philosophy as follows: " I don't think that the way to correct a spin from the left is to try to impart a spin from the right.... [A]n information flow distorted from the right would be just as much a disservice as distortion from the left. What we really should be after... is accurate information. And I don't see what any conservative or anybody else for that matter has to fear from accurate information.[18] Evans was present at Great Elm, the family home of William F. Buckley in Sharon, Connecticut, at the founding of Young Americans for Freedom,[19] where on September 11, 1960, he drafted YAF's charter, the Sharon Statement.[20] Some conservatives still revere this document as a concise statement of their principles.[21] In 1971-1977, Evans served as chairman of the American Conservative Union (ACU).[22] He was one of the first conservatives to denounce Richard Nixon, just a year into his first term and long before Watergate, co-writing a January 1970 ACU report condemning his record. Under Evans' leadership, the ACU issued a July 1971 statement concluding, "the American Conservative Union has resolved to suspend our support of the Administration." In June 1975, ACU called upon Ronald Reagan to challenge incumbent Gerald Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination.[23] In June 1982, Evans and others met with President Reagan,[24] warning him about White House staff who thought they could make a deal with the Democratic Congress. (Reagan subsequently made such a deal, in which for each $1 in higher taxes Congress promised $3 in spending cuts; Reagan delivered the tax hike, but Congress reneged, actually increasing spending.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._Stanton_Evans