As a follow-up to yesterday’s post about the DNC, here’s a style tribute to collar-pin devotee Adlai Stevenson, onetime Democratic presidential hopeful.
In 1952, Richard Nixon called him an egghead (a pejorative term for an intellectual, for younger readers unfamiliar with the term). His baldness may have also had something to do with it, which makes Nixon a bald-shamer and hirsutist. Typical Republican…
Stevenson was also famous for sporting the notorious “Boston cracked shoe.” Check out this 2010 Ivy Style post by contributor Bill Stephenson and read all about it. — CC
Adlai Stevenson is showing one of the many freedoms enjoyed by all men before the internet was invented, the freedom to button one’s jacket buttons whatever way one wanted.
Men Of The World, restore your former freedoms and ignore the silly twits who make up “rules” and post them online.
It’s your jacket. You worked to make the money to buy the jacket. Fully exercise your property rights.
Well said!
Funny how the democratic nature of the Internet inevitably leads to tyranny.
As Peter Thiel once noted, democracy leads to tyranny.
We Need Adlai Badly in the crapper vs.I Like Ike.
Adlai was such a great dresser; much better than JFK. Never stood a chance against Ike.
Can anyone tell what is printed on his tie in the penultimate image? Looks like reindeer to me, could be wrong.
Last picture–compare/contrast Hope’s suit with Stevenson’s.
Adlai Stevenson, II was far more than a good, ivy-style dresser and egghead. He also wasn’t “a commie,” as one misinformed commentator stupidly said in an earlier post. In fact, if you have been living in the US or were born here before or after October 1962, you might just say you owe your and your loved ones’ lives to Stevenson.
While ambassador to the UN, Stevenson stood up to Zorin (that’s the then Russian ambassador, a real “commie”) in an emergency session of the Security Council during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He assertively pointed out that the USSR had placed armed nuclear missiles on Cuba. Zorin tried to avoid answering Stevenson’s question, and Stevenson declared he was ready to wait for “…my answer until Hell freezes over,” showing areal photographs of the missile installation. It gave the US the moral authority to act with purpose and determination in a highly uncertain time. Most people involved in the crisis believed a nuclear war between the USSR and USA was imminent.
Stevenson also suggested to President Kennedy and his National Security Council that the US offer to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey in exchange for Russia removing the offensive missiles from Cuba. Stevenson’s idea was initially dismissed as too weak, but later became the foundation of the back channel deal struck between Kennedy and Khruchev. In a very real sense we owe a lot to Stevenson, so let’s not cast ridiculous aspersions like he’s “a commie” on his memory.
Interesting to see that as far back as 1952 conservatives were already pandering to the “poorly educated.” Not much has changed with Trump, even though it’s clear that conservatives are the actual elitist pricks.
Objectivist Trad, it was the ancient Greeks who made that observation (Plato, if I’m not mistaken, wrote about it).
Either way, I think it’s clear we need less democracy in this country. The founders instituted measures to prevent the masses from running amok, yet look at what has happened since suffrage expanded. The past 8 years of socialist tyranny being the apex. We should probably reinstate literacy tests.
@DD – ah, yes. Buckley, Burnham, Kirk, Kindall, Meyer, Chambers – all so poorly, poorly educated.
DD – Why do you call yourself Dinesh D’Souza? You certainly don’t sound like him. Whatever one’s opinion may be of Mr. D’Souza, or his may be of Mr.Trump, it his hard to imagine him expressing himself that way. Or perhaps you were simply thinking of Acts 26:15 (KJV).
Sorry. Should have been 26:14. Homer nods and all that.
Dinesh D’Souza does have quite the persecution complex. He acts like he was the first person ever to be punished for money laundering, despite his relatively generous plea deal.
There is such a thing as a conservative intellectual tradition (Thanks, George Nash), but just barely. There’s a good case to be made that the original sources usually cited as inspiration (Aristotle, Aquinas, Augustine, Burke, Smith) are misinterpreted and misused. The same is true of the (far too frequently cited) Hayek. It’s sadly predictable–how far into a debate a “conservative intellectual” will begin quoting Friedman and referencing the lovely nuances of the Laffer Curve. Typically less than a minute. As the progressive counters with Keynes and Galbraith and Krugman, the debate spirals downward.
What we’re seeing nowadays is the culmination of decades of fragmentation: the libertarians, NeoCons, Conservative Evangelicals, and PaleoCons finally figured out how little they have in common. The modern-day GOP, like the Democratic Party, is a stew of interests that only occasionally overlap and frequently counteract one another. In other words: a mess. That sound way off in the distance–that’s the laughter of the Founding Fathers from beyond. This is the republic they gave us. A mess.
Mr. Mouse – I’ve no brief for (the real) Dinesh D’Souza, but at least your current nom de blog seems to fits better. As for Stevenson, here is a nice “cracked shoe” pic I had not seen before. Anybody can have a hole in one sole, but our man goes all the way. http://www.gettyimages.com/pictures/state-sen-frank-l-gill-of-hillrose-proves-that-adlai-news-photo-161999858 .
S.E.
1.
Edmund Burke is the Father of Conservatism, and our modern commentator on Burke is R. Kirk, resolved.
2.
F.A. Hayek is our Economic North Star and connector to Classical Liberalism/Mises/Austrian School but was not a true reactionary conservative. http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/articles/hayek-why-i-am-not-conservative.pdf
3.
Friedman was Ronnie’s Svengali for trickle down & monetarism and over cited as our economic North Star because he was seen as the Capitalist counterpoint to Keynes.
4.
Libertarian thought is the antipodes of true conservatism but various principles are often conflated with conservatism. Kirk and WFB often disagreed on the primacy of the individual over the community. The pervasiveness of individualism is one of the core reasons why our primaries are so crowded.
The same can be said about Liberals as well; their tapestry is equally mottled: Progressives, Clintonian moderates, Environmentalists, Socialists, Minority caucuses etc. Liberalism is an ideology while Conservatism is a philosophy. Calling us anti-intellectual doesn’t do justice to those who codified and shaped what we call conservatism today.
Or “barely” intellectual
O rly? I thought the Clintons were racist radicals, all liberals had battered wife syndrome, the problem with liberals was that they believe in the primacy of the community over the individual, the other problem with liberals was that they are against ideology, and that WFB was a “libertarian journalist” who would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the phonebook than 2000 members of the Harvard faculty.
@Mouse
If only Washington would leave us all alone we would all be infinitely more happy and free.
Will
@mouse liberals believe in the primacy of the state.
@ Wifebeater Will
That would be nice, wouldn’t it. Sadly, we have to live in the real world where you don’t get everything you want.
@Mouse
Again, it seems we are in agreement about wanting a laissez-fair approach to government. You are coming along nicely. If only we could elect the proper people who feel the same we may get more of what we want in the real world.
beastly hot today. White oxford, old Duck Heads starched and cuffed, dilapidated weejuns and navy blue tie with Scottish seal from Trimminghams in Bermuda-thrift store find.
“Ronnie’s Svengali for trickle down”
Sounds like an Indie rock band.
Another great collar pin aficionado was Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Republican of course.
My fifth grade teacher said we should tell out parents to vote for Mr. Stevenson because “Ike wasn’t very smart.” My father, who fought in WWII, was ballistic when I told him this; he reminded me that Ike had orchestrated the most complex, amphibious assault ever executed in history … and he did that while leading all the Allied forces. Stevenson was a likeable, articulate Princeton grad who could charm the media (and his fellow Democrats), but who lacked the qualities of leadership.
I’d compiled some images of Lodge recently; can’t remember what instigated the search. Stay tuned.
An eloquent, principled, liberal intellectual.
@Wifebeater Will
I’m glad to see that you have changed your tune and you are now a pragmatic, non-ideological center-leftist like myself and Mr. Stevenson. Perhaps you are moving beyond your vulgar lower middle class values and will even stop raping your wife with a peanut butter jar.
@Mouse
You are a vile person and I feel sorry for you.
Will
I was active in YAF and the conservative Nation at the time and I am pretty sure Buckley’s comment was the first 400 names in the Boston phone book rather than 400 faculty at Harvard.
Objectivist Trad wrote:
“Either way, I think it’s clear we need less democracy in this country. The founders instituted measures to prevent the masses from running amok, yet look at what has happened since suffrage expanded.”
Hear, hear! We are well on the way to the tyranny that inevitably follows democracy.
As for limiting the franchise, I present this and this for your perusal. They are discussions of a hypothetical nature, not a call for a specific course of action.
Somehow, my second link went awry. It’s supposed to be this.
As Jackie Kennedy now famously said, “I always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai.”