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Melvin E. "Mel" Bradford (May 8, 1934 – March 3, 1993) was a conservative political commentator and professor of literature at the University of Dallas. Bradford is seen as a leading figure of the paleoconservative wing of the conservative movement. He died just as the term ''paleoconservative'' was being coined and preferred the term traditional conservative. In his preface to ''Reactionary Imperative'', he wrote "Reaction is a necessary term in the intellectual context we inhabit in the twentieth century because merely to conserve is sometimes to perpetuate what is outrageous." Bradford's conservatism was rooted within the heritage and traditions of the American South. He studied at Vanderbilt and wrote his doctoral thesis under the Southern Agrarian and Fugitive Poet Donald Davidson〔Gordon, David (2010-04-01) (Southern Cross: The meaning of the Mel Bradford moment ), ''The American Conservative''〕 (whose biography Bradford was wrapping up at the time of his sudden death at age 58), and thus was admitted to the succession of this movement to recover the Southern tradition. Bradford was first and foremost a literary scholar and a student of rhetoric. He was known in literary circles for his work on William Faulkner, where Bradford stressed the importance of the Southern setting and the primacy of community in understanding the action of Faulkner's novels and stories. He "had no truck with critical efforts to portray Faulkner as alienated from the South. To the contrary, he saw the novelist as thoroughly embedded within his native region."〔 Outside of literature he wrote extensively on the subjects of history and culture. Bradford specialized in the history of the American founding and Southern history in the United States. Bradford also advocated the constitutional theory of strict constructionism. "The original understanding of the Constitution, Bradford maintained, conformed much more closely to the Southern position than to Lincoln's acts of usurpation."〔 Bradford also frequently wrote for ''Modern Age'', ''Chronicles magazine'' and ''Southern Partisan'' magazine. ==Biography== Bradford was born in Fort Worth, Texas and grew up there. He studied English at University of Oklahoma and completed his bachelor's and master's degrees. He then continued his education at Vanderbilt University and graduated with a Ph.D. He stayed in academia and taught at several institutions of higher education, including United States Naval Academy and University of Dallas.〔Michael M. Jordan, (Bradford, M. E. ), 03/10/10〕 In U.S. presidential elections Bradford campaigned for Barry Goldwater in 1964, George C. Wallace in 1972, Ronald Reagan in 1976 and 1980, and Pat Buchanan in 1992.〔 He was for a time the President of the Philadelphia Society.〔http://phillysoc.org/presiden.htm〕 He died in 1993 after undergoing heart surgery.〔http://www.nytimes.com/1993/03/09/obituaries/melvin-bradford-58-conservative-theorist.html?pagewanted=1?pagewanted=1〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Mel Bradford」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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