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Walter Donway

Goodreads Author

Born

in Worcester, Massachusetts, The United States

Website

https://www.facebook.com/RomanticRevolutionBook...

Twitter

WalterDonway

Genre

Fiction, Memoir, Nonfiction

Member Since

December 2012

URL

https://www.goodreads.com/romanticrevolutionbooks

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In 1998, famous "New York Times" political columnist and expert commentator on language, William Safire, then also a Dana Foundation trustee, tapped Walter Donway to create and edit "Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science"—now in its 19th year. Safire explained to the Foundation’s financial vice president, Burton Mirksy, “He’s a wordsmith.” And then, in typical Safire fashion, cracked, “And he’s also a Right-winger!”

Far more than a “Right-winger,” he was a genuine intellectual drawn to the powerful philosophical revolution launched by Ayn Rand with her novel, "Atlas Shrugged," and a dozen books on epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, politics, and esthetics that followed until her death in 1982.

Her philosophy of “Objectivism,
In 1998, famous "New York Times" political columnist and expert commentator on language, William Safire, then also a Dana Foundation trustee, tapped Walter Donway to create and edit "Cerebrum: The Dana Forum on Brain Science"—now in its 19th year. Safire explained to the Foundation’s financial vice president, Burton Mirksy, “He’s a wordsmith.” And then, in typical Safire fashion, cracked, “And he’s also a Right-winger!”

Far more than a “Right-winger,” he was a genuine intellectual drawn to the powerful philosophical revolution launched by Ayn Rand with her novel, "Atlas Shrugged," and a dozen books on epistemology (the theory of knowledge), ethics, politics, and esthetics that followed until her death in 1982.

Her philosophy of “Objectivism,” primarily a historic defense of reason, individualism, and laissez faire capitalism, brought into existence the modern libertarian movement and Libertarian Party politics. Rand herself had no patience with any libertarian politics not rooted in the fundamentals of philosophy, including the relationship between reason, inalienable individual rights, and capitalism.

Few Presidential candidates of any party met Rand’s stern test of an advocacy of capitalism rooted in reason and individual rights. And yet, against the outright socialist, redistributionist, egalitarian-hippie politics of Sen. George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate, she threw her support behind Richard Nixon—a clear-eyed calculated choice among available options. Donway (“rather dutifully,” he says) became in-volved in the Nixon campaign in 1968 and again in 1972.

Looking back, he comments: “This was Boston during the anti-war movement and student re-bellion—the Black Liberation Army and middle-class New Left kids were gunning down bank guards. So, when I held up my Nixon poster, guys came over, grabbed my collar, and wanted to fight.”

Much later, his support of Nixon, which Donway saw as minor in is life, became the basis of bonding with Safire, who worked for Nixon in both campaigns, became chief Nixon speech writer along with Patrick Buchanan, and, as he commented later, “Managed to stay out of jail.” He did more than that, becoming the showcase Libertarian among New York Times columnists—but soon an indispensable voice in politics and, in his “On Language” column in the Sunday Magazine, the country’s best-known language “maven”—his favored term for it.

By then, Donway had published dozens of articles and essays for publications receptive to the libertarian point of view, including as a columnist for "Private Practice," journal of the Congress of County Medical Societies, and "Human Events," the renowned feisty Washington, D.C., weekly paper of conservative opinion edited by Tom Winters. At that time, "Human Events" was almost alone on the media scene as a critic of liberal-leftism and advocate of capitalism. At the same time, though, he published the lead op-ed article in "Wall Street Journal" “In Defense of Decades of Greed,” solicited by WSJ editorial page editor, Robert Bartley.

When accused of “not looking at the other side,” Donway laughs and points out that all his professional positions, as an executive at Brown University, the Commonwealth Fund (the country’s earliest major foundation devoted to experimentation with health care programs and medical education), and the Dana Foundation were with “certified East Coast Liberal institutions.” He says, “from 1969 until my retirement in 2004, I was a fixture of the Liberal-Left intellectual bureaucracy. Don’t tell me I need to be exposed to that viewpoint!”

In effect, however, he found nothing to refute—or even seriously challenge—the philosophy of Objectivism. The real reform that called to him was of Objectivism itself, which had become cultish, intolerant, and closed to change. It was not unusual—closer to typical—for a powerful new philosophy that set itself against the verities, assumptions, and dogmas of its time. In ...more

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Walter Donway’s books

Average rating: 3.71 · 250 ratings · 56 reviews · 46 distinct works • Similar authors

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	The Way the Wind Blew: They Battled America's First Terrorists 4.10 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Holidays Frightened My Father and Other Stories 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2013 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	History's Luckiest Puppy: The Story of Rin Tin Tin 4.13 avg rating — 8 ratings — published 2014 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
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	Touched By Its Rays really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 2008	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Walter Donway (?)

“The duke soon visited to view progress and merely nodded; he then fixed the toady with a glinting eye, and said, “Do what you must, but I shall have no young man or woman less than 18 years of age—for my own youngest, Charlene, at 17, is still but a child.” The toady solemnly nodded.”
― Walter Donway, The Price of Hannah Blake

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“Who would have thought that discussing the weather conditions of not tomorrow but in 2050 could end lifelong friendships?”
― Walter Donway, Donald Trump and His Enemies: How the Media Put Trump in Office

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Walter’s Quotes

“The Barbarian hopes — and that is the mark of him, that he can have his cake and eat it too.He will consume what civilization has slowly produced after generations of selection and effort, but he will not be at pains to replace such goods, nor indeed has he a comprehension of the virtue that has brought them into being. Discipline seems to him irrational, on which account he is ever marvelling that civilization, should have offended him with priests and soldiers.... In a word, the Barbarian is discoverable everywhere in this, that he cannot make: that he can befog and destroy but that he cannot sustain; and of every Barbarian in the decline or peril of every civilization exactly that has been true.

We sit by and watch the barbarian. We tolerate him in the long stretches of peace, we are not afraid. We are tickled by his irreverence; his comic inversion of our old certitudes and our fixed creed refreshes us; we laugh. But as we laugh we are watched by large and awful faces from beyond, and on these faces there are no smiles.”
― Hilaire Belloc

tags: barbarians, barbarism, civilization, consumption, discipline, work

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