ABSTRACT
The image of Richard Weaver that sticks in the author's memory is a disturbing one. He is standing before an audience in a conference room at Vanderbilt University, his gnome-like features barely rising above the tall, polished oak podium that holds his manuscript. Weaver, realizing that he is fighting a losing battle with the wrecking crew, begins to shuffle through the pages of his talk, skipping huge sections in order to bring the ordeal to a speedy conclusion. Though Weaver makes it quite clear that he believes in the idea of equality under the law, he says that other kind of egalitarianism which attempts to subvert natural authority merely wants to substitute a bureaucratic hierarchy for the government that Jefferson envisioned, a hierarchy of "gifts and attainments." Weaver's discussion of the gentleman and his education is much fuller and considerably more rewarding than his treatment of chivalry, though here again he is cutting against the grain of current mythology.
