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Some of you may be old enough to remember the Ripon Society. A child of the Sixties, it served as an incubator for the ideas of an oxymoronic movement called liberal Republicanism. In the manner of like groups Left and Right, the Ripon Society claimed an influence far beyond its numbers. And if a microscopic membership could be said to validate that claim, the rolls provided ringing affirmation. To those of us observing from afar, in truth, Ripon appeared to have no more than two active members—a writer named George Gilder and a mimeograph operator who worked his crankhand to the bone keeping pace with Gilder’s polemical output.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it should probably be said that some of us did more than observe from afar. There was a cultural edge here, you understand. These Ripon fellows made today’s clean-fingernail Republicans look like Ralph Kramden. Nothing gave us more pleasure, in fact, than lobbing an occasional egg into the men’s room of the Ripon Society. We took to calling it names, including, in the immortal phrase of T. J. Wheeler, the Capon Society.

About the Author

Neal B. Freeman

Neal B. Freeman, businessman and journalist, was a director of National Review Inc. for 38 years.

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Some of you may be old enough to remember the Ripon Society. A child of the Sixties, it served as an incubator for the ideas of an oxymoronic movement called liberal Republicanism. In the manner of like groups Left and Right, the Ripon Society claimed an influence far beyond its numbers. And if a microscopic membership could be said to validate that claim, the rolls provided ringing affirmation. To those of us observing from afar, in truth, Ripon appeared to have no more than two active members—a writer named George Gilder and a mimeograph operator who worked his crankhand to the bone keeping pace with Gilder’s polemical output.

In the spirit of full disclosure, it should probably be said that some of us did more than observe from afar. There was a cultural edge here, you understand. These Ripon fellows made today’s clean-fingernail Republicans look like Ralph Kramden. Nothing gave us more pleasure, in fact, than lobbing an occasional egg into the men’s room of the Ripon Society. We took to calling it names, including, in the immortal phrase of T. J. Wheeler, the Capon Society.