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."