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National Review and Me
My father was a William F. Buckley buff. I still prize his autographed copy of WFB’s second book, McCarthy and His Enemies (co-authored in 1954 with L. Brent Bozell, Jr, Buckley’s brother-in-law). One year later, Buckley founded National Review.
By the time the sixties rolled around, it’s fair to say I was destined to be an NR reader. For me, and with respect to Andrew Breitbart, politics was not downstream from culture. I saw no inconsistency in loving The Who, the Stones, MC5, and National Review, much to the chagrin of some of my contemporaries. And I think the Buckley fandom made my father happy, which was a bonus. You’ll still find a 1965 Buckley for Mayor of New York City poster in my home.
So let’s fast forward to September, 2022. I am about six weeks into another renewal of my subscription to both the dead tree version of NR and National Review Online. We are years past the infamous “Against Trump” issue, compiled during the primaries leading up to the 2016 election. That issue alienated many Ricochet members, to say the least, and still stands as an early sign of the NeverTrump movement. I’ve long felt that NR remains important because it has some fine writers who champion important conservative causes. I’m also not ashamed to say that I’ve defended the magazine here in discussions with people whom I respect—and I fully recognize that some here really dislike the publication.
This is all a prelude to my personal deep thoughts as to whether it’s time to jump ship, something that never occurred to me even in the days of “Against Trump.” In many ways, I think that I’m a prototypical NR subscriber: older, conservative, Buckley fan, and a supporter of the Trump presidency who still sees some warts. Yet, in the last several months (some would say much longer), the unremitting lack of any balance regarding Trump has significantly alienated me. Time and space don’t permit an exhaustive count of what has pushed me to the edge of cancellation, but let’s try a short and recent list.
I’ve generally been good with the pro-impeachment, but often knowledgeable, Andrew McCarthy, but have seriously tired of the likes of Trump Brings Out the Worst in His Enemies, as He Undermines Himself. Much also has been written here about the bombastic Kevin Williamson, yet his recent A Clear and Present Danger column was a new low even for me (“President Biden isn’t taking on the Trumpists’ illiberalism — he’s imitating it.” “Of course the Trump movement is semi-fascist . . .” ). Yes, Kevin, of course.
Messrs. McLaughlin and Geraghty are long-standing Trump critics as well, but the proverbial final straw may have come from Second Amendment stalwart and Ricochet friend Charles C.W. Cooke, a seemingly rational person who has decided 20 months after the end of the Trump presidency that Donald Trump Is Still a Lunatic. You may have noticed that the common thread in much of the above goes beyond “Against Trump” to “Much of what we see in Biden is Trump’s fault.”
So does this story have an ending? I know a good number of you who have read this far are saying “So cancel already, dummy!” But it’s hard for me to toss away 50 years of a reading tradition. Still, if I’m close, I wonder how many NR traditionalists are either gone or right at the edge of the long goodbye.
Published in Journalism
I read your last comment again but I don’t know what you wanted me to take note of.
He was saying I got it right so I referred you back to my comments. I’m tired of repeating them. His position? He is a member of ricochet. He is free to comment on ricochet.. If you want on explanation of what the magazine can say per the case, ask someone who is currently employed with National Review, not someone who retired from the magazine before the case was dismissed. Remember, Steyn’s case isn’t dismissed. They hope it will be.
Frankly, I had forgotten about NR dumping Steyn (that’s how I still look it it). And I followed Steyn on Steynonline for years afterwards and all I recall him talking about was his decade long battle with Mann and the deliberately sclerotic DC judicial system for which Steyn said (I believe coined the phrase), The process is the punishment. Since those very early days Steyn hasn’t mentioned NR that I’m aware of and I haven’t really thought about it.
I know that I read NRO for years specifically for Steyn, J. Goldberg, and McCarthy (and maybe Ben Shapiro on the side). Steyn left under strange circumstances, Goldberg lost his mind (that’s how I still look it it), and McCarthy seems to have lost his focus.
I don’t think of Steyn and NRO in the same breath nowadays, but I think NRO lost a lot more than Steyn when they parted, and I don’t open NRO anymore (information and opinion being ubiquitous on the web now) and I actively avoid KDW. But yet Steyn is still relevant to me and he seems to be doing very good work on GBN.
But I had already acknowledged that he said you got it right. It isn’t necessary for you to repeat your position.
But I am also a member of Ricochet and I’m free to criticize another member who does not contribute in good faith.
I only asked because he inserted himself into the conversation. I did not invite him in, not that I wouldn’t have if I could have.
Cooke is right Trump is a lunatic the conservative movement should have never indulged him.
The Conservative Movement did not indulge him. They came out with a screed against him.
Trump is an outgrowth of the Conservative Movement losing and losing and losing. Trump is what you get when the people who have taken money and votes and have not moved the needle one bit the other way.
The Conservative Movement stand against the GOP primary voters. The GOP primary voters are sick and tired of being lied too. Trump’s presidency proved, without a shadow of a doubt, that National Review, most of the GOP elected officials, the think tanks, etc. who make up Conservatism, Inc. hold the average GOP primary voter with as much contempt as do the Democrats. We are all rubes. This has been born out over and over around Trump.
I’d love someone, anyone, else to take the stands against the swap that Trump has. Produce that person. Where is he or she? No where. They are all captives of the system. Trump had the money and the orneriness to tell them to pound sand. Boy, did that hurt their feelings.
But, people like you have won. Congratulations. You will soon be free of Trump, and the base who hates the status quo will have no place to go. We can get back to business as usual, which is letting the Democrats and the far left keep on winning.
Thank you for reviving one of my infrequent posts. However, I have to differ since I don’t believe that a “ lunatic” can successfully manage a country for four years, particularly in the face of the obstacles Trump confonted. One of the main problems with NR’s Trump coverage was not necessarily the negative columns, but the absence of positive coverage of his Administration. It’s almost as if the writers just could not bring themselves to say much good since they’d already doubled down on being “against” him.
True. That’s the main problem people have with Trump: He did a superb job, despite efforts of Republicans and Democrats to hamper him however they could. So whatever I think of him, I have to concede that America was MUCH better off with him in the Oval Office. Seems counterintuitive. But you can’t argue with his results.
Oh yes, some people can. I had neighbors in Arizona – and I still have some relatives – who insist that everything good in the Trump years was actually “leftover Obama” and everything bad now is “leftover Trump.”
Ah well, Arizona.
Yes, but my relatives are in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Illinois. And now Tennessee also, although they moved there from Oregon within the past year.
I was especially upset with National Review, because it was in National Review that I first learned about Milton Friedman’s quote, “I do not believe that the solution to our problem is simply to elect the right people. The important thing is to establish a political climate of opinion which will make it politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing. Unless it is politically profitable for the wrong people to do the right thing, the right people will not do the right thing either, or it they try, they will shortly be out of office.” I wanted them to establish the climate so that Trump, who they clearly thought was the wrong person, would do the right thing. Instead they kept hammering at his flaws and worked against the things they’d claimed they stood for. In the same vein, it might have been possible for Pelosi and Schumer to woo Trump to their side by offering some honey instead of the vinegar that their constituents demanded.
Yep.
Because Trump is the wrong sort of people.
People like that deserve the inflation we now have.
It would just be helpful if they understood where it really comes from.
But those are the people who tend to think, as I’ve described it before, “Wow, the Democrats have really messed things up! We have to elect more Democrats to fix it!”
Whether they see its source or not, I get the schadenfreude knowing they are suffering.
I guess. Even though their “solution” would mean suffering MORE.
I’ve noticed that phenomenon ever since Bush left office in 2008. Leftists are prone to blame all the bad stuff happening under a democrat administration on the previous republican President, and credit all the good stuff that happens under a republican President by the previous democrat administration. It’s one of those “heads I win, tails you lose” propositions. Complete self-delusion.