Publisher's Statement: Standing athwart history, yelling Stop.

National Review Online ^ | June 29, 2004/November 19, 1955 | William F. Buckley Jr

[xsysmgr]

EDITOR'S NOTE: This appeared in the first issue of National Review, on November 19, 1955.

There is, we like to think, solid reason for rejoicing. Prodigious efforts, by many people, are responsible for NATIONAL REVIEW. But since it will be the policy of this magazine to reject the hypodermic approach to world affairs, we may as well start out at once, and admit that the joy is not unconfined.

Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did NATIONAL REVIEW not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if NATIONAL REVIEW is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

NATIONAL REVIEW is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation. Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.

"I happen to prefer champagne to ditchwater," said the benign old wrecker of the ordered society, Oliver Wendell Holmes, "but there is no reason to suppose that the cosmos does." We have come around to Mr. Holmes' view, so much that we feel gentlemanly doubts when asserting the superiority of capitalism to socialism, of republicanism to centralism, of champagne to ditchwater — of anything to anything. (How curious that one of the doubts one is not permitted is whether, at the margin, Mr. Holmes was a useful citizen!) The inroads that relativism has made on the American soul are not so easily evident. One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things.

Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'. Drop a little itching powder in Jimmy Wechsler's bath and before he has scratched himself for the third time, Arthur Schlesinger will have denounced you in a dozen books and speeches, Archibald MacLeish will have written ten heroic cantos about our age of terror, Harper's will have published them, and everyone in sight will have been nominated for a Freedom Award. Conservatives in this country — at least those who have not made their peace with the New Deal, and there is a serious question of whether there are others — are non-licensed nonconformists; and this is a dangerous business in a Liberal world, as every editor of this magazine can readily show by pointing to his scars. Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality of never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

There are, thank Heaven, the exceptions. There are those of generous impulse and a sincere desire to encourage a responsible dissent from the Liberal orthodoxy. And there are those who recognize that when all is said and done, the market place depends for a license to operate freely on the men who issue licenses — on the politicians. They recognize, therefore, that efficient getting and spending is itself impossible except in an atmosphere that encourages efficient getting and spending. And back of all political institutions there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word. A vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion is — dare we say it? — as necessary to better living as Chemistry.

We begin publishing, then, with a considerable stock of experience with the irresponsible Right, and a despair of the intransigence of the Liberals, who run this country; and all this in a world dominated by the jubilant single-mindedness of the practicing Communist, with his inside track to History. All this would not appear to augur well for NATIONAL REVIEW. Yet we start with a considerable — and considered — optimism.

After all, we crashed through. More than one hundred and twenty investors made this magazine possible, and over fifty men and women of small means invested less than one thousand dollars apiece in it. Two men and one woman, all three with overwhelming personal and public commitments, worked round the clock to make publication possible. A score of professional writers pledged their devoted attention to its needs, and hundreds of thoughtful men and women gave evidence that the appearance of such a journal as we have in mind would profoundly affect their lives.

Our own views, as expressed in a memorandum drafted a year ago, and directed to our investors, are set forth in an adjacent column. We have nothing to offer but the best that is in us. That, a thousand Liberals who read this sentiment will say with relief, is clearly not enough! It isn't enough. But it is at this point that we steal the march. For we offer, besides ourselves, a position that has not grown old under the weight of a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy, a position untempered by the doctoral dissertations of a generation of Ph.D's in social architecture, unattenuated by a thousand vulgar promises to a thousand different pressure groups, uncorroded by a cynical contempt for human freedom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us just about the hottest thing in town.

WM. F. BUCKLEY, JR.

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NR Press Release
Founder and Owner William F. Buckley Jr. To Relinquishes Control of Opinion Journal He Founded in 1955

(New York, June 29) — William F. Buckley Jr., Editor-at-large of National Review, will tonight relinquish ownership of the conservative opinion journal he founded 49 years ago. Edward A. Capano, National Review's Publisher, has been named the magazine's Chief Executive Officer.

<snip>

Mr. Buckley's column will continue to be published in the magazine.

Mr. Buckley, 78, cited concerns about his own mortality as the primary reason for his divestiture. The transfer of ownership will take place tonight at a private dinner in New York City.

National Review is the nation's largest and most influential journal of opinion. It currently maintains a paid circulation base of 155,000 subscribers, and a readership of over 310,000.

<snip>

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Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality of [have] never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity.

Wish this would fit in a tag line.

[Akira]

Ahhh, I just got around to reading this on NRO and was going to post it here. Thanks.

[pissant]

I thought I read something earlier that quoted WFB as saying in hind sight he would be opposed to the Iraq war. If true, he just lost a helluva lot of my respect.

[Dominick]

Thank you Dr. Buckley!

[Akira]

Here is his quote:

"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

[Constitutionalist Conservative]

I thought I read something earlier that quoted WFB as saying in hind sight he would be opposed to the Iraq war. If true, he just lost a helluva lot of my respect.

From the NYT article:

"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."

WFB apparently was speaking in the context of the reasonable proposition that military interventions should occur only when vital U.S. interests are at stake. If we consider Iraq outside the context of the War on Terror, we could hold an honorable debate on whether or not Saddam was worth the blood of our soldiers.

However, the current war pits us against a regional foe, not a national one. Iraq is but one front, one operation in a much larger war that most certainly serves our vital national interest.

[pissant]

very well stated CC. The problem with many conservatives is they did not view Saddam's Iraq as a terror hotbed, despite the overwhelming evidence. As such, we had no choice but to knock him off. The WMDs themselves are a mysterious puzzle which I believe we will solve in due time.

Only the willfully blind right (ie Pat Buchanan) and the hate-America left think that Iraq's WMD were a fiction. The former head of Romanian Intel has stated time and again that Saddam had a KGB/Russian WMD disposal plan ready to go in case the heat turned up.

When Bush is re-elected (I predict 44 states to GWB), we will stay the course in Iraq and the middle east will slowly begin its ascent from the middle ages. There will be many Arab kids in 10 years with George for a first name.