Posted on 01/22/2016 10:38:17 AM PST by Albion Wilde
Today, The National Review magazine, for decades the must-read monthly of the conservative movement, has published a yellow journal worthy of the best discourse Facebook has to offer. This formerly revered publication, founded and edited by William F. Buckley, Jr, was the premier resource for conservative commentary from 1955 until the illness and retirement of its renowned leader in the mid-2000s.
The New York polite society of pious, trust-fund Ivy Leaguers who formed the backbone of the founding editorial staff had given National Review an air of the lamp-lit gentlemen's club: leather wing chairs, green velvet wall coverings, cigars and brandy in front of the fireplace tended by a person of color, harumphed opinions about "the liberals" -- informed by the pages of The National Review. NR's brand of conservatism was infused with an air of social (and therefore moral) superiority. Yet Buckley, along with the unlikely intellectual partner Ronald Reagan, would provide the intellectual correctives to a post-WWII nation infatuated first with liberalism, then radical Marxist progressivism. Under Buckley's editorial narratives, conservatism became a movement.
Writers such as Ludwig von Mises, Whittaker Chambers, Russell Kirk and Auberon Waugh once graced NR's pages, followed by the likes of Robert Bork, Francis Fukuyama, Pat Buchanan, Robert Novak, Tom Wolfe, John Derbyshire and other crafters of deeply informed opinion. NR and NROnline today, led by Rich Lowry, are struggling to survive in the era of New Media. NR thought its best strategy during the 2007 McCain/Obama contest was to run cover after cover depicting -- who? -- Barack Obama, while the articles inside timidly criticized his candidacy. Any streetcorner vendor can tell you, as he watches an increasingly attention-starved work force stream by his magazine stand morning and evening, what catches the eye is now the message; those pesky little words, not so much.
Few of today's regular contributors except perhaps for Dennis Prager, Thomas Sowell and Victor Davis Hanson have garnered name recognition solely on their strengths as writers in the New Media conservative audience, who are experiencing the steady erosion of all that America once promised to those who would work hard and seize opportunities to advance. As the ground beneath them is eroded by the hardened generation of anti-authoritarian narcissists produced by the demise of the traditions, demographics and conservatism that Buckley's editorial heirs have failed to stand athwart, National Review's lead editorial staff have turned to face their own small tent -- and pee'd inside.
The current issue has killed trees and sucked bandwidth not to encourage a new generation to the benefits of conservatism, not to debate the issues as issues, not to promote the best their favored candidates have to offer, but rather to tear down the personality and aspirations of the undisputed leader in the polls of the disenfranchised American middle class, the ones who are flocking by the tens of thousands per event to hear him speak. The aggregate number of Donald Trump campaign rally attendees has, over a six-month span, long passed the million mark. His tweets and Facebook hits stagger the Internet. He has accomplished the "big tent" of fanpersons from all walks of life that the ailing Republican Party has long dreamed about; yet the Party and the National Review despise him for it.
NR and NRO have this week tarnished their brand with 22 mean screeds against The Donald, making it personal. They aim to shame their readers: Trump isn't good enough, smart enough or, doggone it, likeable enough, according to their antique, hypocritical standard of repressed emotions and unspoken agendas, such as projecting onto the guy who has lived the American Dream the blame for the impending death of their genteely elite vision of America -- the elites whose religion was slipping from dominance as early as the 50s and needed to be robustly defended by intellectual Constitutionalism; the elites who spoke of equality under the law but lived in unequal up East enclaves.
To be fair, this smarmy issue of their once respected magazine might cost Trump a few hundred votes.
William Buckley, speaking in 1967 of The National Review's policy towards elections, said, "Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate...The wisest choice would be the one who would win... the most right, viable candidate who could win."
With the margin so razor-thin and the stakes so catastrophic against the Democrat Party's entrenched big tent of anti-Constitution, anti-Christian, anti-life, anti-sovereignty and pro-repressive movements dominating a dumbed-down, entertainment-addicted, financially gutted electorate, any challenger under the Republican banner deserves a fair review, but is too valuable to slime, even if his politics are only just conservative enough to place-hold while he saves this nation from ruin.
NR could have found what's to love in every Republican candidate whom The People say could win, and showcased their best ties to conservatism. Yet in the face of Trump's overwhelming viability -- his robust poll numbers, demonstrable energy for the tasks ahead, financial independence, courageous dismissal of political correctness, incisive diagnosis of the problems facing us, long experience as a dealmaker in the realms of power and industry -- and believing that they still have time to reject the half-a-loaf that's better than none -- Buckley's heirs have just published the sound of entitled heads exploding.
So the National Review Magazine Cartel of buffoon pundits, believe they are the chosen few, better and above, we the people...sorry, not so, or true!!! They think they are all legends in their own time....fact is: the only legend they are, is in their own ego driven minds!!! Let me remind these pompous fools and faiilures....that it is we, the people, that choose our leaders with our votes, not your thoughts & guidance!!! Hang it up...deadbeat losers!!!
“GO DONALD J. TRUMP”
Likewise!
It is. Appreciate your having read it. Blessings...
Well said!
Bless you!
This is the biggest pile of bullshit ever to appear on Free Republic.
Exactly so. One has to ask, what is their value? The more intellectually pure, the more impotent.
Many thanks...
Very much so.
On the other hand, given where WFB Jr. was in the last years of his life, I wouldn't necessarily assume he'd be that enthusiastic about Ted Cruz either.
So I'm not sure that the current crew betrayed Buckley's legacy. Where they are now has something to do with the malaise that he was in in his last years. Buckley was pretty disillusioned in his last years. For one thing, he wasn't as confident about the Iraq War as his associates at the magazine were.
He also didn't have the fight in him that he once did. It seemed like the good fight and the hard work of getting a movement started were in the past. It was clear that he couldn't go on forever, but just what to do and where conservatism should go in the future were unclear.
Buckley would probably have rejected Trump, as he did in his 2000 article, but for outsiders -- people who aren't movement conservatives or Buckley's ideological associates -- Trump 2016 looks a lot like Buckley for mayor 1965, an eccentric millionaire with controversial ideas making a big splash in the political pond.
You could see a tension in Buckley between the thinker who valued intellectual depth and consistency, and the provocateur who wanted to shake things up and bring about change, and that conflict is still alive today, even after WFB Jr. has passed from the scene.
Trump supporters stand firm DO NOT listen to this garbage, and ALWAYS remember what the BASTARDS said about Reagan, just about the SAME thing and NO I am not comparing Trump to Reagan just the political discourse!!!
Thanks for the article. There is a very apt response to it in the comments:
ChrisZ * 3 hours ago
It's great to have Buckley's unforgettable literary voice on this site again; I read the whole piece aloud to myself in my best WFB impression, and relished reciting the line about Burr and Hamilton and their "conclusive encounter in Weehawken." Just beautiful.I miss having someone of his wisdom and perception around today, to guide us. The truth is that we conservatives have been in mourning since the loss of WFB, Reagan, Thatcher, Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II, Neuhaus, Kristol ... it's painful to continue the list. No one of their maturity and accomplishment has arisen to take their places, and we as a movement (and as a country) are suffering for it.
Buckley was right to caution against the demagogue as the candidate who promises the voters Nice Things. But what do you call it when the voters have asked for an uncomplicated and reasonable thing, and the elected officials refuse to deliver it--even lie about it as candidates? That seems to be our situation today, regarding immigration. For at least the past 15 years, the majority of Americans have wanted a more restrictive, rational, and controllable immigration regime. Some of us cast votes for candidates whom we thought would advance that cause. But nearly to a man, and regardless of party, they were unresponsive, and even went so far as to subvert the existing immigration laws of this country.
The terrible result for public policy has brought us to the present impasse. The success of Trump's candidacy from the very beginning was predicated on his promise to build the wall, and that promise has sustained him throughout the subsequent antics of all the candidates (including himself). At any time during the past seven months, any one of the Republican alternatives could have embraced the Trump program on this issue, and effectively ended the major rationale for Trump's candidacy. But every one of them proved too feckless, too coopted by special interests, to do so. So they will lose, and Trump will win.
I think WFB would have understood the dynamic in play here, even if he disagreed with it; and I like to think he would have appreciated Trump's ascendancy as a vindication of democracy--not in it's noblest or prettiest aspect, certainly, but in its blunt assertion that the will of the citizenry should prevail in large questions of national consequence.
Masterful expedition Albion Wilde!
One thing that differs sharply from the time Buckley set out that theory -- almost 50 years ago -- is the burgeoning and ubiquity of the media, particularly the 24/7 news cycle that demands sensationalism, and failing to get enough, creates it. Trump is actually a better candidate because in addition to his other skills as a developer of complex projects, he is already tempered by, and hardened to, the media game.
He’s getting better at it with time.
This was a really good editorial, and I hope you’ll write more. But Please be sure to call them an editorial on the news activism page so they’ll get the views they deserve.
And just yesterday you insisted that I never ping you again, and I cordially expressed regret and bid you farewell; and to the best of my knowledge, I did not ping you to this. If I did, I regret inconveniencing you so distressingly. If I did not, what are you doing here posting to me, sitetest? FR courtesies only extend one way?
Many thanks.
All this baloney about “the establishment supports Trump” is completely debunked and the opposite confirmed by National Review. They are RINO, GOPe, elite establishment. And they HATE Trump. Now, that’s logical and true, and CONSISTENT (I like consistency) despite the cognitive dissonance of those who want to say Trump is supported by the GOPe or they prefer him over Cruz. That’s a smoke screen and a false meme that’s been sown and spread about online.
Pray AMerica wakes
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