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.
No, I don't even watch Fox, or much TV at all any more. I just read FR for the news. Last week I watched one thing on NPT, plus a couple of comedies via the internet. That was it for the week!
I certainly hope so.
Yes, this analysis is very well written - congratulations.
Personally, I find it amusing to hear/read that, because I am willing to consider Trump in the face of the end of the Republic, I am, variously, a fool, an ignoramus, a faux conservative, an idol worshipper, a flip-flopper, an emotional, angry, non-thinker, et al.
What I am is an independent thinker who has been deceived and betrayed too many times by the Establishment; I am willing to consider that Trump might actually do something instead of nothing.
(I realize that the Terrible Twenty-Two care naught for such as I, but I do not at all fit their self-serving characterization [or should I say, character assassination] of “Trumpsters”: I have a documented IQ well into the so-called genius range, and am a lifelong conservative. I do not choose a candidate casually or unthinkingly.)
I worked for Newt, was a delegate to my state convention for him. And I’m not favoring Trump at all, Donald is down there with Bush below spot#10 in my opinion.
I will vote for him should he get the nomination, he’s better than his former co-conspirator Hillary, or Bernie, but I do not trust him. I could be wrong, perhaps time will tell, I just don’t want to take the chance. Promises about the future are very easy to make, and with Trump, who changes views like he changes socks, that’s all we have to go on: Words and contradictions.
Skipped it.
How'd you get so smart? :-)
Me too.
Same here! It was like nails on the chalkboard seeing this in my mailbox over and over.
Amen to that!
:-)
Pointing out that Cruzers SCREAM THEIR ARGUMENTS IN CAPITAL LETTERS is not actually an ad hominem attack because it is not an attack against the person, but rather an attack on the mode of argument. Pointing out that screaming loudly is an empty rhetorical device is not an empty rhetorical device, it is an argument.
Now, if you want to make a real argument, go ahead and make one, in minuscules please, so we can read it and understand your argument, rather than the fact that YOU ARE SCREAMING AT US IN A RAISED VOICE SO WE CANNOT HEAR WHAT YOU ARE SAYING.
“Few of today’s regular contributors except perhaps for Dennis Prager”
Well there’s part of the problem. Dennis knows that he is a 1960s Cold War liberal and for years he used to correct his listeners who insisted that he is a conservative.
He’s not, never was. He’s a liberal who is friendly with conservatives. The problem with National Review is that it is loaded with old style liberals masquerading as conservatives. It laughingly publishes Charles Krauthammer, who was helping Walter Mondale try to defeat Ronald Reagan’s second term.
This has been one of the best election seasons of my lifetime. Trump is a force of nature, even if he only has served to point up the issues. I hope for more.
Winning the nomination is not winning the election.
Show me the numbers demonstrating that Trump will do especially well in November.
You shouldn't have any trouble finding them, just look up Donald's loudly Trumpeted polls, and then run your finger across to the general election. He's a weak candidate, the least likely to win among the top 4 vying for the nomination. So he is certainly less viable by his own favored measurement --the polls.
You’re probably wise.
Now, I happen to be a big fan of WFB, Jr. and his sibbling Fergus [Reid] Buckley. But for the Buckley sibblings to conclude that others are demagogues and narcissists is rich fare for some of us.
Didn’t his liberal son take over? Hook a turbine up to Williams’s grave. He can power the Eastern seaboard for a couple of generations.
Fair enough
But the cast of characters after Trump are almost same took out Newt
But they will fail this time
Pretty funny!
Well, I had a drink in a bar in Lambertville, New Jersey with the brother John Buckley, and he was a pretty nice guy. I was very young and dressed up for a date. He gave me a stock tip. I had barely the cab fare to get home; but it gave me a little laugh at myself, and a peek into how the rich get richer.
“National Review started to really take a dive when it lost Mark Steyn!”
“Lost” Mark Steyn, or drove him out? The post-Reagan NR has a history of driving off some of its best people.
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