William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review (where I work), once confessed in private, “I wish to hell I could attack them without pleasing people I can’t stand to please.” By “them” he meant the members of the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Communist, anti-United Nations, anti-civil rights John Birch Society. The people Bill couldn’t stand to please, of course, were liberals. And yet Buckley did eventually go after the Birchers, at first trying as best he could to denounce their leader, Robert Welch, without alienating the rank and file. Eventually, this needle became impossible to thread, specifically when Welch began insisting that...
