National Review (N.R.) is a semimonthly magazine founded by author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."
Although the print version of the magazine is available on-line to subscribers, the free content on the web-site is essentially a separate publication under different editorial direction.
Origins
Prior to National Review's founding in 1955, some conservatives believed that the U.S. right was a largely unorganized collection of people who shared intertwining philosophies but had little opportunity for a united public voice. They also wanted to marginalize what they saw as the antiwar, noninterventionistic views of the Old Right.
In 1953 moderate Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, and many major magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Time, and Reader's Digest were strongly conservative and anticommunistic, as were many newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and St Louis Globe-Democrat. A few small-circulation conservative magazines, Human Events and The Freeman preceded National Review in developing Cold War Conservatism in the 1950s.
History
Early years
In 1953, Russell Kirk published The Conservative Mind, which sought to trace an intellectual bloodline from Edmund Burke to the Old Right in the early 1950s. This challenged the popular notion that no coherent conservative tradition existed in the United States. A young William F. Buckley, Jr. was greatly influenced by Kirk's concepts.
Buckley, from a wealthy oil family, first tried to purchase Human Events, but was turned down. He then met Willi Schlamm, the experienced editor of The Freeman; they would spend the next two years raising the $300,000 necessary to start their own weekly magazine, originally to be called National Weekly. (A magazine holding the trademark to the name prompted the change to National Review.) The statement of intentions read:
Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically, intellectually, and morally repugnant. We shall recommend policies for the simple reason that we consider them right (rather than “non-controversialâ€); and we consider them right because they are based on principles we deem right (rather than on popularity polls)...The New Deal revolution, for instance, could hardly have happened save for the cumulative impact of The Nation and The New Republic, and a few other publications, on several American college generations during the twenties and thirties.
Contributors
On November 19, 1955, Buckley’s magazine would take shape. Buckley assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians and ex-Communists. They included: Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, and Willmoore Kendall, and Catholics L. Brent Bozell, Harry V. Jaffa and Garry Wills. Whittaker Chambers, the former Time editor who had been a Communist spy in the 1930s eventually became a senior editor. In the magazine’s founding statement Buckley wrote:
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 other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
As editors and contributors, Buckley especially sought out intellectuals who were ex-Communists or had once worked on the far Left, including Whittaker Chambers, William Schlamm, John Dos Passos, Frank Meyer and James Burnham. When James Burnham became one of the original senior editors he urged the adoption of a more pragmatic editorial position that would extend the influence of the magazine toward the political center. Smant (1991) finds that Burnham overcame sometimes heated opposition from other members of the editorial board (including Meyer, Schlamm, William Rickenbacker, and the magazine's publisher William A. Rusher), and had a significant impact on both the editorial policy of the magazine and on the thinking of Buckley himself.
Mission to conservatives
National Review aimed to make conservative ideas respectable, in an age when the dominant view of conservative thought was expressed by Lionel Trilling in 1950:
In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only... in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
William Buckley, Jr. on the purpose of National Review:
[National Review] 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… it is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation…since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to…run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals’.
National Review promoted Barry Goldwater heavily during the early 1960s. Buckley and others involved with the magazine took a major role in the "Draft Goldwater" movement in 1960 and the 1964 presidential campaign. National Review spread his vision of conservatism throughout the country.
The early National Review faced occasional defections from both left and right. Garry Wills broke with N.R. and became a liberal commentator. Buckley’s brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr., who ghostwrote The Conscience of a Conservative for Barry Goldwater, left and started the short-lived traditionalist Catholic magazine, Triumph in 1966.
Defining the boundaries of conservatism
Buckley and Meyer promoted the idea of enlarging the boundaries of conservatism through fusionism, whereby different schools of conservatives, including libertarians, would work together to combat what were seen as their common opponents.
Buckley and his editors used his magazine to define the boundaries of conservatismâ€"and to exclude people or ideas or groups they considered unworthy of the conservative title. Therefore they attacked the John Birch Society, George Wallace, and anti-Semites.
Buckley's goal was to upscale the respectability of the conservative movement; as Rich Lowry noted:
Mr. Buckley's first great achievement was to purge the American right of its kooks. He marginalized the anti-Semites, the John Birchers, the nativists and their sort.
In 1957, the magazine editorialized in favor of white leadership in the South, arguing that "the central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes â€" the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." By the 1970s the magazine had moved to demanding colorblind policies and the end of affirmative action.
In the late 1960s, the magazine attacked segregationist George Wallace, who ran in Democratic primaries (1964 and 1972) and made an independent run for president in 1968. During the 1950s, Buckley had worked to remove anti-Semitism from the conservative movement and barred holders of those views from working for National Review.
In 1962, Buckley denounced Robert W. Welch, Jr., and the John Birch Society, in National Review, as "far removed from common sense" and urged the G.O.P. to purge itself of Welch's influence.
After Goldwater
After Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Buckley and National Review continued to champion the idea of a conservative movement, which was increasingly embodied in Ronald Reagan. Reagan, a longtime subscriber to National Review, first became politically prominent during Goldwater's campaign. National Review supported his challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976 and his successful 1980 campaign.
During the 1980s N.R. called for tax cuts, supply-side economics, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and support for President Reagan's foreign policy against the Soviet Union. The magazine criticized the Welfare state and would support the Welfare reform proposals of the 1990s. The magazine also regularly criticized President Bill Clinton. It first embraced, then rejected, Pat Buchanan in his political campaigns. A lengthy 1996 National Review editorial called for a "movement toward" drug legalization.
Endorsements of presidential candidates during primaries
National Review sometimes endorses a candidate during the primary election season. Editors at National Review have said, "Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate." This statement echoes what has come to be called "The Buckley Rule". In a 1967 interview, in which he was asked about the choice of presidential candidate, Buckley said, "The wisest choice would be the one who would win. ... I'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win."
The following candidates were officially endorsed by National Review:
Current editor and contributors
The magazine's current editor is Rich Lowry. Many of the magazine's commentators are affiliated with think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. Prominent guest authors have included Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin in the on-line and paper edition.
Washington editors
- L. Brent Bozell, Jr.
- Neal B. Freeman
- George Will, 1973-1976
- Neal B. Freeman, 1978-1981
- John McLaughlin, 1981-1989
- William McGurn, 1989-1992
- Kate O'Beirne
- Robert Costa, 2012-2013
- Eliana Johnson, 2014-present
Political views
The magazine has been described as "the bible of American conservatism".
National Review Online
A popular feature of National Review is the web version of the magazine, National Review Online ("N.R.O."), which includes a digital version of the magazine, with articles updated daily by National Review writers, and conservative blogs. The on-line version is called N.R.O. to distinguish it from the paper magazine (referred to as "N.R.O.D.T." or National Review On Dead Tree.) The site's editor is Kathryn Jean Lopez, known to the N.R.O. community as "K-Lo". The web-site receives about one million hits per dayâ€"more than all other conservative-magazine websites combined. Each day, the site posts new content consisting of conservative, libertarian, neoconservative, and neoliberal opinion articles. It also features several blogs:
- The Corner (postings from many of the site's editors and affiliated writers discussing the issues of the day).
- The Campaign Spot (formerly The Kerry Spot/TKS written by Jim Geraghty).
- David Calling (updated by writer David Pryce-Jones).
- Bench Memos (legal and judicial news).
- The Agenda (analysis updated by Reihan Salam).
- Media Blog (media news).
- Planet Gore (global warming news).
- Phi Beta Cons (University news).
Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos web-site, told reporters in August 2007 that he does not read conservative blogs, with the exception of those on N.R.O.: "I do like the blogs at the National Reviewâ€"I do think their writers are the best in the [conservative] blogosphere," he said.
National Review Institute
The N.R.I. works in policy development and helping establish new advocates in the conservative movement. National Review Institute was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1991 to engage in policy development, public education, and advocacy that would advance the conservative principles he championed.
Finances
As with most political opinion magazines in the United States, National Review carries little corporate advertising. The magazine stays afloat by donations from subscribers and black-tie fund raisers around the country. The magazine also sponsors cruises featuring National Review editors and contributors as lecturers.
Buckley said in 2005 that the magazine had lost about $25,000,000 over fifty years.
Notable current contributors
Current and past contributors to National Review magazine, National Review Online, or both:
Notable past contributors
Notes
Bibliography
- Allitt, Patrick. The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (2010) excerpt and text search
- Bogus, Carl T. Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism (2011)
- Critchlow, Donald T. The Conservative Ascendancy: How the Right Made Political History (2007)
- Frisk, David B. If Not Us, Who?: William Rusher, National Review, and the Conservative Movement (2011)
- Frohnen, Bruce et al. eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006) ISBN 1-932236-44-9
- Hart, Jeffrey. The Making of the American Conservative Mind: The National Review and Its Times (2005), a view from the inside
- Judis, John B. William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (2001) ISBN 978-0-7432-1797-2
- Nash, George. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (2006; 1st ed. 1978)
- Schneider, Gregory. The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009)
- Smant, Kevin J. Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement (2002) (ISBN 1-882926-72-2)
External links
- NRO, National Review Online
- NRI, National Review Institute
- National Review at Discourse DB
- A Personal Retrospective: NR and its founder by Rich Lowry, August 9, 2004, on the occasion of National Review's 50th anniversary
- "President Honors Buckley at 50th Anniversary of National Review", GeorgeWBushWhiteHouse.com, October 6, 2005
- Man of Letters, Andrew Ferguson, (Wall Street Journal)
- National Review articles by Whittaker Chambers