National Review
National Review is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. National Review
Since its founding, the magazine has played a significant role in the development of conservatism in the United States, helping to define its boundaries and promoting fusionism while establishing itself as a leading voice on the American right. While National Review is generally supportive of Republican politicians and policy priorities, the magazine has been critical of President Donald Trump since the 2016 presidential election.
History
Background
Before National Reviews founding in 1955, the American right was a largely unorganized collection of people who shared intertwining philosophies but had little opportunity for a united public voice. They wanted to marginalize 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 anti-communist, as were many newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and St. Louis Globe-Democrat. A few small-circulation conservative magazines, such as Human Events and The Freeman, preceded National Review in developing Cold War conservatism in the 1950s.
In 1953, Russell Kirk published The Conservative Mind, which traced an intellectual bloodline from Edmund Burke to the Old Right in the early 1950s. This challenged the notion among intellectuals that no coherent conservative tradition existed in the United States.
A young William F. Buckley Jr. was greatly influenced by Kirk's concepts. Buckley had money; his father grew rich from oil fields in Mexico. He 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. 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 ; and we consider them right because they are based on principles we deem right... 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.
Founding
On November 19, 1955, Buckley's magazine began to take shape. Buckley assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians, and anti-communists. The group included Revilo P. Oliver, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, and Willmoore Kendall, and Catholics L. Brent Bozell and Garry Wills. The former Time editor Whittaker Chambers, who had been a Communist spy in the 1930s and then turned intensely anti-communist, became a senior editor. In the magazine's founding statement Buckley wrote: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 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 finds that Burnham overcame sometimes heated opposition from other members of the editorial board, and had a significant effect on both the editorial policy of the magazine and on the thinking of Buckley himself.
National Review aimed to make conservative ideas respectable in an age when the dominant view of conservative thought was, as expressed by Columbia professor Lionel Trilling,
iberalism 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.
Buckley said that National Review "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.'
Goldwater era
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 National Review and became a liberal commentator. Buckley's brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr. left and started the short-lived traditionalist Catholic magazine, Triumph in 1966.
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 conservatism—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 antisemites. Buckley's goal was to increase the respectability of the conservative movement; in 2004, current editor Rich Lowry, compiled various quotes of articles commenting on Buckley's retirement including from The Dallas Morning News: "Mr. Buckley's first great achievement was to purge the American right of its kooks. He marginalized the antisemites, the John Birchers, the nativists and their sort." However, others such as political historian Matthew Dallek, contend that while the mainstream view has long been that Buckley excluded Bircherism, his "gesture toward kicking out the Birchers was far more concerned with cordoning off Robert Welch while retaining the support of the rank-and-file members."
In 1957, National Review 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 – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race." By the 1970s National Review advocated colorblind policies and the end of affirmative action.
In the late 1960s, the magazine denounced segregationist George Wallace, who ran in Democratic primaries in 1964 and 1972 and made an independent run for president in 1968. During the 1950s, Buckley had worked to remove antisemitism 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 as "far removed from common sense" and urged the Republican Party to purge itself of Welch's influence.
Supporting Reagan
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, 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, National Review 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 and then rejected Pat Buchanan in his political campaigns. A lengthy 1996 National Review editorial called for a "movement toward" drug legalization.
In 1985, National Review and Buckley were represented by attorney J. Daniel Mahoney during the magazine's $16 million libel suit against The Spotlight.
Political views and content
, a regular contributor since 2001, sees a broad spectrum of conservative and anti-liberal contributors:The magazine has been described as "the bible of American conservatism".