Emerald Robinson has written a must-read article, "How The National Review Sold Its Soul to Google". Try this on for size:
Did the editors of the National Review learn anything from this debacle? Of course not. The feckless Rich Lowry recently handed the magazine over to the world’s only living Evan McMullin voter Ramesh Ponnuru — who was absolutely nobody’s choice to steer the magazine back to popularity. (If anything, Ramesh Ponnuru represents an even greater slide into snide effeminacy than Lowry, and few thought that was possible.) Defeat seems to be the brand for these boys. In any culture war, Rich Lowry and the gang have always been the first to stand athwart history, crying: "We surrender first!” They’ve been so weak and defeatist during the Trump years that a year's subscription to the magazine could be marketed as an estrogen supplement.
Red. Meat. And on the remote chance you didn't know, Goldberg and French are not just grifters, but extraordinarily dumb. How dumb?
I only knew NR thru the early blogs, then I read back into the W F Buckley story to get background so I could keep up. Finally I realised NR was what Woody Allen was ranting about in Annie Hall.
ReplyDeleteBut I can see the point you're making. I prefer a more robust conservatism myself, like say Ace.
In the 70s and 80s, National Review was, for me, a godsend. It was one of only a relative handful of unabashedly conservative publications, and it was bold and insightful, with a "happy warrior" vibe to it. It is now (and has been, for years) a lame specter of its former self, having come unmoored from principle and increasingly dependent on its fat cat benefactors who are not conservative at all (except, perhaps, when it comes to corporate taxation, of course).
ReplyDeleteAce of Spades is practically the Viking Warrior of modern conservatism, and I think I'd be lost without him.