I took a pretty liberal girl on a date to see William F. Buckley back in college, which would probably scandalize the current senior staff of his National Review, but I bet it would have made WFB smile. Buckley was also a graduate of the Army's former Ft. Benning School for Boys, but since his death, the Officer Candidate School has become Ft. Moore School for Boys, Girls, and Non-Binary Two-Spirits. This change for the worse is emblematic of how NR's conservatism has failed to conserve much of anything. In Buckley's absence, NR has tried to stand athwart history yelling, "Stop," and instead, the left just gave it a wedgie and continued on its long march.
The latest headshaker is Kathryn Jean Lopez tut-tutting that "Jason Aldean Isn't Helping," presumably by not being the kind of cerebral invertebrate that some at NR confuse with being a proper conservative. WFB went to Ft. Benning to become an Army officer and fight Nazis; the current NR leadership seems committed to fighting against anyone else on the Right man enough to fight back. A song hailing communities that come together to defeat crime and chaos? Apparently, that is not who we are. Oh, well, I never. That sound you hear is my pearls being clutched.
The current incarnation of National Review generally offers readers a conservatism that demands we use our inside voice, placing form – "Jason Aldean is so mean!" – over substance. The substance includes defeating evil when it comes for us, sometimes using violence. But apparently, this is too real. Well, it's real life for millions of us. Theory is fun, but sometimes you gotta throw a punch. WFB got that. These guys and gals don't.
It's sad for me. Like most cons of my generation, notably Rush, I subscribed to National Review back in the day, and it was vital to shaping my thinking. You whippersnappers do not understand what the 80s were like for real conservatives. Sure, the music was awesome, as were the clothes and movies and all that, but if you were a committed conservative, particularly in the hinterlands, you were often alone. NR coming in the mail was my lifeline to an ideology that America embraced but barely understood. You could not go online and get a thousand different conservative views, or turn on your AM radio and get any at all. Buckley's publication was it, and that is why its fall to effete establishment mewling is so painful.
There are still some people on NR worth reading and who I will not embarrass by listing. I read and like their work even when I disagree, and disagreement is good. But this pervasive vibe of prim submission is something else. I could fisk through Lopez's sorry take on "Try That In A Small Town" to explain why no, it is not bad to protect your home from rampaging criminal scumbags even if you have to use violence. But I should not have to. That is a self-evident truth. Lieutenant Buckley knew that – he famously once threatened commie-symp Gore Vidal that "I'll sock you in the…face" if the leftist weasel called Buckley a Nazi again.
I am at a loss as to why Kathryn Jean Lopez fails to understand this. Being a conservative does not mean being a pacifist, though that pacifism does not appear to extend to Ukraine, only to Americans defending themselves. It is of a kind with NR's tendency to embrace a neutered, weak conservativism that offends no one, defends nothing, and always goes down in defeat. But it is not the only kind of conservatism now. We have an alternative. There is the muscular conservatism of the Reagans and Trumps and DeSantises, and then there's whatever dog's breakfast the new NR seems intent on serving up.
Kinder, gentler, a thousand points of light. To again evoke the 80s, gag me with a spoon.
The problem is not that Ms. Lopez does not appreciate Mr. Aldean's tune but that she does not appreciate Mr. Aldean's people. One of the great problems with conservatism, or rather with the intellectual conservative elite, is that so very many of them have never been in a fight. In the real world, most of us have. But NR conservatism grows within the DC/NY hothouse; the idea of it outside in the real world where today's conservatives live would make one of those hilarious fish-out-of-water movies where the guy in a bow tie from the Big City has to milk a cow. I'm not saying you must tromp through the woods stalking deer to be a con – post-Army, my idea of outside recreation is sitting on a lounge having someone bring me G&Ts – but it helps to get out a little and visit America and meet some Americans. Maybe someone on the venerable rag's masthead drives a Ford F-150, but if he does, there's a good chance he does it ironically.
It's not so simple as "non-NR macho/NR sissy," though that is a useful razor. It is that the kind of conservatism that WFB led became something else along the way, something more concerned with strict adherence to appearances and long-dead notions of propriety. While the new NR was fussing over its principles – norms and rules that were worth using to bludgeon less-worthy cons but were never worth fighting hard for against the left – the people conservatism was supposed to be helping were suffering. Their jobs went to China, and their kids to Ramadi, at least the ones that did not die from overdoses. Kevin Williamson, then at NR (and soon to be at The Atlantic for about 10 seconds), had a prescription – cultural euthanasia, because they deserved every misery inflicted upon them.
Conservatism that conserves only the middling cachet of a dying brand within the DC/NY political milieu is not worth conserving at all. NR has found out what it is like to lead a movement without adherents. It has been barely scraping by for years, and if you are still on its mailing list, which I am both out of nostalgia and for the occasional good column, you will be dunned for cash even more unmercifully than if you somehow find yourself on the RNC text roster.
The whole thing is sad, but the world moves on. NR moved on from Buckley, and now conservatives have moved on from it. I will not celebrate its fall, and I will read the good stuff it runs for as long as it struggles on, but NR is not a conservative thought leader. It is unclear whether it is a conservative anything.
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