National Review facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
National Review

National Review cover for August 30, 2010
Editor-in-Chief	Rich Lowry
Categories	Editorial magazine, American conservatism
Frequency	Monthly
Publisher	E. Garrett Bewkes IV
Total circulation (2022)	75,000
Founder	William F. Buckley Jr.
First issue	November 19, 1955; 68 years ago (1955-11-19)
Company	National Review, Inc.
Country	United States
Based in	New York City, New York, U.S.
Language	English
ISSN	0028-0038

National Review is an American conservative right-libertarian editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief is Rich Lowry, and its editor is Ramesh Ponnuru.

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.

History

Background

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder and first editor of National Review, pictured in 1985

Before National Review's 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 anticommunist, 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. (A magazine holding the trademark to the name prompted the change to National Review.)

Founding

On November 19, 1955, Buckley's magazine began to take shape. Buckley assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians, and ex-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 (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 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,

[L]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 anti-Semites.

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 anti-Semites, the John Birchers, the nativists and their sort."

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 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 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.

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

Victor Davis Hanson, a regular contributor since 2001, sees a broad spectrum of conservative and anti-liberal contributors:

In other words, a wide conservative spectrum—paleo-conservatives, neo-conservatives, tea-party enthusiasts, the deeply religious and the agnostic, both libertarians and social conservatives, free-marketeers and the more protectionist—characterizes National Review. The common requisite is that they present their views as a critique of prevailing liberal orthodoxy but do so analytically and with decency and respect.

The magazine has been described as "the bible of American conservatism".

Trump era

In 2015, the magazine published an editorial titled "Against Trump", calling Donald Trump a "philosophically unmoored political opportunist" and announcing its adamant and uniform opposition to his presidential candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. After Trump's election to the presidency and through his administration, the National Review editorial board continued to criticize him.

However, following Trump's 2016 electoral victory over Hillary Clinton, some National Review and National Review Online contributors took more varied positions on Trump. Hanson, for instance, supports him, while others, such as editor Ramesh Ponnuru and contributor Jonah Goldberg, have remained uniformly critical of Trump. In a Washington Post feature on conservative magazines, T.A. Frank noted: "From the perspective of a reader, these tensions make National Review as lively as it has been in a long time."

Biden era

As Trump announced his run for reelection in 2022 and throughout 2023, National Review editorialized regularly against him and his candidacy.

National Review Online

A popular web version of the magazine, National Review Online ("N.R.O."), includes a digital version of the magazine, with articles updated daily by National Review writers, and conservative blogs. The online version is called N.R.O. to distinguish it from the printed magazine. It also features free articles, though these deviate in content from its print magazine. The site's editor is Phillip Klein, who replaced Charles C. W. Cooke.

Each day, the site posts new content consisting of conservative, libertarian, and neoconservative opinion articles, including some syndicated columns, and news features.

It also features two blogs:

• The Corner is a selection of postings from a group of the site's editors and affiliated writers discussing the issues of the day.
• Bench Memos provides legal and judicial news and commentary.

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 Review—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.

In 2019, the Whittaker Chambers family prevailed on the N.R.I. to cease an award in Chambers' name, after an award to people whom the family found objectionable.

Finances

As with most political opinion magazines in the United States, National Review carries little corporate advertising. The magazine stays afloat from subscription fees, donations, and black-tie fundraisers 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 50 years.

Presidential primary endorsements

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."

These candidates were endorsed by National Review:

Editors and contributors

The magazine's editor-in-chief 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, Peter Thiel, and Ted Cruz in the online and print edition.

Contributors

Contributors to National Review (N.R.) magazine, National Review Online (N.R.O.), or both:

Past contributors

Washington editors

• L. Brent Bozell Jr.
• Neal B. Freeman
• George Will, 1973–76
• Neal B. Freeman, 1978–81
• John McLaughlin, 1981–89
• William McGurn, 1989–1992
• Kate O'Beirne
• Robert Costa, 2012–13
• Eliana Johnson, 2014–16

See also

In Spanish: National Review para niños