Good post, like you I was a long time NR subscriber though I stopped about ten years ago. My parents were also, I used to look forward to each new issue as a teenager and remember the excitement at the election of Ronald Reagan, like a dream being fulfilled.
However, I don't want NR to be better, I want it to disappear. They sold their souls and once that happens there is no going back, they cannot be rehabilitated. Not only was there the Big Tech dollar issues, but as you mention their pages were filled with people that gleefully attacked Trump at every instance. Yes, Trump embarrassed us at times but did anyone over there ever consider the wisdom of just not commenting? Not at NR they didn't.
If our side is doing something illegal then one has to speak up, but if they are just saying something foolish then NR could have piped down and spoke to them privately. But they didn't because they were more concerned with impressing their neighbors in New York and the beltway crowd. It was always the "yeah we think he's a buffoon too" knee-jerk comment. Always. These were the people supposedly on our side discussing the most conservative president in a generation? No thanks, good riddance. And now, shock of shock, it turns out nearly all the former NR hacks are actually Paul Ryan style crony capitalists who don't give a hoot in hell about our sewer of a culture. In fact many of them seem to revel in it.
The pièce de résistance was their article attacking Nick Sandmann where they said his actions were akin to "nailing Christ on the cross". They were so anxious to get this virtue-signaling piece up that they posted it at midnight. No sleeping on it to make sure it was a good idea, or ensure they got their facts straight, but they put it right up as soon as they had crafted the perfect dehumanizing metaphor for Sandmann. Of course, many on the "alt-right" had already shown hours before the NR piece went up that the MSM narrative was a hoax. Lowry at least had the good sense to take it down pretty quickly, probably after calls from their in-house counsel.
Looking back it's not too surprising as Buckley was always an elitist with his phony mid-Atlantic accent and general snobbery. Not a man of people to put it lightly. His son Chris Buckley, who was affiliated with NR at the time, endorsed Obama if you recall. The rot at NR has been there for a long time but we pretended it wasn't there as we had no one else. Those days are long gone now, NR belongs on the ash heap of history to use a great Reagan phrase.
BTW, Kay Cole James and Heritage may have been good on the tech dollar issue but she has some real problems of her own. She came out strong for CRT and collective racial guilt, words that don't belong in the mouth of any conservative. Thankfully she quit last year.
The days of the Chamber of Commerce "conservatives" running the party are over. NR (and Heritage to some extent) are decrepit shells that no longer speak for the overwhelming majority of conservatives.
YOU HAVE SUCCESSFULLY DISRUPTED NATIONAL REVIEW LIKE A BOSS
BADASS ARTICLE JON
Good post, like you I was a long time NR subscriber though I stopped about ten years ago. My parents were also, I used to look forward to each new issue as a teenager and remember the excitement at the election of Ronald Reagan, like a dream being fulfilled.
However, I don't want NR to be better, I want it to disappear. They sold their souls and once that happens there is no going back, they cannot be rehabilitated. Not only was there the Big Tech dollar issues, but as you mention their pages were filled with people that gleefully attacked Trump at every instance. Yes, Trump embarrassed us at times but did anyone over there ever consider the wisdom of just not commenting? Not at NR they didn't.
If our side is doing something illegal then one has to speak up, but if they are just saying something foolish then NR could have piped down and spoke to them privately. But they didn't because they were more concerned with impressing their neighbors in New York and the beltway crowd. It was always the "yeah we think he's a buffoon too" knee-jerk comment. Always. These were the people supposedly on our side discussing the most conservative president in a generation? No thanks, good riddance. And now, shock of shock, it turns out nearly all the former NR hacks are actually Paul Ryan style crony capitalists who don't give a hoot in hell about our sewer of a culture. In fact many of them seem to revel in it.
The pièce de résistance was their article attacking Nick Sandmann where they said his actions were akin to "nailing Christ on the cross". They were so anxious to get this virtue-signaling piece up that they posted it at midnight. No sleeping on it to make sure it was a good idea, or ensure they got their facts straight, but they put it right up as soon as they had crafted the perfect dehumanizing metaphor for Sandmann. Of course, many on the "alt-right" had already shown hours before the NR piece went up that the MSM narrative was a hoax. Lowry at least had the good sense to take it down pretty quickly, probably after calls from their in-house counsel.
Looking back it's not too surprising as Buckley was always an elitist with his phony mid-Atlantic accent and general snobbery. Not a man of people to put it lightly. His son Chris Buckley, who was affiliated with NR at the time, endorsed Obama if you recall. The rot at NR has been there for a long time but we pretended it wasn't there as we had no one else. Those days are long gone now, NR belongs on the ash heap of history to use a great Reagan phrase.
BTW, Kay Cole James and Heritage may have been good on the tech dollar issue but she has some real problems of her own. She came out strong for CRT and collective racial guilt, words that don't belong in the mouth of any conservative. Thankfully she quit last year.
The days of the Chamber of Commerce "conservatives" running the party are over. NR (and Heritage to some extent) are decrepit shells that no longer speak for the overwhelming majority of conservatives.
I stopped reading National Review when it became clear they were infested with never Trumpers.