Fifty years ago, National Review vowed to stand "athwart history, yelling Stop." Fifteen years ago, I stood athwart other Bay Staters and stopped when I came upon an issue of National Review. I turned to the back page for Florence King. NR's "For the Record" updated me on political developments in the days before the Internet. If Joe Sobran, Jeffrey Hart, or John O'Sullivan appeared in the table of contents, I rushed to read the article.

I haven't read an issue of National Review for several years. I understand the criticism that it has become a Weekly Standard-lite, but I think the arrival of the Internet (and my preference for books over magazines and newspapers) has more to do with my recent aversion to, as its writers are wont to call it, dead-tree NR. I don't rush to read National Review, but I don't rush to read any magazine. I do follow NR's successful online offshoot NRO, and generally click when I see the name Jonah Goldberg, John Derbyshire, or Kathryn Lopez. Byron York does some excellent reporting, which is something that I don't recall NR doing way back when.

If 17-year-old kids aren't rushing to read National Review the way I and so many others did, National Review can blame the Internet, but it may be wiser to blame National Review. As its inaugural editorial pointed out, "Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did NATIONAL REVIEW not exist, no one would have invented it." It should be added that since someone did invent National Review, Young Americans for Freedom, the Goldwater campaign, conservative non-profits such as Heritage and Free Congress, Rush Limbaugh, the Wall Street Journal editorial page, and so much more followed. Conservatives have more choices than National Review in no small part because of National Review. The publication is a victim of its own success.

I had the pleasure of meeting National Review's founder, who turns 80 next week, once. As executive director of Accuracy in Academia, I helped organize a lecture William F. Buckley gave at the University of Chicago. The undergraduates wanted Buckley to keynote the conference, and I promised that I would make an attempt. I was skeptical. I lowballed, and to my great surprise he accepted. Upon meeting Buckley at O'Hare Airport, I was struck by how down to earth he was. He was gracious. Later at dinner, he took time to indulge students who clearly viewed him as a cross between Jesus Christ and H.L. Mencken. Perhaps he indulged me when I confessed I did not know what calimari was (Forgive me, I grew up outside that landlocked, one-stoplight town called Boston.). He was a great dinner companion, and showed why so many had so much goodwill towards him. As I wrote last year, "some of [the students] occassionally behaved towards Buckley as Chris Farley's jittery-interviewer character acted towards Paul McCartney on Saturday Night Live ('Re, Re, Remember when you were in the Beatles? That was awesome.')." But Buckley took it all in stride. Why wouldn't he? He's William F. Buckley, after all, and discomforting fawners have approached him a thousand times.

In truth, Buckley had some help in founding National Review. The Freeman had virtually collapsed, and there was but one conservative weekly: Human Events. Willi Schlam pressed Buckley. Businessmen poured money upon the recently graduated Yalie. However godlike Buckley appears now, he was a thirty-year-old kid in 1955, and readers most certainly went for Max Eastman, Whittaker Chambers, and Russell Kirk before they tackled Buckley's writings. But to the last man standing goes the credit, and for holding National Review together for decades as it bled money, Buckley deserves the credit. Leftists have had Appeal to Reason, The Nation, Mother Jones, The Call, and scores of other publications. For conservatives, there is (there was?) National Review. Despite the influence of, say, Appeal to Reason or Mother Jones, none of their readers (I hope) became president. Ronald Reagan did. Has there been a more influential American magazine of opinion than National Review?

While it is true that conservatives existed before National Review, it's hard to make the case that much of a conservative movement existed. Why would a conservative movement exist? What we call conservatism, up until the turn of the last century, was the default position. No one reacted to Calvin Coolidge taking the oath of office in the same hysterical manner as some reacted to Ronald Reagan becoming president. John T. Flynn, Albert J. Nock, and others carried the conservative torch prior to World War II. But it wasn't until after Franklin Roosevelt mounted his attack on the status quo that conservatives, who initially didn't know what hit them, organized. We are reactionaries, after all.

Buckley admits that in the magazine's infancy, he hoped to divorce Dwight Eisenhower from the conservative movement. In NR's first issue, the editors fantasized about dumping Richard Nixon from the 1956 Republican ticket in favor of the more conservative William Knowland. I can even recall attacks on Ronald Reagan for going soft. It is that iconoclastic NR that I miss. It comes back occassionally, as it did in this reality-check editorial on the strengthening "Wilsonian tendency...in conservative foreign-policy thought," but not enough for me. What would Russell Kirk, James Burnham, or Frank Meyer make of George W. Bush? Alas, we live in more advanced, chronologically speaking, times. It is enough to make one stand athwart history yelling stop.

It has been sad to see the decline of National Review, and other once-conservative organizations and institutions, and to see the direction that the Republican Party has been headed in as well. The Problem of National Review is perhaps symbolic of "The Problem" of the Conservative Movement as a whole.

By the way: Myself and two other traditionalist conservative students debated with Rich Lowry, regarding this matter, following his dinner speech at the 2004 'National Conservative Student Conference.'

Well I'm an 18 year old who isn't rushing to read National Review, and they can fairly blame the internet. I read NRO all the time.

One of the saddest days of my life: turning to the backpage of NR, where the irreverent southern belle Misanthrope had written her original cultural comments for as long as could I recall, to find David Frum, who had just recently accused Robert Novak of being unpatriotic.

Nice life so far, but that feeling sucked.

I haven't picked up a dead tree issue for years becuase of the UnPatriotic Conservative article by Frum. In one article NR managed to bash the 10 or so people in the world today who actually were standing athwart history yelling Stop!

Hopefully NR will be dead in the next 10 years or so . Good riddance!

I think you are being way too gracious to both Buckley and National Review. It is not as if Joe Sobran and John O'Sullivan magically disappeared from National Review, they were forced out by Buckley who was more concerned with his image than any sort of conservatism. John T Flynn, who you mention earlier, was forced out by Buckley in the 1950s.

As for National Review's occasionally sober editorial stances on the war in Iraq, they were the ones who cheered bush on to begin with, and they haven't really done anything since to urge a expedited exit strategy. As I showed almost every single criticism they made of the policy, they themselves had endorsed earlier.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/epstein/epstein14.html

Can the internet truly be blamed for NR's downward spiral when it has an online edition, as its competitors and detractors have?

If the websurfing teens of today are not aware of the National Review, I hardly think the internet is responsible for it when articles in NR can turn up in a Google search as readily as any leftist content does. I think that, rather than blame the internet, or even National Review itself, we have to look at the damage being done to our youth's minds by an educational system that has long been taken over and subverted by the left. It is very likely that, if young people hear of National Review at all, these days, it's in an entirely negative light, courtesy of left-leaning academics.

Most young conservatives I meet, all love national review, certainly it is the more popular among young conservatives than the weekly standard, american spectator, american conservative etc. In fact Jonah Goldberg is quite popular among my peers.

I do agree that the internet has not hurt National Review, any publication can adapt to new technology and even if the tree zine disapears, it does not mean that a magazine will become irrelevant. National Review was probably the first conservative magazine to really try to adopt to the online format, and NRO is definitely more popular than any other web version of an print magazine.

National Review's decline isn't because of the youth or the internet. Its a combination of the fact that it rarely has any serious thinkers like Burnham or Kirk write for it, and it has ceased to be conservative.

Although Marcus isn't entirely wrong, I think NR has more ability than any other instituion of the conservative movement to unite the various bands of conservatives who have been fighting with each other for the last 10-15 years. It seems that fighting reached its fever pitch under GWB, and now that proBush conservatives have admitted that W has messed up several substantial times (esp Miers), it may be the time for NR to take some very thoughtful, outspoken, conservative stands to unite this unhappy family.

NR took the lead in declaring that anyone who didn't support the war in Iraq hated his country. This is not the magazine to unite anything, much less the desultory conservative movement.

NR is conservative in name only, and is really just part of the growing web of media that rehash Republican talking points. Occasionally there will be an article that shows some thoughtful an-alysis, but you can find articles like these in any magazine today. If NR were to go away tomorrow no voice would be lost because you could hear the same rhetoric on Hannity, Limbaugh, FPM, Fox News and dozens of other outlets. At one time NR might have been indispensable but now it has made itself unnecessary.

Although I don't find the magazines particularly insightful Human Events or American Spectator could have more of a place to say they could unite the conservative movement, because they have stayed out of most of the in fighting. Though they never publish antiwar pieces, they also don't do the type of smear pieces that National Review has done since its inception.

As for this newfound disgust with Bush by some neocons, I seriously doubt it is based on principle. They simply sunk the Bush presidency by cheerleading his war, which is now a complete failure and they are jumping ship. They can't say "we don't like Bush because of his war," because everyone would call them out on their hypocricy, so they are acting as if they just realized Bush doesn't support small government. Myself, and quite a few prominent paleos have all come to this conclusion independently.

All I see National Review doing when it tries to take some semi-sober stands on immigration and the war, is act like they all along have been the advocates of sensible policy and because their policies are now unpopular, they just want to make sure that no one does anything hasty like Read the American Conservatives or Chronicles who have been making those points all along.

This idea of "uniting the conservative movement" is not going to work because lots of people like to carry the name around even though they have nothing in common. How do you unite those who believe in open borders, multiculturalism with those who want closed borders and American to possess a more singular culture? How do you unite those who want a radical Wilsonian foreign policy with those who want a traditional Robert Taft foreign policy? How do you unite those who worship George Bush with those who have conservative principles?

The conservative name is popular and represents the antithesis of liberalism but this field is now so wide open that the word has virtually no meaning. Perhaps it would be best to retire the conservative label -- or reserve to those who have an affinity with the ideas of Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver -- and come up with new names.

Eisenhower was a conservative. Strange he didn't even consider himself a Republican prior to seeking the nomination. NR ramins a vital part of the conservative scene, The strength and extent of its influence can be seen by the vitrol the Left uses in attacking it.

I more/less agree with Eric Wilds assumptions, but there is a certain disconnect I see within the conservative movement, whereby everyone hails the conservative thinkers who are on any ISI reading list and then somehow acts as if these people fueled the Conservative Revolution we are now going through. I really can't believe it when I meet people who actually think that George Bush and Tom Delay are enacting the ideas of Hayek, Kirk, and Weaver, but I've seen it.

I have read a few essays and speeches before my time when some neoconservatives would attack Kirk, Nock and the rest, but now I never see it happen.

You're right, Eisenhower never called himself a conservative, but polls showed that 2/3 of all conservatives considered him to be a conservative.

Eisenhower was far from perfect, and I would have loved for Taft to be president, but he is far more conservative than George W. Bush or even Ronald Reagan. I can't imagine Reagan, much less Bush, enacting Operation Wetback or speaking out against the Military Industrial Complex.

I don't think National Review is in anyway vital to the conservative movement. It may be the most popular magazine, but can anyone think of a single great idea-political or philosophical- that has came out of the magazine in the last 10 years. While it may have succeeded in purging the Birchers 40 years ago, its unpatriotic conservatives piece was pretty much a flop.

I don't think the left hates the magazine like they used to. Why should they? Remember Richard Cohen praising Rob Lowry's call for increasing "Urban Spending" in the wake of Katrina.