National Review Turns 50!

I doubt that any TtP readers or bloggers need a prolix assessment of the importance of National Review and William F. Buckley in the intellectual history of post-Taft American conservatism and libertarianism. Few remember that uber-libertarian anarcho-captialist Murray N. Rothbard was an early contributer to National Review, until they split over Cold War foreign policy (Vietnam, in particular). In 1965, Rothbard was already engaging in his trademark ascerbity (pdf) regarding the magazine:

National Review has reason to look back upon its ten years and be proud. It has accomplished most of what it set out to do: it has managed to transform the American Right from essentially old-fashioned liberalism to old-fashioned Conservatism, with all the devotion to war, theocracy, the State police, and racism that the change implies.

National Review's website features articles from the last half century, including Buckley's obituary of British author Evelyn Waugh, one of my all-time favorite writers.

It's too bad that the overly glib, overly statist Weekly Standard seems to carry more sway with the contemporary Beltway "conservative" set nowadays. I like to think that it helps, in part, to explain why the welfare-warfare state has advanced so exponentially as the GOP holds the reigns to government power.

Why have the two leading magazines of the American Right been so uncritical of one another? A little old-fashioned animosity between friendly market competitors is long overdue.