[x]

In a way National Review has come full circle. In the 1950s and 1960s they were a quirky small circulation periodical. Most Americans probably didn't share the concerns of the clique who put out the magazine. In the 1970s and 1980s National Review reflected the way very many American voters thought. The country came around in the Eighties to some of the positions the magazine had represented earlier. Earlier liberal hopes came to be seen as mistaken and misplaced. The magazine modified its stands to reflect the current situation, and became a major voice in the Reagan years.

Lately, though, the magazine seems to be more a product of a small clique with its own particular interests and preoccupations. The circulation is larger than it was in the Fifties or Sixties, but it doesn't seem as essential as it did in the Seventies or Eighties. The difference is that the deeper cultural concerns of the early magazine aren't there. NR wants to be a "player" on the political and policy scenes and doesn't bother as much with the philosophical framework.

With the end of the Cold War it was back to the drawing board for NR. They've had a hard time getting things to gel. They downplayed some of their earlier cultural conservatism and their post-Cold War positions didn't have as wide an appeal. 9/11 gave the magazine a new focus and won plenty of new readers concerned with homeland security, but they haven't quite convinced me that they're on the right track about a lot of things.

[annalex]

I stopped reading it after they smeared conservatives such as Buchanan and Sobran by lumping them up with the likes of Raymondo. But the deathist views of Ponnuru and Derbyshire are news to me, so I think I will ask them for a check for the balance of my loooong subscription, payable to Catholic Answers.