THE PROBLEM OF NATIONAL REVIEW

Where was the premier journal of the conservative movement during the greatest assault on limited government in the past forty years, as Congress was poised to pass a new $7 trillion entitlement to vastly expand the welfare state? In its relevant edition, National Review only had room for one short item about what was also the biggest news of the week, that Republicans had created a new Medicare prescription drug benefit with an unfunded liability larger than that for its historic bet noir, Social Security.

Curiously, National Review spent most of that little space criticizing Teddy Kennedy-who had nothing to do with the Medicare prescription drug bill's passage. It was as if NR felt comfortable living in the past with recognizable bad guys, not able to come to grips with the fact it was conservative GOP leaders who had designed the largest increase in entitlements since the Great Society. Indeed, there was no mention of conservative members of Congress or the president at all. It waited until the very last phrase of the editorial to call this terrible bill part of a "dismal milieu," as if nothing could be done about this mysterious specter in Washington. To NR, a "legislative juggernaut" had been created by the "White House" (not President Bush or Republican leaders) and the AARP to which conservatives should presumably acquiesce.

What had happened to the journal of opinion that created the modern conservative movement--the one that was the historic voice of its passion to limit government and promote freedom alternatives in markets, local communities, families and responsible individualism? What had happened was that NR had made an earlier considered decision to abandon its role on the ideological cutting edge of conservative opinion. Instead, its current and past editors had set the British The Economist as its model for becoming a worldly-wise observer of the political scene from a moderate, right-of-center position. It would become objective rather than partisan, journalistic rather than ideological. As a matter of design, it severed its relationship to the conservative movement, including its co-sponsorship of the movement's largest event, the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The remainder of its December 8, 2003 edition is a parody of its Economist progenitor, right down to its very British view of the world. It was perhaps not overly excessive to devote two of its precious few editorials to English subjects and another to a European Union poll but two more featured stories from a British perspective apparently were necessary to provide the proper tone. While coverage of ideological matters was slim to nonexistent, there was room for an editorial on whether Britney Spears was heading for a crack up and plenty of space in editorials galore and articles aplenty for its obsession with what it chants as "At War."

In recent years, National Review had editorially proclaimed colonialism as a reasonable replacement for a foreign policy based upon George Washington's narrowly defined U.S. interests with few entangling alliances. But 9/11 had loosened all restraints against the historic conservative position as each week became a celebration of new world areas into which American power (and soldiers' lives) should be thrust by people who had as yet to accept that dangerous assignment themselves. NR was cynical enough in its treatment of the War that it defended jailing detainees at "Gitmo" without legal counsel on the basis of past court decisions holding this appropriate as long as a war was in progress. It ignored the fact that National Review itself had proclaimed this war will not end until terrorism is eliminated everywhere in the world. Consequently, that war will never end and presumably neither would the internment of the enemy detainees.

In some ways, its editorial on Judge Roy Moore demonstrated best how far NR had strayed from historical conservatism. Its editorial proclaimed support for the substance of Moore's decision to display the Ten Commandment in his court but said he was wrong in not obeying the federal court that overruled his right to do so. NR argued that the Constitution and our heritage required his obedience to federal judges, apparently unaware that the Constitutionally sound argument Judge Moore made was that federal courts had no business interpreting the Alabama constitution. As Felix Morley taught us during the early days of NR, that was the conservative position on the Constitution. Judging by conservative principles, was the editorial not backwards? Was not Moore correct Constitutionally but that, practically, he would be required to submit to superior if unconstitutional raw federal power?

Oh, yes, there was one fine article by Robert Bork.

It is with a heavy heart that these issues are raised. National Review taught us conservatism in our youth. The reader is only burdened with the details of this current issue because the current editor demanded detailed, issue-by-issue documentation of my earlier concerns, which we had done previously. But would the editor really publicly claim that his goal is to passionately express and defend fusionist conservatism as opposed to providing journalistic objectivity from a moderately right of center position? I think not. That belief has reluctantly led us to the decision to create ConservativeBattleline to fill the void.