National Review (NR) is a fortnightly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."^[2]

Although the print version of the magazine is available online to subscribers, the free content on the website is essentially a separate publication under different editorial direction.

Origins[link]

Prior to National Review's founding in 1955, some conservatives believed that the American right was a largely unorganized collection of individuals who shared intertwining philosophies but had little opportunity for a united public voice. They also wanted to marginalize what they saw as the antiwar, noninterventionist views of the Old Right.^[3]

In 1953 moderate Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower was president, and many major magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post, Time, and Reader's Digest were strongly conservative and anti-communist, as were many newspapers including the Chicago Tribune and St Louis Globe-Democrat. A few small-circulation conservative magazines, Human Events and The Freeman preceded National Review in developing Cold War Conservatism in the 1950s.^[4]

History[link]

Early years[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011)

In 1953, Russell Kirk published The Conservative Mind, which sought to trace an intellectual bloodline from Edmund Burke^[5] to the Old Right in the early 1950s. This challenged the popular notion that no coherent conservative tradition existed in the United States.^[5] A young William F. Buckley, Jr. was greatly influenced by Kirk's concepts.

William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Review (pictured in 1985)

Two years before, Buckley published God and Man at Yale, criticizing his alma mater for its abandonment of its founding principles. Buckley, a champion debater and former editor of The Yale Daily News, soon rose to national prominence. After a short stint in the CIA, he toured the country debating for The Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (ISI), contributed to The American Mercury, and soon decided to start his own magazine.

Buckley first tried to purchase Human Events, but was turned down. He then met Willi Schlamm, the ex-communist editor of The Freeman; they would spend the next two years raising the $300,000 necessary to start their own weekly magazine, originally to be called National Weekly. (A magazine holding the trademark to the name prompted the change to National Review.) The statement of intentions read:

Middle-of-the-Road, qua Middle of the Road, is politically, intellectually, and morally repugnant. We shall recommend policies for the simple reason that we consider them right (rather than “non-controversial”); and we consider them right because they are based on principles we deem right (rather than on popularity polls)...The New Deal revolution, for instance, could hardly have happened save for the cumulative impact of The Nation and The New Republic, and a few other publications, on several American college generations during the twenties and thirties.

Contributors[link]

On November 19, 1955, Buckley’s magazine would take shape. Buckley assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians and ex-Communists. They included: Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, and Willmoore Kendall, and Catholics L. Brent Bozell, Harry V. Jaffa and Garry Wills. Whittaker Chambers, the former Time editor who had been a Communist spy in the 1930s eventually became a senior editor. In the magazine’s founding statement Buckley wrote:^[6]

Let’s Face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that of course; if National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

As editors and contributors, Buckley especially sought out intellectuals who were ex-Communists or had once worked on the far Left, including Whittaker Chambers, William Schlamm, John Dos Passos, Frank Meyer and James Burnham.^[7] When James Burnham became one of the original senior editors he urged the adoption of a more pragmatic editorial position that would extend the influence of the magazine toward the political center. Smant (1991) finds that Burnham overcame sometimes heated opposition from other members of the editorial board (including Meyer, Schlamm, William Rickenbacker, and the magazine's publisher William A. Rusher), and had a significant impact on both the editorial policy of the magazine and on the thinking of Buckley himself.^[8]

Mission to conservatives[link]

National Review aimed to make conservative ideas respectable, in an age when the dominant view of conservative thought was expressed by Lionel Trilling in 1950:^[9]

In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only... in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.

William Buckley, Jr. on the purpose of National Review:

[The National Review] stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it… it is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation…since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to…run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals’.^[10]

National Review promoted Barry Goldwater heavily during the early 1960s. Buckley and others involved with the magazine took a major role in the "Draft Goldwater" movement in 1960 and the 1964 presidential campaign. National Review spread his vision of conservatism throughout the country.^[11]

The early National Review faced occasional defections from both left and right. Garry Wills broke with NR and became a liberal commentator. Buckley’s brother-in-law, L. Brent Bozell Jr., who ghostwrote The Conscience of a Conservative for Barry Goldwater, left and started the short-lived traditionalist Catholic magazine, Triumph in 1966.

Defining the boundaries of conservatism[link]

Buckley and Meyer promoted the idea of enlarging the boundaries of conservatism through fusionism, whereby different schools of conservatives, including libertarians, would work together to combat what were seen as their common opponents.

Buckley and his editors used his magazine to define the boundaries of conservatism—and to exclude people or ideas or groups they considered unworthy of the conservative title.^[12] Therefore they attacked Ayn Rand, the John Birch Society, George Wallace and anti-Semites.

Buckley's goal was to upscale the respectability of the conservative movement; as Rich Lowry noted:

Mr. Buckley's first great achievement was to purge the American right of its kooks. He marginalized the anti-Semites, the John Birchers, the nativists and their sort.^[13]

In 1957, the magazine editorialized in favor of white supremacy in the South, arguing that "the central question that emerges... is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race."^[14] By the 1970s the magazine had moved to demanding colorblind policies and the end of affirmative action.^[15]

In the late 1960s, the magazine attacked segregationist George Wallace, who ran in Democratic primaries (1964 and 1972) and made an independent run for president in 1968. During the 1950s, Buckley had worked to remove anti-Semitism from the conservative movement and barred holders of those views from working for National Review.^[16]

In 1962, Buckley denounced Robert W. Welch, Jr., and the John Birch Society, in National Review, as "far removed from common sense" and urged the GOP to purge itself of Welch's influence.^[17]

After Goldwater[link]

After Goldwater was defeated by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Buckley and National Review continued to champion the idea of a conservative movement, which was increasingly embodied in Ronald Reagan. Reagan, a longtime subscriber to National Review, first became politically prominent during Goldwater's campaign. National Review supported his challenge to President Gerald Ford in 1976 and his successful 1980 campaign.

During the 1980s NR called for tax cuts, supply-side economics, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and support for President Reagan's foreign policy against the Soviet Union. The magazine criticized the Welfare state and would support the Welfare reform proposals of the 1990s. The magazine also regularly criticized President Bill Clinton. It first embraced, then rejected, Pat Buchanan in his political campaigns. A lengthy 1996 National Review editorial called for a "movement toward" drug legalization.^[18]

Endorsements of presidential candidates during primaries[link]

National Review sometimes endorses a candidate during the primary election season. Editors at National Review have said "Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate."^[19] This statement echoes what has come to be called "The Buckley Rule". In a 1967 interview, in which he was asked about the choice of presidential candidate, Buckley said, "The wisest choice would be the one who would win.... I'd be for the most right, viable candidate who could win." ^[20]

The following candidates were officially endorsed by National Review:

Current editor and contributors[link]

The magazine's current editor is Rich Lowry. Many of the magazine's commentators are affiliated with think-tanks such as the Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. Prominent guest authors have included Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Sarah Palin in the online and paper edition.

[edit] National Review Online

A popular feature of National Review is the web version of the magazine, National Review Online ("NRO"), which includes a digital version of the magazine, with articles updated daily by National Review writers, and conservative blogs. The Online version is called NRO to distinguish it from the paper magazine (referred to as "NRODT" or National Review On Dead Tree.) The site's editor is Kathryn Jean Lopez, known to the NRO community as "K-Lo". The website receives about one million hits per day—more than all other conservative-magazine websites combined^{[citation needed]}. Each day, the site posts new content consisting of conservative, libertarian, neo-conservative, and neo-liberal opinion articles. It also features several blogs:

• The Corner^[24] (postings from many of the site's editors and affiliated writers discussing the issues of the day).
• The Campaign Spot^[25] (formerly The Kerry Spot/TKS written by Jim Geraghty).
• David Calling^[26] (updated by writer David Pryce-Jones).
• Bench Memos^[27] (legal and judicial news).
• The Agenda^[28] (analysis updated by Reihan Salam).
• Media Blog^[29] (media news).
• Planet Gore^[30] (global warming news).
• Phi Beta Cons^[31] (University news).

Markos Moulitsas, who runs the liberal Daily Kos website, told reporters in August 2007 that he does not read conservative blogs, with the exception of those on NRO: "I do like the blogs at the National Review — I do think their writers are the best in the [conservative] blogosphere," he said.^[32] Paul Begala has stated in The Huffington Post that "I bookmark NRO and read it frequently. It's smart and breezy...".^[33]

[edit] National Review Institute

The NRI works in policy development and helping establish new advocates in the conservative movement. National Review Institute was founded by William F. Buckley Jr. in 1991 to engage in policy development, public education, and advocacy that would advance the conservative principles he championed.^[34]

Finances[link]

As with most political opinion magazines in the United States, National Review carries little corporate advertising. The magazine stays afloat by donations from subscribers and black-tie fund raisers around the country. The magazine also sponsors cruises featuring National Review editors and contributors as lecturers.^[35]

Buckley said in 2005 that the magazine had lost about $25 million over 50 years.^[36]

Notable current contributors[link]

Current and past contributors to National Review magazine, National Review Online, or both:

Notable past contributors[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Allitt, Patrick. The Conservatives: Ideas and Personalities Throughout American History (2010) excerpt and text search
• Critchlow, Donald T. The Conservative Ascendancy: How the Right Made Political History (2007)
• Frohnen, Bruce et al. eds. American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (2006) ISBN 1-932236-44-9
• Hart, Jeffrey. The Making of the American Conservative Mind: The National Review and Its Times (2005), a view from the inside
• Judis, John B. William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (2001) ISBN 978-0-7432-1797-2
• Nash, George. The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America Since 1945 (2006; 1st ed. 1978)
• Schneider, Gregory. The Conservative Century: From Reaction to Revolution (2009)
• Smant, Kevin J. Principles and Heresies: Frank S. Meyer and the Shaping of the American Conservative Movement (2002) (ISBN 1-882926-72-2)

External links[link]

• NRO, National Review Online
• NRI, National Review Institute
• National Review at Discourse DB
• The Decline of National Review
• A Personal Retrospective: NR and its founder by Rich Lowry, August 9, 2004, on the occasion of National Review's 50th anniversary
• "President Honors Buckley at 50th Anniversary of National Review", GeorgeWBushWhiteHouse.com, October 6, 2005
• Man of Letters, Andrew Ferguson, (Wall Street Journal)
• National Review articles by Whittaker Chambers

Richard A. "Rich" Lowry (born 22 August 1968) is the editor of National Review, a conservative American news magazine, and a syndicated columnist.

Life and career[link]

Lowry was born in Arlington, Virginia and graduated from the University of Virginia in 1990 and won second place in National Review's Young Writer's Contest. He joined William F. Buckley's National Review in 1992 and has been the magazine's editor since 1997.^[1] He regularly appears on the Fox News Channel. He has guest-hosted on Hannity and Colmes and Fox & Friends, and is a guest panelist on PBS's The McLaughlin Group, Fox News Watch, and NBC's Meet the Press.

Lowry refused to fight Al Franken when challenged in jest in 2000.^[2]

In 2002, Muslim organizations called for Lowry to apologize,^[3] after he posted a message on National Review Online's blog, "The Corner", discussing the "nuking" of Mecca, as retaliation for a terrorist attack.^[4][5]

His book, Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years^[6] is a polemic about President Bill Clinton, whom he deprecates as "Navel-Gazer-in-Chief."^[7] He also has a syndicated column with King Features. He once served as a guest on The Colbert Report.

Most recently, Lowry and Keith Korman wrote Banquo's Ghosts, a fiction novel published by Vanguard Press in 2009.^[8] The political thriller's plot revolves around a nuclear-armed Iran and an inebriated leftist journalist.^[9]

Positions[link]

Lowry has held that in extreme circumstances, the practice of waterboarding "belongs in a murky space short of unambiguous torture."^[10][11][12]

Following the 2008 Vice Presidential debate between Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, Lowry gained some publicity^{[13][14][15][16]} and was selected as then-MSNBC commentator Keith Olbermann's Worst Person in the World^[17][18] for writing: "A very wise TV executive once told me that the key to TV is projecting through the screen. It's one of the keys to the success of, say, a Bill O'Reilly, who comes through the screen and grabs you by the throat. Palin too projects through the screen like crazy. I'm sure I'm not the only male in America who, when Palin dropped her first wink, sat up a little straighter on the couch and said, 'Hey, I think she just winked at me.' And her smile. By the end, when she clearly knew she was doing well, it was so sparkling it was almost mesmerizing. It sent little starbursts through the screen and ricocheting around the living rooms of America. This is a quality that can't be learned; it's either something you have or you don't, and man, she's got it."^[19]

References[link]

External links[link]

• National Review biography
• National Review Columns
• Columns at TownHall.com
• Video discussion/debate with Lowry and Michael Tomasky on Bloggingheads.tv
• Rich Lowry on Charlie Rose
• Booknotes interview with Lowry on Legacy: Paying the Price for the Clinton Years, November 9, 2003.

Ted Cruz
Texas Solicitor General
In office 2003 – May 2008
Preceded by	Julie Parsley
Succeeded by	James C. Ho
Personal details
Born	(1970-12-22) December 22, 1970 (age 41) Calgary, Alberta, Canada[1]
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Heidi Suzanne Cruz
Children	Caroline Camille Catherine Christiane
Residence	Houston, Texas
Alma mater	Princeton University Harvard Law School
Profession	Attorney
Religion	Southern Baptist[2]
Website	tedcruz.org

Rafael Edward Cruz, known as Ted Cruz (born December 22, 1970), is the former Solicitor General of the U.S. state of Texas, a position which he held from 2003 to May 2008. Cruz was appointed by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. He was the first Hispanic Solicitor General in Texas, the youngest Solicitor General in the United States, and had the longest tenure in the post thus far in Texas history. He is currently a partner at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius, where he leads the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and national appellate litigation practice.^[3]

Cruz is a candidate for the 2012 Republican nomination for the United States Senate seat being vacated by Kay Bailey Hutchison.^[4]

Cruz previously served as the director of the Office of Policy Planning at the Federal Trade Commission, an Associate Deputy Attorney General at the United States Department of Justice, and as Domestic Policy Advisor to U.S. President George W. Bush on the 2000 Bush-Cheney campaign. In addition, from 2004-2009 Cruz was an Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin, where he taught U.S. Supreme Court litigation.

Early life and education[link]

Cruz was born to a Cuban-American father and an American mother in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, where his parents were working in the petroleum business.^[1] His father was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba until he escaped to freedom in Texas in 1957.^[5]

Cruz attended high school at Faith West Academy in Katy, Texas,^[6] and then graduated from Second Baptist High School in Houston.

Cruz earned his Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University and his J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. While at Princeton, he competed for the American Whig-Cliosophic Society's Debate Panel as one of North America's top-ranked parliamentary debaters, winning the top speaker award at both the 1992 U.S. National Debating Championship and the 1992 North American Debating Championship.^[7] In 1992, he was named Speaker of the Year and Team of the Year (with his debate partner, David Panton) by the American Parliamentary Debate Association.^[7] Cruz was also a semi-finalist at the 1995 World Universities Debating Championship.^[8]

Cruz graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School. He was a primary editor of the Harvard Law Review, an executive editor of the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, and a founding editor of the Harvard Latino Law Review.^[9]

Legal career[link]

Cruz also served as a law clerk to William Rehnquist, then-Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and J. Michael Luttig of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit.^[10] Cruz was the first Hispanic ever to clerk for a Chief Justice of the United States.^[11]

Cruz has authored more than eighty briefs before the United States Supreme Court and presented forty-three oral arguments, including nine before the United States Supreme Court.

In the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, Cruz assembled a coalition of thirty-one states in defense of the principle that the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees an individual right to keep and bear arms.^[12] Cruz also presented oral argument for the amici states in the companion case to Heller before the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

In addition to his victory in Heller, Cruz has successfully defended the Ten Commandments monument on the Texas State Capitol grounds, the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools and the 2003 Texas redistricting plan.^[13]

Cruz also successfully defended, in Medellin v. Texas, the State of Texas against an attempt by the International Court of Justice to re-open the criminal convictions of 51 murderers on death row throughout the United States.^[14]

2012 U.S. Senate election[link]

Cruz speaking to values voters in October 2011.

On January 19, 2011, following an announcement that U.S. Senator Hutchison would not seek reelection, Cruz announced via blogger conference call his candidacy for the position.^[4]

Cruz has been endorsed by David Barton, founder and president of WallBuilders,^[15] the Club for Growth, a conservative political action committee,^[16] Erick Erickson, editor of prominent conservative blog RedState,^[17] the FreedomWorks for America super PAC,^[18] Princeton University professor Robert P. George,^[19] nationally syndicated radio host Mark Levin,^[20] Former Attorney General Edwin Meese,^[21] Tea Party Express,^[22] Young Conservatives of Texas,^[23] U.S. Senators Jim DeMint,^[24] Mike Lee,^[25] Rand Paul,^[26] and Pat Toomey.^[27] He has also been endorsed by former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Texas Congressman Ron Paul,^[28] as well as former United States Senator from Pennsylvania Rick Santorum.^[29] Cruz faces opposition from sitting Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst in the Republican senatorial primary.

Personal life[link]

Cruz was born and spent the first four years of his life in Calgary before his parents returned to Houston. His father was jailed and tortured by the Batista regime and fought for Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolution ^[30] but "didn't know Castro was a Communist" and later became a staunch critic of Castro when "the rebel leader took control and began seizing private property and suppressing dissent".^[31] He moved to Austin, Texas, in 1957 to study at the University of Texas. He spoke no English and had $100 sewn into his underwear.^[32] The elder Cruz worked his way through school as a dishwasher making 50 cents an hour. Cruz’s mother, who was from Houston, was the first person in her family ever to go to college. She earned a math degree at Rice University in the 1950s, working summers at Foley’s and Shell. "I'm Cuban, Irish, and Italian, and yet somehow I ended up Southern Baptist."^[2]

Cruz and his wife, Heidi Suzanne Cruz, have two daughters, Caroline Camille and Catherine Christiane.

Honors and awards[link]

• "America's Leading Lawyers for Business," Chambers USA (2009 & 2010)
• "50 Most Influential Minority Lawyers in America," National Law Journal (2008)
• "25 Greatest Texas Lawyers of the Past Quarter Century," Texas Lawyer (2010)
• "20 Young Hispanic Americans on the Rise," Newsweek Magazine (1999)
• Traphagen Distinguished Alumnus, Harvard Law School
• Primary Editor, Harvard Law Review
• Executive Editor, Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy
• Founding Editor, Harvard Latino Law Review
• John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics, Harvard Law School

See also[link]

	Law portal
	Texas portal

• List of law clerks of the Supreme Court of the United States

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Ted Cruz

• Ted Cruz for U.S. Senate campaign website
• "Cruz Control: A Republican star rises in Texas," National Review, Mark Hemingway, May 4, 2009
• Ted Cruz’s Morgan Lewis law firm bio
• "Ted Cruz, hatching a site, expects Abbott to run for a different office," Austin American-Statesman, W. Gardner Selby, March 4, 2009
• "Justices listen to a key voice," The National Law Journal (cover story), Marcia Coyle, April 7, 2008
• Announcement of Ted Cruz's departure as Solicitor General
• "In state politics, his star is rising," Austin American-Statesman (front page story), Mark Lisheron, January 15, 2006
• Debating the Supreme Court's Heller decision with the DC Attorney General on News Hour with Jim Lehrer (video)
• "A Day in the life of... Ted Cruz," Texas Bar Journal, Kim Davey, Vol. 69, No. 7

John Derbyshire (born June 3, 1945) is a British-American writer, journalist and commentator. He formerly wrote a column in National Review. He has also written for the New English Review. These columns cover a broad range of political-cultural topics, including immigration, China, history, mathematics, and race.^[1][2] Derbyshire's 1996 novel, Seeing Calvin Coolidge in a Dream, was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year". His 2004 non-fiction book, Prime Obsession, won the Mathematical Association of America's inaugural Euler Book Prize.^[3] A new political book, We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism, was released in September 2009.

Derbyshire attended the Northampton School for Boys and graduated from University College London, where he studied mathematics. Before turning to writing full-time, he worked on Wall Street as a computer programmer.

[edit] Beliefs and disagreements with fellow National Review writers

Derbyshire has differed from his fellow writers at National Review on many subjects. For example, Derbyshire supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, ridiculed George W. Bush's "itty-bitty tax cut, paid for by dumping a slew of federal debt on your children and grandchildren",^[4] has derided Bush in general for being too sure of his religious convictions and for his "rich-kid-ness",^[5] dismisses small-government conservatism as unlikely to ever take hold (although he is not unsympathetic to it), has called for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (but favored the invasion), opposes market reforms or any other changes in Social Security, is pro-choice on abortion, supports euthanasia in a fairly wide range of circumstances, and has suggested that he might (in a time of international crisis) vote for Hillary Clinton as president.^[6]

Derbyshire's views on the Schiavo case attracted criticism from fellow writers at National Review Online such as Ramesh Ponnuru.^[7] The Derbyshire-Ponnuru dispute arose again over Ponnuru's recently published book, Party of Death. Derbyshire reviewed the book harshly in the New English Review,^[8] and Ponnuru replied on NRO with a strongly worded rebuttal.^[9]