September
10, 2003, 9:45 a.m. The
Magazine Without the Paper!
Get Digital.
mong
the decorations at Evelyn Waugh's house in Combe Florey was a set of three
paintings titled "The Pleasures of Travel, 1751, 1851, 1951."
The first picture shows the interior of a stage-coach into which a masked
highwayman has just burst, wielding a pistol. (One of the passengers has
surreptitiously pulled out a pistol of his own, and it looks as though
the highwayman's career is about to come to an abrupt end.) The second
picture is of a 19th-century railroad carriage, the travelers serene and
comfortable, a uniformed porter looking solicitously in through the window.
These first two pictures were by the Victorian painter Robert Musgrave
Joy.
The third picture,
which Waugh commissioned from his contemporary Richard Eurich, shows the
cabin of a passenger plane at the moment when something has gone wrong.
One of the passengers has been thrown from her seat; the others wear expressions
of terror; a white-faced stewardess is trying to comfort an infant.
When he showed people
round his house, Waugh liked to pause at these pictures, point to the
third one, and say with a merry chuckle: "They are doomed, all doomed!"
Waugh was here expressing
the attitude of an English conservative towards technological change.*
It was an attitude he carried with him like a shield. He submitted manuscripts
to his publisher in longhand decades after other writers had switched
to typescript (Mark Twain was the first, I believe); and when, in late
middle age, he found that he had become slightly deaf, instead of having
a hearing aid fitted, Waugh purchased an antique ear trumpet, which he
took great pleasure in deploying at dinner parties, to the annoyance and
bafflement of his guests.
This tendency exists
in American conservatism, too. I should not be very surprised to
see Jeff Hart show up at a National Review editorial meeting wielding
an ear trumpet. In the generality, though, American conservatism is much
more accepting of technological change than the British variety. American
conservatives are American, which means, among other things, that
we have a disposition towards meritocracy and optimism. The meritocratic
temper inclines us to respect and admire the person clever enough to come
up with a useful new gadget; our optimism tells us that whatever problems
may come along with an innovation, they will no doubt all be solved in
short order.
It is in that forward-looking
spirit that we welcomed the Internet and set up National Review Online
— one of the earliest and most successful political webzines. And
now it is in that same spirit that we introduce the online image of our
paper magazine, National Review. The difference between the two
is, and will remain, considerable. Though both are witty, well-informed,
and wide-ranging, the print magazine surveys the world from a loftier
viewpoint, dealing as it must with two weeks worth of events at a time.
NRO will continue to give a daily perspective — brisker, breezier,
closer to the quick-fire irreverent spirit of the blogosphere.
If you have never
been a subscriber to National Review — can't afford it, or
feel you already have too many paper publications coming into your mailbox
— I urge you to give the web image a try. It's the same copy, with
the same features, including all those odd quirks and corners (poems,
cartoons, humor pieces) that make readers feel they are part of a family
of like-minded souls — and for less money! You'll be able to read
sharp one-paragraph snippets of news in "The Week" (which I
have not yet succeeded in persuading the editors to rename "The Fortnight"),
and long thoughtful essays by major historians, philosophers, jurists,
and litterateurs, and everything in between. Why would you notsubscribe
to National Review on the web? I cannot imagine.
* Though not, I have always thought, very consistently.
If a person who grew up with railroads should deplore planes, why should
not a person who grew up with stage-coaches deplore railroads? I think
Waugh would have argued that we ought to resist those innovations that
tend to undermine the kind of social order — hierarchical, based
on rank — that conservatives like himself believed in, and applaud
the others; and that planes are of the first kind, trains of the second.
Remember These Derb Lines? — Pop Culture Is Filth — Let America's enemies crow today: Tomorrow they will tremble, and weep. — I don't see how you can ever have enough nukes
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mong
the decorations at Evelyn Waugh's house in Combe Florey was a set of three
paintings titled "The Pleasures of Travel, 1751, 1851, 1951."
The first picture shows the interior of a stage-coach into which a masked
highwayman has just burst, wielding a pistol. (One of the passengers has
surreptitiously pulled out a pistol of his own, and it looks as though
the highwayman's career is about to come to an abrupt end.) The second
picture is of a 19th-century railroad carriage, the travelers serene and
comfortable, a uniformed porter looking solicitously in through the window.
These first two pictures were by the Victorian painter Robert Musgrave
Joy. 
