We launch the National Review 2019 Spring Webathon for good reasons and for grand ambitions. One ambition is material: We hope to raise $175,000 in May. More if possible (our needs are double that, and double even that). The other ambition is to use that Webathon support to help us combat socialism — that timeless disease that in years recent has done an encore and become . . . cool, the pendulum having swung so that it is once more the go-to fantasy of fevered brains, once more the guiding star of liberal political hacks and their allies in the media, once more the plot line of so much concocted by our cultural mavens.
While they mean to genuflect, we mean to punch. Hard. We mean to leave socialism exposed and bloodied, gasping and backpedaling.
The first ambition we think is possible. Yes, a stretch, because $175,000 contributed in 31 days is, well, let’s just say (as we always do when we launch these drives) from our lips to God’s ears! But it’s possible. We know our readers, and what we know is — they’re so much more than mere readers. They are — you are! — committed conservatives. Committed in every sense (and that’s not an opening for psychiatrist jokes!) to taking on the socialist craze, and to recognizing the important role National Review has in that fight.
No matter when you began reading NR, whether the website or magazine, weeks ago or decades ago, this is a central and undisputed fact: For close to 64 years NR has been at the forefront of fighting this wicked ideology. Why? Because socialism opposes conservative principles, detests the tenets of America’s Founding, begrudges the individual, and embraces the aggrandized state. Because socialism is evil. It’s that very alleged force of History that Bill Buckley was intent on standing athwart, yelling Stop!
Yelling. Not cooing. Not whispering. Yelling is what you do when you are fighting. And the fight against socialism is NR’s, waged each and every day on our website and in the magazine. And it’s yours too, and it is only through your generous support that NR is kept fortified and armed, locked and loaded. This institution’s great fortune over the decades has been to know and rely upon many friends whose engagement with NR transcends the cost of a subscription, whose involvement is real and realized in selfless, consequential material participation, who with us form a we-happy-few band of conservative brothers and sisters.
So we need that help, that fortifying, again. Now. From good conservatives who will accept the Buckley mandate that socialism be fought directly, socked in its g-d gob so it’s spitting out blood and teeth instead of its deceptive nonsense about man’s nature, its contrived prattlings about why wealth needs to be redistributed, its vile lies about equality (while its advocates create a privileged class reserved for elites and bureaucrats).
Please help us. Do what you can, because all support — from the millionaire’s couch-cushion change to the Widow’s Mite, from the $10 gift to the $25,000 eye-opener — plays a vital part in keeping NR punching way, way above its weight. You can lend your support here.
As to that second ambition, we have to face facts: Socialism is so fundamentally related to core vices that stretch back over the centuries and millennia — to that mindset that propagates the theft of the fruits of labor, that sanctifies envy, that deposes the divine, that enriches the bureaucratic vanguard of the proletariat, that boasts with hubris about man’s nature being malleable. Its persistence will be with us until Earth’s lights are extinguished.
But boy oh boy, in 2019, has it ever persisted, and seen its siren song woo the witless and well-intentioned in increasing numbers.
Yep, Socialism is back, bigly, thanks in part to decades of academic indoctrination by the very same misfits who turned the campuses of the 1960s into shambles. They’re now tenured professors, and the flying monkeys they’ve sent out have captured the Democratic party, whose leaders — from young, illiterate economists to old frauds whose closets bulge with Che Guevara tee shirts — now baldly advocate a socialist agenda of massive government growth, of Constitution-be-damned destruction of basic rights, of confiscatory schemes that redefine profligacy.
At NR, we know and are proud of what we have done. But our passion is what we are doing, which is prioritizing the fight against socialism, and combating it in real time, intent on exposing it as the ideological fraud and false hope that it is, and always has been, and always will be.
If socialism is left unchecked, we might as well put the Constitution in the paper shredder at the National Archives. Fair warning, there is one way that could happen: Over the dead bodies of everyone here at NR. And we’d wager: over yours too.
This fight is very real. If not for all the marbles, then for plenty of them. The consequences are very real. The need of NR is very real. Your donation — humbly sought, deeply appreciated — is needed, now. During this Spring 2019 Webathon, would you consider a gift to National Review of $10, $25, or $50? Could you do $100? We know that there are some who can contribute $500 and even $1,000, and if our past is any indicator, there are even some who can and will do (we pray) $10,000 and $25,000. Whatever you might be able to do, make your contribution here, and help us reach our goal of $175,000. If we told you what we really need, you’d gasp. We can discuss that at another time. Right now, though, let’s concern ourselves with taking the fight to socialism.
Again, you can donate to NR here, or just select “Contribute” in the above widget. Should you prefer to send your generosity by mail, make your check payable to “National Review” and mail to National Review, ATTN: Spring 2019 Webathon, 19 West 44th Street, Suite 1701, New York, NY 10036.
Anyone interested in tax-deductible contributions to support the work of National Review Institute, our charitable, 501(c)(3) non-profit sister organization that advances the conservative principles championed by our mutual founder, William F. Buckley Jr., should visit www.nrinstitute.org for more information.