What motivates us is what motivates you.
Why do we do this?
I’m not just talking about NR, and all our writing, speaking, podcasting, and general advocacy.
I’m talking about you, too, and whatever you may do to advance our cause, either professionally or — this obviously shouldn’t be underestimated — by staying an informed citizen, making a difference in your community, and raising your kids right.
The answer to the question of “why?” is simple — America.
We know that there’s an ongoing effort to delegitimize this country, and it undergirds almost every important controversy in our politics and culture at the moment.
Now more than ever, Bill Buckley’s adage about our mission holds true. “The historical responsibility of the conservatives is altogether clear,” he wrote. “It is to defend what is best in America. At all costs. Against any enemy, foreign and domestic.”
That’s why we are still fighting the fight and spreading the word.
And why we humbly ask that you help us continue to defend and extol this country — still the last best hope of mankind.
A while ago, we devoted an entire issue of the print magazine to celebrating all that is lovely about America.
Who does that anymore? Certainly nobody on the left or among the elite, which hands out Pulitzers and MacArthur grants like participation trophies at youth soccer games for the alleged achievement of finding new ways of tearing us down.
And we’ve been obsessed the past few years with pushing back against the 1619 Project and all associated poisonous ideological assaults on our country’s foundations.
No, the American Revolution wasn’t about protecting slavery.
No, our slave system wasn’t unique and unprecedented in the world.
No, Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, or whichever erstwhile American hero has been tested and supposedly found wanting this week shouldn’t be demoted out of the American pantheon.
The other day I was in Charlottesville, Va., by the way, at the University of Virginia, giving a talk defending Thomas Jefferson that was controversial at the university he founded and decisively shaped down to this day.
No, we shouldn’t make school kids pray to Aztec gods, we shouldn’t force trans radicalism on our children, we shouldn’t trash the American way, we shouldn’t kneel for the national anthem, we shouldn’t abandon our birthright of Western reason, and on and on.
You know you can turn to NR for timely, cutting, well-informed, and often profound pushback on all of this, which is why I’m hoping you’ll donate to our fall webathon as it draws to a close.
If you’ve read a number of these sorts of appeals, I know they can be tiring. Believe me, sometimes I even get tired writing them!
But our distinctive kind of journalism has always required support from our readers. We don’t relish taking up space on the homepage and the Corner, or hitting up your inbox, with these pitches and wouldn’t do it if it weren’t absolutely necessary.
Already more than 1,200 of you have given $150,000, for which we are deeply grateful. We are trying to wind up this drive with a nice kick at the end (I assure you this is my final missive), and anything you can give, from $5 to $5,000, would be appreciated.
I hope you don’t think it’s too grandiose if I ask that you do it, not just for us, but for what we’ve been able to lend to the defense of this country.
“I see it as the continuing challenge of National Review,” Bill Buckley said, “to argue the advantages to every one of the rediscovery of America, the amiability of its people, the flexibility of its institutions, of the great latitude that is still left to the individual, the delights of spontaneity, and, above all, the need for superordinating the private vision over the public vision.”
That remains our calling, and I know you realize its importance, or you wouldn’t be a reader.
Thank you for taking the time to peruse this note all the way to the end.
God bless you and yours and this great land, which needs every committed friend and patriot it can get.
