We are doing our best to lead, to stand athwart the progressive distortion of our history.
My fellowship at National Review Institute is a joy beyond words. One of the main reasons why is the sense of purpose and fulfillment that comes with being part of this community. That is why, for many years, I’ve been a member of National Review Institute’s 1955 Society. I humbly suggest that, if not one already, you become a member, too, and that you do what I do around this time every year: Make a contribution to support NRI’s work and our increasingly vital mission.
In October, I had the honor of introducing two extraordinarily worthy honorees as recipients of NRI’s William F. Buckley Prize for Leadership in Political Thought. The moment would have been among my proudest under any circumstances. It was especially so this year for two reasons.
First, it was our first opportunity in a very long time to draw from the well of energy and enthusiasm that comes from meeting in person. It revitalized our appreciation of how powerful is the pull of our commitments to individual liberty, free markets, and a flourishing constitutional republic, when this community celebrates them together.
Second, in honoring the Federalist Society’s Leonard Leo and Eugene Meyer, we were saluting not only their formidable careers but also our dedication to the rule of law.
The most concrete contribution to the cause of conservatism in a generation has been the rise of the originalist philosophy of jurisprudence. Like our honorees, we have championed this bedrock constitutional doctrine — the principle that our fundamental law means what it was understood to mean at the time of its adoption, not what progressive activists can contort it into meaning to impose their destructive pieties — since Bill Buckley founded NRI around the dawn of the originalist movement.
This achievement cannot be overstated. In a new era of “woke” progressive activism, the defense of our nation’s founding ideals — of life, liberty, property, self-determinism, domestic tranquility, and strong national defense — has been left to a judiciary steeped in the Constitution’s careful limitations on government power and trust in the ingenuity and virtue of a free people.
Good ideas have enduring power, but they are always being challenged, and they don’t champion themselves. They need intrepid advocates.
There would be no originalist legal movement without confident conservative thinkers who were willing to push against the tide of incoherent notions — e.g., that the Constitution is an “organic,” make-it-up-as-you-go-along affair — that took hold in academe, government, and the legal profession during the 20th century. The creep of democratically unaccountable government and the instability it inevitably produces — surging crime, financial meltdowns, governmental dysfunction, the breakdown of societal norms — do not right themselves. They need to be countered, day after day.
The judges and legal scholars who are today holding overreaching executives and authoritarian bureaucracies to account did not appear spontaneously. They were painstakingly cultivated for three decades by the conservative teachers, leaders, and traditions that NRI sustains, promotes, and preserves.
This is a movement of the most American kind: one in which we strive for a vibrant, unified, and free society, with as many allies as we can find and despite the Left’s tireless efforts to “cancel” us and divide Americans against each other. But a movement has to move.
We are doing our best to lead, to stand athwart the progressive distortion of our history (I’m looking at you, 1619 Project) through educational and outreach programs and hard-hitting journalism. We can’t get very far at all, though, without you, without what we do together.
I’m not asking you to do anything I’m not doing, with gratitude for all your support, pride in what we’re doing, and optimism about what we can accomplish. It is the season for making a tax-free contribution to NRI’s vital work. I’ve just made mine, and I hope you’ll join me.
Click this secure link to donate.
Meantime, we at NRI wish you the happiest and healthiest 2022.