We choose conservatism.
Permit me to open this webathon pitch to you elliptically, with the opening stanza of a poem my father used to read to me when I was young, during those before-bedtime moments when we’d sit downstairs in his basement den and he’d puff on his pipe as we leafed through his high school poetry anthology:
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.
. . . well in that case, maybe you’ll be a National Review supporter. If you are not already familiar with Rudyard Kipling’s “If,” I highly recommend it — especially if you have young children. Have them memorize it. (As Shakespeare’s King Henry would have said: “This story shall the good man teach his son.”) I mention it now because my father did just that, and its core truth has burned with ever brighter clarity as we sail from one national maelstrom to another: The most important thing of all is to remain calm, in the eye of the storm, and remember why you’re here.
This is what National Review has done throughout its entire history, indifferent to the siren calls of passing political fashion. We are a journal of informed conservative opinion, founded in 1955 by William F. Buckley. Others may change, but we will always remain exactly that: standing athwart the gushing sewage pipe of history and trying to stop it up — sometimes with our bare hands — rather than sitting passively (and safely) alongside.
And it is messy, often filthy work — Mike Rowe understands “dirty jobs” one way; the author of the Carnival of Fools another — but we do it with conservative substance, a spirit of camaraderie, and every now and then a healthy dose of dark humor. The politics of 2026, both foreign and domestic, are crazy compared with the norms of even more recent eras; they would be unrecognizable to a visitor from 2008, let alone one from 1955. So what is to be done, in an era when global sea changes threaten to crest the dam and fashionable opinion often seems to shift with the wind — or maybe a presidential tweet?
We choose conservatism. That is what NR has done — thoughtfully, eloquently, in unceasing rhetorical and political combat, since the day it was founded. Sometimes that puts us crosswise with the present administration; oftentimes that finds us in agreement with it. But NR has never been here to support or oppose administrations; we support and oppose ideas. We aim to do it for decades more — but we rely on the support of our readers. Will you support us? For anything you can give, thank you.
