NR Answers Rage with Reason and Fear with Courage

These are the days of fear and rage. Depending on where you live or work, the fear can be palpable. Say the wrong thing at college, and you imperil your future. Say the wrong thing at work, and you imperil your job. Online shame storms can transform ordinary and decent people into objects of hate and derision. The social-justice warrior is eager to collect scalps.

Yet fear is not the universal response. As the intolerant sectors of the Left attempt to transform American life through shame and intimidation, a significant number of people respond with a furious rage. They want to take the ideas of the Left and throw them in their faces, to show that they can fight fire with fire and that intimidation and personal attacks work just as well for the right-wing goose as they do for the progressive gander.

Into this broken marketplace of ideas step the good people of National Review. I’m the newcomer here, having just finished my first year as a full-time writer, and I confess that each morning I look forward to reading the latest pieces and posts every bit as much as I did when I was a college student grabbing the latest edition of the print magazine, or when I was a young lawyer and the Corner was an Internet revelation.

I knew that I could count on reading the best expression of conservative thought. Not everyone at NR agreed with everything we printed (we still don’t), but I could count on reason. I could count on courage. Even the most furious arguments were leavened with wit and seasoned with facts. And not even the worst condemnations could deter the writers and thinkers at National Review.

And so it is now. In the age of Trump, many readers would be shocked to know the extent of the hate and threats that any given NR writer has endured. Yet these writers haven’t backed down, nor have they altered their commitment to facts and reason. The best way to respond to political correctness on the left or attempted intimidation on the Trumpian right isn’t by mimicking their tactics but instead by speaking the truth. At National Review, my colleagues truly have — to quote the Donald — the “best words.”

That’s why I can proudly and unashamedly ask for your support. On Wednesday, our Spring Webathon ends, and I’m pleased to say that many of you have already responded. We’ve blown past our initial goal. But now we have a new goal — to raise a total of $150,000 by midnight of May 11.

No matter the future of the conservative movement, I know that National Review will play a vital role — the vital role — in defending and advancing the ideas that preserve and protect the best parts of American life and culture. Not long ago I was on a college campus when a professor approached me and said — with deep emotion — that National Review helped give him hope. Our work helped remind him that there is sanity in this world.

By supporting our work, you give us hope. Put us over the top. Help us blow past our Spring fundraising goal. Please give to National Review today.

— David French is an attorney, and a staff writer at National Review.