I’ve traded a couple emails with Paul Cella since yesterday. He seems a decent and sincere and smart guy. Still, I’m not sure it’s worth spending much more time on the subject. But, I’ve gotten a lot of interesting email about all of this. So — with his permission — I thought it might be worthwhile to post his initial email to me and offer a public response.

Dear Mr. Goldberg:
I conflated your work for NRO with the regular magazine. My apologies. Also, I emphatically do not mean my critique to be personal. I may come to regret even mentioning you and Mr. Frum by name.
The heart of my disagreement lies in the fact that you assume that things are generally great with Western Civilization; that, in other words, the pessimism of the early NR has been solidly repudiated by events. I see a still-severe decline, mitigated by the lack (until recently) of consolidated external challenge. In other words, I still see the West as profoundly decadent, unsure of its purpose, enervated by irreligion and relativism, enamored with trivia, enfeebled in its moral compass, and complacent about its liberty. Now I am well aware of your disagreement with this view; you have written in rebuke of it several times — I am just not persuaded.
And this goes to the heart of my concern about NR: that it cannot see the real debilitating problems of the age because it has become such a creature of its age. A good example might be the ho-hum reaction to the march toward gay marriage. That the state would undertake, largely by usurpation, to radically reorder an institution as ancient (far older than the modern state) as marriage is a serious matter: And it has not been examined and criticized at NR with the seriousness it deserves.
Thanks for taking the time to address my essay.
Best,
Paul J. Cella

My response: (And this really is my response and nobody else’s): I simply don’t get the sense that NR is complacent or otherwise pleased with the state of Western Civilization. I also don’t think one could give my own writing a fair reading and say that I’m convinced of the West’s health either.

More important, Cella makes an increasingly common mistake: conflating NR and NRO. Because of it’s daily nature, NRO is simply more freewheeling than NR, which — while often fun and funny — is also of necessity more deliberate.

Cella’s critique of National Review’s allegedly “ho-hum” position on gay marriage is a case in point. I hear this all of the time and, frankly, I don’t know where people get this idea. NR has run quite a high numer of editorials and cover stories on gay marriage, including a cover story demanding a constitutional marriage amendment. Who are these ho hum NR writers and editors? What have they written? I have come out in favor of civil unions of some kind but not gay marriage and I’m certainly not representative of the rest of NR. The only other author identified by name — David Frum — is passionately opposed to gay marriage and civil unions. As for NRO, gay marriage has been discussed a lot in the Corner and elsewhere on the site and pretty much everyone has treated the subject very seriously and come out against same-sex marriage.

Moreover, I don’t write or contribute to any editorials around here (I can’t get into the meetings because of the no shirt, no shoes rule). My biggest problem with Cella’s lament — and of many other conservative NR critics — is that it’s largely atmospheric, impressionistic and often based on myth rather than fact. I can give dozens of examples of NR’s non-ho-hum stance to gay marriage. Where are the examples going the other way?

In short, I think too many people read NRO or the Corner and assume every single thing on it represents “official” NR policy, which is nuts (worse: some just parrot the echo chamber of cranky right-wing blogdom — e.g. the whole NR has gone neocon nonsense). In Cella’s case this is particularly unfair because he goes on at such great length about the print magazine when often he’s simply plucking convenient — and unrevealed — examples from NRO. If people want every item on NRO to be vetted for a party line, that can be arranged. But that would contradict part of what I’ve always considered to be NRO’s mission which is to offer a glimpse of the intellectual diversity of the right as compared to the caricature — a caricature unfotunately too often fed by conservatives themselves.