The first issue of national review was sent out fifteen years ago, and we thought it appropriate to plan something to remark the anniversary. Something serious, and something social. The serious ventures are, paradoxically, much easier to consummate. Five years ago Professor Jeffrey Hart, since joined to the staff of national review as an editor, wrote an entire book on the recent history of the American conservative movement, and NR’s role in it, from which book we excerpted fifty thousand words. At the social end, our well-wishers threw a party, chaired by Clare Boothe Luce, that drew 2,300 people, and featured eight (count ’em 8) speakers including Barry Goldwater and John Dos Passos, with a dais seating about fifty people. Well, one might have invited, this time around, Jeff Hart to write an encyclopedia (he’d have done it, if we had given him a little notice), and had a shot at Madison Square Garden. But what then would we have arranged for our 25th Anniversary? I suppose we might have staged it in the White House, arranging to receive the swords, respectively of the editors of Partisan Review, the New Republic and the New York Times. I like that. But it might prove impractical.
We decided on a conservative solution. James Burnham agreed to edit a special feature section, on the theme, “After Liberalism, What?” He thought if essential to the successful exploration of the question to hear from someone who does not believe that liberalism is over and is glad (enter Charles Frankel); and from a radical, who rejects liberalism even as conservatives do, but for quite other reasons (enter Eugene Genovese).
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