The Level Flying of the National Review

Linked this story before, but it always bears repeating. There are some extremely slow children out there, after all.

From The Decline of National Review by James P. Lubinskas:

In fact, the National Review of the 1950s, 60s and even 70s spoke up for white people far more vigorously than Pat Buchanan would ever dare to today. The early National Review heaped criticism on the civil rights movement, Brown v. Board of Education, and people like Adam Clayton Powell and Martin Luther King, whom it considered race hustlers. Some of the greatest names in American conservatism–Russell Kirk, Willmore Kendall, James Kilpatrick, Richard Weaver, and a young Bill Buckley–wrote articles defending the white South and white South Africans in the days of segregation and apartheid. NR attacked the 1965 immigration bill that opened America up to Third-World immigration, and wrote frankly about racial differences in IQ. There were always hints of compromise, but passages from some back issues could have been lifted right out of American Renaissance. Not so today. NR still supports immigration reform and is not afraid of the IQ debate, but Mr. Ponnuru’s article is just one example of its complete abandonment of the interests of whites as a group. What used to be an important part of the NR message it now dismissed as illegitimate “white identity politics.”

If you're not familiar with them, here's what the Anti-Defamation League (hardly an unbiased source, but still) has to say about American Renaissance:

Founded and edited by Samuel Jared Taylor in 1990, American Renaissance promotes "genteel" racism: pseudoscientific, questionably researched and argued articles that validate the genetic and moral inferiority of nonwhites and the need for racial "purity." Generally avoiding overt bigotry and stereotyping, many of North America's leading intellectual racists have written for the journal or addressed AR's biannual conferences.

Probably not a comparison the current group of National Review writers and editors are looking for.

Back to the article:

A famous example of the early NR stance on race was an unsigned editorial of August 24, 1957, titled “Why the South Must Prevail.” It was almost certainly written by Mr. Buckley, since he uses similar language in his book Up From Liberalism. The editorial argued against giving blacks the vote because it would undermine civilization in the South:

“The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes–the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists.”

“National Review believes that the South’s premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.”

“The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. . . . Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function.”

Given the above, and there's more in the article at AMREN if you've the stomach for it, you'd think any article on racism in National Review would consist entirely of the words "We're sorry."

What is racism, rhetorically?

It's a reflexive, irrational, all-encompassing alibi for black failure derived from a hyper-sensitivity to racially disparate outcomes; it is also, more familiarly-with few exceptions — whatever a black person says it is.

And you'd be wrong.

Mark Goldblatt asks, "What Is Racism?", and comes up with a rather predictable answer.

Also predictably, Mister Charlie thinks the article is the bee's knees.

Which, coming from a man who uses the title "Subhuman Savages Strike Again" for a blog entry, says everything you need to know.