Coming
Out … Because of a Magazine
Published in Marietta Daily Journal Jan. 30, 2016
The
magazine that helped me find myself has committed folly. It has rebuffed many faithful readers with a
move that was just plain uppity.
A bit of background. By age 16 I knew that the nation’s trending political
philosophy was not one that fit my worldview.
Sooner or later I would have to come out and break my father’s heart.
I respected my father, but for the
sake of self-respect, I still had to come out.
Ideas are powerful things, and it was the ideas set forth in a magazine
that led me away from the politics of my FDR-worshiping parents to a philosophy
of limited government and self-determination.
The magazine was “National Review,”
a journal of news and commentary that became a trumpet for conservative
thought. Sounded from the wilderness of
liberalism and initially drowned out by established voices, that trumpet was
eventually heard across the nation. Its
young Yale-educated editor, William F. Buckley, vowed that with his new
magazine he would “stand athwart history yelling, ‘Stop,’ even when no one is
inclined to do so.”
Stand he did, with arguments
dripping with intelligence and clothed in vocabulary that sent readers dashing
for their dictionaries. Still fresh from
his success with “God and Man at Yale,” a critique of how Yale and other
universities were denying their religious roots, Buckley gathered around him
other young conservatives. Together they
began pressing forth with classical conservatism, resurrecting such voices as England’s
Edmund Burke and Scotland’s Adam Smith.
Because I kept seeing references to
NR (it was only 5 years old at the time), I was determined to find a copy. In that pre-internet age, I knew of nothing
to do but call the editor of our local county newspaper. The editor, a Democrat, told me he would
gladly find and send me a copy. Within
two weeks I was drinking from the well of Buckley and his comrades. Pro-religion, pro-free enterprise, pro-Republican,
and viciously anti-statist, the magazine became a wallowing ground for my mind
and heart.
NR buoyed me through many a college class
taught by leftist professors. A
Catholic, Buckley taught me, a Baptist boy, much about Catholics and the social
issues they hold dear. His magazine has
continued to feed my thought world for decades.
Come 2016, however, this fine publication has
taken a very untoward step. Recently
editor Rich Lowery marshaled 20 conservatives to write articles informing us of
how uninformed, unprepared, simplistic, superficial, and menacing is the man
Donald Trump.
Mr. Trump is not my candidate, or
not yet, but in excommunicating him, the NR and its 20 henchmen have revealed
just how out of touch they are with America’s middle class. Their verbal assault is an assault on Trump’s
millions of supporters. The writers are
all intellectuals, meaning they make their living with words and
arguments. Mr. Trump has garnered the
interest and acknowledged the frustrations of those who make their living with
tools, trucks, cash registers, tires, motors, lumber, guns, appliances,
furniture, crops, and sweat.
Try
to envision the 20 writers making their living this way. Dream on about their understanding of
blue-collar America.
These writer-intellectuals
apparently consider Trump’s supporters “menacing” as well. From their ivory towers they fail to see that
political planets are re-aligning, that the old liberal versus conservative
spectrum is fading. It seems they would
know that in politics the old order is always changing. If the peasants are revolting, the
intellectuals might consider asking why.
These writers are saying to
Republican voters, “Get with it and get with us.” The problem is “us” includes Congressional Republicans
who have refused to be the opposition party.
Unlike Democrats, Republicans just don’t seem to enjoy fighting for what
they say they believe. Think borders,
traditional values, jobs, IRS excesses, and Planned Parenthood’s
government-funded atrocities. Hence, the
Trump phenomenon and the anger it has unmasked.
I have deep respect for some of the
conservative scribes who participated in NR’s assault, particularly Cal Thomas
and Thomas Sowell. Some of the others
are limousine Republicans or academics who know little about working people and
their frustrations.
Just as surely as I came out decades
ago, so are many conservatives coming out today, out from the party to which I
was fleeing. NR would have best tried to
understand Trump’s supporters instead of
slamming them. After all, there are far
more working people in America than there are intellectuals.
Let’s put it this way: NR is blind
to political realities; Donald Trump isn’t. Intellectuals, it appears, can
neither fathom nor engage “the forgotten American,” but a billionaire can. What an irony.
Roger
Hines
1/27/16
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