It’s a depressing and frightening time — but not necessarily for me.
It’s true that I’m outraged by our abdication at the border, shocked at the trans insanity ravaging our youth, alarmed at the assault on our nation’s history and ideals, and unnerved by China’s ambitions — among other ongoing occasions for distress and disbelief.
Yes, I feel all these things. Deeply.
But what keeps me from giving in to despair is that I wake up every day and work shoulder to shoulder with incredibly talented, principled people who are committed to fighting error with truth, to exposing the dishonesty and corruption of the other side, to advancing ideas to make our country better, and to defending this, the greatest country on Earth.
And that, I contend, is something to be excited about.
If you are heartened by our work as well, we hope you will consider giving any amount — from $5 to $5,000 (or more, if you’re able!) — to support our valuable journalism.
Of course, I wish the circumstances in our country were better. In fact, I wish that we had no need for National Review. Alas, such is human nature, that our great American project will always be a precarious one.
This is where NR comes in. Our promise is that we will always be true to what makes this country great, true to the Constitution, and true to the ordered liberty that makes for virtuous citizens and a dynamic society.
It doesn’t matter to us whether this project is fashionable or not. We will be here holding up the banner for America’s principles and her interests.
My colleagues wouldn’t be working here if they didn’t believe profoundly in this cause.
Take, for instance, Andy McCarthy. What can I say about him? It’s almost not fair for someone to be this knowledgeable, this prolific, and this acute.
He dismantled the bogus Russian investigation in real time and has been the most persuasive critic of the overreach and shoddy legal reasoning behind the Trump indictments.
We are also blessed with a couple of courageous young journalists who have been fighting the trans madness for years now.
Realizing the significance of the trans fight, especially for the status of women, Madeleine Kearns took it up when it was almost impossible to imagine how much traction trans activists would gain. And Caroline Downey, with her fearless reporting, completes our one-two punch on this issue.
A different area of total irrationality has been the effort to knock Donald Trump off the ballot based on the notion that he has violated Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which has now, thankfully, come a cropper. But I submit that the only way to be fully up on this controversy was to read Dan McLaughlin.
Dan doesn’t write about issues; he owns them.
I could go on, but, finally, at a time when the free market is under assault by the Left and even parts of the Right, we have one of the best young economic writers out there, Dominic Pino, combating poor economic thinking and bad policy every day.
If you value the intelligence, doggedness, and insight of these writers and others at NR, I humbly request that you chip in something to support their work.
While NR is a commercial enterprise, it is the cause that matters to us much more than the bottom line. For us, if there’s a conflict between speaking the truth and worrying about the bottom line, it isn’t even a question — it’s the truth every single time.
Indeed, National Review is a rare creature in our media landscape, an independent-minded voice of ordered liberty that isn’t motivated by clicks or ratings.
Perhaps what I love most about NR is how much our readers identify with our mission. They don’t just read us — or listen to our podcasts or watch our videos — but consider themselves part of our family, joined together by a mutual cause and joint appreciation for excellent writing and thought.
That’s why they — or to be more precise, you — have been so generous in contributing to our effort, from 1955 to today.
With so much at stake, I hope you will do it once more. Again, any amount helps us and is appreciated, whether it is single digits or five digits.
There are two ways to support our mission. One is to give directly to National Review, a (in theory) for-profit enterprise that engages directly in political advocacy. Contributions to the magazine and website are not tax deductible, but they are incredibly important to our work and, of course, much appreciated.
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Please feel free to choose whichever option is to your liking or — if you are feeling particularly generous and want to have maximum impact — both.
If you value what we do . . . if you love our writing and arguments . . . if you believe it is necessary to have every possible weapon arrayed against our domestic and foreign enemies in this time of national peril, then contributing to the NR enterprise is a good and necessary investment.
So, please, if you can, give $100, $250, $500, or as much as $1,000 or more to National Review Institute or National Review, or preferably both.
Even as the Left grows more radical and the foundations of America come under attack, I’m not discouraged — because we are in the fight, and we have friends like you.
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