When my editor Phil Klein suggested that this year’s Summer Webathon — during which we writers implore you readers to donate and help keep this magnificent institution afloat — be quick and hard-hitting instead of dragging on all month long, I leapt at the opportunity to write an appeal. Guys enjoy fun problem-solving challenges, after all, and here was a clear one: How best to quickly raise the most money possible from our readers?

My first thought was to work from the playbook of televangelist Oral Roberts, who I well remember from my childhood: In 1987 he told his viewers, through tears, that God would “call him home” unless they donated $8 million by the end of the year. (They donated $9.7 million, over-fulfilling the target by so much that ol’ Oral lived to the ripe age of 91.) But we have too much integrity to cynically appeal to your sympathies like that; plus only a fool would guarantee my health beyond my next visit to the local pub. How about “Support This Magazine or We’ll Kill This Dog” as a ploy? Effective, yes, but eh — it’s been done before, and not just by National Lampoon.

So without any better gimmick at hand, I offer instead a sincere appeal: We ask for your support because you are a necessary part of the equation. We depend, as we always have, on support from our readers in order to bring you the kind of conservative journalism and opinion you simply cannot find anywhere else in America: a remarkable collection of expert voices, writing and reporting fearlessly, vigorously, and seriously about the challenges we face. (There is also my work.)

As I have said before, National Review is here to defend and advance conservatism, not to participate in team sport. We make the hard calls and address the elephants skulking in the corners of every room. And it is paradoxically because of that — because we care about first principles rather than ephemeral political fads — that we know we do not fight alone. Schiller wrote, in The Maid of Orleans, that “against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain.” We believe he was a pessimist; he knew nothing of National Review or its readership.

Please help us in our fight, for it has never been in vain. And, as Donald Trump would say: “Thank you for your attention to this matter!”