Thread by @KevinMKruse

If @NRO is going to let Kevin Williamson spread this nonsense in its pages and keep @DineshDSouza on its masthead as he does the same on Twitter, then the least it can do is let them have access to the magazine's own archives.

Let's take a look.

In an infamous editorial titled "Why the South Must Prevail" (8/25/57), National Review made it clear that its brand of conservatism was very squarely on the side of southern segregationists.

As the violence of "massive resistance" rocked the South, National Review didn't blame the white South for trying to "prevail" but instead repeatedly blamed the Supreme Court for stirring up trouble.

Left, during Little Rock (9/21/57). Right, after terrorist bombings (10/25/58)

Meanwhile, National Review treated Martin Luther King Jr. with a tone of sneering condescension.

This piece (3/14/59) misidentifies MLK as an NAACP leader, mocks his prediction the US would be fully integrated by the year 2000 (!) and then dogwhistles about interracial sex.

This piece (8/20/63), published right before the March on Washington, attacks King as well as March organizer Bayard Rustin and King aide Jack O'Dell, for their various ties to left-wing organizations.

I could go on like this, but you get the point.

To be clear, National Review's squarely aligned its brand of conservatism with segregationists and opposed civil rights activists.

Williamson and D'Souza claim this was impossible, but it was obvious to anyone reading NR then.

Here -- note praise for Eastland. (NR, 4/7/64)

National Review praised conservatives in *both* parties for opposing the civil rights movement & criticized liberals in *both* parties for backing it.

Here -- Sens. Javits & Keating were liberal Republicans; Sen. Humphrey a liberal Democrat who became LBJ's VP. (NR, 3/31/64).

So, yes, segregation and conservatism got along just fine, @DineshDSouza, according to National Review at the time.

And, despite what Kevin Williamson is claiming in the current @NRO, the party realignment of the era was *also* something National Review saw at the time.

James J. Kilpatrick, a Virginian who was an architect of massive resistance and a conservative columnist, noted here how his fellow conservative Southern Democrats were at a political crossroads and, at that point, basically Democrats in name only. (National Review, 11/19/63)

After conservative Democrat Strom Thurmond switched to the GOP in the fall of 1964, National Review ran a piece (published elsewhere under Buckley's own byline) suggesting that other "conservative-minded Democrats" might be convinced to follow suit. (National Review, 9/29/64)

All right, that's probably enough.

If I add any more evidence from National Review's own archives, @DineshDSouza will just complain again that there's too much reading.

As you can see, in the late '50s & early '60s, National Review argued that conservatism and segregation not only *could* co-exist, but *had* to co-exist.

And to that end, it hoped to bring southern segregationists into the GOP.

Someone should tell the people working there now!

But please break it to Williamson and D'Souza gently.

They keep insisting that Democrats today have to answer for the segregationist past of the party and by that ... sure, let's call it "logic" ... people at National Review today have to answer for all of this.