Mark Hemingway

Well, you know, National Review's 70th anniversary issue was just put out.

And, you know, there are various things they're doing, of course, to assess the magazine's legacy.

But somehow in the midst of that pile of articles, there's a lengthy article that just attacks Phyllis Schlafly.

It's really just really amazing to me that they would use this occasion to...

Well, no, you're right about that.

And I was certainly going to get into that.

I mean, it really is just a Jeremiah that goes hammer and tongs against Schlafly for being a.

you know, sophist and a propagandist.

And the thing that really got me was she's described as a true virtuoso of the paranoid style, which...

You know, the paranoid style has become almost a cliche in politics, but it's a reference to Richard Hofstadler's famous essay that was published in November of 1964 that was an attack on Goldwater Republicans, which, you know, one of Schlafly's biggest legacy was a choice not an echo, a book that sold three million copies, that made the argument for the GOP to move in a more populist direction in 1964 and nominate Barry Goldwater for it.

you know, president, which, you know, had major consequences.

You know, for one thing, it steered the party, you know, even though Goldwater lost badly in the general election, it steered the party in a more appropriately populist direction, which, you

of Reagan in 1980, which was the greatest triumph of post-war movement conservatism at that point.

So it is just shocking that you would embrace that attempt by Richard Hofstadter, a pseudo-Marxist basically, he was a disciple of the Frankfurt School of Marxists, in his attempt to dismiss Goldwater Republicans, including Schlafly.

Yeah, no, I think that's exactly right.

I mean, you know, whether it was globalism or whether it was populism, Phyllis Schlafly was on the sort of at least historically right side of it in terms of where we've ended up now.

I mean, and I think to some extent, you know, a lot of the hostility being, you know, exhibited against her in this National Review article is a direct result of the fact that there are elements of nostalgia that don't like the fact that this is where the party has ended up.

And they want to, you know, punish this and then say that, like, this was

wrong from the beginning.

But that's what's so weird about it.