As a fledgling conservative magazine in 1958, the National Review sought to build its subscriber base by acquiring the mailing list of the Southern Citizens Councils, otherwise known as the uptown Klan. But that's ancient history, surely. https://twitter.com/RichLowry/status/1276349723172048897

The receipt regarding the Citizens Council and the National Review. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1226889654546251776?s=20

The supposedly "historically illiterate" article referenced by Lowry is a succinct and accurate summary of the last few decades of professional historical scholarship on slavery, the Civil War, and emancipation. It's not at all historically illiterate.

It may not be the history Mr. Lowry is familiar or comfortable with, but I think one would be hard pressed to find a practicing, professional historian who would describe @jbouie's writing as historically illiterate.

Given the National Review's long history of having scientific racists and antisemites on its masthead, I'm not sure that magazine would be my "go to" if I wanted to understand the history of racism in the US. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2017/03/how-national-review-helped-create-the-alt-right.html

I was trying to figure out what the cranky baseball guy's overwrought last paragraph reminded me of, and then I got it. It's Bill Buckley's October 1965 explanation for why he would resist the civil rights movement like the English resisted the Nazis in WWII.

Toppling statues...radical narrative...destroying the faith of our fathers... Who knew the world consisted of so many pearls to be clutched?

What's so stunning about that supposed takedown of Bouie's essay is that it barely engages with the argument directly, but instead offers a basic and competent history of abolition that doesn't contradict Bouie's argument and then ends with a wail of "the sky is falling."

I've long found it interesting how these very stoic, conservative white men who pride themselves on their rationality can quickly slide into overwrought "emo" mode when matters of race arise. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/1240386496189927431?s=20

I've been reading Human Events from 1963-4 lately. It was a right wing magazine that avidly supported Goldwater, & which was Reagan's personal favorite. Human Events published a lot of segregationists, and, from what I've seen, no black people or advocates of civil rights.

Reagan went all "emo" in 1966 because he knew he'd been called out for associating with a movement that courted and coddled bigots. Rather than apologize for it or try to explain it away, he just clutched his pearls and walked out.

"American democracy has more authors than the shrewd lawyers and erudite farmer-philosophers of the Revolution, that our experiment in liberty owes as much to the men and women who toiled in bondage as it does to anyone else in this nation’s history." That's Bouie's conclusion.

Imagine thinking that such a conclusion is some America-hating "radical narrative" that seeks to show that Lincoln and the Union Army "had nothing to do" with ending slavery.

Bouie: "Black people's actions matter and significantly impacted the course of American history."
National Review: "OMG, such radical nihilism will spell the end of the American Experiment as we know it!"