The Ghost of William F. Buckley

jonah goldberg
Jonah Goldberg and several of his associates from National Review and the Standard launched The Dispatch in 2019. Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Tina Nguyen
September 28, 2022

Back in college, during my days as a fledgling right-leaning reporter, I applied for an internship at National Review, the flagship magazine of the conservative movement. At the time, National Review Online was run by Jonah Goldberg, and as a digital native obsessed with the early internet, “The Corner”—NRO’s daily blog, which featured musings from across the masthead—was my first interaction with the work of the decades-old magazine, and the conservative movement in general. I was obsessed with Rich Lowry and Kathryn Jean Lopez, pored over William F. Buckley’s past work, and I even managed to get a satirical video of mine posted on the site in 2010. In my internship application, I described the magazine as a “roadmap of the right” and an example of what conservatism can do at its best: not just stand athwart history yelling stop, but offer thoughtful political alternatives when the march of progress occasionally heads over a cliff.