NR’s editor takes small step toward immigration realism

Richard Lowry, then a 29-year-old political reporter, was made editor of National Review in 1997 as part of a major change of direction in which William Buckley dismissed and demoted advocates of immigration restriction and the National Question who had been playing leading roles at the magazine during the early and mid 1990s. (It should never be forgotten that only two years before this editorial coup from above, Buckley had taken the affirmative side in a Firing Line debate on the topic, “Immigration to the United States should be drastically reduced.”) Under Lowry’s editorship the immigration issue literally disappeared from NR’s pages from some years. Since 9/11, it has been slowly and cautiously re-appearing, particularly with regular articles by Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, who, while an important critic of our present open borders policies, assiduously avoids the national and cultural aspects of the issue. Now Lowry has taken another small step forward, arguing in his syndicated column (not at NR) that mass Hispanic immigration, far from helping the GOP and conservative politics, spells their doom. Of course, this point was repeatedly made in the pre-Lowry NR, but has never been made in the Lowry-era NR. National Review still has a long, long way to go before it recovers what it lost.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 24, 2004 10:24 AM | Send