‘The Right’ Read
13th July 2022
Steve Sailer looks at Matt Continetti’s new book.
William F. Buckley, founder of National Review, is the central figure in The Right, showing up on 107 pages according to the index. I didn’t see too much in the book that’s new about that legendary personality, so here’s a story about WFB that I heard only recently (and only from one source, but a reasonably reliable one): WFB, who had won 13 percent of the vote in an entertaining Conservative Party run for mayor of New York City in 1965, intensely wanted to run for president in 1968. If Jack Kennedy could be president at age 43, why not him? He was surprised and frustrated to find that his own inner circle didn’t take him seriously as presidential timber.
Buckley’s popularity shared at least one common characteristic with Trump’s: He was entertaining.
… when a friend asked press baron Rupert Murdoch why he funded The Weekly Standard, which was edited by Continetti’s father-in-law William Kristol (15 references in the index), even though Murdoch doesn’t seem to care that much about Israel one way or another, the wily Australian magnate replied that when you are a foreigner trying to make it in the America media business, you don’t need all the Jews in New York on your side, but you do need some of them.