Don’t Let the Censors Win

(Pixabay)

Help us make sure NR’s voice is heard.

They want to shut us up. By donating to our Spring Webathon, you can help keep us talking — and being heard.

When National Review was founded, we reached our readers exclusively through the mail. Readers sent their money, and we sent them the magazine. As our president would say, it was a beautiful relationship. And it still is!

But as the media environment has gone to screen, so have you and so have we. National Review uses every means to spread the best conservative ideas, analysis, and cultural criticism across the Internet.

But the rules are a little different here on the Web. The mail carrier has to deliver what we address to you. But Silicon Valley can simply add a line of code to their product and prevent National Review from reaching you on the social-media platforms you use.

Surely, you’ve noticed. Ever since Brexit and the surprise victory of Donald Trump, Silicon Valley is under pressure to suppress conservative ideas on their platforms. Governments and liberal activists have been demanding that Google, Facebook, and other sites clamp down on the articles and podcasts that you help spread across their sites. Mainstream journalists — really, many of them have the hearts of censors — openly warn these companies that if elections keep going the wrong way, they’ll demand greater government regulation.

You know whose ideas are going to be banned, throttled, and deleted.

The rest of the media world is engaging in a contest of mutual censorship. Mainstream writers spend their days trying to get the most interesting thinkers and writers fired. Mainstream editors urge on their peers ever-tighter conformity to the latest left-wing editorial line, the latest “narrative.” This isn’t just bad for the our nation’s government; it’s also boring and depressing.

If you can afford $25, please send it. If you can afford $2,500, send that.

Here at National Review, we are having the most open, lively, and thrilling contest of ideas. And, we’ll continue to use every platform out there to reach our readers, and find new ones for as long as we can. But we can’t depend on the good graces of Silicon Valley or our critics on the left. We need to strengthen National Review for the years to come.

The future of free speech, the future of informed debate, the future of our nation, depends on institutions such as National Review. And in turn, we depend on you.

Please donate today. If you can afford $25, please send it. If you can afford $2,500, send that.