Letters

From the Editor

With this issue, National Review relaunches as a monthly journal of conservative thought.

We’re not just making our editions larger and lovelier -- although we are doing that. We are also adding new features. The Week will now include an item highlighting notable conservative work, and another explaining a statistic that deserves attention. We will be keeping an eye on the news between issues, too, emailing a weekly version of the Week to subscribers. (You may sign up for it at www.nationalreview.com/gettheweek.)

A new column celebrates America under the heading “Our Spacious Skies.” How spacious? The inaugural contribution covers a bit of the American way of life in England.

The new NR will be able to run additional reports and analyses and, when warranted, longer ones. And of course we will still have the book and movie reviews, and columns, you already love.

What qualifies as conservative thought has always been contested. We lay out our views in a refreshed mission statement at the end of the Week, with an accompanying editorial. Like any reasonable set of credenda, however, this one leaves many questions open: Under what circumstances do markets require government to regulate and shape them? What foreign policy serves our national interest at a given moment? Conservatives will continue to disagree among ourselves about the concrete answers to these questions. One of the benefits of our new format is that we will be better able to host and cover the debates that enliven and sometimes roil conservatism.

The redesign of the magazine has been the work of many hands. Special thanks should go to Garrett Bewkes, Chris McEvoy, Luba Kolomytseva, Brian Murdock, Eric Sailer, and Mark Wright. Our deepest gratitude goes, as ever, to you our readers, on whom we continue to count to sustain us, encourage us, and spread the word. With your help we will seek to add every month to our nation’s stock of intelligence and beauty.