Victor S. Navasky and The Fate of The Nation

Thomas Powers in the New York Times Book Review:

…no, something even more troubling nagged at Navasky during his decades as editor and now publisher of The Nation — ”that avatar of capitalism,” William F. Buckley Jr., who ran his own small journal of opinion, National Review, which Navasky credits with the relentless march of conservatism under Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Navasky admires many of the writers associated for a time with Buckley’s magazine (Joan Didion, Garry Wills, John Leonard) and he fully shares Buckley’s faith that the point of a journal of opinion is what it stands for, not whether it makes money. ”A profit?” Buckley once expostulated, when asked if he thought National Review would ever make one. ”You don’t expect the church to make a profit, do you?” But agreement ends there; on just about every other issue Buckley and Navasky, the avatar of the left, are on opposite sides in the battle of ideas.

More here.