As a young man in the 1980s, I’d been a New Republic liberal. The Weekly Standard made me a conservative. (With help from First Things.) Now it’s gone out of business after 23 years of publication.

Over the years since, I moved far from the magazine’s politics. My recent article on how neocon foreign policy kills social conservatism explains why. I became more conservative. The magazine didn’t. But I am going to miss this magazine. A lot.

Why Am I Going to Miss It?

John Podhoretz’s new piece on movies that stand the test of time is just one example of why. Other reasons that come immediately to mind are Joseph Epstein and Andrew Ferguson. The Weekly Standard published most of the best conservative magazine writing over these past 23 years. Its back-of-the-book cultural reviews were the best to appear anywhere on the Right.

It was founded in 1995, the year Leslie and I began dating, and it was an on-and-off friend throughout all our years together. I remember lazy Sunday afternoons at her home in the mid 90s, both of us reading through its pages and discussing its articles.

The cover story about the little girl pilot who crashed a plane and died, killing all on board, and how stupid the “Girls Fly” phenomenon was. The article raking People Magazine over the coals for its “Greatest Hollywood Couples” issue, by pointing out all the discarded first spouses and children from previous marriages that were left behind by those “greatest” couples.

The magnificent takedowns of the leftist politics of the Parade Magazine inserts in your Sunday newspaper, say, or the pretentiousness of Garrison Keillor. Joseph Bottum‘s review of “Mr. Ives’ Christmas” and reviews by him and others of the work of Philip K. Dick, Raymond Chandler, and so many more. And the best articles to appear anywhere on the Clinton impeachment and why it was worth doing.

The First Time It Lost Me

We’ve had a rocky relationship, though. I’ve quit on it twice, the second time for good.

The first time The Weekly Standard lost me as a subscriber, it was over a now-completely forgotten episode. It was the “Zeus-worship” (as Marvin Olasky called it) of McCain supporters in the 2000 Republican primaries. The Weekly Standard ran an editorial backing McCain’s effort to replace religion with patriotism as the first principle of American conservatism. That seemed to me to reverse the proper order of God and Country.

National Review took the opposite view. Rich Lowry added a column criticizing McCain’s dark speech at the 2000 convention backing honor above all else. I was sold. From that point I was NR subscriber who only read The Weekly Standard for free at Barnes and Noble.

But even then, The Weekly Standard ran a column that dissented from its editorial position. Written by the guy who eventually ran George W. Bush’s fatherhood program, it made brilliant distinctions between honor-based societies and guilt-based societies. It explained why the latter is healthier, and offered an effective take-down of candidate McCain.

A Good Thing About the Standard

All of this pointed to another good thing about The Weekly Standard, something you also see in the Podhoretz article: it’s capacity for self-reflection, to (not always, but occasionally) admit when it’s wrong.

About three years ago National Review and The Weekly Standard both ran anniversary issues and I was struck by their different approaches to their own recent histories. The Standard hired a writer to do an objective analysis of the magazine’s own history, including all the times they were wrong.

National Review talked about how right they had been about everything, such as how the Bush Administration should have followed their advice to make the war about Islamism instead of a generic terrorism. NR didn’t mention how wrong they had been to encourage the invasion of Iraq and to stand by the Bush Administration’s handling of it. They didn’t admit how wrong they were to run that awful “Unpatriotic Conservatives” piece against anyone who opposed the invasion. All of that was missing from NR‘s retrospective anniversary issue.

Maybe that is why I was primed by 2013 for Austin Ruse‘s Catholic Thing column on how The Weekly Standard was the best magazine for social conservatives. Almost every conservative magazine, he wrote, argued that “gay marriage is inevitable, that it is the conservative or otherwise right thing to do, and that traditional marriage supporters ought to just pipe down.” On that issue, the Standard “has been square and getting squarer.”

NR was increasingly wobbly on same-sex marriage throughout the 2000s. As Austin noted, even The American Conservative “seems to have gone all in for homosexual marriage.” The Weekly Standard ran landmark cover stories like Maggie Gallagher’s “Banned in Boston.” So I switched back.

And then came Trump and Never-Trumpism and I dropped them all.

Reagan Nostalgia

I think The Standard, like much of the Right, suffered from Reagan nostalgia. They were founded to be the Right’s answer to the Reagan-era New Republic magazine, that is, to lay the groundwork for the next chapter for their party.

The editors could not get over the end of the Cold War. They were looking for the next enemy around which to organize an “American Greatness.” They initially aimed at China, but then 9/11 happened and we were off to Iraq. We’ve all suffered for it.

RIP, Weekly Standard. You had some huge misfires, but you also had much of the best writing on the Right these past 23 years. And you made me a conservative. Even if I am no longer your kind of conservative, I am grateful, and I’ll miss you.