As Frum Leaves ...

... and Buckley is fired, and Parker flees, and we are left with adolescent bilge from Kathryn-Jean Lopez and spittle-flecked postings from Mark Levin and Andy McCarthy and Mark Krikorian and Mark Steyn, it may indeed be time to call the era of National Review as a repository for intellectual debate over. Parker and Frum were about the only voices of skepticism on the insane Palin nomination.

Let's be frank: the place is now a choir for a church. What matters is maintenance of dogma, not pursuit of ideas. The election year proved it beyond much doubt. When its editor can write embarrassments like this, it's not an intellectual forum, it's a fanzine. Some interesting people still write from what feels like a place of intellectual honesty: Manzi, Stuttaford, Derbyshire, Brookhiser, Ponnuru (on a good day). The rest is propaganda.