The founder of National Review defended white minority rule as preserving civilization

Evidence

“The central question that emerges,” the National Review’s founding editor, William F. Buckley, Jr., wrote in 1957, amid congressional debate over the first Civil Rights Act of the modern era, “is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas which it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is yes—the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.” He continued: “It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.” — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 645

Categorization

• QUESTION: Buckley’s later renunciation is acknowledged; the passage highlights how the modern conservative movement’s intellectual founder articulated explicit white-supremacist premises as late as 1957/58.