the conservative but respectable National Review

Dean, Dean, Dean... do you have to sound quite so much like a liberal? ;-)

Unrepentant lifelong conservative that I am (Max M: none of your patented snarky remarks, please), I have for the past 30 years been a loyal subscriber to National Review. Yes, dating back to the days of James Burnham. Dating back to the days of Keith Mano and his "transistorized prose" in his fine NR column, "The Gimlet Eye."

For that matter, I am a charter subscriber to The Weekly Standard. I am a longtime subscriber (12 or 13 years at least) to Commentary. I am even a longtime subscriber to The American Spectator— I bore with it even through its godawful days as the George Gilder Journal of CyberWhatsis— if for no other reason than that Ben Stein's column is a must-read.

Hell, back in my youthful indigent student days at the UW-Madison, when the only subscriptions I could afford to carry were National Review, Analog, National Geographic (lifetime membership was a high school graduation gift from my folks), and Eternity (conservative evangelical monthly, not that I've ever been a conservative evangelical, but it was just a damn fine magazine)... anyhow, like I say, back in my youthful indigent student days at the UW-Madison, up on the second floor of Helen C. White Library I even used to read and enjoy Encounter magazine, which if I recall correctly was later "outed" as having been secretly funded by the CIA.

Meanwhile...

the conservative but respectable National Review

Alright, Dean, just because you're sounding so damn much like a liberal there, I'm hijacking this thread, and posting a list of the magazines to which I currently subscribe:

National Review
The Weekly Standard
Commentary
The American Spectator
National Geographic
Smithsonian
The Anglican Digest (another one I've read for 30 years)
The Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society

Anybody else? Which magazines do you subscribe to?

Heh. Well of the conservative publications, I consider Commentary and The National Review to be the most responsible and respectable and reliable. For the longest time I read The American Spectator strictly for Ben Stein's column (you have excellent taste there, Paul). Beyond that I consider conservative publications a crap shoot.

Of course the same is true for the left. The New Republic is a fine and respectable publication. Mother Jones is kinda hippy dippy but really is often pretty good. The folks at The American Prospect sometimes put out quality material but there's a bit of the scurrilous nature to them that I don't quite trust.

THen on the far fringes you've got the folks at Front Page Magazine or The Nation, where I sort of handle anything I get from them by moving very slowly, with tongs if possible.

Of course a good bit of this is also that my views of politics changed radically after 9/11. I'm completely off the map now. I don't like people who are snotty and nasty and full of inuendo about our political leaders, regardless of which party they're in. Cynicism I would have considered amusing and snarky 5 years ago just makes me queasy now.

I have to be honest though: at this point I don't subscribe to any print magazines. I'm afraid I've become too high-tech--if I can't click a link to get to it I'm not sure I want to read it!

What magazines do I subscribe to or read regularly? Hmmm....

Chris Matthew Sciabarra's excellent Journal of Ayn Rand Studies,
Astronomy,
Liberty, (libertarian),
Reason (libertarian),
The Intellectual Activist (Objectivist),
The New American (John Birch Society),
National Review,
FrontPage Magazine.
Stephen A. McNallen's The Runestone (Asatru) was my favorite of all magazines until it ceased publication. Before that, I subscribed to The Odinist.
I used to read The New Republic until they published a vile attack on Lawrence vs. Texas in the name of New Deal economics. That's when I finally decided that even "Center" Leftists of that kind cannot be counted on as allies. Homosexuals must break with the Left.
Encounter once had a symposium on spectrumology that I must get my hands on someday. I have a copy of the big spectrumological symposium that Commentary published in 1976. "What Is A Liberal? Who Is A Conservative?" Fascinating....