National Review at 50: Why "Lolita"'s 50th Was More Fun

The birth of the modern conservative movement is usually carbon-dated to 1964, when Barry Goldwater lost the election only to see the conservative desert bloom in his wake. A closer look at the fossils should push the date back to 1955. That was the year Dwight Eisenhower launched America’s neo-imperial age by sending the first advisers to Vietnam, the year corporate America decreed profits an entitlement when General Motors became history’s first billion-dollar company, the year Ray Kroc launched billions and billions of thromboses with the first franchising of McDonald’s, the year a half century of great American literature died when five American publishers rejected Nabokov’s Lolita, and the year conservative’s die-hard trinity was born with a look-who’s-talking-now twinkle in its halo: Chief Justice John Roberts, Chief Jingoist Bruce Willis, and National Review — the magazine Wheel of Fortune’s Pat Sajak says brought him “clarity of perspective and the intellectual ammunition to fight the battles that needed to be fought.” Vanna White’s America has been turning the pages of that puzzle board for 50 years. And so National Review commemorates its 50th anniversary with its special December 19 issue. Read the complete round-up…