John O’Sullivan on Immigration and the Conservative Movement

"In summer 1991, beginning a long air trip on a National Review Institute delegation to the Far East, I opened a 14,000-word submission to National Review and settled down to read. My mood was a good deal more optimistic than it usually was toward 14,000-word submissions. Its author was a friend and gifted writer, Peter Brimelow, then a senior editor at Forbes, who had long wanted to write this piece. But was the topic “hot” enough to command as much as 20 pages in a national magazine?

I was soon blown away by one of the most powerful and lively polemics I have ever read. It was comprehensive, too, covering almost every aspect of immigration and its effects in crisp and well-documented sections.

My traveling companions included Bill and Priscilla Buckley. Bill had given me full editorial control of NR at this point, but you don’t devote a magazine’s entire article section to one piece without informing the proprietor. I gave him the manuscript and told him my intentions. He raised a skeptical eyebrow, but proceeded to read...

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related: Booknotes video of interview with Peter Brimelow on the subject of his seminal book Alien Nation.