Ok, Slate, please tell me - how do you square this :

Buckley gathered and sifted through these disparate groups, spurning the anti-Semites and anti-Catholics ...

with this :

Christian piety and anti-communism were Buckley's twin pillars, the former to such an extent that Buckley ruled out David Brooks, his onetime protégé, as a possible editor of National Review on the grounds that Brooks was Jewish.

If he denied David Brooks a job because he was Jewish, that would make him an anti-semite.

"If" Buckley didn't make the New York Times' favorite conservative David Brooks the editor of National Review because he was Jewish, that would mean Buckley was inconsistent: after all, he did fire long-time NR writer Joe Sobran because Buckley's Jewish friends complained that Sobran was an anti-Semite.

I'm by no means a Buckley biographer, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. Do we know that Brooks wasn't made editor because he was Jewish? Does anyone have a link to David Brooks, or someone at the National Review, saying so?

Not that I don't trust Timothy Noah, but it is a pretty large charge to levy without providing supporting evidence in the article.

Buckley didn't rule out Brooks as editor of the National Review because he was Jewish. Brooks was ruled out because he wasn't a Christian believer. There is a difference. Buckley's criterion also ruled out nominal Christians, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, etc.

pwoxby:

Buckley didn't rule out Brooks as editor of the National Review because he was Jewish. Brooks was ruled out because he wasn't a Christian believer. There is a difference. Buckley's criterion also ruled out nominal Christians, atheists, Muslims, Hindus, etc.

And yet, if that was true it doesn't seem to have bothered Bill Kristol, Jonah Goldberg, or Mona Charen:

http://www.nationalreview.com/

As for Joe Sobran, he was fired from National Review because he was accused of being an anti-Semite and hired by Murray Rothberg; as he put it, he was fired by a fellow Catholic because he was accused of being an anti-Semite but hired by a Jew who knew that he wasn't one.