The write stuff: U.S. serial print culture from conservatives out to neo-Nazis

In the January/February 1989 issue, Conservative Digest returned to standard magazine size. It ran an affectionate cover story on ultraconservative Senator Jesse Helms, which described the volatile and vituperative solon as "Stouthearted," and a man of "courage, warmth, and wit." In the May/June issue, Weyrich attacked the National Education Association in an article on education reform. There was also a full page ad for summer seminars run by the Old Right Foundation for Economic Education, publisher of The Freeman. James R. Whelan became Editor-In-Chief with this issue. The Coors beer company regularly bought full-page full-color ads in Conservative Digest. In political publishing, this is often a way for corporations to subsidize magazines by covering the cost of running other pages with full color, such as covers or inside illustrations. Funds from Coors company profits helped fund the new right, and were key to the creation of the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation (Bellant, 1991). Another serial that borders the xenophobic right is the American Sentinel, a newsletter that was briefly renamed Pink Sheet on the Left, and printed on pink paper to recall the contention from the 1950s that some liberals were "Parlor Pink" sympathizers with "Red" communism.

Economic Libertarians Libertarians and Free Market enthusiasts are very unhappy with the Roosevelt administration, especially what is seen as unfair advantages given to labor unions. To this day they argue that labor disputes were pulled out of the court system and handed over to faceless bureaucrats in a federal agency, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). In 1975, these actions by Roosevelt still angered rightists, including Sennholz, who in The Freeman (1975) claimed the NLRB

   became prosecutor, judge, and jury, all in one. Labor union
   sympathizers on the Board further perverted this law, which already
   afforded legal immunities and privileges to labor unions. The U.S.
   thereby abandoned a great achievement of Western civilization,
   equality under the law. (pp. 212-213)

This serial quote from Sennholz was later picked up in a report by Lawrence W. Reed (1998) published by the Mackinac Center for Public Policy (p. 13). Many conservative serials echo some of the sentiments of libertarian serials, with the greatest overlap in the area of defending the free enterprise system and deriding Roosevelt. For example, in its July 2000 issue, National Right to Work featured a front page photo of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, portrayed as having nearly destroyed America by fostering the idea of big government.

Typical contemporary libertarian serials include Reason ("free minds and free markets"); and Liberty ("classical liberal review of thought, culture, and politics"). Serials affiliated with organizations include several from the Cato Institute including Regulation magazine, Cato Journal, Policy Report, and Cato's Letter, both newsletters. Liberty & Law is the newsletter of the national Institute for Justice, while City Journal is published by the Manhattan Institute. A number of state-level libertarian policy institutes also publish a range of periodicals.