The Mask Slips at NRO

On National Review's Non-Response to Constitutional Crisis

When I wrote “The National Review Dances in Dissonance” last week, I didn't expect a direct response. Yet here we are, with senior writer Dan McLaughlin devoting an entire article to dismissing my critique without actually engaging its substance. What's revealing isn't what McLaughlin refutes—it's what he concedes through omission and rhetorical sleight of hand.

Let's be clear about what this exchange represents. It's not a disagreement about judicial overreach or the proper boundaries of constitutional interpretation. It's about whether our system can survive the normalization of executive defiance of judicial authority. McLaughlin's response confirms precisely what my original piece argued: the National Review has positioned itself as providing intellectual cover for constitutional crisis while pretending to defend constitutional principles.

McLaughlin opens by calling me “a Substack writer” and labeling my critique “Bulverism”—a rhetorical move that bypasses the actual argument. This framing itself reveals the superficiality of his response. My piece wasn't about McLaughlin's psychological motivations or why National Review editors think what they do. It was about the function their editorial serves in the erosion of democratic norms—how it provides a roadmap for justifying executive defiance while maintaining the appearance of principled conservatism.

The most telling aspect of McLaughlin's response is what he chooses not to contest. He doesn't deny that their editorial outlined scenarios where “the executive may have a persuasive case for defying a judicial order.” He doesn't challenge my characterization that they provided a blueprint for executive branch resistance to court orders. Instead, he simply asks if I “disagree that any of these scenarios create serious separation of powers problems,” as if acknowledging constitutional tensions justifies extra-constitutional responses.

This is precisely the dangerous sleight of hand my original piece identified. Of course judges can err—even grievously. Of course constitutional tensions exist between branches. But the remedy in our system has never been for the executive to simply ignore judicial orders it finds inconvenient or incorrect. The remedy is appeal, legislation, constitutional amendment, or even impeachment—not defiance that renders judicial review meaningless.

McLaughlin cites Justice Robert Jackson's famous line that the Supreme Court is “not final because we are infallible, but we are infallible only because we are final.” Yet he misses Jackson's core point: the finality of judicial decisions is what makes our constitutional system function. If the executive can decide which judicial decisions to follow based on its own assessment of their correctness, there is no rule of law—only rule by whoever holds power.

This brings us to the most revealing moment in McLaughlin's response. He writes: “When the courts seize powers never granted them in the Constitution, that is a usurpation of power – and arguably an even worse one than executive overreach, precisely because there are so very few remedies for it.”

Here the mask slips entirely. McLaughlin is not arguing that judicial overreach should be addressed through constitutional means. He's suggesting that because judicial overreach is difficult to remedy constitutionally, extra-constitutional remedies become justified. This isn't constitutional analysis—it's constitutional surrender dressed as principle.

The technical correction that “the executive branch cannot impeach anybody” misses the point entirely. When Trump and his allies threaten to impeach judges who rule against them, they're not making a technical claim about constitutional procedures. They're signaling that judicial independence will not be tolerated. McLaughlin knows this perfectly well, but chooses to hide behind procedural pedantry rather than address the substance.

As for McLaughlin's defense of the National Review's record on Trump, he protests too much. Yes, the publication has occasionally criticized Trump's excesses. But the question isn't whether they've ever expressed concern—it's whether they've treated threats to constitutional governance as existential dangers requiring uncompromising resistance, or as unfortunate tendencies to be managed through case-by-case accommodation. Their recent editorial, with its roadmap for justified defiance, answers that question definitively.

What we're witnessing is not a good-faith debate about constitutional interpretation. It's the intellectual absorption of anti-democratic thought into mainstream conservative discourse. McLaughlin's response doesn't refute this—it exemplifies it. By treating executive defiance of court orders as just another policy disagreement that reasonable people can differ on, rather than a fundamental threat to constitutional governance, he normalizes what should be unthinkable.

This isn't about partisan advantage or scoring debating points. It's about whether our constitutional system can survive the current onslaught of authoritarian thinking. When publications like the National Review—once bulwarks against tyranny in all its forms—begin providing intellectual frameworks for extra-constitutional power, we have crossed a dangerous threshold.

The challenge before us isn't judicial overreach or executive excess in isolation. It's whether we still believe in a system where power is constrained by law rather than the other way around. McLaughlin's response suggests that for a significant portion of the conservative intellectual establishment, that belief is conditional—applicable when convenient, disposable when not.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And a system where the executive can decide which judicial rulings to obey is not a constitutional republic—it's the prelude to autocracy. This isn't alarmism; it's the clear lesson of history. When intellectual gatekeepers begin justifying the dismantling of constitutional constraints, they aren't defending principles—they're preparing their readers for their abandonment.

“The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison, Federalist No. 47

McLaughlin ends by quoting Monty Python: “An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition. This is just contradiction.” But the contradiction isn't in my reasoning—it's in the National Review's attempt to defend constitutional principles while simultaneously undermining them. It's in their posture of principled conservatism while providing the intellectual framework for its abandonment.

The choice before us isn't between judicial restraint and judicial overreach. It's between constitutional governance and its replacement with rule by executive decree. By framing the issue as mere disagreement over judicial scope, the National Review obscures this fundamental choice. Their position isn't conservative in any meaningful sense of preserving constitutional order—it's revolutionary in its willingness to justify extra-constitutional power in service of preferred outcomes.

This isn't just a philosophical disagreement. It's about whether we still believe in the system that has defined American governance for over two centuries. McLaughlin's response suggests that for too many self-described conservatives, that belief has become negotiable—a position to be held or abandoned based on who holds power rather than on principle.

That's not contradiction. That's capitulation.

And while we're on the subject of “How Not to Argue With an Editorial”—perhaps a better title for McLaughlin's piece would have been “How to Avoid Arguing With an Editorial.” After all, avoiding the substance of my critique while fixating on procedural pedantry is a masterclass in not engaging with the actual argument at all.