John Derbyshire - Beliefs and Disagreements With Fellow National Review Writers

Beliefs and Disagreements With Fellow National Review Writers

Derbyshire has differed from his fellow writers at National Review on many subjects. For example, Derbyshire supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, ridiculed George W. Bush's "itty-bitty tax cut, paid for by dumping a slew of federal debt on your children and grandchildren", has derided Bush in general for being too sure of his religious convictions and for his "rich-kid-ness", dismisses small-government conservatism as unlikely to ever take hold (although he is not unsympathetic to it), has called for immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq (but favored the invasion), opposes market reforms or any other changes in Social Security, is pro-choice on abortion, supports euthanasia in a fairly wide range of circumstances, and has suggested that he might (in a time of international crisis) vote for Hillary Clinton as president.

Derbyshire's views on the Schiavo case attracted criticism from fellow writers at National Review Online such as Ramesh Ponnuru. The Derbyshire-Ponnuru dispute arose again over Ponnuru's recently published book, Party of Death. Derbyshire reviewed the book harshly in the New English Review, and Ponnuru replied on NRO with a strongly worded rebuttal.

Though Derbyshire broadly agrees with many other writers at National Review Online on immigration, he encountered strong opposition from former NRO blogger John Podhoretz, who described Derbyshire's comments on restricting immigration to maintain "ethnic balance" in severe terms: "But maintaining 'ethnic balance' is not fine. It is chillingly, horrifyingly not fine." In response, fellow Corner contributor Jonah Goldberg, who described himself as philosophically "in the middle" of the two, noted:

I should say that I think JPod is getting too hung up on the phrase "ethnic balance" as a codeword for all sorts of unlovely things. It seems to me that if you're going to sit down and have any immigration policy at all, it's unavoidable that you're going to address the issue of ethnic balance in one way or another, no matter what you call it. Ultimately, you have to choose where people come from if you have an immigration policy, even if you emphasize other factors like skills or family unification. So you can either look at it directly or you can skirt around it. But you can't avoid it.

He wrote about American schooling in his book We Are Doomed, "Education is a vast sea of lies, waste, corruption, crackpot theorizing, and careerist log-rolling." He further argued that people "had better brace ourselves for the catastrophe" coming as a result.

Derbyshire also has said that America would be better off if women did not have the right to vote. In 2005, in a monthly column containing a series of miscellaneous musings, he stated that women's physical attractiveness peaks between ages 15–20, a comment which also drew considerable criticism.

In an August 2012 article, Derbyshire summed up his view of American society by saying that it is "slipping into totalitarianism: into a state of affairs where to hold certain opinions is to be excluded from normal society, to be unemployable" He also stated that "given enough advance warning, I can probably get my own wife and kids out to the comparative sanity and freedom of China." He wrote:

The thought came upon me, as it has done quite a lot this past few years, that I shall likely end up in a labor camp. I can't keep my mouth shut; I can't clap along with the Kumbaya; and I can't pretend assent to propositions that seem to me to be false. In the world we are fast heading into, that makes me camp fodder for sure.