To the battlefield.

IT is impossible to summarize, much less itemize, the many insightful writings that have appeared in NATIONAL REVIEW over the course of its long and distinguished history. Indeed, it would be impossible to do so for William F. Buckley alone. What we can do is consider the unique role of NATIONAL REVIEW as the pioneer conservative journal of opinion that challenged the prevailing liberal-left orthodoxy of the media and the academy.

It is hard to assess any achievement without knowing what the obstacles were or what the opposing forces were like. To fully appreciate what NATIONAL REVIEW has achieved would require recreating in our minds the intellectual and ideological world of the mid-1950s in which NATIONAL REVIEW stepped forth to do battle.

Today's intelligentsia may depict the 1950s as a decade of conformity to traditional ideas--the decade that twice gave us Eisenhower as president in a landslide. But while the American public in the 1950s still respected the traditions on which American society was founded, the intellectual world was already firmly in the hands of the political Left. It was not yet the hard Left, stridently anti-American as much of the Left would become in the next, explosive decade. But it was a world in which conservative ideas were simply not to be taken seriously by "thinking people" in the media or the academy.

Eisenhower won the votes of the country, but Adlai Stevenson won the hearts of the intelligentsia. John Kenneth Galbraith was the best-known economist, at least among non-economists, while Milton Friedman was considered a fringe figure, when he was considered at all. To doubt Keynesian economics in the 1950s would have been like doubting the sunrise.

This was the field of battle on which NATIONAL REVIEW appeared, to take on all comers.

It took them on largely alone. There was no Rush Limbaugh or the conservative talk-radio boom that he led. Fox News was not even on the horizon. Conservative think tanks were largely ignored. And there was no other distinguished conservative journal of opinion like NATIONAL REVIEW. It was as unique as Bill Buckley himself.

How much any given intellectual publication, or any given intellectual for that matter, contributes to the course of events in a society is at least unquantifiable, if not unknowable. But when one publication is the clear standard-bearer for a particular viewpoint during a given era, and that viewpoint makes visible inroads over the years, it would be hard to deny that publication--NATIONAL REVIEW--credit for putting that viewpoint on the map or restoring it to the map after liberal intellectuals had airbrushed it out over the years of their unchallenged ascendancy.

NATIONAL REVIEW became and remained an intellectual and ideological warrior--with logic, facts, and wit as its weapons.

The war of ideas was also part of a larger war of elections and policies. The leaders of that war--Ronald Reagan preeminently--are the ones whom the pages of history will record. But such political leaders would never have gotten the opportunity to play their historic roles without those who first changed the minds of those whose votes put them in power. While NATIONAL REVIEW's circulation was not large enough to reach directly the vast majority of the electorate, it reached opinion-makers who reached the public. No longer did the liberal vision of the welfare state or of the courts reign unchallenged as the only rational or humane view.

How much NATIONAL REVIEW directly influenced those whose hands were on the national levers of power in the White House, the Congress, or the courts cannot be known. Nor is that crucial. The whole world of ideas within which "practical" decision-makers act is crucial. Here is where NATIONAL REVIEW made its contribution.

There was a time when a man who reached the age of 50 was considered old, but today 50 is just middle-aged. For NATIONAL REVIEW, it is still the vigorous prime of youth.

Mr. Sowell is a syndicated columnist and the author, most recently, of Black Rednecks and White Liberals.