Changing political beliefs
There is nothing like a fact to kill a theory.
John Chamberlain
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In 1939, Chamberlain was among the "editorial sponsors" of the Writer's Anti-War Bureau that was formed by an informal group of journalists and publicists under the leadership of America First Committee publicity director Sidney Hertzberg. The Bureau publicized a weekly newssheet entitled Uncensored, which worked to analyze the news, expose the propaganda and hidden biases of those who advocated for foreign intervention. The newssheet appeared weekly from October 7, 1939 until its final issue in December 7, 1941.[8]
In the early 1940s, Chamberlain moved to the intellectual Right, along with friends such as former communists Whittaker Chambers and John Dos Passos, although Chamberlain was never himself a communist.[9] Influenced by Albert Jay Nock, he credits the writers Ayn Rand, Isabel Paterson and Rose Wilder Lane with his final "conversion" to what he called "an older American philosophy" of libertarian and conservative ideas.[10] Along with his friends Henry Hazlitt and Max Eastman, he helped to promote the work of the Austrian economist F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, writing the "Foreword" to the first American edition of the book in 1944.
In 1946, Leonard Read of the Foundation for Economic Education established a free market magazine named The Freeman, reviving the name of a publication which had been edited by Albert J. Nock (1920–1924). Its first editors included Chamberlain, Hazlitt and Suzanne La Follette, and its contributors during Chamberlain's tenure there included James Burnham, John Dos Passos, Max Eastman, Frank Meyer, Raymond Moley, Morrie Ryskind, and the Austrian School economists Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek.[11] He joined the neoliberal Mont Pelerin Society during this period. After stepping down as editor of The Freeman, Chamberlain continued his regular column for the periodical, "A Reviewer's Notebook."
From 1950 to 1960, he was an editorial writer for The Wall Street Journal.[12]
William F. Buckley Jr. credited Chamberlain with "changing the course of his life" by writing the "Introduction" to Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale.[13] Later, Chamberlain became a lifelong contributing editor for Buckley's magazine, National Review, from its founding until his death. He still occasionally differed from Buckley; for example, he praised Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand.[14]
For more than twenty-five years, he wrote a syndicated column for King Features which appeared in newspapers across the US.[4]
After his first wife died in 1954, he married Ernestine Stodelle, who had previously been married to the Russian theatrical director Theodore Komisarjevsky.[15]
