His conversion to one form of illiberalism - or, if you prefer, anti-liberalism - is surely sincere and a byproduct of his good-faith Catholicism. No better proof of that hollowness can be found than Sohrab’s own metamorphosis. “The strength of the Trump and Sanders presidential candidacies has revealed the hollowness of this liberal consensus in the 21st century.” Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Orban weren’t the only avatars in the rising tide of illiberalism, Sohrab wrote: “Trumpism (and Bernie Sanders-ism) are but the American symptoms of a global phenomenon: the astonishing rise of illiberal movements of the far right and far left.” They represented a pas de deux of illiberal convergence. “As an ideology and as a governing philosophy, liberalism is fast losing ground,” Sohrab warned. Almost exactly two years ago, he wrote an insightful essay for Commentary entitled “Illiberalism: A Worldwide Crisis.” It was - to stick with the French theme - both a cri de couer and a tour d’horizon of the global crisis of faith in classical liberalism. Sohrab Ahmari, a very decent fellow whose writings I’ve long admired, has been on quite an intellectual journey. (Please buy my album, Rational and Seamless Segues Were Never My Bag, Baby.) Of course, I don’t mean the country but the man ( mensch is a better label) David French. As I head out the door, NR is caught up in an outpouring of pro-French sentiment. I bring this up because of a strange irony. I used to write an annual Bastille Day G-File recounting the perfidy of what my longtime NR colleague John Miller called in a book by the same name “ Our Oldest Enemy.” Long before the anti-French boom during the lead-up to the Iraq war, I was quoting Groundskeeper Willie’s (of The Simpsons) felicitous phrase, “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” I became so associated with it that when the “freedom fries” folderol started, countless major news outlets attributed the epithet to me, even though I never claimed to have coined it. One of the earliest traditions of NRO was, to put it bluntly, French-bashing. If I keep going the pollen out here will only get worse.

Even so, I feel like I’m amputating part of my soul. I’ll be staying on as a fellow at the National Review Institute and staying in touch with everybody. Also, while I may be leaving the magazine, I’m not leaving the family. There are so many friends and colleagues I am grateful for that if I start naming them, I’ll run the risk of forgetting someone or using up this entire “news”letter calling the roll of my indebtedness. It roughly means to include is to exclude, and he often invoked the phrase to explain why he couldn’t thank everyone in attendance at a meeting or talk. He’d say it like it was a normal thing for a person to say. Speaking of Bill Buckley - another object of my eternal gratitude - he liked to say “Lowry, what were you thinking hiring this guy?” But he also liked to say, “Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius.” Really. I often say he hired me to pay me back for saving his life in prison - WFB loved that joke - but the truth is, he took a flier on me early in his role as editor, and I’m eternally grateful for it. My appreciation for you, Dear Readers, is only exceeded by my appreciation for my friends and colleagues here at NR, starting of course with Rich Lowry. I’ve made real and lasting friendships - in the meat space, not just in the digital space - with some of you, and I’ve learned a ton from a lot of you. But as a collective, I cannot begin to express how much the National Review audience has meant to me over the years, starting in 1998 when I joined NR and started the Goldberg File (a blog before we had the word, then a column, then a “news”letter, and, soon, a dessert topping and a floor wax), straight through the launches of NRO, the Corner, and all the rest. What I want to say up front is: I love you. It will soon fly under a new banner, one might even say a pirate flag. This is my last G-File under the National Review flag.

Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays. EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File.

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