Derbyshire has differed from his fellow writers at
National Review on important subjects. For example, Derbyshire supported Michael Schiavo's position in the Terri Schiavo case, showed sympathy for class-warfare themes in movies such as
Titanic, argued that Pope John Paul II was totally unable to stop the secularization of the West, 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, defended Michael Jackson as harmless, 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 harsh condemnation from fellow writers at
National Review Online. NRO writer and frequent blogger, Ramesh Ponnuru, attacked Derbyshire in language far more forceful than customary in
National Review's internal debates. 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 another strongly worded attack on Derbyshire as "wrong," "florid," "anti-intellectual," "gaseous" and "preposterous" among other terms.
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.