Jonah Goldberg Quotes

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others. ~ Jonah Goldberg

You can make a very good argument that society would be much worse off if you let 10 rapists and murderers free rather than put one poor, wrongly accused accountant in prison. And so my only point on that is that it should open up an argument. It should not sort of settle one, because nobody disagrees with it. ~ Jonah Goldberg

And it's the President of the United States who said he wasn't going to spike the football and all this, we shouldn't gloat about it, running campaign ads, gloating about it and saying the other guy isn't good enough to do the tough things that I did, which I think is, one reprehensible. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day. ~ Jonah Goldberg

(I)f France's righteous bloviating against war makes them your Dashboard Saint of International Integrity, it's either because you are sand-poundingly ignorant of how the world works or it's because you think France's self-interest is more important than America's. If the former applies to you, read a book. If it's the latter, maybe you should move there along with Alec Baldwin, Robert Altman, and the rest of the crowd who promised to leave a long time ago. But whatever you do, don't call France's position principled, because that just insults us both. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Nothing drives your opponents more crazy than being utterly reasonable. And nothing makes demonizing or delegitimizing your opponents easier than letting them shriek unreasonable things for you. The Republicans need to get back to being the party that elicits unreasonable shrieking from their opponents. Not the other way around. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Getting the support of Syria is the moral equivalent of winning the Klan's endorsement - it might be useful but it doesn't necessarily speak well of you. ~ Jonah Goldberg

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation-a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Free trade has been proven, time and again, as a reliable path to economic development. It pushes the public and private sectors alike toward greater accountability and transparency. It lifts people out of poverty, and while it can force unsettling changes on a society, those changes prove to be worthwhile in a very short time. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The more you socialize the costs of personal liberty, the more license you give others to regulate it. ~ Jonah Goldberg

American Progressivism - the moralistic social crusade from which modern liberals proudly claim descent - is in some respects the major source of the fascist ideas applied in Europe by Mussolini and Hitler. ~ Jonah Goldberg

And in the minds of progressives you are free to live anyway you want so long as it's progressive. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government. ~ Jonah Goldberg

But it is one of these sort of mythologies about America and its intellectual history, that the right embraced this thing called social Darwinism, when it never did so. ~ Jonah Goldberg

When activists say we need to move past the partisan divide, what they mean is: Shut up and get with my program. Have you ever heard anyone say, "We need to get past all of this partisan squabbling and name-calling. That's why I'm going to abandon all my objections and agree with you"? ~ Jonah Goldberg

[American] liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Tom Friedman says China is so awesome they make kosher pigs. ~ Jonah Goldberg

A rising economic tide is bad for people who live off of the poverty of others. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans. ~ Jonah Goldberg

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes - the people who have just enough to fear losing it - are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic royalists," and so on are the stock-in-trade of fascist demagogues. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Facts are mere speed bumps on the road to lefty moral outrage. ~ Jonah Goldberg

But you're never taught in schools - we don't teach anyone in public schools that government is the problem. We don't teach anyone in college that government is the problem - except maybe a handful of sort of unique, conservative schools. But mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If you're uncertain when life begins, why not give the unborn the benefit of the doubt and oppose abortion? ~ Jonah Goldberg

People ask, "Why is there poverty in the world?" It's a silly question. Poverty is the default human condition. It is the factory preset of this mortal coil. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The village may have replaced "the state," and it in turn may have replaced the fist with the hug, but an unwanted embrace from which you cannot escape is just a nicer form of tyranny. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Under the New Deal, governmental goons smashed down doors to impose domestic policies. G-Men were treated like demigods, even as they spied on dissidents. Captains of industry wrote the rules by which they were governed. FDR secretly taped his conversations, used the postal service to punish his enemies, lied repeatedly to maneuver the United States into war, and undermined Congress's war-making powers at several turns. When warned by Frances Perkins in 1932 that many provisions of the New Deal were unconstitutional, he in effect shrugged and said that they'd deal with that later (his intended solution: pack the Supreme Court with cronies). In 1942 he flatly told Congress that if it didn't do what he wanted, he'd do it anyway. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Despite what you may have been taught about Indians or Africans or ancient Celts, poor people are terrible stewards of their environment. For instance, if my kid were starving to death, I would happily feed her fresh panda. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The main difference between liberals and conservatives is that conservatives are honest about it. We're kind of dorks about it. We are kind of like Dungeons and Dragons geeks. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Capitalism is unnatural.
Democracy is unnatural.
Human rights are unnatural.
The world we live in today is unnatural, and we stumble into it more or less by accident.
The natural state of mankind is grinding poverty punctuated by horrific violence terminating with an early death.
It was like this for a very very long time. ~ Jonah Goldberg

[A] country without a word to describe its love for what is best within it is a country ill-equipped to defend what is best within it. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I suppose in John Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing a fuss. Okay, that was unfair. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. I'm from the government and I'm here to help. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Christian socialism"). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call "state capitalism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

In many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism
the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism
is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter. ~ Jonah Goldberg

One of the things that really drove me crazy was the way in which college kids, in particular, are educated to think that ideology is dangerous and bad. ~ Jonah Goldberg

You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Gov. Christie says 'New Jersey First.' State-based Isolationism! ~ Jonah Goldberg

Social distinctions tend to matter only at your own level and above. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Liberals are Nazis, and Nazis are liberals. And if you don't agree with me, you're a Nazi too. ~ Jonah Goldberg

But if the choice is a cool president and 8 or 10 percent unemployment in a declining economy and a country that seems to be going in the wrong direction and structural unemployment for young people at 50 percent, I'd rather have a dorky president who fixed those problems. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies. ~ Jonah Goldberg

But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don't have one. ~ Jonah Goldberg

And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the 'terrible deeds' ... committed 'in the name of Christ.' ... ~ Jonah Goldberg

Hollywood's martyr-mythology leaves out the fact that the famed Hollywood Ten, for example, were in fact members of the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in violation of the Smith Act and which took orders directly from Moscow. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Life is too short, and cigars are too expensive, to smoke them for any reason other than enjoyment. ~ Jonah Goldberg

At the very core of conservatism lies comfort with contradiction, acceptance of the fact that life is not fair; that ideals must forever be goals, not destinations; that the perfect is not the enemy of the good but one standard by which we understand what is good in the first place - though not the only standard. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection (which is fine by me) and elsewhere. But it's worth remembering that Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Of course, it's a mystery to me why any American who can't be bothered to pay attention to politics unless Pamela Anderson is discussing it should be welcome in that conversation. ~ Jonah Goldberg

There is no - let me repeat - no example in the last quarter-century of a large, complex economy that has been successful with high taxes. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Trump argues for his own brand of strong-government conservatism grounded not in, say, Bush's faith in God, but in Donald Trump's faith in himself. He has never shown more than the briefest nod to traditional conservative concerns about limited government, personal liberty or the Constitution. ... If Trump is successful, liberty-oriented conservatism will be replaced by so-called common sense statism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It is a little-known but significant fact that no president has appeared more times in Superman comic books than JFK. He was even entrusted with Superman's secret identity and once pretended to be Clark Kent so as to prevent it from being exposed. When Supergirl debuted as a character, she was formally presented to the Kennedys. (Not surprisingly, the president took an immediate liking to her.) In a special issue dedicated to getting American youth to become physically fit - just like the astronaut 'Colonel Glenn' - Kennedy enlists Superman on a mission to close 'the muscle gap'. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Socialism preceded Marxism, and socialism has survived Marxism, in part because Marxism was subjected to a real-world test for nearly a century and failed on an epic scale. Soviet revolutionaries did not engage in Fabian incrementalism; they got their country and their empire and their worldwide movement, and they worked their will without opposition. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I've just returned from my daughter's Halloween parade at grade school. She was supergirl - and she was perfect. And, even better, she still considers boys to be made of kryptonite. ~ Jonah Goldberg

As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths. ~ Jonah Goldberg

One of the overriding points of Liberal Fascism is that all of the totalitarian "isms" of the left commit the fallacy of the category error. They all want the state to be something it cannot be. They passionately believe the government can love you, that the state can be your God or your church or your tribe or your parent or your village or all of these things at once. Conservatives occasionally make this mistake, libertarians never do, liberals almost always do. ~ Jonah Goldberg

One upside of the heat. Kind of cool to see a cat pant. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Those who say they dislike dogma, or 'certainty', tend to be liars, hypocrites, or simply wrong. What they really dislike is the dogma of those they disagree with. A society that was certain, certain beyond all certainty, that putting its citizens in death camps was wrong, would never put people in death camps. Such things are only possible when you're open to new ideas. ~ Jonah Goldberg

What is more likely? That tomorrow will be called 'Thursday' or that Maxine Waters will play the race card in her ethics investigation? ~ Jonah Goldberg

In Europe and America alike, voters increasingly recognize that the benefits of the green revolution aren't worth the costs, particularly when the revolutionaries don't have a clue what they're doing. ~ Jonah Goldberg

I have a simple answer to any American patriot who claims that there is no conflict between his love of country and his desire to hitch our fate to the United Nations: "You're mistaken." And, therefore, I'm thinking of adding this corollary to my General Rule of patriotism: The more intellectually consistent and pro-U.N. you are, the less patriotic you are likely to be. I haven't thought that all the way through, but it seems right to me. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Conservatives value economic liberty and moral security, while the liberal values economic security and moral liberty. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The truth is France has been the chief Western advocate of normalizing relations with Iraq - one of its largest trading partners - for years, partly because France holds billions in IOUs from Iraq that wouldn't be redeemable by a new regime. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the south, more land is covered by forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80 percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10 million acres of forestland. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Tip to all British tabloids: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. I repeat: Do Not Hack Amy Winehouse's Phone. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The suggestion that liberals aren't moralizers is so preposterous it makes it hard for me to take any of them seriously when they wax indignant about "moralizers." Almost every day, they tell us what is moral or immoral to think and to say about race, taxes, abortion - you name it. They explain it would be immoral for me to spend more of my own money on my own children when that money could be spent by government on other people's children. In short, they think moralizing is fine. They just want to have a monopoly on the franchise. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil. ~ Jonah Goldberg

It is faith that moves mountains, not reason. Reason is a tool, but it can never be the motive force of the crowd." This ~ Jonah Goldberg

In the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, "Why aren't we killing people yet?" And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Call it a "forceful response," "decisive action" ' whatever. Those are all nice euphemisms for killing people. And the world is a better place because America saw the necessity of putting steel beneath the velvet of those euphemisms. ~ Jonah Goldberg

You know those Navy SEALs, they weren't Democrats and Republicans. They were just doing what was best for America. Wouldn't that be a great country if all of you Americans were just like that? You followed orders, you marched in step and you followed my agenda. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Crisis is routinely identified as a core mechanism of fascism because it short-circuits debate and democratic deliberation. Hence all fascistic movements commit considerable energy to prolonging a heightened state of emergency. Across the West, this was the most glorious boon of World War I. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The problem with saying "the personal is political" is twofold: You politicize what is personal ("Everyone must celebrate my lifestyle!") and you personalize the political ("Your opposition to the minimum wage hurts my feelings!").
This is how you un-think yourself out of a civilization; When politics becomes a fashion choice and fashion becomes political. If you wear your politics on your sleeve, it usually means you don't keep them in your brain where they belong. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If you're too stupid to understand that a philosophy that favors a federally structured republic , with numerous restraints on the scope and power of government to interfere with individual rights or the free market, is a lot different from an ethnic-nationalist, atheistic , and socialist program of genocide and international aggression, you should use this rule of thumb: If someone isn't advocating the murder of millions of people in gas chambers and a global Reich for the White Man you shouldn't assume he's a Nazi and you should know it's pretty damn evil to call him one. ~ Jonah Goldberg

And, of course, liberals see no problem with using the government to impose their cultural beliefs on others; they just won't admit that's what they're doing. ~ Jonah Goldberg

We're all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Are you a producer or a looter? If diversity were always and everywhere good we would be clamoring for more midgets in the NBA. ~ Jonah Goldberg

We drown in information but we starve for knowledge. ~ Jonah Goldberg

The premise of my book is that everyone is a bit ideological to some extent. Everyone comes from a ideological perspective. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Pragmatism is the disguise progressive and other ideologues do when they want to demonize competing ideologies. ~ Jonah Goldberg

We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West's high horse, because we've earned the right to sit in that saddle. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Champions of Liberty get called Fascists by Champions of Statism ~ Jonah Goldberg

Bill Maher is anything but an impartial host. He sucks up to Hollywood liberals because A) he needs to get them back on the show, B) he usually agrees with them, and C) they tend to be wildly ignorant. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Public unions are the country's foremost advocates for increased taxes at all levels of government. ~ Jonah Goldberg

If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Let's treat politicians like Twinkies. They have to disclose their ingredients - i.e., where their money is from - but beyond that, let the buyer beware. ~ Jonah Goldberg

Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good. ~ Jonah Goldberg

In January 1924, as a sweeping immigration measure awaited presidential signature, American Jewish Committee leader Louis Marshall asked to meet with President Calvin Coolidge to urge a veto. Coolidge refused to see him. The president's views were summed up in an article he had written a few years earlier in Good Housekeeping magazine, titled "Whose Country Is This?" "[B]iological laws show us that Nordics deteriorate when mixed with other races," Coolidge wrote. ~ J.J. Goldberg