Author: Jonah Goldberg

“Job-lock!” It’s only February, but it’s already my favorite word — or phrase, I guess — of the year. (Who knows, by December it may be shortened to “joblock.”) It’s not euphonious or edgy, but it does offer insight into the unreality of the Democrats’ predicament. The Congressional Budget Office issued a politically explosive report […]

On my wife’s side, I have a very large family in Fairbanks, Alaska. Culturally, Fairbanks is a lot further from New York City (where I grew up) or Washington, D.C. (where I live now), than the several thousand miles on the map might suggest. Alaska wins a lot of comparisons, and not just the obvious […]

Welcome to the “year of action.” In last week’s State of the Union address, the president vowed to do whatever he must to help the economy, even if that means working around Congress: “What I offer tonight is a set of concrete, practical proposals to speed up growth, strengthen the middle class and build new […]

Wendy Davis, a Democratic state senator running to replace Rick Perry as governor of Texas, owes her political stardom to two things: a pair of pink sneakers and her unstinting support for a woman’s right to terminate a late-term pregnancy in a substandard clinic. Yay Feminism! Last year, Davis led an 11-hour filibuster — that’s […]

The legendary media tycoon William Randolph Hearst believed America needed a strongman and that Franklin D. Roosevelt would fit the bill. He ordered his newspapers to support FDR and the New Deal. At his direction, Hearst’s political allies rallied around Roosevelt at the Democratic convention, which some believe sealed the deal for Roosevelt’s nomination. But […]

The Constitution is powerless against Satan. Earlier this month, the state of Oklahoma received a proposal from New York-based Satanists to build near the state Capitol a 7-foot-high statue of Baphomet, a goat-headed pagan idol. The Satanists’ letter boasted that, “The statue will also have a functional purpose as a chair where people of all […]

On paper, “liberal intolerance” is something of an oxymoron, like “jumbo shrimp,” “loyal opposition” or “conspicuous absence.” But what makes oxymorons funny is that they are real things. There are jumbo shrimp. Absences can be conspicuous, opponents can be loyal, and liberals can be staggeringly and myopically intolerant. Last Friday, in a public radio interview, […]

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. At the end of 2013, the Washington Post’s electoral number-crunchers calculated that the Democrats had a 1 percent chance to win back the House of Representatives. Barely into 2014, that already seems pretty optimistic. In the last week, several Democratic representatives saw the writing on the wall and […]

What a bizarre spectacle. Assuming he did not lie during his marathon news conference last week, the feeding frenzy surrounding New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie will be remembered as one of those incredibly odd moments of elite journalistic hysteria that are difficult to explain to people who weren’t there or didn’t get it. I’m not […]

This week marks the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson’s “War on Poverty,” and as the joke goes, “Poverty won.” Five decades after a blizzard of programs began descending on the American people, the poverty rate remains essentially unchanged. That’s a little unfair. What counts as poverty today would not have seemed so impoverished 50 years […]

Democrats are revving up for a huge national “conversation” on income inequality. This is in no small part because the Obama administration and congressional Democrats would rather talk about anything other than Obamacare. But it would be unfair to say this is all a cynical effort to gain partisan advantage. For instance, New York City […]

“In America,” Oscar Wilde quipped, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” And they often do it in the pages of Rolling Stone. Last week, the magazine posted a mini-manifesto titled “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For.” After confirming it […]

On Jan. 1, the Centennial State (it hasn’t yet changed its nickname to “The Rocky Mountain High State”) became the first place in the country to legalize marijuana sales for recreational purposes. And Brandon Harris is stoked. The 24-year-old Harris drove 20 hours from Cincinnati, along with a smoking buddy, to be the first Ohioans […]

The Beltway consensus seems to be that 2013 was a bad year for the same reason nearly every other recent year was bad: polarization and partisanship. Personally, I can think of plenty of more important things to worry about than partisanship. Democracy is about disagreements, and partisanship is often a sign of healthy disagreement. But […]

Normally at this time of year, the culture-war fight is over a guy with a white beard. That’s true again this year. What’s different is that Phil Robertson has taken Santa’s place, and instead of a war on Christmas, we have a war on “Duck Dynasty.” The patriarch of the popular A&E reality show said […]

So rednecks need to be politically correct now? Wait, before the National Association of Rednecked Persons attacks me, let me be clear that I don’t mean “redneck” as an insult. Indeed, Redneck Pride has been on the rise ever since Jeff Foxworthy got rich informing people they “might be a redneck.” (Some clues: if your […]

It’s a question that’s popping up more and more. On the surface, the question answers itself. We’re talking about pinstriped insurance company executives, not Hells Angels. One doesn’t want to paint with too broad a brush, but if you were going to guess which vocations lend themselves least to revolutionary zeal, actuaries rank slightly behind […]

“Obamacare was sold on a trinity of lies.” That ornate phrase, more suitable for the Book of Revelations or perhaps the next installment of “Game of Thrones,” comes from my National Review colleague Rich Lowry. But I like it. Most people know the first deception in the triumvirate of deceit: “If you like your health […]

Newspapers are among the last places in America that have close to zero tolerance for [expletive deleted]. I could give you a hint about what word is between the brackets, but I’d best not for fear of arousing the ire of the editing Comstocks. About twice a year, I quote a profanity from a public […]

After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots? But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day […]

Maybe someone can explain to me how, exactly, conservatives are the aggressors in the culture war? In the conventional narrative of American politics, conservatives are obsessed with social issues. They want to impose their values on everyone else. They want the government involved in your bedroom. Those mean right-wingers want to make “health care choices” […]

Success! The Obama administration announced over the weekend that it had hit its deadline of Nov. 30 for HealthCare.gov. Of course, there were caveats. The site will still probably get buggy when there’s a lot of traffic, which is why Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius advised people to use it at off-peak hours. […]

“I’m not a particularly ideological person,” President Obama told an audience of donors in Seattle over the weekend. He added (in Reuters’ words) that “pragmatism was necessary to advance the values that were important to him.” This is an old refrain of Obama’s. As he said in his first inaugural, “The question we ask today […]

If the Republicans can’t fight wars and the Democrats stink at socializing medicine, what good are they? That would not be an altogether unreasonable question for a typical American today. No doubt spokesmen for the respective political parties would offer all sorts of objections to that summation. And many of those objections would be fair. […]

In Britain to promote her film “The Butler,” Oprah Winfrey gave an interview to the BBC last week. Not surprisingly, she promoted her movie about race relations in the White House with comments about race relations and the White House. The BBC’s Will Gompertz asked: “Has it ever crossed your mind that some of the […]

Watching President Obama’s press conference Thursday, I almost started humming the old ditty the “Farmer in the Dell” because all I could think was: “The cheese stands alone.” The president did his level best to explain that he was as in the dark as anybody about the problems with his signature legislation. He explained that […]

“Character is what you do when no one is watching.” It’s a bit of a trite saying, attributed to coaches, motivational speakers and fortune cookie writers (by the way, whose idea was it to replace fortune cookie predictions with treacly aphorisms from the “Successories” reject pile?). Still, the expression’s popularity illustrates the power of the […]

This isn’t just an indictment of the current government or an indictment of government itself. It’s simply a statement of fact. At its core, the government exists to do certain things that people aren’t equipped to do on their own. The list of those things has gotten longer and longer over the years. In 1776, […]

Many of the president’s supporters are in barely concealed panic over the fact that he didn’t tell the truth when he was selling the Affordable Care Act. In an oft-repeated vow, he told the country that “if you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one […]

I am writing this before the election returns in New York City come in. Assuming that Democratic mayoral candidate Bill De Blasio’s near-50-point lead in the polls doesn’t miraculously evaporate, it looks like the next mayor will be a Red Sox fan. According to the rules of the New York I grew up in, I’d […]