Author: Jonah Goldberg

Self-proclaimed civil libertarians are up in arms over the National Security Agency’s massive database containing information about whom we call and what we do on the Web. Defenders of the program say, “So what?” Unless you’re a terrorist, no one in the government will ever bother to access that information. That’s not good enough, say […]

Who says President Obama isn’t a unifier? Last week, Edmund Sanders of the Los Angeles Times reported from Cairo: “As rival camps of Egyptians protest for and against the toppling of President Mohamed Morsi, there is a rare point of agreement: America is to blame.” Both the Muslim Brotherhood and the coalition arrayed against it […]

Harry Anderson, a magician and comic (made famous by his stint as the judge on the old sitcom “Night Court”), used to have a routine where he’d promise to juggle George Washington’s ax. I’m quoting from memory here, but he’d say something like: “I have here George Washington’s original ax — the one he used […]

You just can’t out-gloom an environmentalist. The Atlantic invited some luminaries to answer the question “How and when will the world end?” Some contributions were funny. Others simply plausible — a volcanic eruption from underneath Yellowstone National Park is frightfully overdue. But only an environmentalist like Bill McKibben could be a killjoy about the apocalypse […]

When your grandmother gets some bad news, do you tell her: “Well, at least you have your abortion rights”? Why not? Maybe it’s because whatever you think of abortion, the right to have one is not synonymous with a woman’s health. But don’t tell that to the liberal group Think Progress. On Twitter, it recently […]

I don’t know how Democrats do it. The immigration reform proposal wending its way through the Senate is tearing the Republican Party to pieces. Poor Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), once the golden boy of the Tea Party and the conservative movement, is being treated like a guy who wants to leave a gang but must […]

OK, young’ns, here’s your chance. In two consecutive elections, you’ve carried Barack Obama to victory. When he said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he basically meant you. You voted for Obama by a margin of 66 percent to 32 percent in 2008, and, despite a horrendous economy for people your age, by […]

It would make things so much easier for everyone if Edward Snowden were working for China. And that’s certainly a possibility. His decision to flee to Hong Kong — a Chinese vassal — was an odd one, given that China is hardly a bulwark of transparency and civil rights. It’s a bit like complaining that […]

“Why are there no libertarian countries?” In a much-discussed essay for Salon magazine, Michael Lind asks: “If libertarians are correct in claiming that they understand how best to organize a modern society, how is it that not a single country in the world in the early twenty-first century is organized along libertarian lines?” Such is […]

The contradictions at the heart of the Obama presidency are finally out in the open. As a result, a man who came into office hell-bent on restoring faith in government is on the verge of inspiring a libertarian revival. There have always been (at least) two Barack Obamas. There is the man who claims to […]

The U.S. government is trying “to create a database of every [phone] call ever made.” That’s how one informed person described the National Security Agency’s effort to USA Today. That newspaper also confirmed that not only is the government collecting every phone record from Verizon — as first reported by the British newspaper The Guardian […]

In response to the acknowledged abuses of his own Justice Department, President Obama has urged Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., to reintroduce legislation for a “journalist shield law.” And in typical Washington fashion, the proposed act would do nothing to prevent the abuses that supposedly make the law so necessary. We saw a similar response to […]

If there was a moment when the United States could have productively intervened in Syria, it looks like that moment has passed. Shiite militants, including Hezbollah — partly at the behest of their paymasters in Iran — are racing to the defense of Bashar Assad’s regime. According to a witness account in the New York […]

“Could people like Bob Dole, even Ronald Reagan — could you make it in today’s Republican Party?” Chris Wallace of “Fox News Sunday” asked former Senate Majority Leader and 1996 GOP presidential nominee Bob Dole. “I doubt it,” Dole replied. “Reagan wouldn’t have made it. Certainly, Nixon couldn’t have made it, because he had ideas […]

“This war, like all wars, must end. That’s what history advises. That’s what our democracy demands.” President Barack Obama at National Defense University, May 23, 2013 They say all is fair in love and war (I’m skeptical), but that doesn’t mean war and love have much in common. When it comes to love, both parties […]

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” That’s the full text of the First Amendment. But (with […]

Although there’s still a great deal to be learned about the scandals and controversies swirling around the White House like so many ominous dorsal fins in the surf, the nature of President Obama’s bind is becoming clear. The best defenses of his administration require undermining the rationale for his presidency. “We’re portrayed by Republicans as […]

Of course the president deserves some of the blame. Yes, it’s extremely unlikely he ordered the IRS to discriminate against tea party, pro-life or Jewish groups opposed to his agenda (though why anyone should take his word for it is beyond me). And his outrage now — however convenient — is appreciated. But when people […]

President Obama was asked about the metastasizing Benghazi scandal in a joint news conference with British Prime Minister David Cameron on Monday. Referring to the Americans who died in Benghazi, the president said, “We dishonor them when we turn things like this into a political circus.” He added that “the whole issue of talking points, […]

“Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night and decided they’d go kill some Americans? What difference — at this point, what difference does it make?” That was how then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton famously brushed off the question of when she knew that the […]

At an investment conference last week, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson created a huge mess for himself. He glibly speculated that maybe because economist John Maynard Keynes was a childless, “effete” homosexual, he embraced a doctrine that favored immediate economic gratification. Keynes’ bon mot “in the long run, we are all dead” takes on new meaning […]

“You know, I actually believe my own bull—-.” That’s what President Obama once told a reporter. If the man ever uttered a statement that spoke more to his approach to politics, I haven’t heard it. Whether it stems from a grandiose overconfidence in his own powers of persuasion, or the lessons he took from his […]

If abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell is found guilty of homicide, he will be unique among murderers-for-hire: He set his fees based on weight. “The bigger the baby, the more he charged,” a grand jury explained. It recommended he be charged with eight counts of murder — one patient, seven babies. Despite what amounted to a […]

Are Brad Paisley and Rand Paul the bravest men in America? Er, no. At least not by my lights. But maybe the country singer and the first-term senator are contenders for that title according to the attorney general of the United States, Eric Holder. In 2009, Holder famously declared in a speech that America is […]

In 1975, when asked to explain why Margaret Thatcher was poised to take over the Tory Party, the irascible British satirist Malcolm Muggeridge replied that it was all due to television — and the fact that the telegenic Thatcher had a “certain imbecile charm.” That was one of the nicer things said about an “imbecile” […]

The government in Britain recently did something interesting. It asked everyone receiving an “incapacity benefit” — a disability program slowly being phased out under new reforms — to submit to a medical test to confirm they were too disabled to work. A third of recipients (878,000 people) didn’t even bother and dropped out of the […]

In what may be the greatest victory to date for the sophisticatedly asinine organization “No Labels,” the Associated Press has embraced a new policy against “labeling people.” For instance, its widely used and influential style guide is being purged of such terms as “schizophrenic” in favor of “diagnosed with schizophrenia.” Most of the chatter about […]