Author: Jonah Goldberg

If Hollywood remade “The Graduate” and set it in 1980, the one word the businessman would have for Dustin Hoffman’s character wouldn’t be “plastics.” It’d be “medallions.” That’s because the single greatest investment you could have made over the last 30 years isn’t in gold or silver or even Apple stock. It’s in New York […]

It’s at times like this I’m ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway. Well, that’s probably not specific enough since I’m usually ashamed to admit I live inside the Beltway. Still, the second you try to explain the stupidity of this “fiscal cliff” fiasco to a normal person, it makes William F. Buckley’s famous […]

What do you call a leader of a theocratic and cultish movement with a deep and clear disdain for democracy who suddenly assumes dictatorial powers? A “moderate,” of course. Ever since the Muslim Brotherhood broke its promise to stay out of Egypt’s presidential election in the aftermath of the revolution, many Western observers have been […]

If the GOP wants to win more black votes, it will need to get a lot more “racist.” The scare quotes are necessary because I don’t think the Republican Party is racist now (and, historically, the GOP has a lot less to answer for than the Democratic Party does). But that hasn’t stopped a lot […]

President Obama has several stated ambitions for his presidency. He wants it to be “transformative.” He wants to unite Americans of all parties. He wants to build an economy from the middle class out (whatever that means), and he wants to help what you might call the domestic refugees of America’s economic transformation. Given the […]

I think I owe an apology to George W. Bush. William F. Buckley once noted that he was 19 when the Cold War began at the Yalta conference. The year the Berlin Wall came down, he became a senior citizen. In other words, he explained, anti-Communism was a defining feature of conservatism his entire adult […]

The conservative Gotterdammerung is finally here. “Like dazed survivors in a ravaged city, America’s conservatives are wailing and beating their collective breasts,” opines the Economist’s “Lexington” columnist. “A leading conservative thinker,” asked by the Economist to “list today’s conservative ideas, laughs bitterly and replies, ‘Are there any?’” Former Reaganite Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.) laments in […]

The Progressives won on Tuesday. I don’t mean the people who voted Democrat who call themselves “progressive.” Though they won, too. I mean the Progressives who’ve been waging a century-long effort to transform our American-style government into a European-style state. The words “government” and “state” are often used interchangeably, but they are really different things. […]

In the last week or so, an intense kerfuffle broke out over the poll-prognosticator Nate Silver and his blog at the New York Times, FiveThirtyEight. Silver, a statistician, has been predicting a decisive Obama victory for a very long time, based on his very complicated statistical model, which very, very few of his fans or […]

If President Obama had the time for some introspection on the campaign trail, he might take offense at all the media speculation (and in many cases wishful thinking gussied up as speculation) that his response to Hurricane Sandy will give him the edge going into Election Day. In effect, people are saying: “Obama is doing […]

If you want to understand why conservatives have lost faith in the so-called mainstream media, you need to ponder the question: Where is the Benghazi feeding frenzy? Unlike some of my colleagues on the right, I don’t think there’s a conspiracy at work. Rather, I think journalists tend to act on their instincts (some even […]

In the third and final debate, Barack Obama scored huge points with the media, college kids and die-hard liberals — in other words, his base — when he mocked Mitt Romney’s concern about our historically small Navy. “But I think Governor Romney maybe hasn’t spent enough time looking at how our military works,” the president […]

I suspect most voters watching Monday night’s debate found it pretty boring. President Obama wanted to force Mitt Romney into saying something stupid. Romney didn’t take the bait. So pretty much nothing changed the dynamics of the race. But what if something did? What if Obama announced in a fit of pique that “America doesn’t […]

It was arguably Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke. In one version, two kids — one an optimist, the other a pessimist — rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he’ll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with […]

It was arguably Ronald Reagan’s favorite joke. In one version, two kids — one an optimist, the other a pessimist — rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he’ll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with […]

Apparently, Paul Ryan and Joe Biden are both theocrats willing, nay eager, to use state power to impose their religious views on the rest of us. In last week’s vice presidential debate, moderator Martha Raddatz asked the two Roman Catholic politicians “to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views […]

“Now Gov. Romney believes that with even bigger tax cuts for the wealthy, and fewer regulations on Wall Street, all of us will prosper. In other words, he’d double down on the same trickle-down policies that led to the crisis in the first place.” — President Obama in an ad released Sept. 27. This is […]

It was the Puss in Boots eyes. If you’ve seen the “Shrek” movies or the spin-off cartoon starring the storybook cat voiced by Antonio Banderas, you know what I’m talking about. Whenever Puss in Boots really needs something from someone, he flashes these enormous kitten eyes that melt anyone in their path. Whenever my daughter […]

We’re now entering the fourth week of the “CSI: Benghazi” hostage crisis. That’s how long an FBI forensic team has been trying to gain access in Libya to what the State Department still calls a crime scene — the Obama administration’s preferred term for the location of the first assassination of a U.S. ambassador since […]

We like tribalism for the same reason we like to eat fatty foods: We evolved that way. Homo sapiens didn’t survive long on the African savannas as rugged individualists. Alone, they couldn’t scare away the scarier animals and, for the most part, they couldn’t catch or kill the tastier ones. But in groups, humans rose […]

The Oval Office isn’t the place to learn on the job. That was the line from both Hillary Clinton and John McCain in 2008. In fairness, that’s always the argument the more experienced candidate uses against the less experienced candidate (just ask Mitt Romney). But Barack Obama seemed a special case, easily among the least […]

“No One Murdered Because Of This Image.” That was a recent headline from The Onion, the often hilarious parody newspaper. The image in question is really not appropriate to describe with any specificity in a family newspaper. It’s quite simply disgusting. And, suffice it to say, it leaves nothing to the imagination. Four of “the […]

The Obama administration’s omnibus answer to why the Middle East (and now much of the Muslim world) is in near open rebellion against the United States: The video did it. The follow-up question no one seems to be asking is: “What if the administration’s explanation is true?” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney insists the […]

An incendiary video about the prophet Muhammad, “Innocence of Muslims,” was blamed for the mob attacks on our embassies in Libya and Egypt (and later, Yemen). In Libya, Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans were murdered. The video stirred some passion here in America as well. Over at MSNBC a riot of consensus broke […]

“Forward” is a perfectly appropriate slogan for progressives. Progress suggests forward or upward motion. That’s why revolutionaries and radicals as well as liberal incrementalists have always embraced some derivation of the forward trope. So ingrained are these directional concepts in our political language, we often forget they are mere geographic metaphors applied — and often […]

Charlotte, N.C. — Going by the conventional rules of American politics, the Democratic Convention this week was an unmitigated disaster. And, going by the same rules, GOP convention was a disaster, too. So, either the rules of American politics have fundamentally changed, or at least one of the parties is taking an enormous gamble. Since […]

CHARLOTTE — A few years ago, it was fashionable for Democrats to describe themselves as “members of the reality-based community.” These days, it seems the foreclosure crisis has hit them so hard they’ve been forced to move to another neighborhood. Metaphorically, at least, they’ve set up a refugee camp here this week. In this political […]

You have to feel a little sorry for Team Obama as they squirm to explain why the question “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” is so unfair. After all, there is only one way to answer it and retain any credibility. Which is why Maryland’s Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley, when […]

In 2004, Arnold Schwarzenegger, then a popular figure in the Republican Party, gave an exciting, upbeat and surprisingly funny speech at the GOP convention. He covered a lot of territory: the story of how he came to America, how he became a Republican after listening to Richard Nixon, and other highlights of his life story. […]

TAMPA, Fla. — Huzzah, America, our centuries-old struggle with racism and bigotry may be coming to an end. This news was confirmed by none other than Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology and the author of 18 books on race, racism, racial history, black culture and black history. Suffice it to say, he knows […]