Author: Jonah Goldberg

My old boss, William F. Buckley, often said liberals don’t care what you do so long as it’s compulsory (though he probably borrowed the line from his friend M. Stanton Evans). There’s probably no better illustration of this illiberal streak in liberalism than the idea of “compulsory voting.” The argument usually goes like this: Voter […]

Americans could learn a thing or two from Bibi Netanyahu. The Israeli prime minister was in Washington this week to receive the American Enterprise Institute’s Irving Kristol Award. He made some controversial remarks — at least controversial at AEI, where I am a fellow, and where the freedom agenda is alive and well — about […]

It seems like every week there’s a new horror story of political correctness run amok at some college campus. A warning not to wear culturally insensitive Halloween costumes sparked an imbroglio at Yale, which went viral over the weekend. A lecturer asked in an email, “Is there no room anymore for a child to be […]

What if the polls just stopped working? Admittedly, this needs work as a plot device for a Stephen King novel. But for politics, it might be pretty awesome. This week, businessman Matt Bevin won a stunning upset in the Kentucky governor’s race. It was only the second time in more than four decades that a […]

Here’s something you may not know: Dr. Ben Carson is black. Of course, I’m being a little cute here. The only way you wouldn’t know he’s black is if you were blind and only listened to the news. For instance, Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” — a program that often serves as a kind of […]

It’s been a good month for champions of the traditional family, but don’t expect the family wars to be ending any time soon. In recent weeks, a barrage of new evidence has come to light demonstrating what was once common sense. “Family structure matters” (in the words of my American Enterprise Institute colleague Brad Wilcox, […]

Most of the politically savvy people I know are still confident that Donald Trump will not be the Republican nominee for president. Some are even dismissive. They tell me that his poll numbers are a statistical mirage because they count too many people who will not actually vote in Republican primaries or caucuses. They point […]

It’s an ancient story: An innocent idealist sets out to change the world and in the process becomes what he hates most. “He who fights monsters should see to it that he himself does not become a monster,” Friedrich Nietzsche advised. That’s probably the best spin one can put on Sidney Blumenthal, the longtime Hillary […]

Democrats and their supporters in the media are congratulating themselves for a job well done in the first Democratic debate. Both Martin O’Malley and Hillary Clinton included in their closing remarks canned celebrations of how civil and morally superior the Democratic debate was compared with the earlier GOP donnybrooks. The New York Times began its […]

The scuttlebutt in Washington is that Vice President Joe Biden is going to throw his hat into the presidential race, which means there is at least a 50 percent chance that he will. I mean, when is the Beltway scuttlebutt ever wrong? Under different conditions, I’d guess that, if he does announce, Biden has almost […]

“Lean on me, when you’re not strong, and I’ll be your friend, I’ll help you carry on.” The Bill Withers song has been covered by countless artists, but the rendition of “Lean on Me” performed in a duet last weekend on the season premiere of “Saturday Night Live” had novel poignancy. It was sung by […]

Hillary Clinton revealed on Wednesday that she opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal, providing just the latest evidence that she is little more than political ambition wrapped in a pantsuit. Pay attention to the press coverage, because it’s fascinating: Nobody takes Clinton at her word. I’m not just referring to her conservative critics. Slate’s Jim […]

President Obama was right. He was right when, just a few hours after the horrible shooting in Oregon, he decried the fact that such slaughters have become “routine.” He was even right, in a sense, when he defended politicizing the tragedy. “Of course,” Obama said Thursday night, “what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere, will […]

If the humiliation of the Obama administration continues at this rate, by this time next week you should expect to see Secretary of State John Kerry on all fours at the United Nations, getting paddled by the Russian foreign minister and shouting, “Thank you, comrade! May I have another?” On Monday, President Obama and Vladimir […]

Almost exactly seven years ago, House Speaker John Boehner said of the Wall Street bailout bill, “I think this thing is a crap sandwich” — but he’d vote for it anyway. I remarked at the time, “It’s crap sandwiches for as far as the eye can see” — and I was right. Boehner finally had […]

“Anyone who has watched this videotape, I dare Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama to watch these tapes. Watch a fully formed fetus on the table, its heart beating, its legs kicking while someone says, ‘We have to keep it alive to harvest its brain.’ This is about the character of our nation, and if we will […]

There is only one guaranteed way to get fired from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Falsifying records won’t do it. Prescribing obsolete drugs won’t do it. Cutting all manner of corners on health and safety is, at worst, going to get you a reprimand. No, the only sure-fire way to get canned at the VA […]

The news that the Obama administration has spent $500 million to put “four or five” fighters on the ground in Syria adds an almost comic irony to what is ultimately a tragic farce. In the 1980s, the symbol of Republican incompetence and mismanagement was the $600 toilet seat. Left out of the media coverage was […]

The wheels haven’t come off Hillary Rodham Clinton’s bus quite yet, but they’re getting wobblier. Hence the Joe Biden boomlet. As a columnist, never mind as a conservative, I think it’s a fantastic idea. (A Biden vs. Trump debate would cause a national popcorn shortage.) But is Biden really the answer to the Democrats’ problem? […]

Most of the Syrians we see on the nightly news and on newspaper front pages are not fleeing war-torn Syria. The 3-year-old Aylan Kurdi (whose real name is Alan Shenu) whose heartrending death was broadcast around the world was not fleeing Syria. He’d lived his whole short life in Turkey, where his parents had been […]

What if this is as good as it gets? You have to wonder if that’s what Hillary Clinton’s handlers are saying to each other right about now. Of course, that’s not what they’re saying in public — or on background to the press. The New York Times reported this week that Clinton plans to be […]

Every time the State Department pulls out a new fistful of Hillary Clinton emails like Richard Dreyfuss yanking a license plate out of a shark’s belly in “Jaws,” someone declares that there’s “no smoking gun!” I’ve written before about how shouting “there’s no smoking gun!” is a non-denial denial. Ask a cop. When a murder […]

Ridiculous stories about political correctness float around the Internet like so much ocean garbage. Occasionally, one washes up on “Good Morning America” with a larger story to tell. A little girl named Laura was sent home with a note because she had brought a Wonder Woman lunchbox to school. (The website The Mary Sue first […]

According to polls, the No. 1 thing Donald Trump’s fans like about him is that he “tells it like it is.” I think his fans are wrong about this. But that’s a column — actually a lot of columns — for another time. It is true, however, that there is something refreshing about the way […]

When is it outrageous to amend the Constitution? Donald Trump, the front-runner in the race for the Republican nomination, wants to overturn the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship. Whether out of panic or sincerity, a number of other Republican candidates have joined the bandwagon. This is probably good politics for the GOP nomination and almost […]

Peter Schramm has died. I knew it was coming. He’d been struggling with cancer. But it felt particularly poignant given that I was in Europe, a place Peter had little patience for. It was an attitude he inherited from his father. During World War II, before Peter was born, William Schramm had been conscripted by […]

“We are trying to be reasonable,” an organizer for Bernie Sanders’ Seattle rally said. The black female protesters who stormed the stage became enraged. “We aren’t reasonable!” they shouted back. “If you do not listen to [us], your event will be shut down,” one of them declared to the crowd. Sanders caved to the protesters […]

The GOP-controlled Congress is taking up the cause, once again, of defunding Planned Parenthood. This latest effort comes in response to macabre hidden-camera videos shot by the Center for Medical Progress of staff at Planned Parenthood talking about the grisly practice of chopping up fetuses for parts. There’s a debate over whether the videos prove […]

It’s been a hard time for politicians not named “Trump” to get any attention, but Mike Huckabee managed it. He did it by comparing Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler. At least that’s what I gathered from headlines like this one from Gawker: “Mike Huckabee Compares Obama to Hitler” I don’t put huge amounts of stock […]

I had a lot of summer jobs. I was a foot messenger in New York for a couple of summers. I worked as a receptionist and mail room flunky. Before my junior year of high school, I briefly sold ice cream snacks — sort of yuppie bonbons — on the street for a company called […]