Author: Jonah Goldberg

“Now let’s make two things clear: ISIL is not Islamic. No religion condones the killing of innocents, and the vast majority of ISIL’s victims have been Muslim. And ISIL is certainly not a state.” — President Barack Obama in his address to the nation on Wednesday. About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The […]

“I should have anticipated the optics,” President Obama said by way of acknowledging that golfing right after making a statement about the beheading of James Foley looked bad. “Part of this job is also the theater of it,” he said. “It’s not something that always comes naturally to me. But it matters.” For those who […]

On the Internet, you’re never really alone. Name any fad, any cause, any hobby or passion — Shaker furniture? Dungeons and Dragons, Bolivian tree frogs? — and you’re only a few clicks away from someone who shares your obsession. That’s great. It’s also horrible. Because while there’s no harm in tree frog fans sharing pictures […]

We’ve all heard the expression: “A man’s best friend is his equipment.” You haven’t? Well you must not work for the Pentagon. There, military dogs are considered mere “equipment” and as such can be left behind when the troops come home. It’s a bit more complicated than that. Military dogs are enlisted (drafted actually) to […]

So much for non-ideological foreign policy. When Barack Obama ran for president he vowed to be non-ideological. He was a pragmatist and a problem-solver. It wasn’t just that George W. Bush’s ideology was awful, ideology itself was a kind of sinful stupidity. “What is required,” Obama declared the day before his first inauguration, “is a […]

I never liked it when George W. Bush used the term “evildoers” to describe al-Qaeda and other terrorists. A lot of other people objected as well, but for different reasons. I didn’t like the term because it always sounded to me like he was saying “evil Dewar’s,” as in the blended Scotch. (This always made […]

Does the president think the world is a TV show? One of the things you learn watching television as a kid is that the hero wins. No matter how dire things look, the star is going to be OK. MacGyver always defuses the bomb with some saltwater taffy before the timer reaches zero. There was […]

The events in Ferguson, Missouri, have launched a familiar spectacle: the race to be wrong first. Michael Brown, an 18-year-old African-American man, was shot by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. The Washington Post had more on the story about what one witness called an “execution-style slaying”: “Lawyer Freeman Bosley Jr. said Dorian Johnson, a friend […]

There’s an old rule in journalism: All you need are three good examples to prove a trend. And by that measure, writer Robert Draper had more than he needed to declare a new “libertarian moment” in American politics. In a New York Times Magazine cover story, Draper made exactly that case. His chief evidence: Young […]

The hawks (including me) were wrong about a lot, but some got one thing right. It’s going to be a long war. In the early days after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about a “clash of civilizations” and a long “existential struggle” facing the West. I once asked the late Christopher Hitchens what […]

In the summer of 2007, then-Sen. Barack Obama was asked if he was worried that his proposed withdrawal from Iraq would result in ethnic cleansing or even genocide. He scoffed at the premise. “By that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now — where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence […]

World War I started one century ago. Wait! Don’t stop reading. For most Americans, the war is like algebra or frog anatomy — something you have to study briefly in school but then never have to think about again. Unlike World War II, with its unambiguous villains, epic battles and clear victory, World War I […]

Let us now praise Democratic hypocrisy. Throughout my life, various Republicans have suggested amending the Constitution in one way or another. A few years ago, they suggested revising the 14th Amendment to get rid of automatic birthright citizenship. Before that, some proposed amending the Constitution to lock in the traditional definition of marriage. Ronald Reagan […]

“Sorry to email you late on a Friday, but I need your urgent support,” Nancy Pelosi wrote me. The House minority leader went on to explain that “for the first time in history, Congress voted to sue a sitting president.” And, “Today: the White House alerted us that they believe ‘Speaker Boehner … has opened […]

As legend has it, Groucho Marx sent the Friars Club a telegram that read, “Please accept my resignation. I don’t care to belong to any club that will have me as a member.” At least the Friars Club had standards. What to make of the United Nations? It has a single criterion for membership: existence. […]

It was a really nice try. Heritage Action (the activist arm of the conservative Heritage Foundation) invited Sen. Elizabeth Warren to speak at an event dedicated to phasing out the Export-Import Bank. The Ex-Im, as it’s known inside the Beltway, has become a favorite target of populist forces on right. The Ex-Im gives U.S. taxpayer-backed […]

“Here’s the difference between us,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu explained on “Fox News Sunday.” “We’re using missile defense to protect our civilians, and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.” It’s a classic talking point. It’s also objectively true, and that truth is very frustrating for Israel’s critics. All one needs to do […]

All you need to do is look at the headlines out of Central America to see why tens of thousands of children are ending up at our border. “In Columbia (sic), Rising Violence Breeds New Doubts” (N.Y. Times); “Guatemala Seen Slipping Into a Haven For Drugs” (LA Times); “Democracy Jeopardized as New Wave of Violence […]

In the film “Obvious Child,” Jenny Slate plays Donna Stern, a stand-up comedian who specializes in making jokes about her private parts, with the occasional foray into fart humor. She is about to go onstage. Her friend offers her some encouragement: “You are going to kill it out there!” Donna replies: “I actually have an […]

You wouldn’t think, five years into the Obama presidency, that so many liberal Americans wouldn’t like America. A new Pew survey found that 44 percent of Americans don’t often feel pride in being an American, and only 28 percent said that America is the greatest country in the world. Respondents who “often feel proud to […]

Abortion-rights protesters gathered outside the Supreme Court building on Monday holding signs that read “Birth Control: Not My Boss’s Business.” Much to their chagrin, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito agreed in his ruling in the Hobby Lobby case. Of course, that’s not how supporters of the government’s contraception mandate see it. They actually believe that […]

Paging Elizabeth Warren: This is your moment. In 2007, Democrats were delirious with rage about the Iraq war. Hillary Clinton, the “inevitable” presidential front-runner, had voted for the war and refused to apologize for it. Other leading candidates, including Joe Biden, John Edwards and Chris Dodd, voted for it too. This left a huge opening […]

It’s a fact of human nature that it’s easier to talk about who’s to blame for a problem than it is to figure out what to do about the problem. Case in point: There’s a near-riot in liberal circles over the very idea that supporters of the Iraq War should even be allowed to criticize […]

For understandable reasons, the IRS scandal has largely focused on the political question of whether the White House deliberately targeted opponents. To date there’s no evidence that it did. That’s good for the president, but it may not be good for the country, because if the administration didn’t target opponents, that would mean the IRS […]

“Congressional investigators are fuming over revelations that the Internal Revenue Service has lost a trove of emails to and from a central figure in the agency’s tea party controversy.” That’s the opening sentence of the Associated Press story on the IRS’s claim that it lost an unknown number of emails over two years relating to […]

The Arab Spring is over. Welcome to the Jihadi Spring. Across a huge swath of what, up until recently, had been known as Iraq and Syria, a transnational movement of Sunni Islamic extremists has taken control. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) has conquered — without much effort — Mosul, Iraq’s second largest […]

Hillary Clinton’s State Department memoir, “Hard Choices,” has just come out, and who among us can contain their excitement? Not Mike Allen, author of the incestuously insider Politico column “Playbook.” In Monday’s installment, he began, “Welcome to Hillary Week!” But the exclamation point was ironic, for Allen immediately dropped what he calls a “truth bomb”: […]

There he goes again. At a press conference in Brussels Thursday, President Obama was asked if he was surprised by the controversy over his decision to trade Bowe Bergdahl for five high-ranking Taliban leaders. His response was vintage Obama: “I’m never surprised by controversies that are whipped up in Washington.” Thus establishing from the start […]

Good for Rick Perry. After a fairly disastrous first go at the White House, he’s gearing up for a second try. Over the weekend, he told NBC News’ Kasie Hunt: “I was not prepared properly.” In 2012, he told CNN that the “idea you can just stroll in there and be in the mix and […]

Can we please stop holding the country hostage to crazy people? Every year a tiny number of mentally ill people go on horrific killing sprees. It just happened in California. I won’t name the person because I think the media attention lavished on these horror shows encourages some of these young men — and they […]