Jonah Goldberg famous quotes

The government cannot love you, and any politics that works on a different assumption is destined for no good.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Love You #Government #Different

If there is ever a fascist takeover in America, it will come not in the form of storm troopers kicking down doors but with lawyers and social workers saying. "I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Doors #America #Government

Cultures grow on the vine of tradition.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Culture #Vines #Tradition

I don't think twice about picking up my dog's poop, but if another dog's poop is next to it, I think, 'Eww, dog poop!
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Dog #Thinking #Poop

I think there needs to be a meeting to set an agenda for more meetings about meetings.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Thinking #Needs #Agendas

Keep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Cute #Government #Names

If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Believe #Thinking #Government

And, of course, liberals see no problem with using the government to impose their cultural beliefs on others; they just won't admit that's what they're doing.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Government #Belief #Problem

By this point, it was clear she wasn't interested in continuing the relationship. What publication on earth would continue a relationship with a writer who would refuse to discuss her work with her editors? What publication would continue to publish a writer who attacked it on TV? What publication would continue to publish a writer who lied about it - on TV and to a Washington Post reporter? ... It's true: Ann is fearless, in person and in her writing. But fearlessness isn't an excuse for crappy writing or crappier behavior.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Writing #Editors #Scary

Obama did inherit a deficit when he came into office. Why this fact justifies racking up vastly more debt and bigger deficits is a logical mystery.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Office #Debt #Facts

Social distinctions tend to matter only at your own level and above.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Levels #Matter #Social

The GOP needs to figure out a way to become more appealing to new constituencies.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Needs #Way #Figures

But this is the kind of ass-clownery that stems from the fact that all philosophy looks weird when you don't have one.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Philosophy #Looks #Politics

The truth is France has been the chief Western advocate of normalizing relations with Iraq - one of its largest trading partners - for years, partly because France holds billions in IOUs from Iraq that wouldn't be redeemable by a new regime.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Years #Iraq #Politics

Bill Maher is anything but an impartial host. He sucks up to Hollywood liberals because A) he needs to get them back on the show, B) he usually agrees with them, and C) they tend to be wildly ignorant.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Ignorant #Hollywood #Needs

If we say that anyone who 'moralizes' must be perfect morally then we are in effect saying no one can moralize.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Perfect #Saying No

Of course, it's a mystery to me why any American who can't be bothered to pay attention to politics unless Pamela Anderson is discussing it should be welcome in that conversation.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Attention #Politics #Pay

Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection (which is fine by me) and elsewhere. But it's worth remembering that Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Thinking #Doe #Looks

We are a species that must try to impose and find systems - systems of thought, ways of organizing and categorizing reality.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Reality #Trying #Way

Forests are breaking out all over America. New England has more forests since the Civil War. In 1880, New York State was only 25 percent forested. Today it is more than 66 percent. In 1850, Vermont was only 35 percent forested. Now it's 76 percent forested and rising. In the south, more land is covered by forest than at any time in the last century. In 1936 a study found that 80 percent of piedmont Georgia was without trees. Today nearly 70 percent of the state is forested. In the last decade alone, America has added more than 10 million acres of forestland.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#New York #War #Land

If you spend any time in Washington you'll find nerds. What happens is most of them sublimate their fixations with comics, or baseball cards, or 1960s British comedies to policy minutiae and political arcana. But, like Christians in ancient Rome, you can still spot them if you know the signals.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Christian #Baseball #Rome

But you're never taught in schools - we don't teach anyone in public schools that government is the problem. We don't teach anyone in college that government is the problem - except maybe a handful of sort of unique, conservative schools. But mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#School #Unique #College

One of the things that really drove me crazy was the way in which college kids, in particular, are educated to think that ideology is dangerous and bad.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Crazy #Kids #College

The Founders understood that democracy was important, but if you didn't filter it through a republican system you'd be just as likely to end up with a tyranny of the majority as you would with a healthy society. Don't worry, I won't quote the Federalist Papers, but trust me, it's in there.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Worry #Healthy #Democracy

I've just returned from my daughter's Halloween parade at grade school. She was supergirl - and she was perfect. And, even better, she still considers boys to be made of kryptonite.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Daughter #Halloween #School

Science is wonderful at explaining what science is wonderful at explaining, but beyond that it tends to look for its car keys where the light is good.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Keys #Light #Car

You can see why the Marxist left would resist the idea that Hitler was a revolutionary. Because if he was, then either Hitler was a force for good, or revolutions can be bad.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Ideas #Revolution #Force

Progressivism was a sister movement of fascism, and today's liberalism is the daughter of Progressivism.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Daughter #Movement #Today

in many respects fascism not only is here but has been here for nearly a century. For what we call liberalism--the refurbished edifice of American Progressivism--is in fact a descendant and manifestation of fascism.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Facts #Century #Fascism

If you're too stupid to understand that a philosophy that favors a federally structured republic , with numerous restraints on the scope and power of government to interfere with individual rights or the free market, is a lot different from an ethnic-nationalist, atheistic , and socialist program of genocide and international aggression, you should use this rule of thumb: If someone isn't advocating the murder of millions of people in gas chambers and a global Reich for the White Man you shouldn't assume he's a Nazi and you should know it's pretty damn evil to call him one.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Stupid #Philosophy #Men

Why is it fair game to question conservatives' love or loyalty to children or to their fellow man, but beyond the pale to question liberals' love of country?
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Loyalty #Country #Children

As we all know, the most effective lies are the ones sprinkled with the most actual truths.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Lying

The Mars Polar Lander cost the average American the price of half a cheeseburger. A human lander would cost the average American more -- perhaps even ten cheeseburgers! So be it. That is no great sacrifice.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Sacrifice #Average #Cost

Simply because the nanny-state wants to hug you doesn't mean it's not tyrannical if you don't want to be hugged.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Mean #Hug #Nannies

There was no intellectual movement in American history called social Darwinism. The people who were supposedly the leaders of the social Darwinist movement never embraced something called social Darwinism. It didn't exist.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#People #Leader #Intellectual

Republican politics have been off-kilter for several years now because a large segment of the conservative base does not look back fondly on the Bush presidency.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Years #Doe #Looks

But there's a fourth interpretation: Obama can't leave his comfort zone. No president since Woodrow Wilson has been as enamored of abstract ideas or more sure that disagreement with him is proof of ignorance, bad faith or dogmatism. As a candidate, he insisted his real opponent was 'cynicism,' and in his address last week, he returned to this trite formulation, insisting again he was bravely battling the cynics.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Real #Ignorance #Ideas

Three explanations dominate speculation about what Obama is up to. The first is that he's trying to lay the groundwork for his successor, presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton. The second is that he's trying to pad his legacy. The third is that he's trying to 'troll' or bait the GOP into debating his agenda rather than pursuing its own. All are plausible, and none necessarily contradicts the others.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Trying #Bait #Legacy

Our country, if you read the 'Federalist Papers,' is about disagreement. It's about pitting faction against faction, divided government, checks and balances. The hero in American political tradition is the man who stands up to the mob - not the mob itself.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Country #Hero #Men

Dissent is morally neutral. You can correctly call yourself a dissident because you like to kick puppies, but at the end of the day, you're just a jerk who likes to kick puppies.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#The End Of The Day #Likes #Puppy

I suppose in John Kerry's world good diplomacy lets the boys in the bar finish raping the girl for fear of causing a fuss. Okay, that was unfair.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Girl #Boys #Bars

Christian socialism”). This is a difficult concept for modern liberals to grasp because they are used to thinking of the progressives as the people who cleaned up the food supply, pushed through the eight hour workday, and ended child labor. But liberals often forget that the progressives were imperialists, at home and abroad. They were the authors of Prohibition, the Palmer Raids, eugenics, loyalty oaths, and, in its modern incarnation, what many call “state capitalism.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Christian #Loyalty #Children

The white male is the Jew of liberal fascism.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#White #Males #Fascism

Liberals are Nazis, and Nazis are liberals. And if you don't agree with me, you're a Nazi too.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Nazi #Agree

Getting the support of Syria is the moral equivalent of winning the Klan's endorsement - it might be useful but it doesn't necessarily speak well of you.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Winning #Support #Might

I think as - all in all, it's better to have a cool president than a not cool president.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Thinking #President

I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Republican #More Money #Barack

Someone once noted that a 'gaffe' in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Political #Telling The Truth #Politician

If you're uncertain when life begins, why not give the unborn the benefit of the doubt and oppose abortion?
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Life #Giving #Abortion

The premise of my book is that everyone is a bit ideological to some extent. Everyone comes from a ideological perspective.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Book #Perspective #Ideological

America's political system used to be about the pursuit of happiness. Now More and more of us want to stop chasing it and have it delivered.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Pursuit Of Happiness #America #Political

[American] liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance, from what you eat to what you smoke to what you say.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Political #Today #Human Life

Government money only pays for the "liberties" the government thinks you should have, and therefore it can determine how you exercise them. That turns liberties into privileges dispensed at the whim of the state.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Exercise #Thinking #Government

I am just mystified by these people telling me I would think Obama was doing a great job if his skin contained less melanin.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Jobs #Thinking #People

When you treat reprehensible and ludicrous arguments with respect you have elevated the reprehensible and made the ludicrous a bit more reasonable. Having a serious argument with a Nazi makes the horror of the Holocaust a debatable point. Don't wrestle in the mud with pigs. You get dirty and the pig likes it.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Dirty #Pigs #Holocaust

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he's lecturing us about how America's gone "soft"? Really?
-- Jonah Goldberg

#College #America #Years

The mainstream perception that conservatives are close-minded and dogmatic while liberals are open-minded and free-thinking has it almost exactly backward. Liberal dogma is settled: The government should do good, where it can, whenever it can. That is President Obama's idea of pragmatism and bipartisanship: He's open to all ideas, from either side of the aisle, about how best to expand government and get the state more involved in our lives.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Thinking #Ideas #Government

Not reassuring when weathermen say 'Today will be terrible but don't worry it won't be as terrible as tomorrow or Friday.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Friday #Worry #Today

A week after his State of the Union address, political observers are still trying to figure out what President Obama's game is. That's because rhetorically and substantively, he seems to be in another world. ...
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Games #Political #Trying

John Kerry is a sphincter. Okay, that's a bit juvenile.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#John Kerry #Juvenile #Okay

Our fear of hypocrisy is forcing us to live in a world where gluttons are fine, so long as they champion gluttony.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Long #Hypocrisy #Champion

You know those Navy SEALs, they weren't Democrats and Republicans. They were just doing what was best for America. Wouldn't that be a great country if all of you Americans were just like that? You followed orders, you marched in step and you followed my agenda.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Country #Order #America

We’re all born idiots, and we only get over that condition as we get less young.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Idiot #Born #Young

Those who say they dislike dogma, or 'certainty', tend to be liars, hypocrites, or simply wrong. What they really dislike is the dogma of those they disagree with. A society that was certain, certain beyond all certainty, that putting its citizens in death camps was wrong, would never put people in death camps. Such things are only possible when you're open to new ideas.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Liars #Knowledge #Hypocrite

But if the choice is a cool president and 8 or 10 percent unemployment in a declining economy and a country that seems to be going in the wrong direction and structural unemployment for young people at 50 percent, I'd rather have a dorky president who fixed those problems.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Country #People #Choices

On Tuesday, the so-called Islamic State released a slickly produced video showing a Jordanian pilot being burned alive in a steel cage. On Wednesday, the United Nations issued a report detailing various 'mass executions of boys, as well as reports of beheadings, crucifixions of children, and burying children alive' at the hands of the Islamic State.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Children #Islamic #Boys

And on Thursday, President Obama seized the opportunity of the National Prayer Breakfast to forthrightly criticize the 'terrible deeds' . . . committed 'in the name of Christ.' ...
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Prayer #Opportunity #Names

We are all descended from cavemen who broke the skulls of their enemies with rocks for fun or profit. But that hardly mitigates the crimes of a man who does the same thing today. I see no problem judging the behavior of the Islamic State and its apologists from the vantage point of the West's high horse, because we've earned the right to sit in that saddle.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Horse #Fun #Islamic

If power made one evil, then God would be the Devil.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Evil #Devil #Would Be

Are you a producer or a looter? If diversity were always and everywhere good we would be clamoring for more midgets in the NBA.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Nba #Diversity #Would Be

...associational ad hominem attacks remain the left's favorite rhetorical strategy for undermining opponents.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Politics #Opponents #Strategy

Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation-a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Party #Simple #Reality

The problem with the United Nations is that while democracy within nations is the best available form of government, democracy among nations can be a moral disaster - especially if some nations are not democracies.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Government #Democracy #Moral

Everyone understands that [democrat Senator Harry Reid] is deliberately lying. The man reads his lies from prepared texts. You can't read from a script and then claim you misspoke.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Lying #Men #Politics

When I see hipsters wearing Mao hats or Lenin T-shirts, I'm grateful. It's like truth-in-labeling. For now I know you are: Woefully ignorant, morally stunted, purposively asinine, or all three.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Hipster #Grateful #Ignorant

Nothing drives your opponents more crazy than being utterly reasonable. And nothing makes demonizing or delegitimizing your opponents easier than letting them shriek unreasonable things for you. The Republicans need to get back to being the party that elicits unreasonable shrieking from their opponents. Not the other way around.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Crazy #Party #Needs

Champions of Liberty get called Fascists by Champions of Statism
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Champion #Liberty #Politics

Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be and it can't be cast as one.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Doctrine #Politics #Libertarian

[C]ontemporary liberalism stands on a foundation of assumptions and ideas integral to the larger fascist movement.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Ideas #Foundation #Movement

Liberals and leftists have been dismissing inconvenient facts by attacking motives for generations. In the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, Soviet spies and abettors attacked the motives of their accusers because the fact of their guilt was undeniable. In the 1960s, over a thousand psychiatrists who'd never even met Barry Goldwater signed a petition saying the GOP candidate was too mentally unstable to be president.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Guilt #Spy #President

Hollywood's martyr-mythology leaves out the fact that the famed Hollywood Ten, for example, were in fact members of the Communist Party, which advocated the violent overthrow of the U.S. government in violation of the Smith Act and which took orders directly from Moscow.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#Party #Government #Order

In crude Marxist terms, liberals have a theory of infallible government that is constantly at war with the reality of life.
-- Jonah Goldberg

#War #Reality #Government