Jonah Goldberg stories, Page 16
Jonah Goldberg: Political leanings can’t be reduced to genetic programming
Increasingly, the intellectual consensus seems to be that our political leanings are hardwired in our genes. There is some excellent research behind this thinking, and I’ve come around to believing that DNA plays a bigger role in our political worldviews than many on the right or left are willing to...
Jonah Goldberg: Nike fans flames of culture war
Nike is doing it wrong. I don’t mean the shoemaking, though that thing with Zion Williamson was pretty bad, I have to say. No, Nike is doing it wrong because it managed to do something that all the neo-Nazis, Klansmen, alt-righters and other denizens of the lowest coprophagic phylum of...
Jonah Goldberg: The conservative divide
The idea holding together the conservative movement since the 1960s was called “fusionism.” The concept, which always worked better as an organizing principle than a philosophical one, was that freedom and virtue were inextricably linked. Virtue not freely chosen wasn’t virtuous. Or as Frank Meyer, the foremost architect of fusionism,...
Jonah Goldberg: Does reality change ideas, or vice versa?
The intellectual right is in the middle of a huge brouhaha, as some prominent right-wing commentators celebrate what they believe is the end of the “conservative consensus” around classical liberalism — free markets, limited government, the sovereignty of the individual and even in some cases free expression. Fox News’ Tucker...
Jonah Goldberg: Trump’s poor approval ratings have little to do with Mueller investigation
“Without the ILLEGAL Witch Hunt, my poll numbers, especially because of our historically ‘great’ economy, would be at 65%,” President Trump tweeted last month. In all likelihood, the president believes what he wrote. It’s a strongly held sentiment among many of Trump’s ardent supporters that if he hadn’t been stabbed...
Jonah Goldberg: Abortion debate leaves no room between extremes
“Democrats are aggressively pushing late-term abortion, allowing children to be ripped from their mother’s womb right up until the moment of birth,” President Trump said at a Florida rally earlier this month. “The baby is born and you wrap the baby beautifully and you talk to the mother about the...
Jonah Goldberg: If Democrats want ‘normalcy,’ why are candidates so radical?
In the 1920 presidential election, Warren Harding won in a landslide by promising a “Return to Normalcy.” Today’s Democrats would be wise to make that same pledge for 2020. They probably won’t, however, which is why President Trump might get re-elected. Harding’s concept of normalcy has been ridiculed and reviled...
Jonah Goldberg: Will NRA become a casualty of the culture war?
The National Rifle Association has big troubles. It’s wildly in debt. The attorney general of New York — where the NRA was founded in 1871 and where it remains incorporated — is investigating the tax-exempt status of what she has called a “terrorist organization.” The NRA’s longtime chief executive, Wayne...
Jonah Goldberg: Democratic leadership can’t find its backbone on impeachment
“Do you think this is impeachable?” Chuck Todd, host of “Meet the Press,” asked Rep. Jerrold Nadler about the findings in the report by special counsel Robert Mueller. The congressman from New York replied, “Yeah, I do. I do think this, if proven, if proven … some of this would...
Jonah Goldberg: Mueller report offers little in black and white
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but we live in a time when everything is supposed to be black and white. The weird, incestuous relationship between the media and the political parties incentivizes combatants to take positions on the 1-yard lines, if not in the end zones. But what if — and...
