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Jonah Goldberg Quotes
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Jonah Jacob Goldberg is an American conservative syndicated columnist, author, and commentator. Goldberg writes about politics and culture for National Review, where he is a Senior Editor. He is the author of Liberal Fascism and The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas .

He has appeared on various television programs including Special Report with Bret Baier, Good Morning America, Nightline, Hardball with Chris Matthews, Real Time with Bill Maher, Larry King Live, Your World with Neil Cavuto, the Glenn Beck Program and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He is a frequent guest on a number of Fox News shows including The Five, The Greg Gutfeld Show, and Outnumbered. From 2006 to 2010 he was a frequent participant on bloggingheads.tv. He also appears in Dinesh D'Souza's film Hillary's America.

✵ 21. March 1969
Jonah Goldberg photo
Jonah Goldberg: 89   quotes 0   likes

Jonah Goldberg Quotes

“The major difference between the left and the right when it comes to any movement dedicated to overthrowing the free-market order—corporatist, authoritarian, etc.—is which groups will be the winners and which groups will be the losers. A left-wing system might empower labor leaders, government bureaucrats, progressive intellectuals, universities, certain minority groups, and one set of industries. A right-wing system might reward a different set of industries as well as traditional religious groups and their leaders, an ethnic majority, aristocrats, or perhaps rural interests. But both systems would be reactionary in the sense that they rejected the legacy of the Lockean revolution…”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

Sense , Universe

“The coalition instinct is the programming that helped us form strategic groups that advance our self-interest. We are a social species and cooperation is what helped us skyrocket to the top of the food chain.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, When Evil Becomes Inconvenient (2018)

Food , Help

“Obama violated not just democratic norms but also his constitutional oath by effectively granting amnesty to millions of immigrants in the country illegally despite having insisted that he did not have the power to do so.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, Breaking democratic norms was rampant before the anonymous op-ed. Now it's a free-for-all (2018)

Country

“Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action by the state is justified to achieve the common goal. It takes responsibility for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism… 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

Source: 2000s, 2008, Liberal Fascism (2008), p. 63

Life , People , Health , Religion

“The only society in which it is remotely possible for people to design their lives in the manner Marx fantasizes is one that is incredibly rich and incredibly free. We are nowhere near there yet, but it’s worth pointing out that if you plucked any laborer from another era and toured him or her around America today, they’d think that we were remarkably close.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)

People , Thinking

“Conservatism in America has always been deeply traditionalist, sometimes too much so. But at the core of the modern conservative movement has been the effort to protect, defend and conserve the traditions of a liberal revolution, grounded in the best arguments of the enlightenment (slavery notwithstanding). Bannon's potted blood and soil nationalism and racially tinged populism runs counter to that project and the best and highest ideals of conservatism and America itself. He turned Andrew's Breitbart. com into a "platform" (his word) for the alt-right seeking to inject European swill into the American body politic. Let him stay in Europe and hand out torches for the marchers. His un-American schtick has no place here. I'm sure Andrew would agree.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, Andrew Breitbart would tell Steve Bannon to stay in Europe (2018)

Effort

“[S]ocialists are romantics in that they want to curate their lives entirely based on their own feelings.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, A Free People Must Be Virtuous (2018)

Feeling

“I think Rummy should walk up to the table, take the oath, offer his prepared apologies and explanations and then, at the end of his remarks, he should take out a long Japanese knife. He should then cut off his pinky. If this Yakuza style contrition doesn't work he should look to the ranking Democrat on the committee and continue removing fingers until he gets a Shogun-like nod that his offering is acceptable. He should then wrap-up up his hand, curtly bow, and then say 'I am now pleased to take your questions.”

Jonah Goldberg

May 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20001011/www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_05_02_corner-archive.asp
2000s, 2004

Question , Thinking

“This is how we got here. It will get worse because there are no incentives to be better. It won’t end well either, but at least it will feel familiar.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, If You Think Our Politics Can’t Get Uglier Than the Kavanaugh Fight, Think Again (2018)

Feeling

“[C]onservatism is not supposed to be against change or progress… It is supposed to be skeptical of grandiose or reckless schemes which throw out the good in pursuit of the perfect.”

Jonah Goldberg

2000s, 2000, Who the Hell Do You Think You Are? (2000)

Change , Perfection

“States have a habit of forming when the rules say “line starts here for free stuff.” Whoever manages the line becomes the “state” after a while.”

Jonah Goldberg

Twitter post https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/1049835451903815680 (9 October 2018)
2010s, 2018

“I consider the Fourth a patriotic holday more than a nationalist one. We are celebrating the signing of a text, the establishment of a set of laws and principles on the Fourth of July. The Fourth is about political liberty and national independence. It is, for all its pomp and circumstance, a fairly secular and rational holiday. Meanwhile, Thanksgiving plays upon the mystic chords of memory and is prior to and independent of many of things we celebrate on the Fourth. Anyway, I agree its a fair criticism and probably just highlights different perspectives. And, yes, the food on the Fourth of July is really, really good. I am all about hotdogs, beer and barbecue.”

Jonah Goldberg

November 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20040421/www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/04_11_24_corner-archive.asp
2000s, 2004

Law , Food , Beer , Memory

“[B]ending the system to the idea that the government in Washington should see the country as a bunch of competing racial and ethnic groups with no particular or meaningful attachment to place and community, whose only relationship to government is unmediated through state and local government, is precisely the sort of thinking that Arthur Schlesinger lamented… If it makes you sad that California doesn’t have more clout in the Senate, fine. But playing statistical games based on race and ethnicity is a pernicious way of approaching that problem.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, Say No to a Parliament of Tribes (2018)

Sadness , Way , Game , Communication

“One common tactic [socialists like to use] is to point to countries that liberals like and dub them real-world models of socialism. Thus Scandinavian countries with generous social safety nets become the real-world proof that socialism works. Others will just point to government-run programs or institutions—national parks, the VA, whatever—and say “socialism!””

Jonah Goldberg

What about Venezuela? “Shut up,” they explain.
2010s, 2018, Socialism is So Hot Right Now (2018)

World , Country

“Everyone’s decrying tribalism, and yet the idea that we should rejigger the constitutional order to make sure that Asian Americans in California have the same “representation” in the Senate as Hispanics in, say, Texas or Rhode Island is profoundly tribal. Maybe Hispanics in Texas have different political interests than Hispanics in California? Maybe Hispanics — an incredibly diverse category of people — don’t vote based upon an abstract designation?”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, Say No to a Parliament of Tribes (2018)

People , Idea

“Africa is a mess. It is a mess by any civilized measure of human progress. It is a mess by most uncivilized measures of human progress.”

Jonah Goldberg

2000s, 2000, A Continent Bleeds (2000)

“[S]egments of the Right, who denounced phrases like “economic patriotism” when it passed Barack Obama’s lips but nod and cheer when similar phrases come out of the mouths of “nationalists.” They see the state as the key to fostering a new social solidarity because it alone speaks for their new idol — or “strong god” — of the Nation. Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2018, The Government Can’t Love You (2018)

Love , God , People , Strong

“The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context. Conservatism is gratitude…”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

Way , Bad luck , Gratitude , Sense

“But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best. This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.”

Jonah Goldberg

2010s, 2019, What's So Great About Western Civilization (2019)

Hurt , Box , People , Thinking

“Keeping Germany from acting too German (or at least too Prussian) is an important lesson of history.”

Jonah Goldberg

"Nationalism and Nationism" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/nationalism-debate-nation-states/ (3 April 2019), National Review
2010s, 2019

History

“The rifts between Shia and Sunni, Eastern Orthodox and Catholic, Israelis and Palestinians, Tibetans and Chinese, obviously have real political, theological, or economic substance behind them, but they are often reduced to symbolism. If you study the history of nationalism, it is often a story of symbols. What flag shall we fly? What icon shall we mount? What books will we revere — or burn?”

Jonah Goldberg

"The Border Wall Is a Symbol of Our Symbolic Politics" https://www.nationalreview.com/2018/12/border-wall-immigration-debate-political-symbol/ (28 December 2018), National Review
2010s, 2018

Study , Books , History , Flying

“Both flag burners and flag wavers can agree on one thing: The flag has meaning beyond the merely instrumental necessity of having a piece of cloth that identifies a legal jurisdiction.”

Jonah Goldberg

"The Power of Symbols in Our Politics of Digust" https://www.nationalreview.com/g-file/power-of-symbols-politics-of-disgust/ (28 December 2018), National Review
2010s, 2018

Clothes

“The piece was opinion, the news was fact captured on film.”

Jonah Goldberg

Twitter post https://twitter.com/JonahNRO/status/1159984641962631170 (9 August 2019)
2010s, 2019

“The porkbusters fight is fun now, but not since early cave men tried to train grizzly bears to give them tongue-baths has a project seemed more obviously doomed to end in disappointment. Expecting Congress — of either party — to give back pork which has already been approved and passed into law is like expecting crack whores to give refunds days after services have been rendered.”

Jonah Goldberg

2000s, 2005, Unhappy Warrior (2005)

Law , Whore , Disappointment , Fight