The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Red-Pilled at Last? ‘Reliably Anti-Trump People … Have Had It With Biden’

Jonah Goldberg is not the worst of the #NeverTrump crowd. Bad, yes, but not as bad as Rick Wilson or David French. Trump Derangement Syndrome wrecked the minds of a lot of Respectable Republican types, and a lot of it had to do with Trump’s de facto repudiation of the Bush “Global War on Terror” […]

Jonah Goldberg Blames ‘Elites,’ By Which He Means, Everyone But Himself

In a year-end column about the failure of “elites,” Jonah Goldberg pretends to be surprised that the Democratic Party went too far in 2021. He makes a lot of good points, e.g., that the reason the Biden administration thought they could ram “Build Back Better” through Congress was that there was no real opposition to […]

The Biden Administration’s Blame Game and the Sad Fate of #NeverTrump

My colleague John Hoge points out that, no matter what goes wrong in the Biden administration, it’s never their fault. It is psychologically unhealthy to think of oneself as a victim of forces beyond one’s control. Good mental health requires a sense of agency — the belief that we are masters of our own fate, […]

Jonah Goldberg Only Steals From the Best

  Plagiarism — passing off someone else’s work as your own — is generally a career-destroyer in journalism, and what Jonah Goldberg has done in recycling an idea borrowed from Ace of Spades is perhaps not exactly plagiarism. Like, it’s not as if he cut-and-pasted entire sentences, but rather that he failed to attribute the […]

Fear and Loathing at the #NRISummit: Can We Survive the Sarcasm Deficit?

Perhaps National Review‘s famed cartoonist Roman Genn can do a savage caricature of the donnybrook brawl I’ve been trying to incite for this weekend’s National Review Institute “Future of Conservatism” Summit at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington, D.C. Was it a smart career move to kick Jonah Goldberg in the knee? No, of course […]

National Review Institute Summit: Will This Controversial Event Make Headlines?

My decision yesterday to kick Jonah Goldberg in the knee promises to yield enormous dividends both ways. Goldberg has denounced my criticisms as “preening b.s.,” and he’s vowed to fire back at length later today, so I look forward to a (no doubt well-deserved) ass-chewing. Do I expect Jonah to say nice things about me? No, but […]

Jonah Goldberg, Professional Loser?

“We lost. We are losers. . . . Our operatives are incompetent and we live in a dream world.” — Rob Long of National Review, in an interview with Joe Hagan of New York magazine during a Caribbean cruise in November Has National Review, an institution founded in opposition to liberalism, become part of the […]

Jonah Goldberg Is Wrong

He has made his peace with “compassionate conservatism” with an argument that bespeaks intellectual fatigue: The evolving demographics of the country, combined with the profound changes to both the culture and the economy, demanded that the GOP change both its sales pitch and its governing philosophy. Compassionate conservatism increasingly faded from view after 9/11. Bush […]

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