Jonah Goldberg Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Jonah Goldberg
There's nothing within science per se that says medical researchers must not experiment on human subjects; it is the imposition of ethical dogma that constrains the scientist.

Jonah Goldberg
The search for a moral equivalent of war continues to define American liberalism to this day.

Jonah Goldberg
Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don't matter.

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

Jonah Goldberg
I am so disgusted with people who think free speech is defined as being able to say what you think without being criticized.

Jonah Goldberg
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
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.

Jonah Goldberg
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
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
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
Great civilizations create great cathedrals, and the cathedrals of this generation should be in outer space. Cathedrals inspire rich and poor people alike to believe great things are possible. 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
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
Disenfranchisement is something the government does to you. It's not something you do to yourself. If you can't figure out how to fill in the ovals or punch the chads—and some minority of voters will always botch it—that doesn't mean your right to vote was rescinded. It means that you didn't take your right to vote seriously enough to pay attention to the instructions.

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

Jonah Goldberg
I do think my judgment is superior to (Juan Cole's) when it comes to the big picture. So, I have an idea: Since he doesn't want to debate anything except his own brilliance, let's make a bet. I predict that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years time, agree that the war was worth it. I'll bet $1,000 (which I can hardly spare right now).

Jonah Goldberg
Making meaningful distinctions is not hypocrisy, it's called "thinking."

Jonah Goldberg
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