Life

Every normal American, man or woman, understands that these kinds of choices come with a price. This isn't a problem with our system. In a very basic way, it's not even a problem at all. Problems can be fixed. Problems that have no solution aren't problems: They're life. You can say the fact that 2+2 is 4 is a problem because you want 2+2 to equal a badger that craps plutonium pellets ready for a cold-fusion reactor. But that doesn't make it a problem; it makes you a really weird dude, who should probably sit out the next few downs. Choices have consequences. That's why they're called "choices."

-Jonah Goldberg,  The Goldberg File 1/10/2014

Duly Harsh

Just to be clear, my views of, and appreciation for, France have improved since the days of my hardcore French-bashing. In the past I may have been unduly harsh. Now I would like to think I am merely duly harsh.

-Jonah Goldberg, The Corner

Terrifying

In one of those weird ironies of nature, being surrounded by a bunch of soapy-sponge-wielding attractive University of Alabama female zoology students in wet t-shirts is an excellent plot device for a late night cinemax movie when the subject "victim" getting a bath is a sensitive-yet-jocular ski instructor, but it's terrifying if you're a brown pelican.

-Jonah Goldberg, post on The Corner

Squirrel Time Machine

To be intellectually honest, I thought the bin Laden tape was good news for Bush, too. And, for now, that doesn't seem to have panned out. Of course, I didn't think that Rove set the whole thing up; nor do I think squirrels have constructed a time machine under my bed using Q-Tips and Mars bars.

-Jonah Goldberg

Sunshine & Lollipops

Liberalism is always one more tutorial away from sunshine and lollipops for everyone.

-Jonah Goldberg, Planned Summit Is Just an Infomercial in Disguise

Reading Between The Lines

"All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling," Oscar Wilde once remarked.

Irving Kristol took Wilde’s observation and ran with it. "The amateur’s feelings are sincere enough — why else should he be writing poetry? — but he takes the writing of poetry to be more important than the poem itself," Kristol noted in his influential 1972 essay, "Symbolic Politics and Liberal Reform." "For him, writing poetry is a kind of symbolic action, in which he liberates his most earnest sentiments, and it is in this impatient action and in this instant liberation that he seeks fulfillment."

The successful poet, meanwhile, understands that good poetry is ultimately not about the experience of the author but of the reader. "He understands that a plea of sincerity is of no account in the ultimate court of literary judgment, which will look at the poem itself and simply ask: Does it work?"

"It seems to me," Kristol wrote, "that the politics of liberal reform, in recent years, shows many of the same characteristics as amateur poetry. It has been more concerned with the kind of symbolic action that gratifies the passions of the reformer than with the efficacy of the reforms themselves."

-Jonah Goldberg, National Review Online

Squirrels would taste more like ice cream...

But there's still a problem. Yes, Biden is occasionally a truth-teller. But, just as often, he's explaining how FDR spoke to Americans on TV, years before they had television sets or — give it time — how squirrels would taste more like ice cream if goats were only taller. And again, whenever he punctures the politics as usual with an inconvenient truth, the administration forces Biden to recant, not the other way around.

-Jonah Goldberg, USA Today column 8/4/2009

Don't just do something...

Don't just do something, stand there!
-Jonah Goldberg

Nanny State

The fundamental insight of libertarianism is that the government is the government. It cannot be your mommy, your daddy, your big brother, your nanny, your friend, your buddy, your god, your salvation, your church or your conscience. It is the government. A big bureaucracy charged with certain responsibilities, some of which it is qualified to carry out, many of which it is not.
-Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism blog