Jonah Goldberg Columns category, Page 6

We’re only two installments into the limited-run production of the Jan. 6 hearings, and so far, I think they’ve been great. But I also think they’ll leave almost everyone, except for me, unsatisfied. For many Democrats and Never Trumpers, the hope is — or was — that this would lead...

On Thursday, the Jan. 6 committee will make its televised primetime debut, some 519 days after the event that gave the committee its name and purpose. For its ardent supporters, the committee’s mission is nothing less than an effort to save democracy. For its harshest critics, it’s both a waste...

In 2020, Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana was the top recipient of money from members of the “gun rights” industry. According to Open Secrets, his campaign received a total of $142,653 for the 2019-20 cycle. That put the so-called gun lobby at 33 on the list, far behind other industries...

During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden was outspoken in his desire to “revive the spirit of bipartisanship in this country.” On May 15, Politico reported that, at the urging of many advisers, Biden had mostly given up on working with the GOP, which he purportedly now “views as an existential...

The late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was a passionate advocate for abortion rights, but she was also one of Roe v. Wade’s most effective critics. “My criticism of Roe is that it seemed to have stopped the momentum on the side of change,” she said, explaining that abortion...

“What is the difference between a hockey mom and a pit bull?” the president of the United States asked 10 years ago at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. “A pit bull is delicious.” Of course, to echo E.B. White: Explaining a joke is like dissecting a frog. You understand it...

“Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision — huge,” Rush Limbaugh declared in 2010. “I cannot tell you how big this is.” What, pray tell, had roused freedom from its slumber? The Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission decision,...

One of the silver linings of the very large dark cloud of Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is the clarity it provides. This is, broadly speaking a contest between good guys and bad guys. A lot of people who fancy themselves foreign policy realists roll their eyes at talk about...

Perhaps the most interesting thing about last weekend’s French election isn’t who won, but who lost — and what it might mean for America. French President Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen of the National Rally party won enough of the vote — 27.8% and 23.2% respectively — to head...

Conan O’Brien recently tweeted: “Well, I’ve officially lived a long life because people are excited Germany is rearming.” I had a similar feeling recently listening to the 538 politics podcast that discussed “wedge issues.” The conversation between the host, Galen Druke, and two prominent political scientists was illuminating, but the...

An enormous amount of effort and planning went into crafting a single coherent message, and in one instant it was all for naught. I’m not talking about Will Smith slapping Chris Rock during Sunday night’s Oscars, but President Biden’s similarly unscripted call for regime change in Russia. In Warsaw on...

You know who benefits the most from liberal media bias? Conservatives. I spent much of the last 25 years writing about liberal media bias. Heck, I grew up on the stuff. My father, a longtime editor, used to joke that he “worked behind enemy lines.” He’d often tutor me about...

It’s hard to pick up a foreign policy journal or even turn on the TV without encountering someone predicting, recommending or lamenting a “new Cold War” with Russia, China or both. This is entirely understandable and even justifiable, if you mean a new period of strategic competition, pressure and geopolitical...

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine, of Ukraine, Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” Trump explained on a radio show the day after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his unprovoked...

In “The Sun Also Rises,” Ernest Hemingway famously answered the question “How did you go bankrupt?” “Two ways. … Gradually, then suddenly.” The last week suggests that getting out of bankruptcy works the same way. It’s difficult to exaggerate the suddenness and significance of the change in attitudes — and...

Vladimir Putin announced Monday that he had decided to recognize two regions in eastern Ukraine as independent breakaway “republics” and immediately ordered Russian troops into those territories to carry out “peacekeeping” functions. A better term would be “tornaway republics” since Putin has been waging war there for years. It remains...

On Monday, Canadian Prime Minster Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act in order to clear out the trucker protests in Ottawa. From the beginning, I’ve remained quietly fascinated by the whole spectacle. Quietly, because I’ve struggled to figure out what I think about them, fascinated because they are a window...

My first question: What about the feces? I don’t mean figuratively, as in “Wow, the Republican National Committee really stepped in (fill in the blank)” or other colorful idioms. I mean it literally, what about the poop? I should back up. The RNC, the greatest agglomeration of hacks ever seen...

One can only sympathize with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Vladimir Putin has a dagger aimed at the heart of Ukraine. For months he has mobilized troops along the Ukrainian border. The recent deployment of troops to Ukraine’s almost undefended border with Belarus raises the possibility of a blitzkrieg strike against...

“You and my husband think so similarly when it comes to politics,” Hillary Clinton once told Joe Biden. “You guys were almost separated at birth.” It’s interesting to think about how Biden’s first year as president would have gone differently if this were in fact true. The easiest way to...

I have long opposed making voting mandatory, an idea that pops up every few years. I still don’t like the idea. But it’s become more attractive, at least as a thought experiment. The arguments against compelling people to vote — as Australia and a handful of other countries do —...

On Monday, Russian president-for-life Vladimir Putin explained that the “peacekeeper” paratroopers he sent to Kazakhstan to help quash civil unrest were part of his larger policy of preventing “color revolutions” in former Soviet-bloc countries. Putin made his remarks at a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, which the New...

“Don’t Look Up,” Adam McKay’s dark comedy released on Netflix just before Christmas, has gotten an enormous amount of attention, despite the fact most film critics tend to agree it doesn’t hold together too well artistically, even as some welcome it for its propagandistic value. As you’d expect from the...

Things have not gone well for Vice President Kamala Harris. Not only is she less popular than her boss, but according to one recent poll, she even broke Dick Cheney’s record for most unpopular sitting vice president. But it’s worse than that. Cheney — fairly or unfairly — was unpopular...

I quit Fox News after more than a decade as a contributor. So did my business partner and friend Steve Hayes. We explained our reasons on the Dispatch, a media company we founded. The decision was a long time in coming. Like Ernest Hemingway’s description of bankruptcy, it came gradually...