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Charlie Sheen was clearly the man of the year. You'll recall that 2011 began with the oafish actor celebrating his own narcotic and sexual crapulence like a victorious gladiator working the crowds. He was egged on by a media with as much decency as the cons on the top tiers of the prison who chant "fresh fish" as the new inmates walk into general pop, their eyes stinging from delousing powder. Sheen succeeded at turning his own debasement into a national pseudo-event by calling the very definition of losing "winning." And that's what 2011 was all about: pretending to be...

Apoorva and Stu talk with the founding editor of National Review Online (and visiting fellow at AEI), Jonah Goldberg. Jonah gives us his take on the Occupy Wall Street protests that have been going on around the country. We also discuss the Republican Bloomberg debate and why Cain is such a “Happy Warrior.”

And now let us recall the "Fable of the Shoes." In his 1973 "Libertarian Manifesto," the late Murray Rothbard argued that the biggest obstacle in the road out of serfdom was "status quo bias." In society, we're accustomed to rapid change. "New products, new life styles, new ideas are often embraced eagerly." Not so with government. When it comes to police or firefighting or sanitation, government must do those things because that's what government has (allegedly) always done. "So identified has the State become in the public mind with the provision of these services," Rothbard laments, "that an attack on...

Look, I am past exhausted talking about liberal media bias. It’s real, we all know it, and people who deny it aren’t even fooling themselves. But some things just have to be pointed out. This morning I watched the first 15 minutes of the Today Show. I don’t particularly love or even like the program, but I find it useful to see what the producers think is the big news of the day. And sometimes Chuck Todd is on, and I like him. If I sound defensive about watching the show it’s only because I am. Anyway, the first ten...

"I think increasingly the American people are going to say to themselves, 'You know what? If a party or a politician is constantly taking the position my-way-or-the-highway, constantly being locked into ideologically rigid positions, that we're going to remember at the polls,'" President Obama said at his Friday news conference. I know everyone is sick of hearing about the debt-limit negotiations. Lord knows I am. When I turn on the news these days, I feel like one of the passengers seated next to Robert Hays in the movie "Airplane!" By the time we get to the phrase "in the out...

Historic

At this point, there’s at least one thing you can’t blame Donald Trump for: being Donald Trump. Like the scorpion in Aesop’s fables that must sting the frog because that’s simply what scorpions do, the world-renowned, self-promoting billionaire clown must tout himself with passion and narcissistic self-regard. It was only a matter of time, for instance, before he came out with his own fragrance: Donald Trump Cologne by Donald Trump Eau De Toilettes (You can find it on Amazon.com. The first of the two customer reviews is from a woman who discovered the scent as it wafted up from the...

And so now we enter the mopey phase of the GOP presidential contest. The gloom takes many forms, but foremost is the fear that the field taking shape might be the one we're stuck with. It's like that feeling you get when you're starving and you go into a restaurant. At first everything on the menu looks great, until you have to make your choice and you realize there's nothing you actually want to eat. There isn't a German word for this sensation, but one that comes close is futterneid -- the envy one feels when somebody orders a better...

Albert Einstein said the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. And so goes the White House with these attacks on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce drummed up by the “professional left’s” blogosphere that it is using foreign donations to finance political advertising. Syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer however, had another take on what these attacks are. He said they’re not insane, but desperation of on of the highest degrees. During the Oct. 11 broadcast of Fox News Channel’s “Special Report with Bret Baier,” Krauthammer attacked the Obama administration, calling this campaign...

I'm only now getting to Jeffrey Miron's NRO column on why the tea parties should embrace drug legalization. My views on drug legalization are fairly well known to longtime readers (I'm for the decriminalization of pot, against the legalization of hard drugs), and I really don't want to start that debate from scratch again, so let me just say I find some of Miron's familiar points on the merits of the issue stronger than others. But my main objection to his argument is more practical: It's politically absurd. I can totally understand why someone who cares passionately about drug legalization would...

We are taught to believe that ideology is the enemy of free thought. But that's not right. Ideology is a mere checklist of principles and priorities. The real enemy of clear thinking is the script. We think the world is supposed to go by a familiar plot. And when the facts conflict with the script, we edit the facts. So, for instance, David Horowitz is a stock villain on U.S. campuses because he deviates from the standard formula of coddling the usual victims and lionizing the usual heroes. Once a committed left-wing radical, Horowitz now resides on the right. Two...

As I wrote last year, I find it amazing that the "Birthers" are considered more dangerous and evil than the "Truthers." The Birthers believe that an ambitious man who travelled a lot as a kid has concealed the circumstances of his birth so he could be eligible for the presidency. I don't think they've made their case. And, frankly, I'm not sure I'd want them to at this point. Aside from the horror of a Biden presidency, I for one don't yearn for a constitutional crisis. And while I am sure there are more elaborate and crazier versions of Birtherism,...

Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism is now in paperback.Jonah Goldberg has written an important article in Commentary on what he calls the "neo-socialism" of the Obama administration. I like this label. It is both accurate and more palatable than the term "neo-communism" which I have applied to the hard left. But given the twenty-year political partnership between a neo-Communist like Billy Ayers and Obama, and Obama's coterie of Communist Party mentors and allies, it is at bottom a distinction without a difference. Neo-socialists are fellow travelers of neo-Communists and vice-versa. The real division in the modern world is between totalitarians...

I attended the Cincinnati Tax Day Tea Party rally as a speaker. But it was more interesting to be an observer. First, here's what I didn't see. I didn't see a single racist or bigoted sign or hear a single such comment. Nor did I see any evidence of "homegrown fascism." Though in fairness, such things are often in the eye of the beholder, now that dissent has gone from being the highest form of patriotism under George W. Bush to the most common form of racism under Barack Obama. But I did see something a lot of people, on...

Back in September, Tom Friedman, speaking of China, proclaimed that "there is only one thing worse than one-party autocracy, and that is one-party democracy, which is what we have in America today." That prompted Jonah Goldberg to call Friedman a "liberal fascist," drawing an example from his seminal book, Liberal Fascism, to demonstrate how Friedman's fawning over the Chi-Coms "is exactly the argument that was made by American fans of Mussolini in the 1920s." But far from being abashed, Friedman is apparently so enamored of his formulation that he has repeated it virtually verbatim. The Times columnist suffered another bad...

"Victory has a thousand fathers," John F. Kennedy reportedly said, "but defeat is an orphan." By that standard, George W. Bush has won the Iraq war. Last month, Vice President Joe Biden proclaimed on CNN's "Larry King Live" that the peaceful transition to democracy and the (partial) withdrawal of U.S. forces "could be one of the great achievements of this administration." Initially, I ignored Biden's comment because, well, he's Joe Biden. As critical as I may be of the Obama administration, holding it accountable for Biden's mouth seems grotesquely unfair. But then White House spokesman Robert Gibbs defended the vice...

Almost exactly 10 years ago, I boarded a Northwest Airlines plane in Minneapolis. As I started toward my veal-pen seat in steerage, I saw the faces of the preboarded aristocrats in business class. But before I could glare at them with proletarian rage and envy, I heard a loud bang and felt a sharp pain on the top of my head. Everyone looked to see what the sound was; even the two flight attendants chatting like village women around the well broke off their no-doubt-vital conversation. The source of the preflight disturbance? I'd smacked my enormous gourd of a head...

On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio. Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by now familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality and theft. When the report was over, "Morning Edition" host Steve Inskeep summarized it with a tart, "the decade in capitalism." I don't want to single out Ins- keep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done, particularly of...

On the last day of 2009, that awful year, I was listening to a report on National Public Radio (yes, I’m a listener). Reporter Tamara Keith presented a by-now-familiar recap of the worst financial and corporate scandals of the decade, from Enron and Martha Stewart to Tyco and Bernie Madoff. It was a depressing slog of greed, venality, and theft. When the report was over, Morning Edition host Steve Inskeep summarized the report with a tart: “The decade in capitalism.” I don’t want to single out Inskeep, since he was doing what pretty much the entire media establishment has done,...

Fire Napolitano [Jonah Goldberg] Understandbly, the White House is trying very hard to get out in front of the would-be Christmas bomber story. The head of the Department of Homeland Security isn't helping. I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the pevious appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest...

On Monday, Lisa Jackson, head of the Environmental Protection Agency, formally announced that her agency now considers carbon dioxide to be a dangerous pollutant, subject to government regulation. The "finding" comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled that CO2 falls under the EPA's jurisdiction. A day later, an unnamed White House official told Fox's Major Garrett that the message for Congress is clear: "If you don't pass this (cap-and-trade) legislation ... the EPA is going to have to regulate in this area. ... And it is not going to be able to regulate on a market-based way, so it's...

By now you might have heard something about the scandal rocking the climate change industry, though you can be forgiven if you haven't, since it hasn't gotten nearly the coverage it should. Computer hackers broke into the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia in England and downloaded thousands of e-mails and other documents. The CRU is one of the world's leading global warming data hubs, providing much of the number-crunching to global policymakers on climate change. And, boy, can they crunch numbers. In a long string of embarrassing e-mail exchanges, CRU scientists discuss with friendly outside colleagues,...

I think I've had my fill of moral hypocrisy. We routinely hear stories of evangelical ministers who "mentor" hookers at $500 an hour, "family values" politicians who like the cut of a congressional page's jib, or senators who love to press the flesh, one bathroom stall at a time. And, given the times, we increasingly hear stories about progressive politicians and columnists who -- gasp! -- have bigger carbon footprints than they want the rest of us to have: CO2 emissions for me and not for thee! For shame. The press loves stories of moral hypocrisy. Catching a finger-wagging politician...

'm writing about this for my USA Today column, but the Frank Rich hissy fit is a perfect example of the real story of the election. The story is not that the GOP is self-destructing, it is that the conventional wisdom is being shown to be ludicrous. For some time now Frank Rich, Sam Tanenhaus and countless others (including David Frum) have been arguing that the GOP is a rump party and the only way for it to survive is for it to embrace me-too Republicanism of one flavor or another. The story of all three major races (VA, NJ,...

"When John McCain said we could just 'muddle through' in Afghanistan, I argued for more resources and more troops to finish the fight against the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11, and made clear that we must take out Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants if we have them in our sights," Barack Obama thundered as he accepted the Democratic nomination for president in Denver last year. "John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of Hell. But he won't even go to the cave where he lives." It was a shabby bit of...

If you think American politics have gotten nastier, crueler, and more symbolic over the last 20 years, blame Ted Kennedy.

The fight over health care took the most interesting turn last week. President Obama briefly switched from wonkish frippery about bending cost curves to speaking of faith. Reaching out to progressive faith leaders in two massive conference calls, Obama insisted that God was on his side. Expanding health care fulfills a "core moral and ethical obligation that we look out for one another ... that I am my brother's keeper, my sister's keeper." This would be an easy opportunity to call attention, once again, to the double standards applied to Obama. When President George W. Bush invoked God as his...

Here is video of Jonah Goldberg saying the Veteran's Administration's use of a booklet that urges veterans to consider "whether life is worth living" is similar to the Germans during World War II believing they had the right to "value whether life is worthy of life." The booklet is for use with veterans and urges them to consider whether they are a "financial burden on their family" and asks if they have a hard time getting over the blues. Fox News' Chris Wallace challenged the Assistant Sec. of Veteran's Affairs about the booklet yesterday. . . . . (Watch Video)

Since a bunch of readers want to know where I come down on the great debate of the day, let me start by saying that Rich Lowry is not only a handsome man, but a wise and powerful one. As are all of the editors and others who make my work so enjoyable around here (of course, the womenfolk are lovely, as opposed to handsome). But I guess I'm more in the McCarthy & Steyn camp. As a matter of the finer points of policy discussion, I think the death-panel label is awfully blunt and inexact. But in the arena...

The Democratic party is panicking, lashing out like a cornered animal, all because its effort to take over the health-care industry is coming apart like so much wet toilet paper. Nancy Pelosi, who will get her own bound volume in the annals of asininity, has outdone herself. When asked by a reporter whether the protests at various town-hall meetings represented legitimate grassroots opposition or were manufactured “AstroTurf” stunts, she replied, “I think they’re AstroTurf. You be the judge. They’re carrying swastikas and symbols like that to a town meeting on health care.” Now this is a pas de trois of...

I think Jamie Kirchik has the politics pretty much exactly right. Eugene Robinson, Joe Conason and E.J. Dionne, in addition to all the politicians and bloggers Jamie mentions, have been pumping the birther story in order to tar Republicans as extremists at precisely the moment their own agenda is being rejected by the American people for it's own extremism. Even the folks at Mother Jones think this is a plausible explanation of the administration's behavior: If the White House thinks the birther movement is hurting the Republican party, they might refrain from doing anything that could cause the GOP to...

Dear Governor Palin, You’re blowing it. We haven’t met, but you might remember I was one of the first columnists to tout you for John McCain’s running mate. I cheered you mightily when Senator McCain selected you, and I still believe that you were the smartest choice he could have made given the obstacles before him. I’m also assuming you want to run for president some day. There’s a reason why the Left and much of the media establishment hated you from day one. Some hated you out of the fear that you might stop Barack Obama’s unfolding coronation. Others...

What did you do when capitalism died, Daddy? I won't be surprised to hear that question from my daughter by the time she gets out of college, or should I say the State Mandatory Voluntarism Training Facility. When liberals hear conservatives decry the death of capitalism, they titter and roll their eyes. "Oh, you paranoid right-wingers! You see Bolsheviks around every corner." But such exasperation is the exhalation of concentrated ignorance. The absence of free markets isn't necessarily Bolshevism, or even socialism. Capitalism's death can come in many forms, by many different hands. After all, not all of Julius Caesar's...

No link allowed, story here .

It’s a lovely thing when the conventional wisdom proves to be so spectacularly wrong. The entire Democratic party, not to mention the media establishment, simply took as a given that suave, charming, effulgent, numinous president Barack Obama would mop the floor with grumpy, truculent, sardonic former vice-president Dick Cheney. And yet, on almost every issue he has championed since he left office, Cheney has won the debate or at least put the White House on the defensive. From the closing of Gitmo and the placement of terrorists in domestic prisons, to the release of the torture memos and the aborted...

Some days you have to ask yourself, my God, what if these people were Republicans? Democrats took back Congress in 2006 and the presidency in 2008 in no small part because of their ability to bang their spoons on their high chairs about what they called the Republican "culture of corruption." Their choreographed outrage was coordinated with the precision of a North Korean missile launch pageant. And, to be fair, they had a point. The GOP did have its legitimate embarrassments. California Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham and lobbyist Jack Abramoff were fair game, and so was Rep. Mark Foley, the...

The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama's first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency. There's no denying that this is liberalism's greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations. "The world has changed," Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. "The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes ... [in] traditional values...

In 1993, Bill Clinton joked, "Gosh, I miss the Cold War." And, he explained, somberly: "We had an intellectually coherent thing. The American people knew what the rules were." Such Cold War nostalgia vexed many conservatives. It seemed to us that the Cold War consensus had broken down with the Vietnam War. Clinton himself didn't much like that Cold War endeavor, which is one reason he worked so assiduously to avoid serving in it. A young John Kerry did serve, but he also threw away his medals and denounced his fellow servicemen as war criminals. Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, had proclaimed...

One of the most important events of our lifetimes may have just transpired. A federal agency has decided that it has the power to regulate everything, including the air you breathe. Nominally, the Environmental Protection Agency's announcement last Friday only applies to new-car emissions. But pretty much everyone agrees that the ruling opens the door to regulating, well, everything. According to the EPA, greenhouse gases include carbon dioxide -- the gas you exhale -- as well as methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride. It is literally impossible to imagine a significant economic or human activity that does not...

Despite all the criticisms of the Fox News Channel broadcasted on MSNBC for promoting tea party coverage, one thing hasn't been pointed out - how the NBC networks, including CNBC and MSNBC are given a pass for their shameless promotion of their Green Week and Green is Universal network events. Jonah Goldberg, editor-at-large for National Review and author of "Liberal Fascism," appeared on Fox News Channel's April 18 "Fox News Watch" and commented on FNC's promotion of the tea parties, but the double standard of MSNBC's criticism of Fox News. "I think that there's a perfectly legitimate criticism against Fox...

Amidst all of the hooplah, I've heard a lot of complaints from liberals. Here are the most frequent complaints and my responses. 1. All of this tyranny talk is overheated and idiotic.Well, some of it surely is. But look. According to that reason video I posted below, Americans work an average of 103 days a year just to pay their taxes. If you had to work 365 days a year to pay your taxes, that would be a kind of slavery or indentured servitude, because all of your productive labor would be going to the government. You would have no...

Well, that was simple. Shoot the pirates, problem solved. OK, not the problem of piracy per se. But the problem of these specific pirates off the coast of Somalia: taken care of. And, if more pirates were shot, there would be fewer pirates. Unlike, say, jihadist terrorists, pirates are in it for the money. Raise the cost of being a pirate -- in denominations of pirate blood -- and you'll lower the supply of pirates. That's how governments -- good and bad -- have dealt with piracy for thousands of years. President Obama didn't personally order the SEALs to take...

Obama in his press conference: In this context, my administration will offer General Motors adequate working capital over the next 60 days. During this time, my team will be working closely with GM to produce a better business plan. They must ask themselves: have they consolidated enough unprofitable brands? Have they cleaned up their balance sheets or are they still saddled with so much debt that they can't make future investments? And above all, have they created a credible model for how to not only survive, but succeed in this competitive global market? Maybe because I keep seeing all this...

In the 1950s, liberals insisted that right-wingers were paranoid because they feared a Soviet takeover. Today, pro-Obama intellectuals are desperate to make the case that 21st-century nutcases believe Obama is leading a French takeover. You would think liberals would be congratulating the Right for not going overboard. For example, in a major address to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray said of Obama’s effort to emulate the European model: “There’s nothing sinister about that.” Obama and his advisors “share an intellectually respectable view that Europe’s regulatory and social welfare systems are more progressive than America’s and advocate reforms that...

Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I'm a jerk? I ask because I'm trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration. "Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste," White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. "They are opportunities to do big things." Over the...

Politicians and journalists are petrified of seeming hostile toward members of the “coalition of the oppressed.”‘Speak truth to power,” a phrase of Quaker origins adopted by campus radicals, Hollywood gadflies, and establishment journalists, has become shorthand for bravely criticizing government, big corporations, and other stereotypical villains. But where’s the bravery? I don’t know many journalists who are afraid of the government, and most make their living from big corporations. Sure, liberals — which most journalists are — are afraid of what conservatives will do in power and vice-versa. But they aren’t very afraid of what government will do to them,...

OK, things aren't going well. Good people are losing their jobs. Every day the deficit is looking more and more like the Great Pit of Carkoon, which, as we all remember, was that giant hole with a ravenous monster inside it that ate Boba Fett in "Return of the Jedi." "In its belly," quoth C-3PO, "you will find a new definition of pain and suffering as you are slowly digested over a thousand years." In this case, pain and suffering will inevitably take the form of inflation of Zimbabwean proportions and proctologically intrusive taxes that will make every April 15th...

Stimulus Shows Obama’s Inability To Deliver The stimulus bill has failed. Barack Obama has failed. The Trojan Horse of Hope and Change crashed into the guardrail of reality, revealing an army of ideologues and activists inside. Now, before I continue, let me say that Barack Obama will still be popular, he will still get things done and he will declare victory after signing a stimulus bill. But Mr. Obama’s moment is gone, and politics is about nothing if not moments. The stimulus bill was a bridge too far, an overplayed hand, 10 pounds of manure in a 5-pound bag. The...

"Go back to the oven! You need a big oven, that's what you need!" This is what one young woman thought passed for acceptable discourse during an anti-Israel rally last week in, of all places, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Other chants were similarly unlovely. You can watch it on YouTube if you like. But why bother? The Fort Lauderdale outburst is just one window on the upside-down world of Israel hatred. Across the Islamic world, and in too many points West, it is still considered a penetrating and poignant insight to call Zionists the "new Nazis." For instance, in Sunday's Gulf...

"Militarism during the first third of the 20th Century was seen as the best means of organising society. Since then, liberals have been searching for a moral equivalent of war that would inspire citizens to drop their personal ambitions and, in President Woodrow Wilson's words, 'marry their interests to the state'."