EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (No, really),

This is my last G-File under the National Review flag. It will soon fly under a new banner, one might even say a pirate flag. More about that at the bottom. What I want to say up front is: I love you. Okay, technically not all of you. Some I merely like. But as a collective, I cannot begin to express how much the National Review audience has meant to me over the years, starting in 1998 when I joined NR and started the Goldberg File (a blog before we had the word, then a column, then a “news”letter, and, soon, a dessert topping and a floor wax), straight through the launches of NRO, the Corner, and all the rest. I’ve made real and lasting friendships — in the meat space, not just in the digital space — with some of you, and I’ve learned a ton from a lot of you.

My appreciation for you, Dear Readers, is only exceeded by my appreciation for my friends and colleagues here at NR, starting of course with Rich Lowry. I often say he hired me to pay me back for saving his life in prison — WFB loved that joke — but the truth is, he took a flier on me early in his role as editor, and I’m eternally grateful for it.

Speaking of Bill Buckley — another object of my eternal gratitude — he liked to say “Lowry, what were you thinking hiring this guy?” But he also liked to say, “Expressio Unius Est Exclusio Alterius.” Really. He’d say it like it was a normal thing for a person to say. It roughly means to include is to exclude, and he often invoked the phrase to explain why he couldn’t thank everyone in attendance at a meeting or talk. There are so many friends and colleagues I am grateful for that if I start naming them, I’ll run the risk of forgetting someone or using up this entire “news”letter calling the roll of my indebtedness. Also, while I may be leaving the magazine, I’m not leaving the family. I’ll be staying on as a fellow at the National Review Institute and staying in touch with everybody. Even so, I feel like I’m amputating part of my soul. Okay, enough with that.

If I keep going the pollen out here will only get worse.

Down (And Up) With the French

One of the earliest traditions of NRO was, to put it bluntly, French-bashing. I used to write an annual Bastille Day G-File recounting the perfidy of what my longtime NR colleague John Miller called in a book by the same name “Our Oldest Enemy.” Long before the anti-French boom during the lead-up to the Iraq war, I was quoting Groundskeeper Willie’s (of The Simpsons) felicitous phrase, “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.” I became so associated with it that when the “freedom fries” folderol started, countless major news outlets attributed the epithet to me, even though I never claimed to have coined it.

I bring this up because of a strange irony. As I head out the door, NR is caught up in an outpouring of pro-French sentiment. Of course, I don’t mean the country but the man (mensch is a better label) David French. (Please buy my album, Rational and Seamless Segues Were Never My Bag, Baby.)

Sohrab Ahmari, a very decent fellow whose writings I’ve long admired, has been on quite an intellectual journey. Almost exactly two years ago, he wrote an insightful essay for Commentary entitled “Illiberalism: A Worldwide Crisis.” It was — to stick with the French theme — both a cri de couer and a tour d’horizon of the global crisis of faith in classical liberalism. “As an ideology and as a governing philosophy, liberalism is fast losing ground,” Sohrab warned. Russia’s Putin and Hungary’s Orban weren’t the only avatars in the rising tide of illiberalism, Sohrab wrote: “Trumpism (and Bernie Sanders-ism) are but the American symptoms of a global phenomenon: the astonishing rise of illiberal movements of the far right and far left.” They represented a pas de deux of illiberal convergence. “The strength of the Trump and Sanders presidential candidacies has revealed the hollowness of this liberal consensus in the 21st century.”

No better proof of that hollowness can be found than Sohrab’s own metamorphosis. I am not accusing Sohrab of bad faith. His conversion to one form of illiberalism — or, if you prefer, anti-liberalism — is surely sincere and a byproduct of his good-faith Catholicism. But that just demonstrates the point. For Sohrab, to be a good Catholic, as he understands it, requires jettisoning – or again, in abundance of fairness, questioning — the classical liberal and civil-libertarian faith in pluralism that David French models in almost everything he does (though his fondness for Aquaman remains troubling).

But while I can’t gainsay Sohrab’s sincerity and personal decency, I also can’t adequately express my conviction of his profound error in analysis and strategy. The idea that David French — and the civility and decency he manifests daily — are what’s holding social conservatives back from “victory” in the culture war strikes me as one of the most preposterous claims to be taken seriously by intelligent conservatives in recent memory. I can’t really improve upon the replies by David himself and Charlie Cooke, and I really do like Sohrab, so I’ll just endorse what they said.

Victory You Can Taste but Never Swallow

Instead, let me turn to the larger project Sohrab is associating with. The First Things crowd, and various allied parties, have become intoxicated with the bizarre notion that social conservatives can win the culture war if they lean into Trumpism, nationalism, and some of the worst caricatures of the Christian right. R. R. Reno, the editor of First Things, is giddy about the fact that Trump broke the old conservative consensus around limited government, free markets, individual autonomy, and the foundational metaphysical claims of the American Founding. He sees the New Deal as a nationalist attempt to impose social solidarity from above. And he’s right. He just celebrates the effort, while traditional conservatives do not.

Last March, Reno organized a group of intellectuals — some of whom I admire — to sign a manifesto of sorts. It drips with disdain for capitalism, or to be fair, it creates a platoon of strawmen, calls that “capitalism,” and then sets fire to it. Now, let me be clear: I agree with many of their concerns. Though Reno clearly didn’t bother to read my book before “reviewing” it, I wrote at great length about many of the problems they identify, including the role capitalism itself can play in eroding vital institutions, most importantly the family, organized religion, and traditional communities.

Still, my disagreement stems from what I think is a mix of bad analysis of the roots of the problem and worse thinking about what to do about it. As Sohrab often implicitly concedes, most of the outrageous assaults on religion don’t come from liberal democratic capitalism, but from the state. Capitalism didn’t attack the Little Sisters of the Poor, the state did. And as both Charlie and David note, the best and only available means of defending such victims are the tools provided by the liberal order and the Constitution. Religious liberty is a concept as close to being definitional of the American order as any I can think of.

The potted idea that a policy of right-wing statism — fight fire with fire! — is the solution rather than a compounding of the problem is deeply dismaying me to me. I’m reminded of my favorite exchange from A Man for All Seasons, in which the cinematic Thomas More (a different fellow than the real one) explains why rules matter:

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.

Conceding the idea that the State should impose one faction’s conception of virtue on the entirety of the country is only a smart play (in the realpolitik sense) if you’re sure your faction is the one that gets to call the shots. When your faction is in the minority with few prospects of becoming the majority, it’s tantamount to turning the asylum over to the inmates.

Since David French set this whole thing off, I’ll use an analogy he’ll like. Like the Greyjoys in Game of Thrones, the First Things coterie are a belligerent band that is formidable only in proximity to their own shores. The farther they extend their forces, the weaker and ultimately ineffectual they become. They can dream of ruling, but they should recognize that’s all it is: a dream. In the larger game — i.e., the game of power — the best they can do is harass the enemy from their home base.

The idea that observant Catholics — a group I admire and sympathize with — can successfully win the culture war entirely on their terms is absurd, particularly if part of that strategy requires defenestrating the likes of David French — not to mention countless secular conservatives, traditionalists, and libertarians — for the sake of not theological or ideological purity but mere tactical consensus. David’s emphasis on “decency and civility” (Sohrab’s words) offers one of the only plausible ways of converting large numbers to the cause. More importantly: Since total victory is impossible, convincing the unconverted and unconvertible, that religious conservatives nonetheless deserve fair treatment and autonomy in a pluralistic society requires first convincing them that the religious right’s real objective isn’t to seize the commanding heights of the culture and turn their guns on the enemy. If average Americans, forget progressives, think the religious right wants to use the state to force everyone else to heel, the assault on religious liberty will only get worse.

But hey, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the First Things crowd has a brilliant plan for mounting a successful — and permanent–– benign, mildly theocratic takeover of all three branches of the government, the administrative state, as well as the universities, media, and state and local governments:

Step One: Purge the Frenchian Squishes

Step Two: ?????

Step Three: Bask in “a public square re-ordered to the common good and ultimately the Highest Good.” (Sohrab’s words).

And let us just take two seconds to chuckle at the notion that Donald Trump is precisely the man to pull that off.

Back to the Future

Now, I don’t think Sohrab’s utopian society, if achievable, would be such a terrible place. But “utopian” is a neologism that means “no place.” The only goal we can strive for is eutopia, which means “good place.” And the Founders believed that a good place was a polity where individuals were free to pursue an individual conception of happiness. You can argue that this idea has gone off the rails, as Sohrab does, and I’d have some sympathy. But let’s be honest about their proposed solution: to have the state impose on people its conception of virtue.

Replying, “Yeah, but that’s what the state is doing now and their definition of virtue sucks,” doesn’t require surrendering to the idea that the Right should do it too, throwing out the metaphysics of the founding in the process.

It’s a cliché to say that nationalism’s resurgence is a response to globalization. Obviously, there’s truth to that. Less discussed is the fact that American nationalism — both on the right and the left — is a response to, well,  nationalization. What I mean by that is that technology has tended to make the nation smaller and more intimate. Distances are shorter. Media — social, cable, the Internet etc. — creates a national racket where the equivalent of small-town busybodies thrive. We feel like we’re living cheek by jowl with people who actually live thousands of miles away from us. This feeling arouses anger and animosity because we’re exposed to people we think are living wrong and that leads to the desire to use the state or Twitter mobs to make people live the right way.

On the left, this is a very old argument. Woodrow Wilson thought the Constitution had outlived its usefulness in an era with railroads and telegraphs. The whole of the country was now bound together and must now live as a single organic whole (George Will’s forthcoming book is excellent on this, and many other, points). Wilson repudiated the Constitution stem, branch, and root because the Madisonian vision of letting multiple factions bloom was inorganic and divisive. Progressivism, from the New Deal to the Great Society to Obama’s New Foundation, never shed this basically Wilsonian view. The only two important players on the board are the government and the individual whose first commitments and basic needs would be met by it. Classical liberalism doesn’t want a nation of Julias; modern liberalism does.

As I noted in my forthcoming conversation with George Will on CSPAN, what’s amazing to me is that at the precise moment conservatives are finally recognizing the moral horror of the Wilson administration, they are simultaneously adopting his premises.

The idea that a vast, and vastly diverse, continental nation can be united in a singular conception of national purpose that gives everyone a sense of meaning and belonging is just as ludicrous when ornamented with right-wing verbiage as it is when it comes out of the mouth of Wilson, Obama, or the vast horde running for the Democratic nomination. It’s even more dangerous because it would make the race to statism bipartisan, with no serious movement arguing for the ideas and ideals that made this country great.

Again, the solution isn’t to get the best right-wing technocrats to run the economy and the culture. It’s to deny the state the power to run either. Send power back to the communities where people live. If North Dakota wants to be a theocracy, that’s fine by me as long as the Bill of Rights is respected. If California wants to turn itself into Caligula’s court, I’ll criticize it, but go for it.

The enemy here is the state, because by aggrandizing to itself the power to tell people how to live, people put all of the blame on a far-off government in Washington — or even more distant “globalists” — for their problems. Federalism, part of the forgotten portions of the Bill of Rights, is the only system that lets the most people live the way they want to live, in communities they have power to influence and direct. In a real community, there are no faceless “powers that be.” There’s Phil and Sarah, or even Mom and Dad.

And the glorious thing about this kind of pluralism — i.e., for communities, not just individuals — is that if the community you’re living in isn’t conducive to your notion of happiness or virtue, you can move somewhere that is. We want more institutions that give us a sense of meaning and belonging, not a state that promises to deliver all of it for you.

People are misdiagnosing the problem of social, institutional and familial breakdown. A healthy society is a heterogeneous one, a rich ecosystem with a thousand niches where people can find different sources of meaning or identity. A sick society is one where people find meaning from a single source, whether you call it “the nation” or “socialism” or any of the other brand names we hang on statism.

Heck, don’t call it federalism if that sounds too ickily modern to your ear. You can call it “subsidiarity,” a good Catholic word.

The bipartisan love affair with statism — whether it’s called nationalism or socialism — is simply a modern-sounding version of the old games of thrones from the past. Substitute Protestant for “progressive” and Catholic for “traditionalist,” and these fights would be recognizable to Europeans three or four centuries ago. The ideas being thrown around by the new nationalist conservatives aren’t new. The only new part is that conservatives, long the heroic defenders of the American Founding, are spouting them.

Various & Sundry

Well, I guess it’s only fitting that the final installment of this “news”letter ends with a sweaty rant written in nicotine-fueled haste with dogs constantly demanding my attention. I didn’t plan on this topic (because I never plan this thing), but I did choose it this morning because I think it addresses one of the central concerns of this “news”letter from the beginning: defending conservatism as I understand it.

Now, as my wife hears me say all too rarely, it’s time for some housecleaning. The G-File will live on. For the next few months (and possibly beyond) this “news”letter will only be available as an email newsletter. (For legal reasons, I cannot take my subscription list with me, so I have to recreate it as best as possible.)

The price will more than quintuple: from zero to zero. In the future, its frequency may increase with added brevity and newsiness on weekdays, but there will always be the traditional Friday version. I can’t really say that separating from the mothership will free me up to make it more outspoken because Rich always let me fly my freak flag any way I wanted in this space. But who knows what changes are in store?

So if you want a front-row seat for the adventure ahead, or if you feel like part of the Remnant and don’t want to feel so lonely, or if you agree with Rusty Reno that I “[exemplify] the decadence and dysfunction of today’s public discourse” and you crave such decadence

— or if you just want to continue to receive canine updates — I would be honored and grateful if you subscribed. Contra Reno, I promise to keep the nudity tasteful and integral to the plot. And we’ll never sell or share your email with anyone. Ever.

You can sign up for it here.

Canine Update: It’s been quite a week. The Fair Jessica has been out of town since last weekend, and my daughter’s been crashing on finals, so the beasts and I have had a lot of quality time. Whenever Jessica — whom they love more than me — is gone, they get super needy and worried. I knew it was going to be rough when Pippa watched Jessica get into an Uber from the window next to the front door and started to whimper and cry. They follow me from room to room as if they think I might somehow escape if they lose visual contact with me. If I leave the house, even to take out the garbage, they greet me upon my return like I’m their East German family reunited after the Wall came down. The other night, Zoë even found it necessary to become a cliché and eat my daughter’s homework. But I’m doing my best to burn off the anxiety with extra long perambulations and workouts in the mornings and the evenings. And Kirsten helps enormously with the midday workday walks — and swims. Perhaps Pippa’s forced independence from the mater familias is even causing her to stick up for herself more. The other day at the creek, she didn’t let the big dogs get her ball. The only problem is that the eau de chien after their midday visits to the creek can assault the nostrils with an almost Sex Panther intensity. They are holding up their end by constantly keeping the crows at bay, and Zoë is helping in other ways, like burying treasure for a rainy day and procuring much needed supplies. All she asks demands in return is adequate scritching.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Hollywood’s Georgia paradox

Trump can’t blame Mueller for his approval ratings

On Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton

The latest Remnant, on bears

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Wednesday links

Relatable robot

cc: SMOD

John Wick 6

Imperial March

Dog detectives

Radioactive Giant Clams

Lake Erie’s salt mines

Who among us

Vicious wolves

Keanu

The horror…

Cursing Elmo

So you’re lost in the woods…

And you had a bad day…

Bored teens launch operation space

Fossilized school of extinct fish

Chocolate conching and cement mixing

Aretha Franklin’s handwritten wills

Elon Musk’s satellites cloud the night sky

Weird fabrics

New global measurements

Neptune’s tiny moon

LeBron James loves candles

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you having this read to you while you white-knuckle the steering wheel trying to get to wherever you’re going for the weekend at the pace of Zeno’s arrow),

We’ve had so many good times. The volcano lancing, the sweatiest-movie-ever polls, the homage to women’s prison movies, and of course, our debate about the best necrophiliac gay-porn title to describe the Florida recount (“Hanging Chad” was my pick). I feel like Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)” should be playing in the background as we flash back to scenes like the first time I walked into the National Review offices wearing my spaghetti-strainer codpiece. (Note: I’m evoking the song’s perceived meaning of wistful nostalgia from its presence in TV show finales and graduation parties, not its actual, slightly harsher meaning.) That look on Priscilla Buckley’s face!

I’m getting all verklempt because this is my penultimate “news”letter under the National Review shingle, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m sitting in my car in a parking lot for some nature preserve out in Bethany, Delaware, smoking a cigar and trying to keep the glare of the sun both out of my eyes and off my laptop screen, which makes me a kind of sundial. It also makes me more than a bit melancholy. But as Bill Clinton said when the intern wet T-shirt contest started to drag on, I must persevere.

Certainty, True and False

I recently listened to an outstanding episode of EconTalk on the topic of certainty. It inspired me to buy Robert Burton’s book on the topic, which I’ve only been dipping into because I’m still working on George Will’s — so far, wonderful — magnum opus on conservatism. The main takeaway of Burton’s On Being Certain: Believing You Are Right Even When You’re Not is that certainty is not always what you think it is. More to the point, in your brain, certainty is a feeling. As Burton puts it:

The message at the heart of this book is that the feelings of knowing, correctness, conviction, and certainty aren’t deliberate conclusions and conscious choices. They are mental sensations that happen to us.

If you’ve never had the sensation of knowing you are right about something — a line from a movie, the year something happened, the airspeed of an unladen swallow — only to find out you were completely wrong, you are probably a very scary person who shouldn’t be trusted with large earth-moving equipment or fissile material.

I have a love–hate relationship with certainty. I often cannot stand people who inveigh against certainty as if it is a great evil. My go-to example of this is Anthony Lewis’ thumb-sucky (the thumb is silent) “Big Conclusion” of his career. He said: “Certainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft.”

The first response to this, which would cause one of Harry Mudd’s android friends to implode, is “Are you certain about that?”

Certainty, like dogma, is one of those things that people hate only when they disagree with what people are certain (or dogmatic) about. Certainty about evil things is almost always evil (even when good people are mistakenly certain about it). Certainty about good things can lead to evil if applied poorly (see The Bridge on The River Kwai). But certainty is not an evil thing in itself. I am certain that slavery is bad. I am certain that torturing puppies for fun is bad. My certainty about such things doesn’t make me an enemy of decency any more than being certain that decency is generally a good thing.

When people insist certainty is bad, what they really mean is that closed-mindedness about things that should be open questions is bad. But again, even here, that’s a judgment call. As the guy from Internal Affairs says in NYPD Blue, “everything is a situation.”

Burton makes a persuasive case that Rashomon situations, where witnesses differ over the same event, aren’t just the product of different people having access to different facts or perspectives — like the blind men and the elephant. They are also a byproduct of the fact that our brains take in the same information differently depending on a host of factors. The seasoned warrior who’s lived through a dozen firefights will remember a fresh battle differently than the rookie who has never been in such a situation. The soup of hormones and emotions that the veteran has learned to control but the newbie hasn’t experienced will result in a different recording in their mental hard drives.

It’s important to note that while each of the blind men around the elephant have reason to be sure the trunk is a snake or the tail is a tree, none of that changes the fact that the elephant remains an elephant. The fact of the pachyderm doesn’t care about the feelings of the blind men (though it might be annoyed at being felt up by a bunch of dudes). The elephant’s ontology isn’t dependent on their phenomenology.

 

Everyone on the planet can be certain that two plus two equals five, or, for that matter, Phyllis Diller’s hat; it won’t change the fact that two plus two is four. In other words, as Agent Mulder likes to say, the truth is out there, regardless of what’s in our heads. If truth was made by feelings, planes wouldn’t fly — at least not reliably. That’s because if the science “works,” it works regardless of how we feel about it (sorry, Social Text). Moreover, scientific knowledge accumulates in roughly arithmetic fashion, but political or social knowledge only advances in fits and starts. Every generation, we have to reargue the case for democracy or civil rights, but we don’t have to start from scratch on the boiling point of water or the airspeed of that unladen swallow.

Bad Certainty

Where I agree with the critics of certainty is that certainty can be dangerous. Other than anger, few things define a mob more than the collective feeling of certainty. Like a flood, it swamps decency and bursts through the levee of the law.

Even in science, certainty closes off avenues of inquiry, which is why the phrase “settled science” is a font of mischief and closed-mindedness. But science has procedures to test certainty. In a sense, the most important discoveries in science aren’t the first ones, but the second ones — when the results are replicated by someone else, often by someone else who wants to disprove the first.

This points to why I have become so entrenched in my Hayekianism. Hayek understood the problems with certainty intimately. Technocrats, planners, and leaders of mobs are certain that they know the truth and try to impose it on the rest of us. For Hayek, the market is a process of discovery, as is tradition. No individual person can possibly know all the variables that go into a price. Competition lets actors discover the price of something. It’s not technically science, but it works in a similar way. Every certainty is tested by players in the game and in the process productivity and innovation are made possible. Traditions form through trial and error creating social tools that solve problems. Sometimes those traditions outlive their utility like, perhaps, Chesterton’s fence. But the first key to deciding why a tradition should go is to first understand why it emerged in the first place.

The Perils of Social Justice

Vox’s Dylan Matthews has an interesting article on how Raj Chetty, a popular and serious economist now at Harvard, wants to change the way we teach economics.  He’s taking dead aim at Harvard economist Greg Mankiw’s introductory text book and course (EC 10), which in Matthew’s telling are benchmarks of traditional (capitalist) economic theory.

Reading through Mankiw’s introductory textbook, one gets a sense that economics is the study of supply and demand. Reading through the syllabus for Chetty’s Economics 1152, one gets a very different sense of the field. The economics he describes is, essentially, a kind of applied statistics, an attempt to use quantitative data to answer social questions. 

Later, Matthews writes:

[Chetty’s] class attempts to be clear about what economics can, and cannot, tell students about public policy. If Ec 10 tells students that minimum wages are inefficient, that taxes harm growth, that free trade lifts all boats, and so on, Ec 1152 tries to draw a sharp distinction between empirical fact and moral values. 

I’m not dismissive about all this. It’s obvious from the piece that there’s a lot of interesting and even important stuff going on here by serious economists. But the clear upshot, from both Matthews and Chetty is that economists should be taught first and foremost as a tool of social justice.

The way economics is taught is “very different from the sciences, where as a kid you have a sense, it may not be very precise, but that people try to cure cancer,” Chetty says. Matthews adds: “He wants to give students a sense of the kind of economics that cures: that cures inequality, that identifies and fixes bad schools.”

Matthews says this “shift could change economics itself, by attracting a new breed of students who are intrigued by the field’s new empiricism, not put off by its mathiness and high theory.” He adds: “It could make economics departments more diverse, and more open to new perspectives from women and students of color.”

Among the many remarkable things going on here is the notion that this is a remotely new idea. For much of the 20th century, progressives argued, pushed, and cajoled for precisely this interpretation of economics as a tool for social justice (whether they used the term or not). This was the worldview of John Dewey and the progressive intellectuals who believed they were smarter than the markets. This is why many looked with envy at countries like the Soviet Union. Stuart Chase, who would become one of the most prominent New Deal intellectuals, visited the Soviet Union in 1927 and expressed his envy of the great experiment unfolding. In America, “hungry stockbrokers” make all the decisions, while in the Soviet Union, it was economists and social engineers (then not a pejorative term) “informed by battalions of statistics” with “no further incentive than the burning zeal to create a new heaven and a new earth which flames in the breast of every good Communist” were using numbers to impose their certainty from above.

No, I’m not saying Chetty, Matthews, or any of these people are Communists, but as Russ Roberts is quoted in the article:

“Numbers don’t speak on their own,” he warned. “There are too many of them. We need some kind of theory to help us decide which numbers [to] listen to. Inevitably, our biases and incentives influence which numbers we think speak the loudest.”

The numbers are the elephant. As Tom Sowell noted on my podcast recently, numbers can mislead if you don’t know the why behind them. For instance, consider the black poverty rate. Sowell notes in his Discrimination and Disparities that “despite the high poverty rate among black Americans in general, the poverty rate among black married couples has been less than 10 percent every year since 1994.” He asks, “Do racists care whether someone black is married or unmarried?”

Scientists describe how things behave with a high level of confidence because behavior can be observed, chronicled, tested, etc. Scientists are far more humble about questions of “why.”

Among my problems with the logic of social justice is that its practitioners start from the answer and then look for the right questions to fit it. They start from the conclusion that women make less, on average, than men because of sexism, and then they design questions that confirm the conclusion. Inequality is bad because shut up, it just is. Inequality exists because capitalism is cruel and bigoted at its heart.

The world should be a better place than this. And if it’s not, the reasons are an indictment of the system, not the free choices made by individuals or the political choices made by enemies of the market. Capitalism is always to blame because there’s some perfect alternative just waiting around the bend to replace it.

For instance, the Washington Post recently ran an article on the sh**show — often literally speaking — that is San Francisco. That once-wonderful city has been run not just by Democrats, but very liberal Democrats for decades. The mayor is a Democrat. The most powerful politician in America, Nancy Pelosi, represents it. The governor is a Democrat — from San Francisco. The state legislature has a supermajority of Democrats. And, the people themselves are overwhelmingly Democrats. And the reason San Francisco is a hot mess is, apparently, capitalism.

“This is unregulated capitalism, unbridled capitalism, capitalism run amok. There are no guardrails,” says Salesforce founder and chairman Marc Benioff, a fourth-generation San Franciscan who in a TV interview branded his city “a train wreck.” 

The New York Times’s Farhad Manjoo should be praised for this piece, which makes up somewhat for his recent liquidate-the-billionaires column: “America’s Cities Are Unlivable: Blame Wealthy Liberals.” I may have quibbles here and there, but at least Manjoo doesn’t start with the answer — capitalism bad — before asking the right questions. Capitalism doesn’t create insidious zoning laws and the like, humans do. Yes, capitalism makes some people rich enough that they can manipulate local politicians for their own ends. But again, the blame for the policies rests not in capitalism but in the human actors restricting capitalism for their own ends.

Anyway, my kid wants to go get lunch and go to the beach now so I’m going to wrap up. I’m not certain about a lot of things, but I’m certain that’s more important right now.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: The Fair Jessica is leaving town for a week when I get back, which means there will be a lot of quality time — and quality video — of me and the beasts over the next week. If you’re feeling stressed, might I recommend watching a minute plus of Dingo-scritching. It’s very Zen. Followers of the canine duo are fond of noting how different the two are. It’s not quite a little bit country, a little bit rock and roll. It’s more a little bit backwoods fighter and a little bit goofy aristocrat. But I do wish more of each would rub off on the other more. I wish Zoë cared less about getting into scrapes with other dogs and just pursued harmless passions as Pippa does (and no, trying to kill bunnies doesn’t count). Likewise, I wish Pippa stood up for herself a bit more. In recent weeks, Pippa’s let herself get mugged by Samson, a sweet lab (I know that’s a little redundant). I’m told that after one egregious robbery, Pippa did give Samson a piece of her mind. But I don’t think Sam was chastened. I did laugh when I saw that both Zoë and Pippa were like “What’s wrong with this guy?”

Anyway, I gotta go. But in case you were worried, Pippa is very skeptical of Bernie Sanders.

ICYMI

Last week’s G-File

The last-ever Game of Thrones GLoP

My last-ever Game of Thrones take

How Roe v. Wade warped the abortion debate

This week’s first Remnant, on Generational Warfare

The silliness of the generational conflagration

This week’s second Remnant, on Iran

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Sushi stories

Mascot struggles

Sea sketches

Lord of the Rings > Game of Thrones

Game of Thrones > Game of Thrones

Brushes with Mengele

Romania from above

Monks bring back old beer recipe

Rats take over NYC

A wild story

Alligator on alligator action

Hiding from cats

Astronaut farts

Who among us…

Herbal remedies

Mail hype

Scary robot

Deep-sea lantern fish have a weird way of seeing colors

Bacteria can be created with manmade genomes

YouTube now has a summer camp

Mixed race children in the Third Reich

Medieval kings regulated the fish market

Dunkin’ Donuts’ new nail polish line

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of the Democrats not running for president. Let’s have lunch),

And then there were 24.

Of course, you normally don’t say “And then there were X” when the number increases. You’re supposed to say it in such situations as when your softball team has been kidnapped by a Moldovan blood-sport ring. You sit in your dank holding cell beneath the streets of Chisinau, watching as your buddies are taken away in ones and twos to fight to the death with tire irons and shovels for the amusement of the Moldovan illuminati until it’s just you and a once-pudgy, urine-soaked accountant who’s become a lean, death-dealing gladiator and has decided the only way to survive is to accept that this is the only life he knows. You hear the outer door open and see burly men drag in the bloodied corpses of both your former first baseman and your centerfielder and dump them in the corner. Then one of them comes to the gate of your cell and says “Si apoi au fost doi” — Romanian for “And then there were two.” A macabre grin appears on the accountant’s face.

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right. There are now 24 Democratic presidential contenders, give or take any who may have announced since I emailed this to NRHQ.

One of the things I find amusing is how each candidate must come up with some unique qualification for why they should be president that sets them off from the others. Some are just platitudinous — Joe Biden’s experience — but some are awfully niche:

Cory “Almost Spartacus” Booker says he’s “the only senator who goes home to a low-income, inner-city community” in Newark.

Michael Bennet says, “I have a tendency to tell the truth to the people I represent in Colorado and I want a chance to do that with the American people.”

Kirsten Gillibrand explains that what sets her apart is the fact that “as a young mom, I’m going to fight for other people’s kids as hard as I would fight for my own.” She’s 52, by the way.

John Hickenlooper is going for the crucial magical-realism bloc. “I’m running for president because we need dreamers in Washington, but we also need to get things done.”

At this rate, I think the 30th candidate will say “I’m running for president because I rarely wear underwear, and when I do, it’s usually something unusual.”

Oh, I left out Bill de Blasio, who says that his unique contribution is his bully-fighting superpower. Of course, that’s not his only superpower, he also has the ability to make evidence of his superpowers invisible to the general public. It’s a very niche superpower.

De Blah-sio

I have a fair amount of confidence that after today, I won’t need to write about Bill de Blasio again, save perhaps in passing, à la: “The overflow from the Biden event was so large, the crowd butted up against the dunk tank, where another 2020 hopeful sat, unable even to persuade the locals to throw the ball at the target. After an hour, he remained dry, save for the heavy coating of sweat drawn from the beating midwestern sun and more than a few of his own tears drawn from anticipation of the political beating to come.”

Now, I don’t want to get locked-in; he could say or do something so spectacularly dumb that I will be compelled to comment — occupational hazards of the pundit trade and all that — but that will be a judgement call, not a necessity. As I suggest in my column today, I think he’s a remarkably unserious candidate. Yes, that’s been said in this space about other candidates, one of whom is currently in the Oval Office, but say what you will about Donald Trump, he had a gift for drawing contrasts with other candidates.

(Before I continue, I love sentences like that. Years ago, a friend of mine came up with a bunch of statements one could say about the GOP that would sound positive to people who wanted to hear something positive and negative to people who wanted to hear something negative. One example he offered: “With Ted Cruz, the GOP finally has the leadership it deserves.” I’m not a Cruz basher, but I still find that funny. “Donald Trump has a gift for drawing contrasts” makes me chuckle, too.)

The reason it is very unlikely that de Blasio will replicate the success of Donald Trump in the Democratic primaries is that he cannot offer any contrasts that matter. He isn’t entertaining, he’s tiresome. He isn’t charismatic, he’s unctuous. He talks like the president of a small liberal-arts college, spouting clichés plucked from a flier on an assistant professor of Peace Studies’ door. He seems convinced that the glassy expression on the faces of the students and faculty in the audience is awe, not a soul-numbing tedium that is a few desperate heartbeats away from resorting to self-harm just to feel something again.

That’s not to say there aren’t interesting things about the man. His habit of sleeping late is amusing, even charming. The possibly unfounded rumors that every day is 4/20 at Gracie Mansion are fun. His honeymoon in Castro’s Cuba is so on the nose that Tom Wolfe would have cut it from an updated version of Bonfire of the Vanities (perhaps renamed Bonfire of the Chronic). The fact that he married a lesbian is legitimately fascinating, though I’m not sure how it will play in certain quarters of the left given that converting gay people to heterosexuality is not as popular as it once was.

Stork v. Ferris

But the most interesting — and disturbing — thing about de Blasio is that he is such a conventional politician. In my column, I argue that he’s a Ferris Bueller — someone who jumps in front of an existing parade and thinks he’s actually leading it. I’ve used this analogy before, and I have a longtime reader who always emails me — including this morning — to say I’m getting my movies confused. He thinks I’m talking about Animal House, specifically this scene with Stork (played by Douglas Clark Francis Kenney, one of the co-founders of National Lampoon):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1v0jB3OswM&feature=youtu.be

But this is wrong. When Stork takes over the parade, he actually does take it over, leading the entire marching band into a dead-end alley. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen, I know Stork, sir. And Bill de Blasio is no Stork. De Blasio is a Bueller because all he does is lip-sync the words to someone else’s song and dances for the crowd.

And that’s what I mean about what’s disturbing about de Blasio. There is not an original bone in his body. He’s a sponge of woke platitudes, acquired over a lifetime of shared pleasantries with disgruntled left-wing academics, activists, red diaper babies, and rent-control Maoists. The sponge is boring. But what he’s soaking up is more than a little terrifying, because it reveals what’s in the atmosphere around him. After all, the conventional wisdom is that de Blasio is frustrated that the Democratic party has moved leftward toward his worldview, and he’s not getting credit for being there first.

The very first words of his presidential announcement video — i.e. the central message of his campaign — are: “There’s plenty of money in this world, there’s plenty of money in this country, it’s just in the wrong hands.”

Let that sink in, like a cliché through the blood-brain barrier in de Blasio’s skull.

Bumper-sticker socialism

When Proudhon said that “property is theft,” he had something of a point. He wasn’t talking about all property, but land specifically in the tradition of Roman law. And if you check the video of history, you could find more than enough evidence to make the case that the land owned by aristocrats and royals was taken from somebody else at some point.

Marxists took the phrase “property is theft” — which Marx himself criticized — and turned it into “capitalism is theft.” This incredibly stupid aphorism — no doubt tattooed between the shoulder blades of some Antifa thug (the irony that it was paid for with the red blood cells of capitalism, money, was probably lost on him) — is predicated on the Marxist idea of the “surplus value of labor.” This potted notion holds that all of the value in a widget comes from the workers on the widget assembly line. The inventor of the widget, the investor in the inventor’s idea, the managers and engineers who figure out how to make the factory cost effective, and the salesmen who hawk the widgets add no value. So all of the profit from each widget sale is theft from the laborer.

I don’t want to get even deeper in the weeds (“Did someone say ‘weed’?” —Hizzoner). But among the myriad ways this idea is ridiculous is that the ultimate value of a widget is determined by the price it can fetch on the market. Without a market, it has no real price. And without a price, there is no possibility of profit, or even compensation for labor — unless the state decides to take resources from someplace and reward unproductive labor. That’s how real socialism works, which is why socialism is theft.

Which brings me back to de Blasio’s spongey sputum. The idea that there’s “plenty of money” to do the stuff we want and it’s just in the wrong hands is literally the logic of the bank robber. Its pernicious radicalism is stunning on the merits, but it’s all the more gobsmacking that a banal political opportunist sees political opportunity in spouting it. I know I keep quoting Wayne Booth’s definition of rhetoric — “the art of probing what men believe they ought to believe.” But the idea that this is something a conventional Democratic pol should say is incredibly disheartening. When Bill Clinton admitted that the government could return the budget surplus to taxpayers, but that this would run the risk of taxpayers spending the money the wrong way, it was considered a modest gaffe. It worked on the same assumption of de Blasio’s — that “the money” out there belongs to the government, and what you get to keep is a question left to the politicians. But de Blasio takes it further. Because at least Clinton was talking about money that was already in the treasury. De Blasio seems to think he’s running to be the ringleader in a heist movie.

That de Blasio is seen not as a radical fringe candidate but a sad sack trying to catch up with the cool crowd is a damning indictment of the Democrats, but also of defenders of the free market for being unable to foster a climate where such statements would be seen as the insipid prattle of an irrelevant stoner.I would be more impressed with de Blasio if he were a Stork, but I find him more worrisome because he’s a Ferris.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: Not much to report this week. The struggle to keep the beasts clean amidst all the rain has been particularly intense. The mud and surging creeks are just too much to resist, particularly for the spaniel. This means going to the hose more often and occasionally the full shampoo job. The main problem here is that there’s a little-known rule in the Human-Canine Compact of 12,000 b.c. (subsequently modified and amended) that if you over-bathe dogs, they will punish you by rolling around in extra awful stuff, like deer poop, dead things, etc. Both Zoë and Pippa have exercised their rights under this clause this week, and they made no apologies for it. As I think I said last week, I am heartened by the fact that some folks on Twitter are confessing that they are actually on #TeamZoë. I mean, the dogs don’t care. One of the defining features of doggy goodness is that they don’t care about such things. Still, I sometimes feel bad for Zoë, who in many ways is a vastly more interesting creature than Pippa. I love them both, but Pippa is a girl of very simple tastes, emotional states, and desires. Zoë is full of mystery and contemplation But what’s very weird for the Fair Jessica and me is how so many people now think Zoë is so “chill” and “mellow.” I understand why folks think that, but it’s just funny, because for the first few years Zoë was easily the most difficult dog we ever had or even knew. It took years of training and mellowing to get to the point where she reliably comes when called and doesn’t get into trouble. I sometimes miss the wild child, until the memories come flooding back in. And then I realize how much better off we are now.

ICYMI

Last week’s G-File

A follow-up to my G-File

Bill Barr didn’t break the law

My appearance on the Acton Institute podcast

This week’s first Remnant, from and about Chicago

The second Remnant with incoming AEI president Robert Doar.

The latest GLoP Culture podcast

On Bill de Blasio’s presidential campaign

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Monday links

Debby’s Friday links

Wow!

Concrete explosion

Best places to find Bigfoot

Cool find

Kids these days

Awesome

Barr’s bagpipes

And I found you, flightless bird…

Black ball mystery

The words people look up on Mothers’ Day

Dr. Strange and Medieval alchemy

What color is a tennis ball?

Doris Day heroics

Penis probe

Stress balls being destroyed

Endgame behind the scenes

How starfish walk 

Stories from the set of Mad Max 2

And from The Mask

Free cats

Misplaced Uranium

Getting your citizenship at McDonald’s

Dnieper River from space

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of you having a constitutional crisis),

A hundred years ago, if you wanted to tell a lot of people across the United States that the people of North Dakota had secretly been replaced by enormous bipedal otters in human skin suits, it would have been extremely difficult to pull it off. There were probably a dozen, maybe two dozen, people who could possibly afford to buy ads in newspapers in every state and town to warn everyone that “North Dakota is only the beginning!” and “The Otter people are coming for you!”

There were probably another dozen people sufficiently famous or important that if they held a press conference in New York unveiling the terrible news that there was an Otter Man Empire rising up from within, the press could be relied upon to get the news out fairly quickly.

Of course, most of the coverage would be along the lines of:

Talk of Impeachment Roils Washington as President Harding Has Breakdown

Sees ‘Mammalian Conspiracy in Dakotas’

Not since former president Wilson’s stroke has official Washington been more concerned about the mental capacity of the commander in chief. At his hastily called press conference on Monday, the president warned of a “weasel menace” and “otter occupation.” “They will take the food off your table and eat it on their soft bellies while swimming in our lakes and rivers,” the president said as aides endeavored to remove him from the rostrum. “They’re here! They’re living amongst us already with their wee beady eyes!”

But at least the story would get out.

Things changed with the radio. (Fun fact: 1920 was the last year when the cutting-edge communications technology for political campaigns was recorded speeches on records you played on the gramophone.) By the 1930s, the number of people capable of warning large numbers of people across the country of the unfolding Ottergeddon probably increased to the low hundreds. Of course, it would still take work. Radio was mostly a regional communications technology where “national” shows were relayed over networks and the like.

More to the point, if a radio host tried to get the truth out, the company he worked for would probably fire him or turn off his microphone before he could rally the militias under the banner of “Hell is Otter People.”

TV expanded the number of people who could technically get away with something like this, but the institutions that owned and regulated broadcast television served as a pretty reliable check on some Howard Beale–type character telling people to go to their windows and shout, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take these otters anymore!” The rise of cable expanded opportunities even more. But you get the point.

But just in case you don’t, let me make it explicit: Since the dawn of mass communication until very recently, there were strong laws, norms, customs, and institutions that served as a check on the ability to be wildly irresponsible or outright deceitful when “informing” the public. None of this is to say that newspapers didn’t print a lot of garbage or that enterprising people didn’t have success sneaking past gatekeepers with graffiti, pamphlets, newsletters, faxes, videotapes, or DVDs. But such efforts remained difficult and largely confined to the periphery.

All of that is gone now. There are now thousands, even tens of thousands, of one-man–band media operations that use big platforms to belch whatever they want out their nether regions. And that doesn’t even capture the multiplier effects from retweets and other forms of signal-boosting from allied accounts and platforms. Just the other day, the president of the United States retweeted people who in a bygone era a president would never want to be associated with.

The Price of Wealth

But before we get into all of that, it’s worth highlighting something the folks shrieking about censorship and free speech tend to overlook. I’m one of those folks like Steven Pinker, Marian Tupy, Ronald Bailey, Russell Roberts, Donald Boudreaux, Matt Ridley, and other misery-deniers who feels compelled to point out how much better we have it than people in the past. By many metrics, the average middle-class person today is richer than the average billionaire a hundred years ago. Of course, your choices in real estate would be much greater as a fat cat in 1920, but your choices in cuisine, air-conditioning, transportation, medicine, communication, etc. would be far worse or simply non-existent.

Kevin Williamson points out a scene in The Count of Monte Cristo in which the count hosts a dinner at which he serves a staggering variety of fish to his guests. How many kinds of fish in this lavish repast? Two. The count describes this largess as a “millionaire’s whim.”

The point here is that in terms of the ability to communicate — both to friends and family and the broader public — we’re unimaginably wealthier today. Wealth isn’t simply about money, it’s about the ability to do things. Financial wealth manifests itself in the expanded number of choices you have to do and have stuff. The mid-market cars of today have features that were reserved for the wealthy two decades ago and that were reserved for science fiction a hundred years ago.

Platform Luxury

The reason this is important to keep in mind is that so much of the talk about “de-platforming” has individual people borrowing arguments that once applied in practical terms to a relative handful of institutions — newspapers, TV stations, etc. — and adapting them to pretty much everyone with a Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube account. I’m not saying that’s wrong. I have long argued that the First Amendment isn’t a special right for journalists and media companies. We all have the right to commit journalism.

But just imagine how weird this debate would have seemed just 30 years ago. If a newspaper dropped a popular columnist because he started writing bigoted garbage, would so many conservatives call for the government to intervene? A few folks on the right complained when Bill Buckley rightly fired Joseph Sobran for indulging his metastasizing obsessions with the Jooooz. But I don’t think anyone called for the federal government to force his reinstatement.

I get that the current — and I would bet temporary — dominance of a few Big Tech firms makes this situation categorically different, but that insight cuts both ways. We’ve never been in this kind of situation before, and that should cause thoughtful people to have a little humility before setting their hair on fire about the obvious injustice of denying, say, Laura Loomer the “right” to spread bigoted lies and conspiracy theories about staged mass shootings on a privately owned platform. And I think it’s deeply revealing that so many people can muster blind rage for the “silencing” of people like Loomer and Milo what’s-his-name but can’t rouse themselves to criticize any of the stuff these people did or said that got them in hot water in the first place. Most of the same people wrapping themselves in the First Amendment for Milo cheer every time the president talks about opening up the libel laws and taking away broadcast licenses. So forgive me for not seeing them as champions of principle here.

Big-Tech Bogeyman

I have my problems with various Big Tech platforms. For instance, I’m open to various regulatory reforms such as making it easier to depart Facebook and take your data with you. I’m more sympathetic to stuff like the “right to be forgotten” than I used to be. But stuff like this?

Wave 1: Jones, Loomer, Milo, Watson, Robinson.

2: Posobiec, Kassam, Cernovich, Chamberlain, Draino, Fleccas.

3: Carlson, Hannity, Ingraham, Levin, Shapiro, Beck.

4: McConnell, McCarthy, Paul, Don Jr.

5: Trump.

This is Big Tech’s plan to kill conservatism of all stripes.

— Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) May 4, 2019

Come on.

And even if this were true. Even if the heads of all these outfits were secretly meeting in the bowels of their volcano headquarters to plot how to kill “conservatism of all stripes” — right before they ban the semicolon and right after they give Steve Gutenberg’s career a boost — the notion they could succeed is sophomoric nonsense betraying a wildly perverted understanding of what conservatism is. (Hint: It’s not the unadorned right to use someone else’s platform to monetize owning the libs.)

Indeed, I sometimes suspect that the paranoia overtaking parts of the right and so-called right these days stems from a sneaking terror that certain business models aren’t sustainable anymore.

Still, the hilarious thing about the calls from the right for the government to step in is that they think that will solve the problem. Yes, by all means, let’s give government bureaucrats the power to determine what speech should be permitted, they’ll always give conservatives the benefit of the doubt. You’d think the fact that Mark Zuckerberg wants the federal government to take over the task of policing harmful content on its site would give these people pause. There’s a long history of corporate behemoths wanting the government to regulate them because it not only takes risks and costs off its balance sheets but also makes them too big to fail.

Again, times are different today. But perhaps they are not as different as the people who believe they have an unalienable right to have their jackassery boosted over someone else’s microphone think. Back before the Internet, writers and other public figures understood that certain obligations came with both the right and the privilege to use someone else’s newsprint or TV cameras. Don’t lie. Don’t be a jerk. Don’t encourage bigotry and thuggery. These rules weren’t just professional codes of conduct, they were cultural codes of conduct — codes at the heart of the best forms of small-c conservatism. Violating these codes had consequences not just professionally but socially. But now we live in a time when any consequences for our own asininity are definitionally unjust. I fail to see how that’s a trend conservatives should celebrate, never mind fuel.

Who’s a Right-Winger?

Last week I wrote that I wanted to talk about the brouhaha over Louis Farrakhan being lumped into the “right-winger” category in The Atlantic, the Washington Post, the New York Times, Politico, and elsewhere. A lot of conservatives took great umbrage over the designation, and they certainly have a very good point. Left-wing activists routinely praise or refuse to repudiate the deranged dapper bigot. Not long ago, Bill Clinton shared a stage with him. Meanwhile conservatives have denounced Farrakhan for decades. But whenever Farrakhan prattles on about the perfidious and satanic bagel mongers and conservatives call on liberals to repudiate him the way liberals are constantly calling on conservatives to repudiate David Duke, the media reverts to the “Republicans pounce” formulation.

Even if I were inclined to, I wouldn’t defend these outlets, because they are clearly guilty either of laziness or the well-known habit of believing that bad equals right-wing.

But some of the defenders of calling Farrakhan right-wing have a point. This can get a bit confusing and weedy so if you’re not interested in conservative taxonomy, feel free to skip ahead to the canine update.

“Before the Reformation,” wrote Lord Hugh Cecil, “it is impossible to distinguish conservatism in politics, not because there was none, but because there was nothing else.”

Skipping ahead, after the Reformation, we got the Enlightenment.

Friedrich Hayek, in his famous and famously abused, essay “Why I Am Not a Conservative” writes:

Conservatism proper is a legitimate, probably necessary, and certainly widespread attitude of opposition to drastic change. It has, since the French Revolution, for a century and a half played an important role in European politics. Until the rise of socialism its opposite was liberalism. There is nothing corresponding to this conflict in the history of the United States, because what in Europe was called “liberalism” was here the common tradition on which the American polity had been built: thus the defender of the American tradition was a liberal in the European sense. This already existing confusion was made worse by the recent attempt to transplant to America the European type of conservatism, which, being alien to the American tradition, has acquired a somewhat odd character.

What we often call “classical liberalism” was originally a left-wing phenomenon — to the extent the “left” and “right” labels had any meaning outside 18th-century France. It stood opposed to the closed systems of throne, altar, and guild.

The liberals — before some of them carried their ideas to a tragic excess that transformed them from liberals into radicals — championed reason, individualism, free minds, free trade, and democracy or republicanism.

To varying degrees, and with more than a few setbacks, the liberals eventually won the argument in France but more decisively in England, the Netherlands, and Scotland. Their greatest triumph, as Hayek notes, was in America, the first nation to be founded from scratch on (heavily English-influenced) liberal ideas and ideals. Then socialism emerged, and suddenly the liberals were cast into the role of right-wingers of a sort because they were now the defenders of an existing order rather than rebels against the old one. The liberalism that both Marx and Mussolini railed against was the “Manchester liberalism” of free trade and free markets.

But back when they were still the rebels, the “right” of the “counter-enlightenment” repudiated the universalism of the early philosophes and their peers across the channel. Joseph de Maistre, a brilliant ultramontane monarchist conservative of the old type, grounded his opposition to the Enlightenment not just in religious orthodoxy and tradition but in what we would today call “identity.” “Now, there is no such thing as ‘man’ in this world. In my life I have seen Frenchmen, Italians, Russians, and so on. I even know, thanks to Montesquieu, that one can be Persian. But as for man, I declare I’ve never encountered him.”

Other conservative opponents of liberalism argued that class and aristocracy were part of the natural order. People were born into a certain station in life, and each station came with a different menu of rights, responsibilities, and privileges. (With the rise of “scientific racism” — an unfortunate offshoot of the Enlightenment — these atavistic arguments were retrofitted in the name of “race science”).

Such arguments have an ancient conservative pedigree, more ancient than anything found in American-style conservatism, which is at least partly rooted in an adherence to the Founders’ animosity for titles of nobility and monarchy.

Confusing things even more was the rise of nationalism, national-socialism, and Nazism. For Communists, the operating rule was that they had a monopoly on what counted as the left. Hence socialist and nationalist movements not loyal to Moscow were dubbed “right-wing” or, at first, “right-wing socialism,” according to Stalin’s “Theory of Social Fascism.” Through the magic of Marxism, classical liberals, Manchester liberals, Monarchists, traditionalists, anti-Communist progressives, and socialists (including John Dewey, Norman Thomas, and FDR), and anyone else to the “right” of Communist fellow travelers and useful idiots were dubbed “right-wing” or “fascist.” A similar but mostly unrelated phenomenon occurred domestically in the U.S. In the 1930s, all opponents of Roosevelt were labeled “right-wing” even if the criticisms came from labor unions, free marketers, or syndicalists like Father Coughlin.

This classification system eventually broke down a good deal after World War II, but there are vestigial bits and pieces all over the place. For decades, American progressives have wanted to see in their domestic conservative opponents aspects of “right-wingness” borrowed from these old classifications. Capitalism, which depends on classically liberal notions (and a force for the liberation of women and minorities), is still “right-wing,” we’re told, because it’s a tool of the white man to keep rich white men rich and everyone else poor.

Another confusing variable is that as the Left embraced identity politics and popular-front thinking, opponents of “the system” were operationally part of the Left if they were “oppressed” in some way. This is why knobs like Jeremy Corbyn see no contradiction between their socialism and their support for Islamic terrorists, various Communist insurrections, and other supposed freedom fighters against the hegemonic power of America, the capitalists, or the Jews (though that’s all redundant in Corbynist eyes). Tribal loyalties of “outgroups” trump ideological commitments almost every time. Tell me who your enemies are, and I’ll tell you who you are.

Enter Louis Farrakhan. The Nation of Islam — which isn’t really Muslim — is a bizarre ethno-nationalist cult. Like neo-Nazis and alt-righters, they see the world as divided between good races and evil ones (“6,600 years ago” an evil scientist named Yakub invented evil white people in a lab, according to the NOI. Among the problems with this theory: The number of years since this horrible crime has never changed in nearly a century of Nation of Islam teaching). If Farrakhan’s goofball, Otter-insurrection level stupid theories of black racial supremacy were trotted out by white people for white people, today’s progressives would have no problem denouncing him in heartbeat. The Nation of Islam under Malcolm X ridiculed the essentially classical-liberal arguments of Martin Luther King Jr. Heck, the Nation of Islam tried to form an alliance with the American Nazi Party in the 1960s because they had so much in common.

What makes everything such a hot mess now is the emergence of the alt-right from the swamps it has lurked in for decades. Thanks to the signal-boosting of social media and a mainstream media eager to give them greater prominence, as well as boneheaded right-wing defenders suffering from their own tribal popular-frontism, we now have a visible faction of so-called conservatives who subscribe to views that would be perfectly welcome within the Linda Sarsour coalition if they came out of the mouths of racial-minority crackpots like Farrakhan.

So in a sense, I have no problem with calling Farrakhan a right-winger so long as the person doing it actually applies such distinctions rigorously. Of course, that’s not what is happening. If classical liberalism and traditionalism in the Anglo-American tradition are right-wing, then Farrakhan is not a right-winger. If racial essentialism and hatred for classical liberalism and Anglo-American traditionalism are right-wing, then I’m not a right-winger and neither are most American conservatives.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: Zoë’s been a little under the weather lately, and we’re not sure why. We think she might have hay fever or something like it. She occasionally makes these weird wheezing noises that are bit disconcerting and she’s been a bit Jeb-like in her energy levels. We’re keeping a close eye on it. Pippa also seems to be getting a bit stiffer after big workouts, so we have to moderate a bit more than she’d like when in the heat of things (not that kind of heat). But both of them are still having a lovely spring. But with spring hijinks comes heightened expectations. They want to be outside constantly and do not have a full appreciation that I have other demands on my time. I am heartened that some people are rising up to demand more time for Zoë in my Twitter feed. Even Zoë seems to realize the mismatch. The thing is, Zoë has not only mellowed, she really is hard to manage for video purposes. When all a dog wants to do is play ball and play in mud or water and ideally do all three, it’s pretty easy to get good video. Meanwhile when Zoë only wants to sniff, chew flowers and grass, hunt varmints or rough house with someone her own size, quality footage is elusive unless you luck into it. But she did get to play with Sammie this week. And they both have plenty of energy for the truly important stuff.

ICYMI
Last week’s G-File

On Game of Thrones

This week’s Remnant

Where is the real Democratic Party?

Washington’s secret: No one knows anything

And now, the weird stuff.
Debby’s Wednesday links

Debby’s Friday links

Bees!

Nebraska Man > Florida Man?

Florida woman disagrees

Gator disagrees

Leonardo Da Vinci’s claw hand

Best places to face the void in D.C.

Audiences reacting to Eraserhead when it was first released

Wasps are smart

Who is Taylor Swift, really?

The Pokémon region

Inside a scam call center
What did the Romans know?

!@#$

Michael Crichton weeps

Beautiful Barryland

Who among us…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including Jacob Wohl, who might need help with the big words),

I’m leaving in a little while to chaperone a New York City weekend get-together for my daughter and 15 other 16-year-olds. So . . . pray for me. This might mean that this week’s “news”letter is not only abbreviated but also a bit snitty.

Speaking of snitty — and I don’t mean the eighth dwarf —  I really don’t want to write about the Bill Barr brouhaha bedeviling the Beltway Brahmins, but alliteration beckons and beguiles, perforce the professional pundit proceeds with perhaps pusillanimous, perchance pugnacious, pontification on the pending pertinent predicaments.

Sorry, I won’t do that again.

You know that feeling when you and your fellow Knights Templar are sitting around drinking absinthe-flavored Fresca watching turtles play chess, but no one else notices that the bigger turtle, which is actually a rare breed of parrot that likes to wear unlicensed Phish concert T-shirts, brings its queen out way too early? No wait, that’s a different feeling. A somewhat related one is when everybody is screaming about stuff you don’t think is scream-worthy.

That’s how I feel about this Barr stuff. On the substance, I mostly fall in with my colleagues on this one. Bill Barr stands accused of a heinous cover-up. But he didn’t actually cover up anything. He wrote a letter that characterized the findings of the Mueller report in terms that were favorable to the president, but not inaccurate. The monster! He then released the report less than a month later with minimal and, by most objective accounts, perfectly reasonable redactions.

In the long history of attorneys general playing the role of political fixers and cronies, this doesn’t seem to amount to much. George Washington’s first — “handpicked” — attorney general, Edmund Randolph, served as a political operative and confidante of the president. JFK appointed his 35-year-old, unqualified brother to run interference for him. FDR’s first AG was a former head of the DNC who spent much of his tenure concocting dubious constitutional arguments to give the boss wartime powers over the economy. If you’ve seen Boardwalk Empire, you probably know that Harding’s AG, Harry Daugherty, was a piece of work.

Give Me Narrative or Give Me Death

Anyway, Eli Lake asks a good question:

So what are Democrats so upset about? Is it that they lost a precious 25 days — from March 24 to April 18 — to spin Mueller’s findings to their liking? This is worse than Watergate! They will never get those news cycles back.

E. J. Dionne has the answer: Yes, that is exactly what they are upset about:

It’s not good enough that a redacted version of the report was eventually made public. For 27 days, the debate over Mueller’s findings was twisted by Barr’s poisonous distortions that implied a full exoneration of President Trump. Many public statements and much punditry were devoted to insisting that Trump’s opponents owed the president an apology, that the Russia matter was never what it was cracked up to be, that the president was free and clear. 

Back to Eli:

This complaint is not only picayune but also hypocritical. Since Trump won the 2016 election, the narrative (that word again) that he might be a Russian asset or may have conspired with Russia has been a near article of faith for the resistance. If Democrats can chastise Barr for spinning Mueller’s report for 25 days, then why can’t Republicans ask why Mueller didn’t end all the speculation about a Trump-Russia conspiracy as soon as he found out it wasn’t true? 

Much like that time the border patrol opened my car’s trunk during my Bolivian-tree-frog-smuggling phase, a few things jump out at me.

The first is that Eli says it was 25 days and E. J. says it was 27. I will not adjudicate this because I was promised there would be no math. But I am tempted to split the difference Salvador Dali style and say it was melting clock number of days.

Second, I think E. J. has a point, I just think it’s a strange one to get so angry about. Barr did throw a monkey wrench into the gears of the juggernaut of the media-industrial complex. I have no quarrel with folks who think Barr overstepped in an effort to blunt the spin of the report. But Mueller declined to make a call on obstruction, leaving that up to Bill Barr. He decided not to pursue charges of obstruction for debatable, but certainly defensible, reasons. Once he made that decision, it would be odd for him to lend aid and comfort to those who would disagree with it no matter what.

But the really amazing part is the way the imperative of narrative is overpowering everything else. I’m with Eli in being a little exhausted with the thumbsuckery about narratives these days. But this is remarkable. Barr’s “cover up” amounts to accurately describing the conclusions of the Mueller report, but not in a way that would have chummed the water for the media and the Democrats.

This is a categorical change in the way we normally talk about scandals. Dionne — along with many others — is sincerely outraged that pundits were denied their preferred column fodder for 27 days. Mueller himself also seems perturbed that the Barr letter contributed to a narrative that was less hostile to Trump than the one he wanted. And, to be honest, I get it. I think the Mueller report is far more damning of the Trump administration than the pro-Trump narrative-crafters claim. But successfully winning a battle in an ongoing spin war is not a “cover up,” never mind a “crime.”

The assumption seems to be that a great opportunity to gin up public outrage was lost by Barr’s chicanery and that it now unfairly falls to the Democratic House to make its case on the merits. I get why partisans would be pissed off about that. I can recount countless examples of Bill Clinton winning spin battles with similar “cheating” during his impeachment struggles. But at the end of the day, winning a spin cycle is not an affront to the Constitution.

One last thing. I do think many criticisms of Barr have some merit, but I am deeply skeptical of the various theories about his motivations. All of this talk about how Trump has finally found his Roy Cohn or Eric Holder strikes me as another form of narrative maintenance. If someone does something that is beneficial to Trump, it must be proof that they’ve gone over to the Dark Side or some such. But it still strikes me as possible, indeed probable, that Barr’s motivations are nobler. Remember the anonymous op-ed in the New York Times? The author said he was one of many administration officials working to blunt or thwart the president’s “worst inclinations.” Don McGahn arguably saved the Trump presidency by refusing to do some of the “crazy sh**” Trump wanted him to do. Gary Cohn reportedly stopped Trump from pulling out of NAFTA and a trade deal with South Korea by snatching the paperwork from his desk. I know too many people in the administration who see themselves as doing the right things despite Trump, not because of him, to immediately assume everyone in there is a less stupid Jacob Wohl.

It is not obvious to me that Barr’s actions aren’t consistent with these kinds of efforts. Who knows what Barr had to do to get Trump’s permission to release the Mueller report in a timely manner? The widespread assumption is that Barr wrote that memo about the Mueller probe as a way to curry favor with the administration. Maybe. But it’s also possible that he sincerely believed the Mueller probe was fatally flawed on the merits, as many of my friends around here believe as well. Maybe he is trying to salvage the Department of Justice as an institution. The public facts make this seem preposterous to people who think that anything that is good for Trump must not only be bad but also come from bad motives. Barr has certainly taken a reputational hit since he became attorney general — a job he didn’t need — but we don’t know what he is getting for paying that price. But the history of all this has yet to be written, and I’m willing to hold off final judgment until it is  — or at least until we have better facts than the ones currently on offer.

Various & Sundry

There’s a bunch more stuff I wanted to write about today, but I don’t want to start stuff I won’t be able to finish before I have to head to New York. So my unconventional take on the media’s labelling of Louis Farrakahn as a “rightwinger” will have to wait. As will my fairly conventional theory about the head of Alfredo Garcia.

Meanwhile, if you’re still feeling intellectually peckish after this “news”letter, you might want to nosh on my lengthy essay for the special capitalismpalooza issue of National Review. It may well be my last piece for the magazine — as a senior editor. I hope to still grace (and be graced by) NR’s pages in the future.

It’s been a good week for The Remnant podcast. For episode 100 (?) I talked with the great Thomas Sowell. For episode 101 (?) I finally convinced my bride, The Fair Jessica, to talk with me about her career as an author and ghostwriter, her roots in Alaska, our shared dog-love, and a host of other topics (warning: I apparently giggled a lot). Going by the feedback on Twitter, it was one of the most popular episodes ever. The latest installment features my friend and colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty, discussing his book, staggered identity, Ireland, and the disenchantment of the world.

Canine Update: The middle-age mellowing of Zoë continues apace. Kirsten our indispensable canine perambulator sent Jessica and me a text the other day: “Wow, so ZZ found some ancient bone and Obi [a member of the pack] went to investigate and all she did was tell him off. That would have been a face ripping offense once upon a time. I’m kind of proud of her.” Some evidence of Zoë’s meddling might just be a misreading of the data. She is a little overweight (we’re working on it), and so she’s lost a step when it comes to chasing rabbits and squirrels. It could be that when we get her back down to fighting weight, she will be able to add to her metaphorical necklace of critter skulls. Still, she seems more content with smelling (and occasionally eating) the flowers than she used to be and more content with scritches too. Though she still considers guarding the pack a non-negotiable part of her portfolio, even if she sometimes thinks Pippa should fight her own battles. Meanwhile, Pippa remains the indefatigable ball of energy she’s always been. As she matures, that puts a bit more pressure on us to regulate her butt-waggling spanielness since she came without any factory-installed regulator. Regardless, they’re good dogs, no matter what Comfortably Smug says. And Gracie is a good cat. When she chooses to be.

ICYMI

Last week’s G-File

This week’s first Remnant, with my wife

The NRA in disarray

A special Game of Thrones GLoP

More on Game of Thrones

This week’s second Remnant, with MBD

Will the right defend economic liberty?

Is the right forgetting Hayek?

And now, the weird stuff.

University title generator

What is STEVE?

Fun ferries

Answering the important questions

Hedgehog spike wound

Gross

Also gross

Classic storytelling

This seems excessive

The ventriloquism museum

Good news

Cocaine shrimp

Nature is scary

https://twitter.com/BrendanClancy/status/1123582887339724801

Don’t cheat at marathons; this guy will catch you

Lake Erie’s mystery beast

Yeti discovered; crossover Bigfoot erotica to follow?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you in prison who would read this “news” letter to inform your decisions come election time in a Sanders administration),

Here’s my succinct request to Donald Trump and all the Democrats and Republicans trying to unseat him.

Stop trying to unify the country.

I’ll wait a minute for those of you who need to clutch your pearls or breathe into a paper bag to compose yourselves.

Okay. Now, if you felt a certain amount of horror, revulsion, or rage at that statement, ask yourself why you want the country unified. (If you felt a sudden burst of sexual arousal, I think you stumbled on the wrong “news”letter.)

Seriously, why is unity good? Think about it, please.

Now as I’ve written a zillion⁴ times, I think the desire for unity is an evolutionary adaptation. So there’s no need to review all that again, except to say that this doesn’t mean unity isn’t valuable. Love in all its forms, friendship, loyalty, altruism, and all sorts of other things we value are good — or can be good — and they have genetic components too.

But what is it exactly about unity that you think is so damn important? If your answer is simply that “disunity” is bad, that’s understandable. But is that true either? I mean, can’t 300+ million Americans disagree on some stuff without everyone getting weepy? Moreover, it seems to me we’re slicing distinctions as thin as the garlic in the prison cell dinner scene in Goodfellas when people say diversity is among the highest virtues but disunity is one of the greatest vices. If diversity — real diversity — is good, then it is irrefutably the case that some disunity is good too. In a condition of maximum diversity and maximum unity, it follows that all of these very different people — different races, genders, religions, abilities, traditions, etc. — would have to all think alike.

There’s something downright Orwellian about the prospect of shouting at people “We must unite around our celebration of our differences!”

Who the hell wants to live in a world like that?

Unity is Power

Perhaps you desire unity because unity is required to get important things done. This is wholly defensible, and even admirable, depending on the sincerity of the person saying it. Despite what you may have heard, Washington has plenty of decent, civic-minded, and patriotic politicians, policy wonks, and journalists who decry partisanship for the best of reasons. They want to deal with real problems, from the national debt to climate change to various threats from abroad, and they are stymied by the unrelenting ass ache of the current political climate.

But note how the argument here is instrumental or utilitarian, not aesthetic, psychological, or philosophical. We need to unify to get X done. In other words, unity is a tool, a means to an end, not a good in itself. Fire is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Unity is the political equivalent of fire — a source of power. This is why the desire for unity became an evolutionary imperative. The unified group was better at hunting and defeating its enemies than the group lacking a sense of common purpose.

So here’s the thing: That means unity is only as good or bad as the goal you want to attain with it. No one likes a good heist movie more than I do. The gang gets together to rob a bank or casino, and they pull it off by sticking together. But all reasonable people understand that in the real world, that’s an immoral goal (hypotheticals about ripping off bad guys — gotta love Kelly’s Heroes! — notwithstanding). Really unified rape gangs are still evil. Indeed, their evil is compounded by their unity.

What is true of rape gangs is also true of evil regimes. Was Nazi Germany less evil because it could plausibly boast of the sense of unity and common purpose felt by so many Germans? In fact, mobs tend to be evil, or at least dangerous, even when they are unified around an ostensibly noble purpose — because unity can be an intoxicant, causing us to surrender our individuality to the group.

But the unity here is merely the mixer in the intoxicating cocktail. The 100-proof stuff is the power that comes with the unity. For instance, Democrats routinely wax nostalgic for the 1930s and the 1960s as times of great unity. As a historical matter this is crazy talk. The 1930s were a time of violent labor strife and protest. The 1960s were even worse, with domestic terror attacks, political assassinations, and massive protests filling the headlines. This is a great example of how unity is the mask power wears to justify itself. What liberals are nostalgic for is not unity but the kind of power they had back in the good old days. They can’t say, “Man, I really miss having the kind of power to do what we wanted,” so they gauze it up with false phantasms of national unity lost.

This is a particular weakness of intellectuals who, like all humans, tend to crave what they don’t have. That’s why they look enviously on regimes that put into action what they advocate here. Tom Friedman drooling over Chinese authoritarianism is one example. Stuart Chase — the New Deal egghead who marveled over the Soviet Union’s accomplishments — captured this spirit well when he wrote, “Why should the Russians have all the fun of remaking a world?”

What the Founders Did

The Founding Fathers were profoundly aware of the perils of unity, which is why they set up the first government in human history deliberately premised on the idea that disunity was valuable. Sure, the Romans and others had systems where power was shared between a monarch or emperor and some kind of parliament. But those systems emerged organically as compromises between different power centers. The kings of England did not want to be weak compared to their French peers. Circumstances, not design, made them so.

The founders studied the past with an eye to seeing what might work for the future. They subscribed to Edmund Burke’s view that “In history a great volume is unrolled for our instruction, drawing the materials of future wisdom from past errors and infirmities of mankind.” The founders put on paper what history had ratified by experience. “Example is the school of mankind and he will learn at no other” Burke said, in perhaps my most overused — and favorite — Burke quote.

The founders wanted to create a new kind of country where individuals — and individual communities — could pursue happiness as they saw fit. They didn’t achieve that instantaneously, and we still don’t have it in meaningful respects, but they set up the machinery to make it achievable. This doesn’t mean the founders were against unity in all circumstances. Their attitude could be described as in necessariis unitas, in non-necessariis libertas, in utrisque caritas. In essential things unity, in non-essential things liberty, and in all things charity. In other words, they understood that unity was a powerful tool, best used sparingly and only when truly needed. Odds are good that this was — or is — the basic, unstated rule in your own family. Good parents don’t demand total unity from their children, dictating what hobbies and interests they can have. We might force our kids to finish their broccoli, but even then we don’t demand they “celebrate broccoli!” I wish my daughter shared my interest in certain things, but I have no interest in forcing her too, in part because I know that’s futile. Spouses reserve unity as an imperative for the truly important things. My wife hates my cigars and has a? fondness for “wizard shows.” But we tend to agree on the big things. That seems right to me.

What is fascinating to me is that in the centuries since the Enlightenment, unbridled unity, enforced and encouraged from above, has been the single greatest source of evil, misery, and oppression on a mass scale, and yet we still treat unity like some unalloyed good.

Just Drop It

Okay enough of all that. Let’s get to the here and now. Joe Biden promised this week that if he’s president, he will unite the country. Newsflash: He won’t. Nor will any of the other Democrats. Donald Trump won’t do it either — and certainly hasn’t so far. George W. Bush wasn’t a uniter. Barack Obama promised unity more than any politician in modern memory — how did he do?

For the reasons spelled out above, our system isn’t designed to be unified by a president — or anybody else. The Era of Good Feelings when we only had one party and a supposed sense of nationality was a hot mess. It’s kind of hilarious to hear Democrats talk endlessly about the need to return to “constitutional norms” in one moment and then talk about the need to unify the whole country towards a singular agenda in the next. Our constitutional norms enforce an adversarial system of separated powers where we hash out our disagreements and protect our interests in political combat. Democracy itself is not about agreement but disagreement. And yet Kamala Harris recently said that as president, she’d give Congress 100 days to do exactly what she wants, and if they don’t she’ll do it herself. You know why Congress might not do what she wants it to do? Because we’re not unified on the issue of guns. In a democracy, when you don’t have unity, it means you don’t get the votes you need. And when you don’t get the votes you need, you don’t get to have your way. Constitutional norms, my ass.

So here’s my explanation for why I don’t want politicians to promise national unity. First, they can’t and shouldn’t try. Tom Sowell was on the 100th episode of my podcast this week, and one of the main takeaways was that we shouldn’t talk about doing things we cannot do. Joe Biden has been on the political scene since the Pleistocene Era. What evidence is there that he has the chops to convince Republicans to stop being Republicans? When President Bernie Sanders gives the vote to rapists and terrorists still in jail, will we be edging closer to national unity? When President Warren makes good on her bribe of college kids with unpaid student loans, what makes you think this will usher in an era of comity and national purpose?

But more importantly, when you promise people something you can’t deliver you make them mad when you don’t deliver it. I’m convinced that one of the reasons the Democrats spend their time calling every inconvenient institution and voter racist is that they are embittered by Barack Obama’s spectacular failure to deliver on the promises he made and the even grander promises his biggest fans projected upon him. When you convince people they’re about to get everything they want and then you don’t follow through, two reactions are common. The first is a bitter and cynical nihilism that says nothing good can be accomplished. The second is an unconquerable conviction that evil people or forces thwarted the righteous from achieving something that was almost in their grasp. The globalists don’t want us to have nice things! The corporations keep the electric car down! The Jooooooooz bought off Congress! The Establishment pulled the plug! The Revolution was hijacked! The system was rigged! The founders were Stonecutters!

Finally, whenever you make things that are supposed to be above or beyond politics and make them part of an explicitly political agenda, you inevitably convince the people opposed to that political agenda that your invocations of grander themes are simply political. If you think nationalism is a great thing, using it to sell tax cuts, school choice or religious liberty will inevitably make opponents of those things dislike nationalism even more. The same applies to patriotism, religion, and every other grand concept.

Church attendance is plummeting in the United States. I think there are many reasons for this, ranging from popular culture to the decline of the family to our education system. But one important reason is that Christianity is increasingly seen as an adjunct of the Republican party. From the AP:

David Campbell, a University of Notre Dame political science professor who studies religion’s role in U.S. civic life, attributed the partisan divide to “the allergic reaction many Americans have to the mixture of religion and conservative politics.”

“Increasingly, Americans associate religion with the Republican Party — and if they are not Republicans themselves, they turn away from religion,” he said.

Yes, I understand this is a complex phenomenon. Some of this is a result of the fact that the Democrats have grown so rhetorically hostile to religious liberty and religion itself (they booed God at the 2012 Democratic Convention!). The GOP certainly shouldn’t be equally hostile to religion for the sake of national unity. But it’s also a product of the fact that many prominent spokesmen for Christianity have made it entirely reasonable to think that you have to be a loyal Republican to be a good Christian. They quote scripture to defend Republican’s sinful behavior and they quote scripture to condemn Democrat’s sinful behavior.

When politicians push national unity in the service of a political agenda, they are insisting that politics is the only metric that counts in determining what it means to be unified.

This country is wonderfully unified on all sorts of questions. For instance:

The vast majority of Americans agree that believing in individual freedoms, such as freedom of speech (91%), respecting American political institutions and laws (90%), accepting people of diverse racial and religious backgrounds (86%), and being able to speak English (83%) are somewhat or very important to being American.

We’re also unified on the myriad other apolitical questions. I don’t have the polling in front of me, but I am confident that the vast majority of Americans believe that families are important, education is good, good manners should be celebrated, slavery is wrong, crime should be punished, children should be protected, hot dogs are not sandwiches, the Super Bowl is fun to watch, Fox shouldn’t have cancelled Firefly, they’re all good dogs, etc. The best way to make these issues sources of division is for politicians to turn them into partisan issues.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: It was a stressful week for the pups, as they had to go to the vet and get poked and prodded. Both of them have good reason to hate the vet. Zoë spent a long time there in the ICU when she almost died from parvo. Pippa had surgery there a couple years ago. But I think they hate the vet because, for dogs, it must smell like the abattoir in Hostel or Saw. Pippa in particular is a nervous wreck there. She is always happy to get in the car. But she knows we’re at the vet in the parking lot outside and she cowers in the back like she’s going to be dragged to her doom. Anyway, they both made it out alive. But I got a call yesterday saying they both tested positive for the “presence” of Lyme Disease. This has happened before — the test merely says there’s evidence they had it in the past. We don’t think they have it now. But, to be sure, the vet wants us to bring in urine samples. I asked how I should do this, and the tech on the phone said, “Oh just bring some Tupperware and slip it under at the right time. First of all, not with my Tupperware, thank you very much. Second, I’m not going into the details about how the girls pee, but there are some particular logistical problems in getting the kind of clearance required. Moreover, even if that could be worked out, if I lunge at one of my dogs with some Tupperware at the precise moment they are peeing, there are many things they might do, but the one thing I am certain they would do is: STOP PEEING. Anyway, we’ll figure it out.

Meanwhile, they’re both good otherwise (though we’re going to put Zoë on a stricter diet, which probably means she will try to augment her caloric intake with some neighborhood varmints). Zoë is getting her scritches, Pippa her ball, Zoë is stopping to eat the flowers, and Pippa is getting her ball, Zoë is heaping scorn on Pippa, and Pippa is getting her ball. They’re both getting in some swim time, though Pippa is also getting her stick. Oh, and Samson beat her to the ball, which was good for her spirit.

ICYMI . . .
Last week’s G-File
On Game of Thrones
This week’s first Remnant, a nationalism “discussion”
The Democrats’ impeachment morass
My appearance on the Bulwark podcast
The 100th episode of the Remnant, with Thomas Sowell
The latest GLoP
I appeared on Jon Ward’s excellent podcast, The Long Game, in which I talked about a bunch of stuff, including that other thing I’m doing.
Friday column
And now, the weird stuff.
Scientists reactivate mammoth cells
The internet finds a homeless man’s lost pet rat
HoverCopter
61 year old wins 544 mile race in Australia
Company offers to ‘Fake a Vacation’ with doctored photos
So what happened to Julian Assange’s cat?
If you’re going to burglarize a home, don’t get stuck in the chimney
Pick up your trash or go to war
The Easter Bunny has started hanging around a tough crowd
Texan cavemen ate rattlesnakes
Piranhas have migrates to the UK
Please don’t use iguanas as weapons
I said no pictures!
The rat is a parrot
Potato AirBnB
Chimpanzee discovers social media
Rare live footage of G.K. Chesterton

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Redacted: Harm to Ongoing Matter),

One of the things I tell new parents is something that was told to me when my daughter still had that new-baby smell: “Prepare for long days but short years.” No statement more succinctly captures the exhaustion, excitement, and melancholy nostalgia that come with parenthood. I have no doubt whole books have not covered it more eloquently.

This week I had a similar sensation thinking about the two big news stories of the week: The fire at Notre Dame and the release of the Mueller report.

Time may be linear, but our comprehension of it isn’t. All around us events are taking place that we do not perceive as events because they are moving at a pace that we really can’t comprehend. Imagine if you could make a film of the planet earth from its birth to its demise. If you played the movie fast enough, the formation of mountains would look like terrifying clashes between continents. The breakup of Pangaea might look like a jigsaw puzzle thrown into a hot tub. Playing the film a million times slower would still probably make the rise and fall of ancient redwoods seem like nothing more than the instantaneous and momentary emergence of some colors on a canvass. Think of it this way: If you reduced the entire history of the planet to a 24-hour cycle, humans don’t even show up — some 2 million years ago — less than one minute before midnight.

Against such a backdrop, the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris emerges and disappears too fast for the naked eye. As for the controversies about Donald Trump, never mind the Mueller report, they take up a fraction of time words cannot capture.

But if you slow things down enough for the mind to take it in, Notre Dame is like a mountain. Not quite eternal in a literal sense, but eternal enough by human standards. As I mentioned the other day, I once wrote and produced a documentary called Notre Dame: Witness to History (I don’t really recommend it; I wasn’t a great TV producer and I certainly didn’t have a great budget). The title was clichéd but accurate. Notre Dame was the central location for so much of French and really Western history, its scars and embellishments are almost like rings in an ancient tree recording whole eras of Western history. Signs of the Huguenots’ assault on the Church — and the Church’s assault on the Huguenots — can be found in its nooks and crannies like the tiny indicia of a plague of locusts in a bisection of an ancient oak. The last time the Spire burned, it was at the hands of the Jacobins who briefly turned Notre Dame into a “Temple of Reason.”

Putting History on a Stop Watch
I bring all this up for a few reasons, not least because the “process” for this “news”letter amounts to taking my brain pan and upending it like a kid emptying his toy chest in search of the Lego pieces required to build a time machine. The controversies of the day are important, but they are like the crises of parenthood: Hugely important in the moment, but likely to turn into the faintest squiggles in the tree rings of time. That’s not foreordained, of course. There are daily crises with your kids that can turn into existential ones — as anyone who’s taken their child to an emergency room can attest — which is one of the reasons the days of parenthood can feel so much longer than the years.

I’m not sure what the right terms are, but there’s an analogy here. Some controversies are important (and some are just incredibly stupid) but they are important in the moment alone. Others transcend the fierce urgency of now and apply across generations. For some, climate change is precisely such a challenge. For others, it is the civilizational friction between the Muslim world and the rest, or the rivalries between America and China. The Cold War was certainly larger than any confirmation battle or scandal.

The most worthwhile daily arguments are the ones that work within a timeline measured by more than 15-minute increments in a Nielsen report on last night’s cable ratings. For instance, Jussie Smollett’s transgressions are great for feeding the ratings beast, but they are only significant to the extent they illuminate the larger dysfunction of a culture that encourages racial hoaxes because we have turned victims into heroes. And even then, that context is usually used as a pretext just to keep jaw-jawing and preening for the perpetual outrage machine.

I’m the first to admit that it is hard to know where to draw the lines between seriousness and exploitation, or mere infotainment, particularly since this “news”letter darts back and forth across the borders like the Viet Cong running the Ho Chi Minh trail. But one of the things I despise about the current moment is how the Big Things are so often turned into just another Twitter controversy and the Small Things are elevated into existential crises of the first order.

President Trump, lacking anything like a historical memory, is fond of claiming that this or that outrage or accomplishment is the worst or best thing “ever.” “Our African American communities are absolutely in the worst shape they’ve ever been in before,” Trump declared in 2016. “Ever, ever, ever.” That might have been news to the Africans-Americans lynched in the 1920s or the Africans auctioned off in Charleston in the 1820s. I still laugh whenever I think about Sebastian Gorka ranting about the alleged FISA warrant abuses of the Obama administration. “It has to be put in the context of the history of our great nation,” he said in expert-mode. “This is 100 times bigger.” More recently he explained that the Democrats were a continuation of Stalinism because they’re coming for our hamburgers.

Western Civilization 0, Twitter 1
The other day Ben Shapiro offered what should have been an utterly banal statement about the fire at Notre Dame:

Absolutely heartbreaking. A magnificent monument to Western civilization collapsing. https://t.co/UajArjkt2g

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 15, 2019

Now, I have no problem with quibbles (and neither does Ben) from Catholics who point out that Notre Dame was a monument to the glory of God and what Catholics believe to be the One True Church as delineated in the Nicene Creed. But, I doubt any of those Catholics took offense at what Ben said. And if they did, they should probably lighten up. I’d also point out that Cathedrals were the space programs of their day (“The Knights Templar were the first Space Force”: Discuss). Cities and nations constantly competed to see who could build the tallest Cathedral — which is why most are built on the tallest ground available. The idea was both theological and political. Theologically, the idea was to get as close to God as possible. Politically, it was a desire for, well, national greatness.

Anyway, what I have a huge problem with is the bonfire of asininity that ignited from people who think “Western civilization” is a term reserved solely for the alt-right and other bigots (David French addressed the point well here). In a piece about Ben’s excellent book on Western civilization — I’ll reserve my quibbles for later — The Economist labeled him an “alt-right sage” and a “pop idol of the alt right.” To The Economist’s credit, they retracted and apologized. But the immediate assumption that praise for, or pride in, Western civilization is a species of bigotry and racism is a perfect example of the sort of civilizational suicide I describe in my own book on the subject.

So adamantine is this absurdity that some Shapiro haters actually assume he’s not actually saying he thinks the West is superior, only “tacitly” suggesting it.

I wasn't tacitly saying Western civilization is superior to other civilizations. I openly say it, because I believe Western civilization is superior to other civilizations. In fact, I wrote an entire book on the topic, in which I explain why. https://t.co/5xxT67KKj6 https://t.co/u02Ju84WmH

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) April 16, 2019

Ben might as well be standing in the center of Times Square waving a giant foam finger that reads “Western Civ #1” on it. But the idea is so offensive to some people they think he wouldn’t dare say it outright.

What’s So Great about Western Civilization?
I’ve covered much of this at length — book length but also in this G-File — elsewhere. So I’ll go in a slightly different direction.

Forget calling it Western civilization for a moment. Instead think of a kind of party platform with a bunch of planks:

• Support for human rights
• Belief in the rule of law
• Dedication to democracy
• Free speech
• Freedom of conscience
• Admiration for science and the scientific method
• Curiosity about other cultures
• Property rights
• Tolerance or celebration of technological and/or cultural innovation

I’ll be generous and stipulate that 90 percent of the people who are offended by pride in Western civilization actually believe — or think they believe — in most or all of these things. They just have a problem connecting the dots, so I’ll try.

Where do they think most of these ideas come from? Where were they most successfully put into action? What civilization today or in some bygone era manifests these values more? Chinese civilization? Islamic civilization? Aztec? African? Indian? Persian? Turkish?

I’m not trying to belittle any of those cultures, nor deny their contributions to human history. I’m not even trying to argue – here, at least — that Western civilization is objectively superior in some scientific or God’s-eye-view sense. As with the debates over nationalism, there’s no arguing — and no reason to argue — with a French patriot about whether or not America is “better” than France. I would think less of a Spaniard who didn’t love Spain more than he or she loves France. It’s like arguing whose family is better, we love what is ours. As Bill Buckley liked to say, De gustibus non est disputandum.

But the weird thing is that many of the people who are outraged by benign nationalism or the benign pan-nationalism that is pride in Western civilization take no umbrage when someone from Iran or China says they think their civilization is best.  This of course is a manifestation of the ancient cult of identitarianism, which the best traditions of the West have battled internally at great cost for thousands of years. Saying Western civilization is great hurts the feelings of some people invested in some other source of identity. And it hurts the feelings of some Westerners because they think it’s a sign of enlightenment to get offended on other people’s behalf or to denigrate the society that gave them their soap box.

The irony is that the willingness to entertain the possibility that some other culture has something important to offer or say to us is actually one of the hallmarks of Western civilization (and the condescension with which many Americans treat other cultures is also a more regrettable side of Western culture). We “borrow” stuff from other cultures constantly, starting with Christianity itself.

This is particularly true of America, which is why our menus read like the requested meal plans from a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly. This profound lack of self-awareness manifests itself most acutely among progressives who wear their Europe-envy on their sleeves. Oh, they’re so much more civilized over there. Well, what civilization do you think “over there” is part of?

Western civilization is a work in progress because that’s what civilization means. If you want a Cliff’s Notes version of what my book was about it’s simply this: Every generation, humans start from scratch. As Hannah Arendt said, every generation Western civilization is invaded by barbarians — we call them “children.” As babies we come into the world with the same programming as Viking, Hun or caveman babies. These barbarians need to be civilized and that’s a job primarily done by families, which is why the days are long and the years are short. We teach barbarians how to be citizens in the broadest sense of the word, through formal education, religious teaching, social norms and the modeling of proper behavior. In other words, we assimilate people into a culture.

As Alan Wolfe writes in his discussion of Immanuel Kant:

As cultivating a field yields a better product, the arts and sciences cultivate us by improving the quality of who we are. No wonder, then, that when we look for a term that expresses the way we improve upon nature, we use “culture,” which has the same root as “cultivate.” And civilization—expressed in German not only as Zivilisation but also as Kultur — far from corrupting our soul, makes it possible for us to bring good out of evil.

The way you sustain and improve upon a culture is by fostering a sense of gratitude for what is best about it. You celebrate the good in your story while putting the bad in the correct context. Conservatism is gratitude, and as I noted on Fox the other night, one of the most compelling things in reaction the fire of Notre Dame was seeing how many people recognized their own ingratitude for this jewel of their own civilization. The Church was in peril because the French took it for granted. But, like that feeling one gets deep in the soul when a loved one in peril, millions were overcome with a sense of what they might lose. And now France is devoting itself to restoring what was almost lost.

Has Western civilization made mistakes? Sure (cue the Monty Python skit about Rome). Terrible things have been done in its name, a statement one can make about every civilization that has ever existed. But to say that the mistakes define us more than the accomplishments is suicidally stupid. And if you subscribe to those planks I mentioned above, I’d like to suggest that telling people they’re bigots for taking pride in the civilization that brought them forth better than any other is like taking a sledgehammer to the soapbox you’re standing on.

And to do it in the name of virtue tweeting is one of the purer forms of asininity.

Various & Sundry
Canine Update: Pippa’s limp keeps coming back when she overdoes it, which is a challenge since Pippa only has a handful of settings. Overdrive, waiting for opportunities for overdrive and recharging after overdrive. Zoë in her middle age has a richer emotional range. We’ll be taking her to the vet if it persists. Some readers have suggested it might be from an infection like Lyme disease. We’ve seen that sort of thing before. Zoë once had a terrible infection from a tick bite, that cleared up very quickly with the right medication, but it was scary how fast and severe it came on. But they remain decidedly happy beasts. Though it seems like they have a problem with Bernie Sanders.

Some of my Twitter followers have protested about Gracie, AKA the good cat, getting equal time in my feed. They think it’s “off-brand.” I get it, but she’s such an exceptionally good cat (admittedly graded on a feline curve) and besides my daughter lobbies on her behalf so much, that I think you’ll just have to put up with it. Besides, I find her contempt for the dogs hilarious.

I’ll be on Meet the Press this Sunday.

Oh, and if you’re curious about what’s going with my next thing, I’m afraid I can’t share much right now. But you should check in to my personal website from time to time for updates. The first such update is here.

And have a Happy Pesach and/or Easter!

ICYMI…

Last week’s G-File

On Notre Dame

On Trump’s lib-owning

Skinflint Beto

Bernie and abortion

This week’s Remnant

Mueller report muddle

My Monday hit on NPR

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Thursday links

Beautiful photo of horses galloping through a lake

Florida man steals a police car immediately after getting out of jail

Asteroid bombing

Drinking beer helps you lose weight… why hasn’t that worked for me?

Real life battle-royale

Marvel Studios’ secrets revealed

Haunted Appalachian mountain with disembodied voices

Doc Oc on the roof

Ouch

The most relatable Florida man yet

Bedazzled skeletons

Giant sea cucumber species named Cthulhu

Brad Pitt, Baby Shampoo, and a Unitard: The Story Behind That Meet Joe Black Car Scene

Scientists partially revive disembodied pig brains

65 year old Florida woman fends off half naked burglar with baseball bat

Selfie deaths are getting out of hand

Australian real estate company’s raunchy property advertisement

Oil rig workers save a dog 135 miles out to sea

What would actually happen if Thanos snapped?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you about to be dropped off in a sanctuary city),

Damn Jim Geraghty. Damn him straight to hell, or Newark airport, whichever comes first.

He basically wrote about what I wanted to write about this morning, in spirit plagiarizing what I was going to write.

One of the reasons our politics is so contentious and angry is that we can’t agree on what the rules are. Some of us want to argue that certain policies are good and certain policies are bad. But a vocal chunk of Americans don’t really care about what the policies are; they would much rather argue that their side is right. They don’t care if these are the same policies or comparable to those they denounced earlier. The system is clogged with bad-faith arguments, hypocrisy, and flip-flopping.

Jim runs through a bunch of examples, the most obvious being the follow-the-bouncing-ball standards for Julian Assange, a hero for much of the American Left when he was undermining American national security and putting Americans and allies in jeopardy, but a villain when he helped Vladimir Putin damage Hillary Clinton.

Even as a I write this, I can hear a lot of conservatives saying, “Yeah, damn hypocrites!” about the Left’s changing standards.

But hold on. Assange became a hero for many on the right for the very same reasons. He was a villain for working with then–Bradley Manning for a lot of people. But that was all forgiven when he helped Putin damage Hillary Clinton.

Similar reversals can be found with regard to Vladimir Putin himself. In 2012, Mitt Romney says Russia was our No. 1 geopolitical foe, and Democrats laughed and laughed (“the 1980s called, Mitt, they want their foreign policy back,” hah-hah snort). Since 2016, lots of right-wing pundits have, like one of the Real Housewives of New Jersey with a glass of chardonnay, thrown that in the faces of Democrats who now think Russia is the focus of evil in the modern world. But the same right-wing pundits are pretty silent on the fact that Trump, and many rank-and-file Republicans, now themselves disagree with Romney. They enjoy pointing out the other team’s flips but mumble about their own team’s flops.

If it’s your view that Assange was noble for undermining the U.S. war effort or national security but evil for undermining the DNC or Hillary Clinton, then your standard for such things is entirely team-based. And if it’s your view that Assange was evil for undermining the U.S. war effort or national security but noble for undermining the DNC or Hillary Clinton, your standards are also entirely team-based.

In short, partisanship is a helluva drug.

As Jim selfishly noted before I could, this is an old story. When Republicans are in power, Democrats fret over the deficit while Republicans insist it doesn’t matter. When Democrats are in power, Republicans pound the table over the deficit while Democrats shrug. Of course, there are some exceptions, and the details of how Republicans and Democrats want to accrue more debt differ markedly. Democrats want to spend money, except on defense. Republicans want to cut spending, except in defense. Democrats want to raise taxes, but only on the rich. Republicans want to cut taxes, especially for the rich. Blah blah blah. These agendas have pluses and minuses on both sides, but concern about the deficit is something that moves with possession of the ball.

And the ball is power. For partisans, invoking principles — or simply the rules of the game — is very often a question of whether you are on offense or defense.

Of course, this stuff is so much more obvious — at least to me — and more pronounced in the age of Trump than it has been at any time in my life. But the dynamic is ancient, because it is human. The enemy of my enemy is my friend is a concept that predates modern politics and philosophy by — someone check my math — a kajillion years.

Two Cheers for Partisanship
To be honest, I’ve always had some sympathy for this aspect of partisanship. Imagine you’re a defendant in a criminal trial. You want your defense attorney to be a partisan for your side. If the prosecutor violates the rules or simply contradicts himself, you want your lawyer to point it out as aggressively and effectively possible. In other words, partisanship is often the only force that causes political combatants to invoke the rules. In sports, when the other team breaks the rules, your team appeals to the ref to enforce them. Likewise, in politics, partisans invoke the rules for their team. The fact that they do it selectively for their own team’s benefits isn’t a bug of our Madisonian system, it’s a feature. And — here’s the important part — the hypocrisy of the partisans invoking the rules isn’t an indictment of the rules. If a teammate double-dribbles, it’s entirely understandable if you don’t go running to the ref to point it out, even if five minutes earlier you pointed out the double-dribbling of a player on the opposing team.

When Bill Clinton was in the hot seat (not the one that costs extra at the Bunny Ranch), his partisans invoked the argument that even the president deserved the full benefits of the legal system. When Donald Trump was in Mueller’s crosshairs, his partisans made the same arguments. Many of these players are, by conventional political standards, eye-watering hypocrites precisely because they switched positions based upon the party affiliation of the president in peril. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the rules they were invoking were wrong. What’s wrong is the inconsistent and selective application of them.

More on this in a moment.

Partisanship has another benefit. It forces the agenda of politicians to be about something more than pure political self-interest. A party, according to Edmund Burke, “is a body of men united, for promoting by their joint endeavors the national interest, upon some particular principle in which they are all agreed.” By requiring politicians to get the approval of parties, politicians become beholden to the party that brought them to the dance.

It was Martin Van Buren who basically invented the two-party system. Van Buren was arguably the most underrated thinker in the history of American presidents. He’s underrated in part because he was a decidedly meh president according to historians, though I think many presidential scholars were distracted by his indisputably bad-ass mutton chops. He set out to create two parties that united around policy programs instead of personalities or narrow regional interests. When parties are strong, they force politicians to be beholden to the party’s agenda. When parties are weak — or non-existent — then whoever is in power is effectively unconstrained by his own side. As Joseph Postell writes:

In addition, Van Buren suggested that party nominations would prevent elections from descending into contests of personality. Understanding that Andrew Jackson was likely to win election in 1828 whether or not he was the party’s nominee, Van Buren sought to constrain Jackson’s ambition by making him the instrument of the party rather than his own ambition.

Postell quotes a letter from Van Buren:

The effect of such a nomination on Genl Jackson could not fail to be considerable. His election, as the result of his military services without reference to party, . . . would be one thing. His election as the result of a combined and concerted effort of a political party, holding in the main, to certain tenets & opposed to certain prevailing principles, might be another and a far different thing.

The best things Donald Trump has done, from a conservative perspective at least, stem from catering to the demands of the GOP or the conservative movement. He appointed judges from the Federalist Society’s list because he had to (before this was made clear to him, he was still talking about putting his sister on the court). His positions on guns, taxes, health care, defense spending, abortion, etc. are products of his transactional relationship with the institutions of the GOP establishment and the conservative coalition. The best proof of this is that he used to be pro-choice, anti-gun, pro–socialized medicine, etc.

Three Cheers for Ideology
One of the strangest things — at least for me — these days is how partisanship and ideology have become almost interchangeable terms. A day doesn’t go by where someone doesn’t tell me I am a “fake conservative” because I remain both critical and skeptical of Trump. They also call me a “RINO” — “Republican in Name Only” — as if being insufficiently loyal to the party is the same thing as being insufficiently conservative. This reasoning would have seemed preposterous to many of the founders of American conservatism who often fought the GOP hammer-and-tongs. In 1944, Russell Kirk voted for Norman Thomas, the socialist candidate, to reward his anti-imperialism. National Review was a hotbed of anti-Eisenhower vituperation. Willmoore Kendall reportedly voted for LBJ over Goldwater. Frank Meyer couldn’t find a dime’s worth of difference between JFK and Nixon, and National Review refused to endorse any presidential candidate in 1960, thanks largely to opposition by Meyer and Bill Rusher, the magazine’s longtime publisher. William F. Buckley and Nixon sparred constantly, and, while he was friends with Reagan, he certainly didn’t refrain from disagreeing with him publicly when warranted. In 1988, Buckley helped topple Republican senator Lowell Weicker by backing his Democrat opponent Joe Lieberman. You can certainly make the case that such episodes are proof of RINOism. But if you want to argue that Kirk, Buckley, Meyer, et al. weren’t conservatives, don’t be surprised when the nurse tells you it’s time for your medication.

For simplicity’s sake, let’s imagine that the totality of conservative ideology is defined by being pro-dog. You are pro-dog, and you support the GOP because it claims to be pro-dog as well. Then the Republican president starts talking about how great cats are. It appoints pro-cat people to key positions and imposes draconian leash laws in dog parks. Are you any less conservative for objecting to these moves?

Partisanship is an important source of authority, but it is best understood as a prudential one. You support a party because it is the most desirable or least objectionable vehicle for your agenda or principles. Ideology has prudential aspects, and wise ideologies take into account practical considerations of what is possible and at what cost. But ideology’s authority derives from something else: Truth. It can be revealed truth as in religion or experiential truth as discovered through the Hayekian or Burkean process of discovery over time. But the thing about truth is that it lies outside the election cycle and the vicissitudes of political fashion and circumstance.

The challenge of today is that partisanship is masquerading as principle, and principle is being denounced as a racket. Facts are becoming instrumental plot points in competing “narratives” bendable to the needs of the storyline. Kim Jong-un is a murderous thug, even if he’s friends with the president. Putin is a goon and enemy of American interests, even if he helped in the beclowning of Hillary Clinton. Tariffs aren’t paid for by foreign countries, even if the president says so all of the time. Assange and Manning are villains, regardless of the messaging problems they cause for one party or another. Sexual assault is repugnant, whether you have an R or a D after your name, and the other side’s hypocrisy in selectively being outraged about it doesn’t validate your own.

This is what I am getting at when I tell people I’ve never been more politically homeless even though I’ve never been more ideologically grounded. Taken seriously, being called a RINO doesn’t bother me one whit, because it’s true: I am a Republican in name only. If I wear a Los Angeles Lakers jersey and the team lets me sit on the bench one night as an honorary member, I would still only be a LINO.

And this gets us back to Jim’s point. Politics these days are so ugly because partisan considerations are turning into ideological commitments, and ideological commitments are becoming mere partisan tools.

Ideological commitments aren’t just the stuff of right and left, conservative and liberal. They’re the stuff of Americans. There was once a consensus about the rules of the game because Americans shared a broad idea about how the “game” was supposed to be played. Democrats now openly tout the need to pack the Supreme Court, a move that was once taught as out-of-bounds in civics class. Now it’s a great idea — but only if Democrats do the packing. If Court-packing is good, legitimate, and desirable, what is the principled argument against President Trump packing the court right now? If your answer is “But he’d appoint the wrong judges,” you’re not actually making an argument from principle, you’re using a principle as a partisan tool for power. If you’re against crony capitalism when it helps Solyndra but in favor of it when it supports sugar growers or car manufacturers, you’re not actually against crony capitalism, you’re against crony capitalism for “capitalists” you don’t like.

That’s what explains all of these double standards. They are merely tactical shifts in the name of the larger single principle: Our side should win, and their side should lose. The dilemma is that in this populist and romantic era, we no longer have any refs to appeal to enforce the rules. Because these days, when a referee rules against my team, it’s proof that he’s trying to rig the system for the other team.

Various & Sundry
This has been one of the busiest and most interesting weeks of my professional life. I was in NYC (with a detour to Wisconsin for a speech) working on that other thing. I think I’ll write an update on all that soon on my personal website. But for now, I’ll just say I am very excited and very exhausted (hence the relative paucity of jocularity in this week’s “news”letter).

I wasn’t around much for the doggers, but reports are that they were, yet again VGDs (Very Good Dogs). Many of you have asked about Pippa’s limp. It seems to be improving, but it comes and goes. Part of the problem is that once Springer Protocol Alpha is activated, Pippa basically goes numb to any physical restraints and can overdo it. It’s very hard to get her to calm down once she gets the zoomies, and when she’s doing her zooms, there’s no sign of any problem. But, as with 50-year-old cigar-smoking pundits, when the exertions end, the aches and pains materialize. But even then, Pippa is always ready to press her ideological commitments. Because they make her so happy. Zoë knows this, which is why she sometimes tries to exploit Pippa’s passions. The other day, Zoë treated a ball she found the way Ramsay Bolton treated Ricon Stark, simply as bait for Pippa in the role of Jon Snow. Anyway, they were very happy to see me last night, and Gracie at least acknowledged my return as well (I know what she wanted).

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Because I was out of town, this week’s Remnant was guest-hosted by Jack Butler. I haven’t listened yet, but I hear nothing but good things. Jack is off to run in the Boston Marathon this weekend. Wish him luck.

The latest GLoP

On Kirstjen Nielsen’s exit

On “taxing the rich”

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Tuesday links

Four bees living under a woman’s eye

Turns out, its gets worse than just bees under your eye

The Swiss decide to stop stockpiling coffee

A Florida man threatened to destroy everyone with a turtle army

Jar Jar Kinks and Grabba the Butt

Blink 182 singer’s UFO hunting academy is in a $37 million hole

Some real modern-day Han Solos

Game of Thrones’ dragon sounds are actually tortoise sex moans

TSA confiscation highlights

Filipino customs officials seize 757 tarantulas mailed from Poland

Poisonous frogs invade Florida town

Don’t neglect your goldfish, the government will come after you

Everything went wrong for Terry Gilliam’s Don Quixote movie

Giant rainbow squirrels

Real life Mary Poppins

Apparently three-parent-babies are possible now

That’s one way to ease back pain, I guess

Service with a smile creates alcoholics

Bald eagles relocate trash to suburbs

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (And victims of wind-noise cancer everywhere),

I’m sitting about a block north of the Trump Hotel on Central Park West smoking a cigar on Thursday afternoon trying to write this “news”letter. If seven-day units of time were people, this one would be wearing a Millard Fillmore mask, slathering itself with salmon viscera and running through the nearby polar-bear enclosure at the Central Park Zoo shouting “Trieste belongs to the Italians!” — which is my way of saying it’s been a crazy week.

I wrote my column today on Joe Biden and the effort to un-person him over the fact he has a long history of acting around human beings like a small child at a toy store; Oh, let me see! I just want to touch it! Can I hold that? Oooooo soft!

Now I want to be clear — not in the Scientologist sense, but in the expository sense. I dislike the entire suite of Biden mannerisms and affectations. I do not think he’s a bad person, nor do I think he’s an idiot despite the many nakedly ridiculous things he’s said over the years. Here’s how I put it almost 14 years ago (typos corrected):

He says interesting things, from time to time. I think he makes a fair point here and there. He was correct, for example, that Congress needed to have a real debate over the war. I think he has some obvious verbal intelligence. But, again, what’s fascinating — and what might be distracting some folks from seeing his underlying-yet-occasional smarts — is that he lets his ego and vanity get in the way. The man loves his voice so much, you’d expect him to be following it around in a grey Buick, in defiance of a restraining order, as it walks home from school. He seems to think his teeth are some kind of hypnotic punctuation marks which can momentarily disorient the listener and absolve him from any of Western civilization’s usual imperatives to stop talking. Listening to him speechify is like playing an intellectual game of whack-a-mole where every now and then the fuzzy head of a good point pops up from the tundra but before you can pin it down, he starts talking about how he went to the store and saw a squirrel on the way and it was brown which brings to mind Brown v. Board of Ed which most people don’t understand because [TEETH FLASH] he taught Brown in his law-school course and [TEETH FLASH] Mr. Chairman I’m going to get right to it and besides these aren’t the droids you’re looking for. . . .

I don’t like the way Joe talks (and talks and talks, occasionally using words borrowed without attribution) and I don’t like the way he touches people either. He is a space invader, as in personal space, and I generally cannot stand close encounters with space invaders. People who touch me on the arm to emphasize a point drive me crazy, and if it weren’t for the rule of law and all that, I would have stabbed a few in the forearm with a ballpoint pen on more than one occasion, including on national television.

Biden’s behavior toward women offends me, but not because of Me Too but for old-fashioned, fusty, fuddy conservative reasons. Men, especially powerful men, should not take liberties touching anybody, but especially women. I once had to take an online sensitivity course for an employer (don’t get any ideas; everyone else there did too). When the instructor explained that you shouldn’t just start giving women back rubs without their permission and that you shouldn’t keep asking subordinates out for a date after they’ve repeatedly said “No,” I thought to myself “Self, this is a great example of how we have to repackage good manners in the guise of ‘diversity training.’”

So yeah, Biden’s behavior is bad. And, I think Emily Yoffe makes a very good case that he’s getting what he deserves. As she writes, “Joe Biden is now living in the world of accusation he helped to create.” Biden reminds me of that line from The Dark Knight: “You’ll either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.” If he had checked out or simply retired from public life in 2016, he would be remembered as a hero by many of the very people now trying to weaponize his legacy against him.

So I will not cry for Joe if he’s undone by all this. But it still doesn’t feel right to me.

The Most Acceptable Bigotries
It’s funny. Progressives are quick to defend the customs and mores of non-Western peoples. They celebrate women who wear the hijab. They defend non-traditional cultures at home and traditional cultures abroad. This doesn’t bother me, really. Indeed, in some cases I often find it admirable and wish more conservatives would do likewise. But what does bother me is how this tolerance tends to be selective. For many progressives, when the practices are usefully at odds with mainstream traditional culture, diversity is wonderful. But when the practices are consistent with or — shudder — reinforcing of traditional culture, progressives are often appalled.

For example, it was revealed a while ago that Mike Pence has some onerous rules for how he behaves around women, and progressives were horrified. But Pence’s practices would be celebrated or at least defended were he a devout Muslim. Just last week Beto O’Rourke found it necessary to apologize for thanking his wife for taking the lead on raising their kids. What was he supposed to do? Denounce her for meekly accepting the traditional gender roles of the patriarchy?

This is a good example of having such an open mind your brain falls out. It also calls to mind Robert Frost’s observation that a liberal is someone who is so broadminded they won’t take their own side in an argument.

But the glib and fashionable double standard against traditionalists and orthodox Christians isn’t what I have in mind. It’s the far more widespread and fashionable bigotry against the past.

If a visitor from Sudan comes to your house for dinner, it’s simply good manners to make allowances for the cultural differences. If you go to a foreign country, it’s understood by most decent people that you should be making the lion’s share of adjustments to how people do things. The quintessential ugly American refuses to bend to — or even respect — the norms of foreign cultures, norms that can sometimes be ugly, nasty, or backward by a lot of Western standards.

The arguments in favor of deferring to foreign cultures ranges from Emily Post bromides about etiquette to swirling torrents of words about colonial this, patriarchal that, and imperial the other thing. Fine.

But now imagine that someone comes from the past, which is a kind of foreign land as well. For some people, particularly those wielding the “nightstick of wokeness,” as Peggy Noonan calls it, carrying any old values or assumptions into the present day is a form of heresy or, really, contamination. Beto thanks his wife, and the thronging wokesters shout the equivalent of “2319!” and bust out the cultural hazmat equipment.

Again, Biden’s habits are unappealing to me, and I understand why people accuse him of being insensitive to other peoples’ comfort with his antics. But there’s a remarkable amount of insensitivity going the other way as well.

Forget Biden for a moment. I’ve never understood why we immediately assume that young people are more open-minded, forward-thinking, or moral than older people. Sure, sometimes they are. But sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re just open-minded about the things they believe and closed-minded about everything else. And there are few things they are more closed-minded about than the past. I don’t just mean the iconoclastic goons tearing down statues on college campuses, I mean many generally decent and intelligent young people who seem to take it as a given that moral progress has advanced in lockstep linearity with technological progress. Today, people — at least the right people — are simply better people than those from earlier generations.

I think there’s a lot of mythmaking about how Biden simply represents a bygone style of politics that was common for men of his generation. I don’t recall Sam Nunn or Bill Bradley Eskimo-kissing anybody. And his case is by no means the best illustration of my point. But there’s just something about the smug self-confidence of the most socially awkward generation in American history, many of whom struggle to talk on the phone, never mind go on a date, asserting with moral righteousness that their customs and norms are so obviously superior. If Biden were a visitor from another country, we’d hear how charming his customs are. But because he allegedly comes from the past, it’s fine to give a full airing to your bigotry against those kinds of people.

Various & Sundry
So now I’m at the Acela waiting area at Penn Station taking in the effulgent stench of this fetid hate crime against architecture which manages the unlikely feat of looking worse than it smells, something only Harry Reid and certain neighborhoods of Gary, Ind., have accomplished. Just to give you a sense of the kind of week I’ve had: On Tuesday I had my appeal for my IRS audit; Wednesday, I had my colonoscopy. Rarely have I ever moved from the figurative to the literal in such a short period of time. I will spare you the details of throwing away all of those Paul Krugman columns during my Dark Night of the Bowl in preparation for the procedure. This is a family “news”letter after all. But then Thursday I came to New York for business reasons, and I’ll be back here all next week. At some point I’ll be able to brief you all about everything, but for now it’s time for the . . .

Canine Update: So I’m a little worried about Pippa’s workout regimen. She’s been limping a few times over the last couple weeks, and I think her age is starting to compete with her joi de vivre. Meanwhile, Zoë has been a pill. The other night, the Fair Jessica left a tray with some chicken bones on it unattended, and Zoë took one and was less than willing to give it back. A few nights before that, Pippa was snuggling in my lap while Zoë was resting in Jessica’s.  Zoë got jealous and complained, even though she was getting attention too. In a funk, she took a log of firewood off the pile and very ostentatiously made a scene about chewing on it with subdued rage. Meanwhile, out in the world, the girls are just loving the spring.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Why is the media covering for Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Is Donald Trump pretending not to know how trade works, or does he actually not know?

Why is the Guardian publishing propaganda for North Korea?

This week’s first Remnant, with David French

Trump is wrong about the border crisis, but Democrats are wrong that there is no crisis

Notes on nationalism

This week’s second Remnant, with Michael Strain

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s April Fools’ Day Links

Corgis in the garden

Inside the Panopticon

Some long-lost Raiders of the Ark footage

Ridley Scott elbow-deep in sheep intestines

Cane-wielding grandma rescues her priest

This is how werewolf transformations should be done. Take notes, Hollywood

Not even cancer can take down the mighty Tasmanian Devil

Anyone down to get drunk and shoot each other in bulletproof vests? No one?

The running of the . . . sheep?

Lemur yoga

My kind of championship

Amsterdam’s new 5-D pornographic-movie theater

Don’t try to park in LA

Skrillex protects you from mosquitoes

Lithuanian flying to Italy gets a Boeing 737 all to himself . . . imagine the legroom

Elon Musk raps about dead gorillas

I can finally tuck my kids into bed like a burrito, as they’ve always wanted

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you under sealed indictment in Chicago),

I have to write this quickly because I have to head down to the National Review Institute Ideas Summit and Basket Weaving Expo to debate — or “engage” — my friend and boss Rich Lowry on the question of how conservatives should think about nationalism. So in order to organize my thinking, I’m going to lay out my basic view here.

But before that, I have to get on my one millionth conference call in the last 72 hours (someone check my math on that). I have a lot on my plate these days, figuratively speaking (“And quite often literally speaking, too” — The Couch). Indeed, my days are a blur. (My nights, a blood-soaked terror.)

Speaking of having a lot on your plate, I made a bit of a confession last night on Twitter:

I’m not proud of this but I’ve done a good amount of off book, back room, competitive eating. I have zero doubt I could do this a lot faster than 8 hours. https://t.co/8z6wrLNAy9

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) March 29, 2019

I was no pro. Joey Chestnut or Matt Stonie could eat circles around me, particularly if the circles were made out of hot dog links. I was more like the guy at the bar who was only too eager to make a friendly wager on a game of pool, or an android happy to play stabberscotch with the Colonial Marines.

True story: In high school, some friends and I ran a booth at a Make-A-Wish Foundation fair with a hand-drawn sign that said “We’ll Eat Anything You Want If You Pay Us Enough.” No, you couldn’t scoop a Paul Krugman column off the sidewalk and get us to eat it. But we loaded a table with all manner of foodstuffs and opened the bidding. Among the highlights of my own endeavors that day: I ate a whole brick of uncooked Ramen noodles and, later, a stick of unsalted butter. I peeled the wax paper like a banana and just chewed away (though I took the second half of the stick and put it in a hot dog bun with some horseradish — that didn’t make it a sandwich by the way). It was awful. In college and my twenties, my reprobate friends and I would often issue challenges to eat very large quantities of food in short periods of time.

The last time I did the bareknuckle boxing version of competitive eating was while I was still dating the Fair Jessica.

I came back late from a night out with my friends looking sweaty and guilty. Jessica asked me, “What’s going on?”

I told her I had something to confess.

“What did you do, Jonah?” she asked, suspecting something awful.

“I don’t want to keep any secrets from you, Jessica. I consumed an entire tray of baked chicken and a beer in ten minutes. If it makes you feel better, I won like fifty bucks.”

She looked at me with that “My God, what have I gotten myself into” face that helps men want to be better men.

But enough bragging.

Back to Nationalism

For this nationalism conversation thing, it would be best if I said he’s for it, and I’m against it. But that’s misleading. I haven’t read Rich’s book yet, but we’ve chewed this over like a younger me in a chicken-eating contest enough for me to know that Rich’s position is more nuanced than that. In his big essay with Ramesh, he championed “benign nationalism.” As I noted at the time, the “benign” does a lot of work. And as Rich would concede, there are many kinds of unbenign nationalism. You could look it up.

My position is nuanced, too. While I can live with the formulation that there are good kinds of nationalism and bad kinds, I think more in terms of degrees of nationalism. A little nationalism is necessary for holding together a nation-state or a people. If there isn’t some conception of “us,” then there is no investment in the success of the collective enterprise. Countries without a sense of being a nation do not last and cannot get much done.

I don’t want to overly wallow in nuance, but sometimes even a lot of nationalism can be a good, or certainly necessary, thing. Nothing arouses the nationalist spirit more than war (and few things can arouse the spirit of war more than nationalism). That’s because from the earliest humans onward, we have evolved an instinct to unify in the face of an external threat. Our success on the food chain derives only secondarily from our intelligence. Our primary advantage was our ability to cooperate.

As Darwin noted in The Descent of Man, our capacity for altruism and cooperation was the key to the survival of our genes. “If the one tribe included . . . courageous, sympathetic and faithful members who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would without doubt succeed best and conquer the other.”

A tribe of prehistoric disciples of Ayn Rand — “this tuber is mine and you can’t have any of it!” — would not last long against a band of small-browed ruffians that worked well as a team. The John Galts of the Savannah would scream, “You’re violating my property right!” as the brutes smashed their faces in with a rock.

As G. K. Chesterton put it, “Nationalism is the consciousness of nationality; and the consciousness of nationality comes from the constant consciousness of danger.”

This goes a long way toward explaining why nationalist movements inevitably find themselves using the language of war. As I recently wrote in National Review, it’s no coincidence that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez constantly invokes World War II as a rationale for the Green New Deal.

The language of war flips a switch in our brains that causes us to drop other concerns and considerations. It’s like the episode of Little House on the Prairie when Carrie falls down a mine shaft. Everyone drops what they’re doing, forgets about property rights, commerce, or other personal priorities and rallies to save the girl. Nels Oleson, the owner Oleson’s Mercantile, doesn’t charge anyone for the lanterns, kerosene, or ropes he lends to the effort. Nobody says, “You can use my horses, but it’ll cost you five bucks.”

In times of emergency, we’re all in it together. And that’s a good thing.

But there are two caveats. The first is that emergencies do not last, and when the emergency is over, the old rules need to come back. If they don’t, then capitalism, democracy, and liberty are done for. Emergencies must be the exception to the rule, because if we make the spirit of emergency the rule, then we no longer live under the rule of law, but the rule of tyrants or mobs.

The second problem is that real emergencies must be obvious to all — or at least nearly all. There are moral equivalents to war. A girl down a mine shaft is one. A meteor heading to earth is another, as are various forms of natural disasters, zombie, vampire, and C.H.U.D apocalypses, etc.

The Allure of Power

The problem is that there are people who are very attracted to the power that comes with emergencies. Power is seductive in whatever form it takes: Emergency powers, money, Infinity Stones, the One Ring, or, as we’ve seen in the case of Jussie Smollet, the cultural power that comes with being able to claim you are a victim.

This leads people to declare emergencies when they do not exist or to exaggerate real challenges so they can do an end run around the conventional rules of democracy. There’s been a lot of the latter over the last decade or so.

My problem with nationalism is that, left unchecked, it devolves into the spirit of emergency. By placing the logic of “us” above all, it must create thems that must be defeated. It casts about for threats to justify a cult of unity. As Orwell observed, “As nearly as possible, no nationalist ever thinks, talks, or writes about anything except the superiority of his own power unit.”

It is fine to talk of “benign nationalism” being a good thing, but this is a kind of tautology. Benign simply means good. So of course, good nationalism is good in the same way that good violence is good. A policeman who uses violence to thwart a rapist is using good violence. A nation that uses nationalism to defeat Nazism is deploying good nationalism.

The hitch is that the concept of “good” lies outside the four corners of the concept of nationalism. Rich and Ramesh write that “Nationalism is a lot like self-interest. A political philosophy that denies its claims is utopian at best and tyrannical at worst, but it has to be enlightened. The first step to conservatives’ advancing such an enlightened nationalism is to acknowledge how important it is to our worldview to begin with.”

I have no quarrel with this. But think about that. Self-interest is not necessarily a personal, social, or abstract good. Serial killers act on their self-interest, as they define it. Not to go all Thomist, but my understanding of Christianity (and Judaism and conservatism and the liberal arts) is that we must use reason to inform and form the conscience to define self-interest in moral and productive ways. Nationalism is only good when it is informed, tempered, and constrained by ideas outside of nationalism.

Or as Rich and Ramesh write, nationalism “should be tempered by a modesty about the power of government, lest an aggrandizing state wedded to a swollen nationalism run out of control; by religion, which keeps the nation from becoming the first allegiance; and by a respect for other nations that undergirds a cooperative international order.”

In other words, for nationalism to be good it must be countered and constrained by the concept of the good. If nationalism were an unalloyed good — like, say, love — it wouldn’t need the adjective “benign.”

In its raw form, the only concept of the good contained within nationalism itself is the good for us. This is why nationalism is, like violence, at best an amoral concept. And like any amoral thing — violence, tools, fire, whatever — good or bad comes from what you do with it. The Iranians are nationalists; the Nazis were nationalist; Maduro, Chavez, Stalin, Castro, Mussolini, the Kims: They’re all nationalists. So were Washington, Lincoln, Churchill, and de Gaulle. What differentiated the heroes from the villains was how they deployed nationalist sentiments.

Nationalism and Socialism, Again.

My objection to the new nationalist fad is that many of its practitioners do not do what Rich and Ramesh do; they skip the part about nationalism needing to be tempered and constrained by things outside of nationalism. Championing nationalism qua nationalism is simply championing power. “Nationalism is power-hunger tempered by self-deception,” Orwell writes. “Every nationalist is capable of the most flagrant dishonesty, but he is also — since he is conscious of serving something bigger than himself — unshakably certain of being in the right.”

This is why, historically, nationalism and socialism are kindred phenomena. I’ve written dozens of times that, as an economic matter, nationalism and socialism essentially mean the same thing. When we nationalize an industry, we socialize it. And vice versa. Some doctrinaire Marxists think nationalism and socialism are opposites, because they subscribe to the straw-man concept of global Communism, or they unwittingly still subscribe to the Stalinist propaganda known as the “theory of social fascism.” Stalin came up with this notion as a way to excommunicate any socialist or progressive movement that wasn’t loyal to Moscow. He felt it necessary to promulgate his totalitarian encyclical because it turned out that lots of people liked the idea of socialism, they just also liked the idea of nationalism — hence national-socialist movements that were stealing Bolshevik market share.

From the Bolshevik/Trotskyite perspective, any nation-state that puts its interests above others is betraying the global cause. But in the real world, this is nonsense. Because once socialists take power, national interest and the self-interest of the ruling classes force the rulers to talk and govern in nationalistic ways. That’s what happened with Stalin, Castro, and every other Communist regime.

Looking Backward

Rather than rehash all of that, let’s look at Edward Bellamy.

Edward Bellamy was, by any fair accounting, a socialist. His utopian novel Looking Backward did more to popularize socialist collectivism in America than anything Karl Marx ever put to paper. When he died in 1898, The American Fabian eulogized:

It is doubtful if any man, in his own lifetime, ever exerted so great an influence upon the social beliefs of his fellow-beings as did Edward Bellamy. Marx, at the time of his death, had won but slight recognition from the mass; and though his influence in the progressive struggle has become paramount, it is through his interpreters, and not in his own voice, that he speaks to the multitude. But Bellamy spoke simply and directly; his imagination conceived, and his art pictured, the framework of the future in such clear and bold outlines that the commonest mind could understand and appreciate.

Looking Backward inspired a mass “nationalist” movement, dedicated to “the nationalization of industry and the promotion of the brotherhood of humanity.” The first Nationalist Club appeared in Boston in the summer of 1888, founded by a labor reporter for the Boston Globe. The following year it started publishing the Nationalist magazine. It didn’t take long for clubs to sprout up across the country. Two years after the publication of the book, there were clubs in 27 states and the District of Columbia. In Chicago, the Collectivist League, which had been founded in April of 1888, changed its name to the Nationalist Club of Illinois ten months later on February 12, 1889. Soon there were hundreds of such clubs. One estimate held that were some four thousand “Bellamy societies” in the United States and hundreds more in Holland, Denmark, and Sweden.

Looking Backward offers an insight into how nationalism and socialism occupy the same part of our brains, even if some ideologies try to keep them separated. Bellamy was at first reluctant to call himself or his work “socialist,” even though it was instantly recognized as such by his avowedly socialist contemporaries. “Bellamy was anxious that his plan of social and economic organization be called Nationalism because he wished to distinguish it from other and more vague forms of socialism and because it was to proceed by the nationalization of industries,” writes John Hope Franklin. Socialism for Bellamy seemed too divisive a term. Nationalism was more inclusive.

The nationalist movement died in labor while giving birth to the populist party. But the populist party gave way too much of the progressive movement which was very nationalistic. But contained within progressivism is a greater loyalty to power and the most important tool for exercising power: The state.

Nationalism isn’t statism, but left un-tempered and unconstrained, it always expresses itself as statism, and statism is the enemy of all the ideas that make America’s form of nationalism valuable and unique.

Various & Sundry

So I am writing this part after I did the panel with Rich. It went fine. You can probably find it on C-SPAN. We didn’t change each other’s minds about anything, but it was fun nonetheless.

Canine Update: The beasts are doing great. When I was writing this this morning, the girls were having a grand time, which was quite distracting. I understand that Pippa is more of an internet sensation than Zoë, but it’s important to remember that in the Goldberg household, Zoë is still the alpha dog (and Gracie is the alpha cat), even if she throws Pippa a bone from time to time and every now and then Pippa forgets. (Also, Zoë takes a nice picture, too). The important thing is they really do love each other.

Anyway, I really gotta go. So here’s the rest of the other stuff.

I’ll be on Face the Nation this Sunday (and Rich will be on Meet The Press).

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

On Mueller vindication

On Captain Marvel

The latest Remnant

On the never-ending collusion story

The latest Ricochet GLoP Culture podcast

On Democrats and climate change

And now, the weird stuff.

Your honor, I dismembered dad, but I did not kill him

High school thespians do Alien

Behold: Hover-Owl

Squirrel flung into orbit

Why women live longer than men

The dreams of a man asleep for three weeks

Not even airports can frustrate Keanu Reeves

Lewdest town names in every state

Dog suicide bridge… I’m not crying, you’re crying

Oh, Florida Man, how I love you

R2-D2 observatory

Priceless manuscript museum burns in St. Louis

Poaching is forcing elephants to evolve without tusks

A seagull imitating competition?

I take back everything negative I have ever said about Florida

Imagine hating your job so much you call the cops to get out of a shift… okay maybe it’s not that hard

Double the womb, triple the children

Uri Geller plans to stop Brexit through telepathy

Metal necrophagic Dead Sea microbes

Please get out of my car, Mr. Koala

Microscopic life is horrifying

A win for freedom

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all you whippersnappers under the age of 50),

I’m writing this from somewhere over the Atlantic. At least I hope that’s the Atlantic down there.

After watching American politics from outside the fishbowl for the last couple weeks, I feel a bit like a bartender or bouncer who works at a whorehouse and now has to return to the job after a brief respite away. The whole fetid, depraved spectacle of it, glimpsed through the distorted fisheye lens that is the steamed-up peephole of Twitter, has left me feeling a bit despondent for America.

Of course, America isn’t as unhealthy as the image through the lens. And even if she is, she is worth salvaging. America is still the last best hope for mankind — and it has pretty great Tex-Mex food, which I miss terribly.

Where to begin? Well, while I was gone, the president of the United States attacked George Conway in fairly juvenile, personal, and pathetic terms, and Conway’s wife came to the president’s defense.

I don’t want to dwell on it, because I’ve known and liked the Conways for years, and the whole spectacle is sad. I don’t care which of the three you think is the villain, heel, chump, or victim. It’s sad.

But it’s also gross — regardless of what soap-opera reality-show interpretation of this spectacle you subscribe to. I don’t care if you think it’s kayfabe, deadly serious, or something in between. It’s repugnant.

And if you can’t see that, you’re part of the problem.

America, The Series
Here’s an easier example: Eric Bolling. I have considerable disagreements with Bolling — though he’s personally always been a decent guy to me. I can certainly understand why people are critical of him. But using the tragic death of Bolling’s son as a cudgel because of a political disagreement is not simply horrible; it’s evil. It’s a corruption of the soul.

But that’s the thing: The political disagreements are the least of it now, because almost none of it is really about policy anymore. It’s all about theater.

Speaking of the theater: On Wednesday, I took my family to see Les Misérables in London. It’s not my favorite musical for a bunch of reasons, but it was a really stellar performance, and my daughter loved it.

Anyway, at the end of the show, when the actors come out to take their bow, something strange happened. Or at least it was strange to my wife and me. When the performers who played the conniving Thenardiers and also the actor who played Javert came out to a mostly thunderous standing ovation, a smattering of people in the audience booed. Both my wife and I got the distinct impression that the boos were intended for the characters, not the actors themselves (the Fair Jessica was almost certain). The actress who played Madame Thenardier even made a face when she heard the boos that suggested she’d experienced this sort of thing before.

Maybe the booers were tourist from a land where this is common. Maybe they were just joking around. But, at least figuratively, it felt like this was part of what I am getting at. The guy who mocked Bolling was mocking the character in his mind, not the actual person. These kinds of category errors virtually define our politics now. “That side isn’t just wrong, it’s evil” may not be the dominant view among normal liberals and conservatives, but it is the official opinion of the loudest ones.

Ever since I wrote my book, I’ve been going on about how we watch politics as if it’s a form of entertainment. Your brain changes when you watch entertainment. Or, rather, it unchanges; it reverts back to something closer to its original design. (The real change to your brain is the one that takes place outside the theater; the one that makes it possible for you to get along with strangers and not hit them over the head with a rock when you want their Toostie Pop.)

When you watch entertainment — movies, plays, video games, etc. — you can yell: “kick him again!” or “finish him!” You can cheer when a character you detest suffers beyond all deserving. Most of the time this is cathartic, healthy, humorous, or otherwise harmless — because it’s not real. What happens in the movie theater stays in the movie theater. Now, with Twitter and Facebook, we never really leave the theater, because we’re watching the story unfold everywhere — including New Zealand.

But the news is real — or at least it’s supposed to be.

Of course, politics — as in the stuff politicians say and do — has always had less reality than straight news because so much of politics is performative. When an orphanage is burning on live TV, there’s little acting on the screen. When a politician visits the ashes and vows to hold so-and-so responsible, there may indeed be some acting going on.

Even so, politicians may be full of fakery, but that fakery is the tribute rhetoric pays to reality. The false sincerity, the “spontaneous” outrage when the camera light goes on, the lachrymose pathos, and the earnest pretending that somewhere in a steaming pile of double standards is a golden nugget of principle we’ve come to associate with politicians — these may all be forms of acting on the political stage, but they are not strictly speaking fictional, the way Star Wars or Frankenstein is fictional.

Let me put it more simply: I do not believe about 80 percent of the outrage I hear spewed from senators’ mouths, but that outrage is intended for effect in the real world, to sway votes inside and outside of the chamber. It’s not the same thing as a speech by Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, where both the actor and the audience alike understand there is a suspension of disbelief at work and the emotional response from the audience is an end in itself, not a means to an end as it is in politics.

Even the infotainment-y bilge flung at the audience between ads for adult diapers and gold coins like a monkey tossing feces through the bars of his cage on a nightly basis is supposed to be more real than pure entertainment. Instead, the lines are blurred, and people treat TV “personalities” like they are TV characters, and the TV characters say insane things that the audience is supposed to believe are real.

When Mark Antony waved the bloody tunic, he was performing, but the desire was to incite the mob for a political goal, not to put on a rousing show. Much of political commentary is intended for little more than getting people to tune or click in tomorrow, by telling the audience that the enemy is even worse — and we are even more victimized — than you thought!

What Shall We Believe?
In other words, the line between rhetoric and entertainment is blurring. Rhetoric, Wayne Booth once said, is “the art of probing what men believe they ought to believe.”

What, I wondered over these last two weeks, are we teaching people to believe?

Every time I looked through the Twitter peephole or listened at the doors of the brothel bedrooms, the president was saying something outrageous or heroic depending on where you sit. What stuck out to me was not merely his demeaning of John McCain but the various conservatives leaping to Trump’s defense. Apparently it’s not only defensible but laudatory to piss on a former POW’s grave, according to various Republican politicians and consultants, because McCain is a useful “foil” for Trump. Dead men often are (I can out-debate any corpse in the world).

The rhetorical gibbeting of McCain was grotesque.

Meanwhile, other conservatives and Republicans — who obviously know better — simply stayed mute or rolled their eyes at anyone who criticized Trump on the grounds that this is “who he is” and everyone should just get used to it because we have a “transactional” relationship with him. They sound like pimps making allowances for abusive Johns because “that’s who they are” and we’re running a business here.

Worse, some keep telling us that Trump’s behavior — all of it — is actually manly. I pity the son whose parents tell him, “Be like that guy,” and I fear for the daughter whose parents say, “Behold a man in full” when Trump is on the screen.

The Anti-Trump Corruption
But if this were all about Trump, I wouldn’t be all that despondent. I’ve drained a spleen venting about the corrupting effects of Trump on the right. And when I do, I always get a nice pat on the head from liberals for it. But the same liberals seem blind to or celebratory of the rot on their own side.

Call it Trump derangement syndrome, moral panic, the righteous arrogance that comes when you substitute politics for religion — I really don’t care what label you put on it. But the simple fact is that the Democrats are behaving horridly too. Is there moral equivalence? Sometimes yes, sometimes no.

But when I hear liberals say: “What about Trump!?” all I hear is deflection or the insinuation that “better than Trump” is an acceptable standard for liberals. After all, liberals saying “What about Trump?” bounces off me just as much as when MAGAers shriek “What about Obama?” at me. I’ve remained consistent. They haven’t.

This is a personal peeve of mine. But when I hear sophisticated liberals tut-tut “both sideism” these days, it drives me a little bonkers. I am very comfortable in my bothsidesism because both sides offer plenty to criticize, and when people like me or David French or Charlie Cooke denounce Democrats, we aren’t trying to distract anyone from anything.

But forget about me. “Whataboutism” is such a strange argument from people who claim Trump is a demonic force in our politics. I am happy to beat up on Trump’s transgressions, but if you are going to bleat and wail about Trump’s violation of democratic and constitutional norms while staying silent as Stacy Abrams flatly lies about winning her governor’s race — questioning the outcome of an election! — spare me the accolades for speaking up about Trump and “my side.”

I don’t know how much credit or blame Trump deserves for goading the Democrats into a kind of nervous breakdown of radicalism, but the fact is Trump could resign tomorrow and the rhetoric of our age would already be horribly disordered. And, yes, on both sides.

Notes from The Peephole
According to Democrats today, the Constitution — which we are supposed to revere, but only when Trump defiles it — is a relic of white supremacy and tyranny when it proves modestly inconvenient to Democrats.

Indeed, in the politics as-the-crow-flies that defines so much of progressivism — and a great deal of Trumpism — inconvenience is the divining rod for discovering what your actual principles are. For Trump, inconvenience is defined entirely egocentrically. Ideas, individuals, institutions, even marriages that lay between him and where he wants to go are, at least rhetorically, flowerbeds to be trampled in order to cut the path of least resistance.

For progressives, inconvenience, too, marks the boundaries of principle. Because inconvenience is like the gravel on the road to personal liberation, and the moment you feel the smooth ride give way to unpaved road, it is time for the government to come clear the path ahead. So “socialism” means not having to deal with private health insurance paperwork (according to Kamala Harris), or college tuition, or struggling to find a job — or even working at all according to the Green New Deal.

Even the convenience of restrictions on verrrrrry-late-term abortions is the very definition of tyranny now. I’ve lost count of the number of Democrats who, when asked specifically about late-term abortions or babies accidentally delivered after botched abortions, respond with platitudes and euphemisms about choices and “women’s bodies” — even when the relevant body in the scenario is no longer inside the woman’s body.

Beto O’Rourke may or may not agree with all of this from his Democratic opponents. We won’t know for sure until he’s elected because, like Obamacare, we have to vote for Beto first to find out what’s in him. But inconvenience defines Beto, too. He finds it too inconvenient to have an opinion on many policies, so he’s literally asked his biggest fans to tell him what he should believe. He asks his supporters to tell him who to be and to “shape” him.

Rhetorically, this makes him the defining candidate of our age. While Trump loves to play his greatest hits at rallies, Beto is taking requests for new material. He’s asking the people to lead, and he’ll follow them, because rhetorically that’s how we define leadership today: pandering to the base, servicing the fans, and telling the people what they want to hear rather than what they need to hear.

Various & Sundry
Well, I’m about to land, so I don’t have much time for this portion, which is okay because I don’t have much of a canine update for you. The doggers have been doing great with Kirsten, our dogwalker, and if you’ve been following me on Twitter, you probably knew that already. After I get the full story from Kirsten, I will have a more fulsome canine debrief next week.

Oh, one last thing, my thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday. It was very much appreciated.

And now the other stuff.

ICYMI . . .
Last week’s G-File

Part one of my AZSU podcast

Part two

The latest Remnant, on the opioid crisis

Look in my eyes, what do you see? The cult of personality…

Don’t abolish the Electoral College

And now, the weird stuff.
Debby’s last Friday links; Debby’s Monday links; Debby’s this Friday links

Cher calls into C-Span

Jack the Ripper’s identity uncovered

Meet the Flintstones while you still can

The only way your parents’ funeral can get any worse… being sucked into their grave

Flat Earthers head to the “edge of the world”

The hunt for the U.S.S. Wasp

Don’t doubt Herodotus

We don’t deserve dogs

Hula hoops are— were good fun

Run free, sweet wallaby

Eat mor chikin

iPhones > plate armor

The last of a dying breed

I always knew modern art reminded me of a pig sty

The best of NASA

Don’t use pepper spray upwind

Even sharks can’t reach all their itchy spots

Tell your kids to wash their hands

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Estimado Lector (y todos mis amigos a través del Atlántico),

Greetings from Barcelona. And it is Bar•ce•lona, not Barth•e•lona. That pronunciation is a shibboleth of the Castilian hegemony, and I am decidedly on the side of the Catalan separatists (I suppose this means I should have written “Benvolgut Lector (i tots els meus amics de l’Atlàntic).”)

Shibboleth is a fun word, and not just because it sounds like what one of the kids from Fat Albert would say if he went to prison, got hard and mean, and told someone to “Shiv old Les.” You know like, “Shib ol’ leth in da shower durin’ the guard change.”

For those who don’t know, it comes from the Book of Judges in the Hebrew Bible. Long story short, the Gileadites beat the stuffing out of the Ephraimites. When the surviving Ephraimites wanted to get past the River Jordan incognito, the Gileadites had a test to tell them apart from other travelers. They first asked the strangers if they were Ephraimites. If they said “No,” the soldiers asked them to say the word “shibboleth,” which referred either to a part of a grain plant or maybe a flood. But the definition didn’t matter, the pronunciation was everything — because the Ephraimite dialect pronounced “sh” words with an “s” sound. So anybody who said “sibboleth” got the business end of a sword (or perhaps a spear or some sort of pike — I’m no expert on such things). According to the Bible, some “forty and two thousand” Ephraimites went to their maker wishing they had a lisp like Cindy Brady.

By the way, lest you indulge your desire to condemn the ancient Hebraic penchant for smiting and wrath, similar stories were common across Christian Europe. In 1302, the Flemish massacred every Frenchman they could find in Bruges. They identified them by asking them to pronounce the phrase schilt ende vriend (shield and friend). In 1794, the Sardinians rounded up Piedmontese officers who couldn’t say nara cixidi, the Sardinian word for “chickpea.” And the list goes on.

In modern usage, a shibboleth can be anything — a custom, tradition, pronunciation, an old wooden ship named “diversity,” etc. — that distinguishes one group from another. When American soldiers asked potential Nazi spies who won the World Series, they were using a shibboleth. When you say in mixed company: “I can’t believe what Jonah Goldberg’s couch said this week,” it can serve as a shibboleth distinguishing between people who use their time productively and the dear readers of this “news”letter.

EU & The Land of Shibboleths

Of the many things I inherited from my Dad, a love of walking around cities and looking at stuff is one of the most obvious — other than my chin, my love for cured meats, and a few other things. When I say “looking at stuff,” I mean exactly that, stuff. My Dad loved museums more than I do, but we loved people watching and stuff-looking equally (he was the guy who spotted the Hop Bird, after all).

I’ll save some of those observations after I finish my time in Madrid next week, the Capitol of the Spanish Panem in my personal version of The Hunger Games (though in this version, the battles are waged over who can eat the most Iberian ham). But one of my habits is to see how many blocks I can go before I see a building that doesn’t have at least one window or balcony with a Catalan flag, sign, or banner hanging from it. Almost every building has at least one. There are other shibboleths all over the place. I don’t know much about the Catalan language, but it sure does like the letter “X,” and it seems to be everywhere the Spanish use a “ch,” and a few other places to boot.

I’m not going to get deep in the weeds on Catalan secessionism, in part because I don’t want to get arrested walking from my hotel to Steve Hayes’s apartment this weekend (on Saturday I head to Madrid, where Hayes has been holed up swilling Spanish wine and plotting schemes and scheming plots). What interests me is how the EU makes secessionism more attractive, and I don’t mean in the Brexit sense. In the U.K., Brexiteers want their nation to leave the EU; in places like Catalan, the separatists want to leave their nation.

Twelve years ago, I wrote a column on this. It began: “You probably don’t realize it, but we are living in an unprecedented historical moment. For the first time, Belgium has managed to be interesting without getting invaded by Germany or abusing an African colony.” What made it interesting? Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons were squabbling like siblings in the backseat at the end of a long car ride. Okay that wasn’t the interesting part, exactly. Rather it was the fact that Belgium — itself a kind of mini-EU — was coming apart at the seams because the Belgian national project was being dissolved by the Belgium-led national project.

As I wrote at the time: “The European Union is in effect subsidizing nationalism in Belgium and across the Continent. As the EU assumes more of the responsibilities of states — regulations, the economy, currency, possibly even defense — the cost of independence becomes lower.”

This process can be seen all around Europe. As the “European” identity solidifies, national identities start to melt, and regional ones take on more meaning. The more the Scots can rely on the EU for state functions, the less they need — or want — to be with the English. This creates powerful incentives for old shibboleths to take on renewed significance.

The Dialect of Identity

The most obvious one is language.

Starting with Henry VIII, the English tried to eradicate the Welsh language. The Welsh are trying to bring it back. Similar stories are unfolding across Europe, from the Basques and Catalans to the Irish.

Modern nationalism was born as a rebellion against French cultural and political imperialism. Johann Fichte and Johann Herder both made the case for German nationalism largely on the glory and “purity” of the German tongue. “Spew out the ugly slime of the Seine,” Herder exhorted French-speaking German elites, “Speak German, O You German!”

“Men are formed by language far more than language is by men,” Fichte insisted in his Addresses to the German Nation. The German tongue was pure, it had defied the corruption of the Roman Empire and its Latin taint. “The Germans still speak a living language and have done so ever since it first streamed forth from nature, whereas the other Teutonic tribes speak a language that stirs only on the surface yet is dead at the root.” This fact made the German people unique — a new chosen people whose destiny was to rise up and redeem all of humanity. “Of all modern peoples it is you in whom the seed of human perfection most decidedly lies and to whom the lead in its development is assigned. If you perish in your essentiality, then all the hopes of the entire human race for salvation from the depths of its misery perish with you.”

Indeed, one of the things that fascinate me about the biological racism at the heart of Hitlerism was that the structure and framing of it was established a century earlier around mere language.

The EU seems to understand the phenomenon, which is why it takes such a hard line against regional separatism. There are 276 distinct regions within the EU, and if even a fraction of them go down, the secession route the EU is doomed, because if membership in the EU means dissolution of nation states, it is a political suicide pact for national governments.

What fascinates me about all of this is how the need for identity creates a need for shibboleths, in part because shibboleths, broadly understood, are what define the contours of identity. At my brother’s funeral, several of his wife’s relatives brought flowers. The rabbi gave a fascinating little story about how Jews used to put flowers on graves but stopped millennia ago as a way to distinguish Jewish customs from non-Jewish ones. Since then, a whole Talmudic tradition has evolved around the Jewish customs of putting stones instead of flowers on graves. One explanation is that there should not be distinctions of class in such matters. One of the best Jewish burial customs — with which I have too much experience — is that everyone should be buried in a simple wood casket, because everyone is equal in death. I find the idea that loved ones should go into extra debt to inter their beloved in gaudy coffins very off-putting. The tradition of putting stones instead of flowers on graves is understood in part because stones are eternal.

The coalition instinct — that topic of endless fascination for me — is amorphous in that it can attach identifiers of identity (which I suppose is a redundant phrase) to anything. Gang colors, inside jokes, idiosyncratic pronunciations, knowledge of sports statistics, subtle distinctions in religious doctrine, fondness for podcasts that indulge in Dune trivia — the list is endless. Shibboleth isn’t necessarily the best word for all of them — some are badges, insignia, MAGA hats, or other forms of signaling. But the concept is basically the same.

Shibboleths of the Meritocratic Class

Like just about everyone, I am mesmerized by the college scam story. I write about it in my column today.

But before I go on about that, one of the things I found intriguing about the reaction to it on Twitter was how so many people felt the need to divulge their own college admissions narrative, as if to signal they weren’t one of them. My favorite tweet actually came from someone owning — if only in jest — his privileged status:

https://twitter.com/bendreyfuss/status/1105488904579309568

Still, I will join the ranks of the outraged by disclosing my own bona fides. I went to college the old-fashioned way: by applying to an all-women’s school right as it went co-ed. As I often like to say, my freshman year Goucher had 30-odd men and more than a thousand women — and I do mean 30 odd men.

Before being an affirmative-action success story, I was rejected from every other college I applied to. My high school record was, at best, a Rorschach test. On the one hand, I had the worst GPA of any student in my class who wasn’t kicked out. On the other hand, when I was interested in a subject, I did very well, winning various awards for papers and whatnot. My SATs were fine (thanks mostly to the verbal section), but most admissions officials looked at the Rorschach blots on my transcript and saw a train wreck rather than a diamond in the rough.

For what it’s worth, my high school at the time was the subject of an intense debate about its status. It can be summarized by the question, “Was it the worst school on the A list or the best school on the B list?” Dwight at the time was the school you went to if you couldn’t get into Collegiate or Horace Mann — or if you failed out of them.

At Dwight, I saw firsthand how some of the most middlebrow kids at my New York private school organized their whole lives — or let their parents organize it for them — around the box-checking quest to get into an elite college. These kids didn’t have many interests or hobbies — just a singular focus on grades, test prep, and extracurriculars. Since I indulged my interests — social, nerdy, intellectual alike — to the detriment of my grades, this bred a good deal of resentment in me.

When I was in my twenties, that resentment carried over. I had something to prove, which is why when I started out at AEI, I threw myself into learning stuff I either felt I missed in college or thought my mostly Ivy League policy-wonk peers already knew.

The chip on my shoulder shrunk and finally vanished over the years because it’s a stupid thing to get hung up on (though I do enjoy speaking at all the colleges that rejected me, never mind the ones I never dreamed of applying to in the first place).

Having worked in the worlds of think tankery and eggheady journalism for three decades, I’ve learned to take people as I find them. Ramesh Ponnuru is possibly the smartest person close to my age I’ve ever met, and he went to Princeton — where he was a star student. Arthur Brooks, the outgoing president of AEI, is another of the smartest people I’ve ever known. He got his college degree by mail from Thomas Edison State College. Conversely, I’ve met more than my share of buffoons and cranks with impressive degrees (Jerome Corsi has a PhD from Harvard!). They may not have been true morons, but they couldn’t hold a candle to some college drop-outs I’ve known — without burning their fingers.

Anyway, this story has brought back a lot of that resentment. It’s not personal, really, but that only makes it more sweeping. As I write in my book, higher education is like a training academy for the New Class. It is a giant shibboleth factory for a new caste and class system. Even if it were working properly, the meritocracy industry would have a lot to answer for, as people like David Brooks, Charles Murray, and Ross Douthat have chronicled for years.

For the children of the affluent, particularly those outside the STEM fields, higher education is both a kind of Game of Thrones citadel where the Maesters get their chains conferring special status and a four-year Rumspringa for crapulent social strivers. Kids are taught to be hostile to, and ungrateful for, the very civilization that lets them live like princelings.

I don’t want to repeat what I wrote in my column, but I do think it’s worth noting that these literal indictments are not quite the figurative indictments many are making them out to be. It’s instructive that the first reflex of much of the mainstream media has been to search for vindication of minorities who benefit from affirmative action. I understand why. But keep in mind, the rich and famous parents ensnared in this scandal may go to jail for what they did. In other words, there’s a deep contradiction between saying, “this is how the system really works” while overlooking the fact that the government is filing criminal charges against the very people you’re holding up as examples of how the system works.

The implied remedies some people are touting would make the system less, not more, fair because it would give even more arbitrary power to the clerisy running higher ed. The assumption seems to be that since the wealthy have so many advantages (true), the bureaucrats need to substitute their own judgment even more in the name of social justice. We already know this is happening, because the most systemic discrimination in elite college admissions is against Asian Americans who have the right grades and test scores but haven’t mastered the shibboleths of wokeness the gatekeepers are looking for.

I’m a pretty conservative guy, but on this stuff I am increasingly radical. I’d say burn it all down and rebuild on the ashes, except I worry that the people who would get all the reconstruction contracts are the ones who created the problem in the first place.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: So I have nothing first hand to report since I haven’t seen the beasts in eight days. But we are getting some excellent proof of life updates from home. It seems Zoë in particular is getting quite bossy with her parents gone, sort of like a teenager who thinks she’s in charge, not the babysitter. That probably explains some of her misbehavior. It also seems like the girls miss us and think we’re hiding in trees. Even so, it’s amazing how not worrying about the dogs while on vacation makes it so much easier to relax.

Ah, and before I forget: March 28-29 is the National Review Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C. I will be there to discuss (the polite term for “debate”) nationalism and populism with my handsome and powerful boss Rich Lowry. But honestly, as important as that debate is to me, it’s only one among many reasons to attend. The cast for the Summit is amazingly, almost ridiculously stacked. You’ll find both your favorite NR types (Kevin Williamson, the so-called “notorious MBD,” David French, etc.) and a sizeable smattering of political types (Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Senator Marco Rubio, Congressman Dan Crenshaw, and more) among the featured speakers. If none of this can convince you to come, then surely the karaoke sessions afterward will. (Note: They may or may not be happening.) Remember also that, in mild Brigadoon-like fashion, these things happen only every other year, so don’t skip out thinking you can just come next year. Sign up here.

And now, the other stuff.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

This week’s Remnant,with Arthur Brooks, on loving your enemies

My column on the college conundrum

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

It me

RIP

Robots are coming for dog jobs 

The urban planners inspired by Sim City 

George Washington’s beer recipe

Badass

Insanity

Squirrel-hunting

Own a piece of the Great Escape

Noir Spider-Man

How to catch a pig 

You had one job

Michigander loses it

Ohioan does Lent right

German town celebrates fat rat rescue

The only good thing a phone has ever done

Send in the wolves!

?laer si levart emiT

A good boy does his best

Editor’s Note: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (including Paul Manafort, who will finally have the time to catch up on back issues of this “news”letter),

Imagine a semi-prosperous middle-aged white guy saying something like “The Jews are bad and not just because they smell like cabbage.”

I think it’s fair to say that some reasonable people would call that ridiculous or anti-Semitic or some combination of the two.

Now imagine a one-armed lesbian Yemeni refugee with a cleft palate, a severe gluten allergy, and a really rough childhood saying the exact same thing.

Does the statement become any more true? Do I suddenly, as if by magic, start to emit the odor of cabbage? When all eyes turn to me for no obvious reason and people start asking “Is someone making sauerkraut?” is it because the One-Armed Yemeni has called out my people again?

The reason I ask is that I’m still noodling over James Clyburn’s statement yesterday. From The Hill:

Clyburn came to Omar’s defense Wednesday, lamenting that many of the media reports surrounding the recent controversy have omitted mentioning that Omar, who was born in Somalia, had to flee the country to escape violence and spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before coming to the United States.

Her experience, Clyburn argued, is much more empirical — and powerful — than that of people who are generations removed from the Holocaust, Japanese internment camps during World War II and the other violent episodes that have marked history.

“I’m serious about that. There are people who tell me, ‘Well, my parents are Holocaust survivors.’ ‘My parents did this.’ It’s more personal with her,” Clyburn said. “I’ve talked to her, and I can tell you she is living through a lot of pain.”

Now, I’m tempted to cut Clyburn some slack. The more I think about it, it might be his way — his really, really poorly worded way — of saying: “Don’t pay too much attention to her, she’s kind of messed up.”

You know, like the uncle who just got out of prison who threatens to stab you in the hand with his salad fork at Thanksgiving dinner when you reach for the bread rolls. “Please excuse Uncle Roy. He was ‘away’ for a long time. He’s still getting used to life on the outside.”

But I don’t think that’s the case, and it’s certainly not how it was received. Clyburn seems to be suggesting that because of her experiences and identity, her ideas deserve more latitude than those of another person with the exact same views.

Now, I have to admit, I have trouble with the logic here on a number of fronts. Ilhan Omar had a rough childhood in Somalia. She apparently went through the ringer in a Kenyan refugee camp. And therefore she earned the right to bitch about Israel and the Jews?

I’m just missing some of the connective tissue here. If she had been born in Chad and spent time in a Nigerian refugee camp, would that give her some special dispensation to rip into the Irish? I mean, what the hell did the Joooooooooz or Israelis have to do with her youthful travails?

This just seems like Dewey Oxburger logic to me. Dewey, you’ll recall, was the John Candy character in Stripes who understood that you can convince an idiot of anything if you do it with great confidence and authority. There’s the scene where he and his low-IQ comrade “Cruiser” arrive in the barracks in Italy, and Cruiser jumps up on the top bunk. Dewey says:

What are you doing? No, no . . . get off. Get off. See . . . you gotta make my bunk. See, we’re in Italy. The guy on the top bunk, he’s gotta make the guy on the bottom’s bunk . . . He’s gotta make his bed, all the time. See, it’s in the regulations. See, if we were in Germany, I’d have to make yours. But we’re in Italy, so you gotta make mine. [shrugs his shoulders] Regulations.

The problem is, we’re not all idiots.

The Suck-Up Instinct
I already wrote a column about this, and David French has the intersectionality beat covered, so I want to come at this from a different direction.

Because the vast majority of my readers are humans, I’m confident that nearly all of you have some experience with the phenomenon of sucking up, and I don’t mean the form of sucking up where you find yourself on your hands and knees in a motel room outside Albany at 4:00 a.m. trying to salvage the tequila from the soaked carpet after you accidentally dropped the bottle because you got too worked up singing both parts of Donny & Marie’s “I’m a Little Bit Country, I’m a Little Bit Rock and Roll.”

An intern tells you a joke: “What do you call a can opener that doesn’t work? A can’t opener.”

You might chuckle. You might throw a stapler at his head.

Now, imagine the CEO of your company or the dean of admissions for your kid’s dream school told you that joke. You might, might, laugh a bit harder than the joke deserved on the merits. And even if you’re a rock in such matters, I’m sure you’ve seen some version of this dynamic in others.

I remember talking to Rich Lowry about how amazing it was that Barack Obama could offer the most modest quip at a rally — “I guess I’ll have a salad.” “I picked the wrong day not to bring an umbrella.” — and there would always be a couple of people in the background who laughed so hard you had to wonder whether you were missing something.

This is part of human nature. And, as with anything that comes preloaded into our operating system, we shouldn’t get too worked up about it. What fascinates me is how this aspect of human nature manifests itself in different contexts.

In pre-Enlightenment societies, this deference to power was codified into law and custom alike. Of course the king’s jokes are funnier, his insights wiser, his Paul Krugman columns less foul-smelling in the chamber pot.

I won’t get all deep in the weeds on Nietzsche’s concept of ressentiment, but the gist of his argument was that the priestly caste turned the hierarchy of morality on its head. They made virtues — strength, honor, etc. — into vices, and vices — meekness, weakness, etc. — into virtues.  Now, Nietzsche’s ideas of what constitute virtue and vice are not my own, but his analysis was brilliant nonetheless.

As I wrote recently, we’ve turned victimhood into a source of incredible cultural power to the extent that some people, like Jussie Smollett, make a perversely rational choice to turn themselves into victims because they know that if they can pull it off, they’ll gain status, fame, and money as a result. It’s not always as cynical as that, of course. Victimhood has cultural power because victimhood is a new source of meaning, and people are desperate to find new sources of meaning these days as religion recedes further from modern life. Rachel Dolezal didn’t don blackface — blackbody? — to mock or ridicule black people. She did it because she thought she could fill the hole in her soul with a can of shoe polish.

At least in pre-Enlightenment societies, the corrupt deference to power made some sense. In a society ruled by a monarch or an aristocracy where power flowed from the point of a sword, a certain amount of sucking up made sense. If I ever go to prison, I can guarantee that I’m going to laugh pretty damn hard at some jokes that aren’t all that funny.

Sumptuary Laws, Ancient and Modern
This is the premise of the fable of the Emperor’s New Clothes. A bunch of people deliberately or delusively convinced themselves they could see something that wasn’t there, because to do otherwise would risk their status or position.

In medieval and ancient societies, rulers codified their power in myriad ways. Among my favorites were sumptuary laws, which delineated the kinds of garments people of different stations could wear. Henry VIII issued an edict that no one could wear “any silk of the color of purple, cloth of gold tissued, nor fur of sables, but only the King, Queen, and the King’s mother, children, brethren, and sisters, uncles and aunts; and except dukes, marquises, and earls, who may wear the same in doublets, jerkins, linings of cloaks, gowns, and hose; and those of the Garter, purple in mantles only.”

Barbara Tuchman writes:

Proclaimed by criers in the county courts and public assemblies, exact gradations of fabric, color, fur trimming, ornaments, and jewels were laid down for every rank and income level. Bourgeois might be forbidden to own a carriage or wear ermine, and peasants to wear any color but black or brown. Florence allowed doctors and magistrates to share the nobles’ privilege of ermine, but ruled out for merchants’ wives multicolored, striped, and checked gowns, brocades, figured velvets, and fabrics embroidered in silver and gold. In France territorial lords and their ladies with incomes of 6,000 livres or more could order four costumes a year; knights and bannerets with incomes of 3,000 could have three a year, one of which had to be for summer. Boys could have only one a year, and no demoiselle who was not the châtelaine of a castle or did not have an income of 2,000 livres could order more than one costume a year.

This ability to figuratively wear power on your sleeve by literally dictating what everyone else’s sleeves could look like was rooted in how society understood power. Today, because we’ve turned identity and the presumed victimhood that attaches to certain identity groups — Muslims, gays, the transgendered; but not the Jooooz — into a new form of aristocracy, that manifests itself in bizarre ways.

This is how I think of cultural appropriation. Victim identity is a resource. So when white people use the accoutrement of that identity, they are seen as stealing cultural power. How dare you make Korean tacos, whitey! These clothes, that hairstyle, this music: They belong to us, and when you appropriate them, you are diluting their brand value. It’s the cultural analogue to copyright infringement. My brand’s value depends on my monopoly on this stuff, so you can’t use it.

Anyway, as the serial killer said before he went to the truck to get the plastic tarp, I should wrap this up.

The aristocracy of victimhood can be seen everywhere if you train your eyes to see it (don’t get me started on the new push for reparations). And the corrupting power of this cultural shift is profound. Because we’re not just heaping praise on victims, we’re investing extra legitimacy to their ideas and arguments. If we as a culture want to say that the Pale Penis People can’t wear sombreros or cook Korean food, I’ll pound away at my keyboard about how stupid that is. But ultimately, that idiocy falls under the loosey-goosey rubric of fashion and manners. If we’re going to start saying that victims’ ideas are “more right” simply because the people spewing them are victims, then we are committing a kind of civilizational suicide. I don’t care if you spent your youth at the bottom of a pit putting the lotion in the basket when commanded to, you’re still wrong if you tell me two plus two equals seven.

If anti-Semitism is wrong, it shouldn’t matter how bad Ilhan Omar’s childhood was. If racism is wrong, it doesn’t become less wrong if a survivor of Auschwitz says something racist.

Various & Sundry
Canine Update: So the doggers are doing great, and not because they won the Twitter dog competition this week. One of the reasons dogs are great and why people love dog Twitter is that dogs just don’t care.  Still, I want to thank everyone for rewarding the hard work I put into bringing my Twitter followers the best dog content I can. Haters like @comfortablysmug be damned, Zoë and Pippa are good dogs.

Anyway, I’m in Sea Island for work. And after a big speech, I got over-served by the bartenders. Before I left, I made sure to get in some extra quality time with the beasts, because I leave from here with the (human) family for a vacation in Spain and, briefly, London. I’ll say hi to Steve Hayes for you when I’m in Madrid. The good news is that Kirsten, our super-dog-walker, will be dog- and house-sitting while are gone. The dogs love her with a passion that sometimes makes us jealous, but that’s okay because it also removes the guilt of leaving them behind. And Kirsten knows how important it is to send proof-of-life pictures and video. So, I’ll still be tweeting the beasties.

ICYMI . . .
Last week’s G-File

Capitalism, socialism, and corporatism

The whomp in the swamp!

Trump at CPAC

Finally, a mediocre superhero movie for women

This week’s Remnant, with Rob Long; also available as a GLoP episode (with hideous photoshop)

Trump and masculinity

Democrats and Fox News

House Democrats and anti-Semitism

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Tuesday links

Where does fake movie money come from?

Does a bear think in the woods?

Just read the title

Psychics are real? Were real?

Photos of pre–World War I Russia to be shown at the Library of Congress

Exactly what you don’t want to hear while at the beach with your kids

What not to do with your rare-coin collection

Cheesy parenting

New healthy-beverage craze!

Nessie is real. Change my mind

McDonald’s-burger scented candle that lasts as long as their food does

Don’t cuddle your fish

Mathematical literary perfection

Charles Dickens may have hated his wife . . . a lot

Not quite as good a smuggler as Han Solo

Finally, a reason to actually visit France

What a way to go

The Incas took climate change a bit too seriously

The disappearing anus trick

The Crufts Dog Show

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including the Amy Klobuchar intern kept in a crate in the back office),

One of my favorite Twitter accounts is the official Twitter feed of the Socialist party of Great Britain. Folks often criticize me for engaging with it because it is so irrelevant, even in socialist circles. That in itself is a kind of accomplishment. It’s like the guy who attends Civil War reenactment-society meetings, but dresses in full Klingon battle regalia and screams at everyone that no one knows how to fight Romulans. “You call yourselves warriors, but none of you even knows how to swing a Bat’leth!”

Virtually every time anyone says anything critical of Maduro’s — or Stalin’s — socialism, the SPGB Twitter feed leaps into action, raining “ACKSHULLYS” down like a UFC fighter beating on a 98-pound mugger. “Actually” real socialism is collective ownership of the means of production! Real socialism has never been tried! Soviet Communism was “state capitalism!” You can almost smell the old socks and stale urine wafting up from the guy tweeting from some public-library computer, his overstuffed shopping cart full of dog-eared copies of Das Kapital and back issues of Juggs close by his side.

But that’s kinda what I like about the SPGB. At least they take their ideas seriously. They’ve constructed a wholly hypothetical alternative world that is simultaneously as plausible and impossible as Middle Earth or Westeros or a great meal at a Wolfgang Puck Express at the Newark airport. It sounds like it could be real, and it’s kind of fun to think about, but it’s not actually reality. It’s like they think they can pluck the Platonic ideal of a hamburger out of the ether and use it as a rhetorical cudgel to say a Five Guys burger “isn’t a real hamburger! Real hamburgers have never been tried!” Even the Wikipedia entry on the SPGB says: “The party’s political position has been described as a form of impossibilism.”

Impossibilists of the World Unite!

I don’t think anyone will be shocked to know that I’ve won several chicken-eating contests, but that’s not important right now. It also shouldn’t be too much of a surprise that I’m no expert on Carl Jung, rumors of my ass-tattoo notwithstanding. But I do find some of his ideas interesting, and not just his stuff on the designated hitter rule. I think there’s something to the idea of the collective unconscious. Certain ideas or concepts — archetypes according Jung — pop up in every culture.

I once listened to a great episode of Radio Lab in which they talked about a fossilized skull of a young human that had been grabbed by a giant bird and carried off (they could tell from the talon marks inside its eye sockets. Let that image sink in). In our prehistoric past, there were birds that preyed on us, and that’s why, they speculated, we get even to this day that creepy fight-or-flight feeling when a shadow passes over our heads. We’ve got some “Oh crap, run!” programming in us left over from when a shadow from above terrifying. According to Jung, people all around the world have snake dreams even though they may never have seen a snake or Michael Cohen.

This is how I mostly think about socialism now (as I recently discussed on the Tikvah podcast). At its core, it’s not an idea or even a program: It’s a feeling. The world of liberal democratic capitalism is unnatural. “Unique among species,” Robin Fox writes in The Tribal Imagination, “we created the novel environment, and the supernovel environment that followed on the Miracle, by ourselves and for ourselves.” But just because our environment is new, our programming is still very old. A pampered dog that has never known life outside a big city probably still dreams of running through the woods in a pack, and somewhere deep inside of us we dream of living in a tightknit community, a tribe or band, where we share all of our possessions and are “all in it together.”

Indeed, Marx’s vision of the glorious end of history tracked nicely with various romantic fantasies of what man’s life in a state of nature was really like. Of course, these fantasies bore little resemblance to the real world of our ancient past where giant fricking birds could pluck us from the savannahs and feed us, piecemeal, to giant baby birds.

Capitalism In the Side Pocket

I was eight when I first saw the George Burns movie Oh, God, but one line always stuck with me. God/Burns is explaining some of his big mistakes. “Ostriches were a mistake. Silly looking things. Avocados . . . Made the pit too big.” But he also said, “The reason I put everyone here naked . . . I wasn’t trying to be cute. It’s just that with clothes there’s right away pockets, and pockets, you gotta put something in ‘em.”

There’s a point there. Private property is divisive. It arouses envy, and envy is a hugely powerful emotion, a driver of all manner of political evils. But in a state of nature, it’s a tool of social cohesion, just like altruism and shame. Envy is one of the emotions that leads to sharing, because it causes the group to demand the haves to share with the have-nots.

The thing is, where humans are nomadic, it’s hard to accumulate too much private property when you can only keep what you can carry.

Now we can have a lot of property, but we also have a lot of baggage in the form of an inarticulate yearning to restore an imagined past. It’s an instinct for solidarity that manifests itself in different forms in different ages, grafting itself to different priestly or technocratic lingo. But you can incant all the Marxist verbiage you like, it doesn’t make the underlying idea more modern.

In Ghostbusters, when the very Jungian Gozer the Gozerian says: “Choose the form of your destructor,” the team tries to keep their minds blank. But Ray couldn’t help himself. “I couldn’t help it. It just popped in there.” And that’s all it took for a Godzilla-sized Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man to materialize.

“I tried to think of the most harmless thing,” Ray says. “Something I loved from my childhood, something that could never, ever possibly destroy us: Mr. Stay-Puft.”

Socialism works in a similar way. Whether it’s the Socialist Party of Great Britain or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or the millions of young people who think they’re socialists, they think socialism is a good thing that can do no wrong, and if it does wrong it must be because it’s not really socialism. I understand why conservatives think socialism is evil — because there are so many examples of socialism being evil. But most socialists don’t think they’re evil — nor is it their greatest dream to steal our hamburgers: Socialism is just their word for fixing what’s wrong with the world. The problem is that when you give yourself over to a single idea of how things should be, you check yourself into what Chesterton called “the clean and well-lit prison of one idea” and you become “sharpened to one painful point.” You are bereft of the “healthy hesitation and healthy complexity” that lets you grasp the world as it is and understand the crooked timber of human nature.

In the fantasy world of the SPGB, we’d all share equally society’s wealth. But what this vision leaves out is the socialist with the clipboard that keeps track of who gets their “fair share” and the men with guns who protect the man with the clipboard from those who disagree with his decisions. The man who says “get in line for your share” is the new ruler of every would-be utopia. The clipboard becomes a totem of power no less ominous than the ball and scepter, the whip, the fasces, or the phone the person in power uses to make you disappear. Humans make hierarchies of status and privilege for themselves whenever the opportunity avails itself. This is why all socialist systems that do not work within the constraints of a liberal democratic framework of the rule of law inevitably descend into tyrannies. Give the state unbridled power, and the denizens of the state will use that power toward their own ends.

But socialism is just one form of destructor that can be unleashed to trample the complex ecosystem of liberty in pursuit of a single idea. Nationalism, fascism, and almost every other ism can, in service to the same cult of unity, do the same damage.

One-thingism is the enemy of all freedoms, even the one thing of freedom itself. As Peregrine Worsthorne once noted, a doctrine of total freedom pursued to its logical conclusion is a world where bullies are free to do their will. Ordered liberty is a different concept altogether because it balances the tension between the need for both order and liberty. We are free to do the things that do not harm others unjustifiably. Which brings me to . . .

The Freedom to Kill Babies

I don’t like debating abortion, but every now and then I get dragooned into it. The other day, I was on Guy Benson and Marie Harf’s radio show, and we got into it because Ben Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act bill had just gone down in flames. I like Marie quite a bit, and I think she tries very hard to give conservatives a fair hearing, so I don’t mean any of this as a personal criticism. But she ran through all of the usual arguments, the chief of which was the old saw about how conservatives are hypocrites because they want the government out of everything, yet they want the state to regulate women’s reproductive choices.

My problem with this argument is that it suffers from a profound category error. The first obligation of the state is to protect human life. This is what Max Weber was getting at when he said the state has a “monopoly on violence.” In a decent and free society, this monopoly has only a handful of legitimate exceptions. The most important and obvious is the right to self-defense, which is an absolute natural right that is prior to any form of government. You cannot pass a just and enforceable law barring people from fighting for their life when attacked.

The other exceptions are fairly minor and still fall under the regulatory power of the state. Boxers need licenses after all. Police have discretion about how to deal with bar room fights. Whether or not spanking is good or bad for kids, I think parents have a right to do it. But we all recognize that the state has a right to intervene when parents go much beyond that kind of thing. A swat on the backside for a misbehaving child isn’t the government’s business. A parent who beats or burns their kid should have their kid taken away.

This sliding scale has an analogue in the abortion debate — not theologically or scientifically perhaps — but culturally and politically. Most Americans favor abortion rights shortly after conception through the end of the first trimester. Even larger majorities are opposed to late-term abortions.

Again, putting aside the philosophical, scientific, and theological arguments, this simply makes sense. People can understandably debate whether a young embryo should be considered a human being. But there is simply no credible moral argument that a viable baby should not be considered a human being. A late-term fetus strikes most reasonable people as a baby, not some abstracted and euphemized thing called “uterine contents” or whatnot. And a delivered baby outside the womb or in the process of delivery is, simply, a baby. The Barbara Boxer view that a baby miraculously becomes a baby only after you bring it home from the hospital is a moral monstrosity.

And this is why conservative pro-lifers are not hypocrites when they say the state should intervene on the behalf of babies. The real hypocrisy cuts the other way. Liberal abortion rights supporters — speaking broadly — have no principled objection to the state regulating the size of our sodas, banning plastic straws or regulating free speech. But going by the statements and votes of the last month — by Ralph Northam, Andrew Cuomo, Kamala Harris, and so many others — they draw the line at regulating infanticide.

From LifeNews about Kamala Harris’ recent comments:

Harris, a 2020 hopeful who voted against Republican Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse’s bill, would not say if abortion was ever immoral.

“I think it’s up to a woman to make that decision, and I will always stand by that,” she told The DCNF. “I think she needs to make that decision with her doctor, with her priest, with her spouse. I would leave that decision up to them.”

Harris supports the Women’s Health Protection Act (as do Elizabeth Warren, Cory Booker, Beto O’Rourke, Kristen Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, and Bernie Sanders). It would eliminate nearly all limits on abortion from late-term bans to abortions based on sex-selection (one wonders how they would feel if transgender fetuses could be identified in utero).

This isn’t ordered liberty; it’s the freedom of the jungle which says you can do whatever you can get away with. It’s fine to argue that “abortions” of viable, healthy, babies are rare (putting aside all the begged questions implicit in the word “healthy.” Do otherwise healthy kids with Down Syndrome count as unhealthy?). But what we’re talking about is the principle. If I said, “Look, it’s extremely rare for women to kill left-handed dudes named Todd who think E.L.O was better than the Rolling Stones,” that would be a true statement. It would not be an argument for killing that poor unlucky Todd with terrible taste in music (Jack’s view notwithstanding).

Just as socialism represents an atavistic impulse to return to pre-modern understandings of politics, the new push for killing inconvenient babies — in principle — is a barbaric step backward to pre-civilized past. Infanticide in our natural environment was incredibly common. This is from part of my book that didn’t make publication:

With the exception of the Jews, virtually all ancient societies, Western and non- Western, routinely butchered, burned, smothered or otherwise slaughtered their own children (and the children of their enemies even more). The Svans of Ancient Georgia murdered newborn girls by filling their mouths with hot ashes. In parts of Ancient China, female babies were killed by submerging them in buckets of cold “baby water.” In feudal Japan, the practice of Makibi (a term borrowed from rice farming meaning “thinning out”) was widespread. Unwanted babies — mostly girls, but also some boys, particularly twins (which were considered unlucky or dangerous in many pre-modern societies) — were snuffed out with a wet cloth. In India infants were sometimes thrown into the Ganges as sacrifices or had their throats cut.

As the anthropologist Laila Williamson famously wrote:

Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunters and gatherers to high civilization, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule.

In pre-historic times, which were no Eden, our ancestors often killed their offspring because they were a real burden and adoption agencies were few and far between. And when I say a real burden, I mean a real burden. Mothers often didn’t have enough milk to feed two infants, which is why the killing of twins was so common. Crying babies when enemy tribes or predators are about are as inconvenient as hungry toddlers when food is scarce.

One aspect of the amazing miracle of the environment we live in now – i.e. civilization — is that killing babies is no longer a necessity, but a luxury. This move to disguise this hideous luxury as a new form of necessity is not a sign that we are advancing as a civilization, but that we are regressing, back to when killing babies was natural and normal.

Various & Sundry

As the Klobuchar staffer who accidentally hung her boss’s pant suit on a wire hanger said, “Dear God, what have I done?” By now, you probably heard that I am going to be stepping down as a senior editor of National Review in the coming months (details have yet to be worked out). I cannot begin to describe how difficult and painful this decision was, despite how excited I am about this new chapter of my professional life. I love this place. I’ve given the bulk of my adult life to it (“Your ‘adult’ life? So like, six months?” — The Couch). Some of my closest friends have been made here. This is also where I got to know you, Dear Readers, many of whom have become friends in the corporeal realm outside my email box. National Review is part of me, and always will be. I want it to succeed, and I want to stay part of the family (which is why I will stay on as a fellow at the National Review Institute). I am incalculably grateful to Rich Lowry and literally every one of my colleagues, and, again, to all of you (except for that Todd guy). There will be plenty of time for me to get weepy (again) about all of this, and I don’t want to use National Review to promote my new venture with Steve Hayes. But if you’re interested in getting updates on the project as it proceeds, you can send an email to HayesGoldberg2019@Gmail.com, and we’ll keep you in the loop. We’ll never sell your email or anything like that. And that’s enough about all that for now.

Canine Update: So there’s this new trail I’ve been taking the beasts to that Zoë particularly likes because it’s infested with deer and fat, slow squirrels. Since they both partake of our public waterways quite frequently, I didn’t think much of the fact that they went into the creek there, too. But the water didn’t seem to be right. And they both got sick. For about 24 hours, Zoë was farting to the extent that I think she would be banned under the Green New Deal. And both of them were relieving themselves in a way that suggested they had bad tummies — at times it was like a fine mist of Paul Krugman columns. Perhaps because Zoë has an iron stomach that allows her to eat stuff best left to the buzzards, or perhaps because she merely took a few sips rather than immersing herself, spaniel-style, Pippa seemed harder hit. She always had her energy out on walks. Tennis balls — and even floppy frisbees — are like anti-Kryptonite, giving her super-canine stamina. But when home, she had only Jeb-like energy levels and wouldn’t eat her dinner (though one night, the Fair Jessica managed to hand feed her a little). If she didn’t seem better this morning we would have gone to the vet. But the good news is it seems the bug is gone. Pippa’s appetite is back, and Dingo flatulence levels are back within normal parameters. Beyond that, everything is good. The Dingo is happy and frisky and demanding of attention. And Pippa is Pippa.

In other news, theirs is a fierce competition on Twitter for the best conservative dog-tweeting account. So far, we’ve been sailing through the early contests. But the tough competition is ahead. If I make it through this round, I could soon face Nikki Haley and her unfairly cute pooch Bentley (I’m tempted to demand a blood test). As of this writing, Bentley is in a fierce dog-eat-dog contest with dark dog contender Yoko (of Neontaster fame). There could be an upset, which would roil the betting markets on both sides of the Atlantic.

A surprise Yoko upset might be best — despite his indisputable game — because the Fair Jessica works for Ambassador Haley. So far, Jessica has not asked me to take a dive if it comes to a head-to-head contest. But if, somehow, the dynamic duo of Dingo & Spaniel gets past Bentley, the odds-on favorite in the finals is none other than Dana Perino and Jasper, the Hungarian-American wunderhound who inherited the undisputed title of “It Dog of the American Right” after Cosmo the Wonderdog’s demise. I love Dana and have boundless respect for Jasper’s skills. But I am hoping that there will be some reward for my steadfast dog tweeting. Only time will tell.

ICYMI…

Last week’s G-File

Democrats are actually being socialists now

This week’s first Remnant, with Tim Carney on his hugely important and good book.

The Mueller muddle

Cornyn didn’t endorse Mussolini, but some of the original New Dealers did

Rules of engagement

Thoughts on Cohen

This week’s second Remnant, with David French in which David and I had a grand time covering everything from abortion and Michael Cohen to the EMP that prevents Westeros from developing transistors.

Trump’s North Korea failure is almost success

And now, the weird stuff.

Spiders eat opossums now

Breaking news: Yosemite is incredible

Don’t worry, you can eat a zombie deer

Rats can’t handle their whiskey

Slovenian MP quits after stealing a sandwich

LegoDune

Minnesota dog mayor passses away

Fat rat stuck in a manhole cover

Lucky Charms flavored beer? This can’t be good

Nero was a neckbeard

Poppy seeds can mess with drug tests

Train passengers stuck in snow are finally close to reaching Seattle

Be glad you don’t have a tooth in your nose

Smuggling snakes into Scotland in shoes

Acrobatic chimpanzee

Nurses release cockroaches to get a ward transfer

Escaped emu crosses border from Florida to Georgia

Where was this poor bicycle taken?

Vietnam deports fake Kim Jong Un the day before the real one arrived

Hummingbird fencing

Electro-BandAid

China won’t show Lady Gaga winning her Oscar because she met the Dalai Lama

Don’t steal mummy heads

Siberian black snow

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you merely pretending to be readers as part of some elaborate ruse to get more attention),

Here’s something you might not know: In Nazi Germany, very few Jews staged bogus hate crimes against themselves.

Here’s some more trivia: Very few blacks in the Jim Crow South went to great lengths to pretend that they were harassed or attacked by racists.

You know why? Because that would be incredibly stupid. What, exactly, would the German Jew who staged an assault on himself gain from it? Where would he or she go to ask for sympathy or recompense? Conjure any horror story you like, the Nazi official you brought it to would say, “Yeah, and . . . ?” The black sharecropper who took the time to make his own cross and burn it on his own property would benefit . . . how?

Why am I bringing this up? Well, for a bunch of reasons. I have more points to make than can be found at an English Setter competition.

First, people who live under real oppression have no need to fabulate oppression. To paraphrase Madge from the old Palmolive ads: They’re already soaking in it.

Second, when you live in an oppressive country, there’s no one you can take your grievances to because that is what it means to live in an oppressive country! For God’s sake, people, you’re making me use exclamation points and italics here. If you’re an inmate in the Shawshank prison, you can’t go to the guards to complain. When you live in North Korea, you can’t go to the local police and gripe about your working conditions or the sawdust in your bread.

I feel like one of the Duke Brothers explaining how you might find bacon in a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. But in oppressive societies, the oppression isn’t a bug — it’s a feature. That’s why they’re called “oppressive.” Complaining about oppression in such societies is like a fish complaining that there are a lot of fish in a barrel of fish.

What a Free Society Means

Which brings me to the third point: In non-oppressive countries, there are people to take your case to. Sohrab Ahmari put it nicely in an essay a couple of years ago:

And as Pascal Bruckner wrote in his essay “The Tyranny of Guilt,” if liberal democracy does trap or jail you (politically speaking), it also invariably slips the key under your cell door. The Swedish midwives driven out of the profession over their pro-life views can take their story to the media. The Down syndrome advocacy outfit whose anti-eugenic advertising was censored in France can sue in national and then international courts. The Little Sisters of the Poor can appeal to the Supreme Court for a conscience exemption to Obamacare’s contraceptives mandate. And so on.

This is a hugely important point, and there’s an urgent need for more people to understand it. A free society is a rich ecosystem of competing institutions. Some are powerful, some weak. Some have great influence in a specific sphere of life: the American Bar Association, the military, the Catholic Church, whatever. Some only have power in a certain place: the county zoning board, the local police, your parents, etc. But none have unchecked power over the whole of the society and, thanks to the Constitution, that goes for the government itself, too.

A free society is a honeycomb of safe havens, competing authorities — legal, moral, cultural — that allow for people to find safe harbors from other institutions (“And, apparently, a safe harbor from mixed metaphors” — The Couch). The pursuit of happiness is an individual right that can only be achieved communally with the communities the individual chooses to be part of.

But, as I’ve been writing a lot lately, when statists, planners, nationalists, socialists, et al. embrace the language of crisis or war — metaphorical or otherwise — they are trying to board up these safe havens, to close off avenues of dissent or simple apathy about a given cause. Culture warriors demand that you care. They demand that you be part of the solution, and if you’re not, you’re part of the problem. When this spirit takes over, there’s no one to appeal to for your grievance, because everyone is in on the new crusade or too afraid to say they’re not. Oppressive societies are societies where you don’t have the right to exit.

A host of liberals are bleating about conservative “gloating” over the Smollett debunking. What they seem to sincerely not understand is that their instant acceptance of the story and their instant condemnation of anyone who voiced skepticism over it was an act of oppression. “You must care!” “You must believe!” There is no safe harbor. No right to skepticism or even reflection. He is our Horst Wessel, and you must grasp your complicity in evil. That this response came from Hollywood types who make a living off giving free rein to their emotions is not shocking. That mainstream journalists did it wasn’t shocking either, but it was appalling. It was appalling because they really can’t see how invested they are in this kind of narrative peddling, how convinced they are that they see the world as it is, and the people who disagree are not just fools, but evil.

And now that the truth is out, they are flummoxed, and this consternation is appalling, too.

From Kyle Smith’s piece about the widespread shock in the media that Smollett’s story was a fraud:

Ana Cabrera, CNN anchor, was equally flummoxed Saturday night: “The big question, then, is why?” she asked. “Why he would make something like this up?”

CNN’s senior entertainment reporter Lisa France was comparably engulfed by confusion. “If he actually did this, why in the world would he do this?” she asked. “Why? That’s what everyone wants to know.”

A bit later, Stelter chimed in again: “This is about why he might — and, so far, we don’t know. But why he might have made this up. It just boggles the mind.”

If you think it’s mind-boggling, then you’re part of the problem.

The Smallness of Jussie Smollett

The Jussie Smollett story is not mind-boggling, it’s not even mind-yahtzeeing. It’s normal in these abnormal times.

I’ve been exhausted with the Smollett case since the story of his brave search for a Subway sandwich deep in the heart of MAGA country first made headlines. Like most conservatives I know, I greeted the story skeptically from the outset. The idea that the upscale streets of Streeterville are like a modern Mogadishu with roving bands of MAGA hat-wearing, Empire-watching, bleach-and-noose carrying hooligans just waiting to pounce on gay black dudes in the wee hours of the morning on literally one of the coldest Chicago nights in decades struck me as implausible.

MAGA Thug: “I know it’s cold. But just wait. We know those gay black guys need to eat, and they can’t resist the gray translucent turkey product at Subway . . . Wait! There he is! Grab the bleach!”

But I just couldn’t muster the energy to follow every detail, which is why I’m grateful to our Kyle Smith for all his due diligence.

I’m not trying to sound superior. I wish I’d called bulls*** on the story the way Kyle did from the get-go (and the way I did on the UVA rape story). But I’ve been trying not to join Twitter mobs, even when I suspect the mob is right. That’s the danger of trying to follow a policy of not rushing to judgment; you sometimes end up forgoing the satisfaction of saying, “I told you so!”

But there’s another reason I was reluctant: Smollett’s hoax isn’t that unusual. I’m already running long, so I’ll spare you the data, but hoaxes happen all the time — and so do actual hate crimes. They’ve happened under Trump, and they were happening for decades before Trump. That’s why it’s particularly galling to see Al Sharpton opine on the Smollett case given that his entire career stemmed from the Tawana Brawley hoax and his role in a real hate crime that killed seven people.

I’ve been following this stuff ever since I witnessed such hoaxes as a college student. I think the first book I ever reviewed professionally was about student activism. The author, Paul Rogat Loeb, had a whole chapter about racism on college campuses. He focused on a hate crime at Emory. It was only after dozens of pages about all the wonderful consciousness-raising — and shakedowns of administrators — that resulted from the response to the atrocity that he acknowledged that the victim orchestrated the whole thing. But that was irrelevant, according to Loeb, because “other racial harassment has unquestionably occurred again and again, at colleges nationwide.” And besides, so much consciousness was raised! I wrote at the time, “When students are taught that the coin of the realm is race and rage, invariably some will spend that currency on self-aggrandizement and controversy.”

And that gets me to my next point.

We’re Asking For It

A truism of economics is that you get more of what you subsidize and less of what you tax. I have no quarrel with that. But it seems to me we don’t think enough about how this principle applies to areas we see as outside of economics.

For instance, contrary to what one hears in the left-wing punditsphere, there’s a high cultural penalty — a tax, if you will — on open racism, which is one reason there is so much less of it today. Already, I can hear throats clearing to say “Oh yeah, what price has Donald Trump paid!!!?!?!” Well, leaving aside the merits of the cases for and against the claim that Donald Trump is a racist, it’s transparently obvious that he’s paid a political price for the perception that he is one. The reflexive opposition to Trump by many of the media outlets from which he craves approval is driven in no small part by the widespread liberal assumption that he’s a bigot of one kind or another. Similarly, he’s almost surely paid a price among many independent and moderate voters, including the millions who voted for both Trump and Obama, because of how he’s perceived, fairly or not.

But my point here isn’t to talk about Trump, but to check the box so I don’t have to talk about him further.

In our culture, as with any culture, we reward certain behaviors and penalize others. Think of the young women who made sex tapes as a stepping stone to celebrity. In a different culture, this would not be a wise career strategy. But in our current click-baity climate (which has been this way since long before we had the term clickbait), controversy, attention, etc. are their own reward. Positive attention may be better than negative attention, but negative attention is superior to no attention at all (an insight exploited to great extent by an increasing number of politicians).

Well, slattern chic is just one shining facet of the disco ball of asininity that our culture has become.

The sort of racism Smollett manufactured has never been lower in the United States, but rather than celebrate or express gratitude for this incontestable fact, people look for proof it’s worse than ever. Bereft of giants to slay, they construct windmills and pretend they are heroes for levelling their lances at them. Like the elders of Salem, they mistake their quiet hysteria for sober reality and believe every tale of witches beyond the tree line. On the principle that some things have to be believed to be seen, wearing a blanket at Oberlin is all the proof one needs for a moral panic over the invading armies of the Klan, just as the splash of a dolphin’s tale was proof of mermaids for horny sailors centuries ago.

This, too, is just a facet of the larger tapestry, just one rhinestone glistening off a Liberace cape of self-indulgence.

H. Auden’s prophetic poem “For the Time Being,” keeps coming to mind. Auden predicted that in the “New Age”:

Knowledge will degenerate into a riot of subjective visions & Justice will be replaced by Pity as the cardinal human virtue, and all fear of retribution will vanish & The New Aristocracy will consist exclusively of hermits, bums and permanent invalids. The Rough Diamond, the Consumptive Whore, the bandit who is good to his mother, the epileptic girl who has a way with animals will be the heroes and heroines of the New Age, when the general, the statesman, and the philosopher have become the butt of every farce and satire.

Not all of his examples fit, but he was onto something. If there was a commodities market for pity when Auden was writing, he would have been wise to take a large position because the pity bubble has been expanding for decades now. The New Aristocracy also includes both women with biological penises and those who want to abort their babies in the delivery room — but not the babies themselves. Gay men who travel cross country to buy cakes from pious bakers are heroes and even old Jewish socialists are villains for the crime of Having a Penis While White (and not thinking that should disqualify them to be president).

But pity is a soft emotion that needs something hard to brace against. And that’s why hate belongs in every bullish portfolio, too. We prove our virtue by pitying the right victims and hating the right victimizers. And in any booming market, the incentives for counterfeiting skyrocket. And so people give in to the temptation to manufacture reasons to be pitied, and the buyers can’t resist the pitch because it comes with the opportunity to hate included.

Hoaxes and hysteria-fueled misinterpretations are common on the left because a certain kind of pity and hate has become institutionalized, monetized, and sacralized. But while pity and hate take a certain recognizable, custom-made form on the left — call it bespoke woke — the left doesn’t have a monopoly on the larger phenomenon. Donald Trump demands pity almost daily, and he gets it. And the pitiers get their opportunities for hatred, too. Christopher Hasson is an exceptional case, but only because he took the rhetoric of pity and hate duopoly to an extreme conclusion.

But the rhetoric itself is all over the place — and it’s getting worse. The amount of self-pity on the right is staggering, and it produces an enormous amount of hatred — not so much racist hate, as various liberal elites would have us believe, but hatred at the liberals because they believe it. We’re victims because they hate us, so we must hate them. Pity and hate, hate and pity, for as far as the eye can see, like a snake eating itself.

So I’ll leave with this depressing prediction. Obviously more Smollett-style hoaxes are coming. If the negative attention heaped on mass shooters is enough to inspire other losers to commit that kind of evil, it’s easy to imagine that the attention Smollett has gotten will inspire losers to do likewise. But that’s not my prediction. There will be a hoax involving MAGA hats, but the fake victims will be those wearing them. We already saw the hunger for this kind of thing in the Covington case — but those kids were in fact victims. President Trump invited that kid named Trump to the State of the Union precisely because he wanted to exploit this great reservoir of pity. And the coverage of this legitimate outrage will no doubt encourage others to get a piece of that on the cheap.

So mark my words, some loser, desperate to be lionized by Candace Owens or applauded at CPAC, will manufacture some story of victimhood that will ignite a bonfire of outrage on the right and a riot of sympathy about MAGA persecution. The mainstream media will suddenly remember the professional integrity it forgot in the Smollett case and debunk it. But before then, the pitiables of the right will claim victimhood by proxy and denounce the insensitivity of an uncaring media that hates them. The roles will be reversed, but the script will be the same, and the actors will all yell just a little bit louder, as the snake ups the tempo of its own repast.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: So Pippa has been extra spanielly this last week or so. The cold weather, the mud, the snow, the ice, and in particular, the combination of all four have brought out the true essence of Pippa and provided the content people seem to crave. This video has over 123K views. And this one has been viewed 141 thousand times (though I suspect a lot of that is from repeat viewers). The problem is that when Pippa is truly joyous, the constraints of civilized society vanish, and because she is truly joyous when she gets in muddy water, that behavior also leads her to do very bad things, like roll in fetid foulness. Worse, all of these things lead to baths, which in turn make her all the more desperate to erase the bourgeois scents of modern society, making these cycles repeat themselves.

But that’s my problem. Both girls are having a really good time these days. They were a little too needy when the Fair Jessica was out of town. Zoë is even willing to be captured in action on video. Here she is with her bestest friend Sammie. People keep asking me about the cameos from other dogs that Zoë and Pippa know. Sammie is Zoë’s buddy from her midday pack. They have a very close and special relationship. They’ve been playing like this since they were puppies. And it’s always great when they get reunited. But fear not, Zoë still makes time for Pip.

I hope that continues, but we’ve decided that Zoë needs to go on even more of diet, which is hard because we only really feed her once a day as it is, and it’s not like she doesn’t get a lot of exercise. If anybody has any good advice, please send it my way.

In other news, I can’t begin to tell you how stunned and flattered I was when I heard the news that my appearance on EconTalk was selected as the audience favorite for 2018. I consider Econtalk the gold standard in egghead podcasts. I learned so much from it, I mentioned it in the acknowledgements of my book. So it was particularly awesome that my talk about the book beat out some really amazing competition. Thanks very much to everyone.

On another note, there’s a whole bunch of stuff going on in my life; I’ll hopefully fill you all in when the smoke clears. But there may be a hiatus in G-Filing in the next few weeks, in part because I’ll be travelling for much of March. I’ll be in Spain — when I turn 50! — but, don’t worry, you can save on international postage by sending your pallets of cash, scotch, and cigars to my office at AEI.

ICYMI…

Last week’s G-File

This week’s first Remnant, on Marxism

The Green New Deal and crony capitalism

Trump’s national-emergency declaration is an act of weakness

The freakout over CNN’s decision to hire…a self-professed Republican

This week’s second Remnant, with Charles Cooke

The identity-politics left now despises Bernie Sanders

Thoughts on strategy

And now, the weird stuff.

Karl Lagerfeld’s cat is to inherit $200 million

Not exactly how I like to relax on a plane

The origins of the Stonehenge monoliths is finally discovered

Hipster drinks are going a little too far

Underwater Virgin Mary

Sign me up

Smurfs invade Germany

Take your next mile time with your dog

Want to catch a 20lb goldfish? Use a biscuit

Kid’s cute reaction to seeing clearly for the first time

Geniuses at work

Who says lawyers can’t be romantic?

Colorized footage of George Washington Carver at Tuskegee University

Dog reunited with its family after the wildfire

Used hot-dog napkin cracks 26-year-old murder cold case

This kid is way too happy to get ketchup for Christmas

This koala is sexier than you

A good dog

A smart teen

A big bee

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (But especially Sammie),

I had my say on the emergency declaration yesterday, and I’m sure I’ll have to say it all again not very far down the road.

But there is a point that I think needs to be made. The reason President Trump finds it necessary to declare a national emergency stems from the fact that he is not the world’s greatest dealmaker.

If President Trump had signed the budget deal last December, he would have gotten more wall funding than he did after forcing a government shutdown. For two years, Republicans controlled Congress, and no wall was built. If you want to blame the congressional GOP for that, be my guest. But then don’t give sole credit to the president for everything Congress did pass.

What I mean is there’s a weird heads-Trump-wins, tails-the-establishment-RINO-cuck-Congress-loses dynamic to how Trump’s defenders talk about his record. If Trump is responsible for getting tax cuts — or anything else — through a GOP-controlled Congress, presumably he’s also responsible for the things he didn’t get through Congress, too. But when he wins, it’s proof of his deal-making prowess. When he loses, it’s because of the Deep State, the weak-kneed establishment, Democratic obstruction, polarization, gridlock, CHUDs, whatever.

All you needed was eyes to see to know that he wasn’t going to score some great deal in that December 11 Oval Office meeting. He preemptively took credit for a shutdown, and he got a shutdown and came out the other end worse off.

The reason I point this out isn’t to gloat or say, “I told you so.” It’s to point out that Trump — and his fans — get into trouble by constantly switching rationales for his presidency. In 2016, there were two central themes to the case for Trump. The first was that he was a fighter, a counter-puncher, a paladin against political correctness and all that. The second was that he was a dealmaker who could cut through the stupid dysfunction in Washington. As he said when he announced he was running: “So I’ve watched the politicians. I’ve dealt with them all my life. If you can’t make a good deal with a politician, then there’s something wrong with you.  You’re certainly not very good. And that’s what we have representing us.” Or in a presidential debate in February of 2016:

No, a good deal maker will make great deals, but we’ll do it the way our founders thought it should be done. People get together, they make deals. Ronald Reagan did it with Tip O’Neil very successfully, you didn’t hear so much about executive orders, if you heard about it at all. You have to be able to get a consensus.

And it’s worth noting that he didn’t say, “This is going to be tough and I’m going to need your help.” He didn’t say “These problems are hard and they’re going to require compromise or sacrifice.” He said it would all be “so easy.”

These two rationales overlapped each other with the promise of endless winning. He’ll fight to make deals, and he’ll make deals to win. And it worked — on the campaign trail. But campaigning and governing are different things, and as time has gone by, the two rationales have coiled around each other like a two-headed snake fighting itself.

By wanting to seem like a fighter, he makes it harder to be a dealmaker, because being a fighter has come to be defined as not giving in, not compromising, and not earning the wrath of Ann Coulter’s Twitter feed.

The Tyranny of the Gut

Trump’s definition of being a great dealmaker is merely a facet of his core belief that his instincts are superior to anyone else’s expertise, facts, or judgment. “I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody’s brain can ever tell me,” Trump told the Washington Post.

To paraphrase Ben Shapiro, Trump’s feelings don’t care about anyone’s facts.

This is why my eyes roll like billiard balls on the deck of the Titanic whenever someone claims that Trump has some long-term plan to out-maneuver his opponents. We saw a riot of this stuff during the shutdown.

If @SpeakerPelosi thinks her State of the Union stunt can outmaneuver @realDonaldTrump , she’s in for a rude awakening. Pelosi is playing checkers. Trump is playing chess.

— David Brody (@DavidBrodyCBN) January 16, 2019

Talk to virtually any Republican senator (away from a television camera), and they’ll tell you that Trump’s insistence upon going with his gut from moment to moment makes it almost impossible to craft deals because they never know whether he’ll change his mind or honor his commitments.

There were multiple opportunities to cut immigration deals throughout his presidency, but because he responds to stimuli more than arguments or planning, he missed them all. Remember Paul Ryan’s Border Adjustment Tax? Not only would it have made Mexico pay for the wall, it would have really replaced NAFTA rather than modestly update it. The Oracle of His Gut took a pass. A year ago this week, he could have gotten $25 billion for a wall in exchange for a DACA deal. The Gut said no. Or rather, Stephen Miller went over Lindsey Graham’s head to Trump’s gut. And again, last month his intestinal homunculus vetoed a deal that was better than the one he just signed.

And so that’s why he’s declaring a national emergency. He drove past every off-ramp provided over the last two years, because his gut was giving him directions from the shotgun seat. And now, with the Democrats controlling the House, he’s out of gas on the issue. There is no national emergency now, but he steered himself into a political one. And neither he nor his cheerleaders can see the difference.

Gangsterism and Socialism

On the latest episode of The Remnant, I talked with my AEI colleague Roger Noriega about the situation in Venezuela. If you’re interested in a deeper dive than the usual fare on what’s going on — both down there and in the White House, I think it’s worth a listen. And for those of you who think I can’t praise Trump when called for, let me say that I think the Trump administration has handled the Venezuela issue very well.

But Roger made a point that helped me flesh out something that’s been gestating in my head for a while. I have no problem with conservatives who want to highlight the horror in Venezuela as a cautionary tale about socialism.

But as Roger noted, there’s a lot of explanatory power in seeing Venezuela as a gangster state. The regime behaves like a crime family, buying support like a Don who gives everyone a turkey come Christmastime. And, if you read my book, you’d know that I think the way Mafia Dons operate is one of the oldest and most natural forms of political organization. It’s how Ancient Rome worked — competing clans buying loyalty or “true friendship” in exchange for protection and, often, food. This is the politics of the Big Man, which defined most tribal societies for millennia.

What’s interesting to me is how thin the line between this form of politics and socialism (or fascism) is. The most important thing about the rule of law — including property rights — is that it insulates society from this form of politics. In “natural” societies, justice follows blood. Certain people get different treatment because of their status or class. One set of rules for the prince, another for the peon. Under the rule of law in the Anglo-American tradition, everyone is equal in the eyes of the law. A man’s home is his castle isn’t just a phrase, it’s a cultural norm that stretches from feudal England to the Fourth Amendment. Even the king or the police need a good and lawful reason to violate your rights, even if you’re a nobody.

Look, I know very well there are many kinds of socialism. But wherever socialism has teeth, it veers closer to gangsterism because it depends on the use of arbitrary power, either by the state or, in essence, the mob. If you really want economic equality, you need to take money from people who earned it and give it to, or spend it on, people who didn’t. “Fighting income inequality” doesn’t change the fact that the state is using force based upon an aesthetic conceit about how society should look.

When you hand power over to planners, technocrats, or commissars to substitute their judgement for the rule of law, you are behaving like an outlaw, because you are literally outside the law.

Now, you might object that if socialists come to power democratically and pass laws to “abolish billionaires” or otherwise confiscate wealth to give it to people “unwilling to work” or pay for the Green New Deal, it’s not unlawful. This gets thorny, and I don’t want to get deep into the weeds of Hayek’s distinction between law and legislation. But we don’t need to do that. First of all, one of the reasons we have a Bill of Rights is that the founders recognized that laws can be as illegitimate and dangerous as any monarchical whim. I would hardly be surprised if Nicholas Maduro and Hugo Chavez before him could point to some law or judicial ruling for every horrible thing they did. We know the Soviet Union had plenty of laws, but that didn’t make Stalin any less of a gangster. Once you are outside the rule of law, you live under the rule of force.

When the law moves away from neutral rules applicable to all, it moves toward arbitrary power, which is a form of tyranny. As John Locke put it, “tyranny is the exercise of power beyond right, which nobody can have a right to.” Tyranny is just a fancy word for gangsterism, because in both cases it’s about someone’s individual will being the ultimate authority. If it is tyrannical for a single ruler to violate your rights, it becomes no less tyrannical if 535 elected legislators do it.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: The Fair Jessica is out of town this weekend at a family get-together, and the dogs are pissed. Well, not so much pissed as crazy needy, even though I took them out this morning for an extra special adventure. Expect a lot of dog-tweeting. Anyway, they had quite a week. On one outing with Kirsten, our cherished workday dogwalker and their beloved pack leader, Pippa had a grand time. Too grand. She found a rich deposit of goose poop and said “YOLO” and did her best Andy Dufresne impersonation. When Kirsten brought Pippa home, poor Jessica had to rinse her for fifteen minutes before she even bothered with the soap. As expected, the #TeamPippa hordes on Twitter took the spaniel’s side. Perhaps because of the bath trauma, Pippa was on good behavior for about 48 hours. Then on Thursday, Zoë once again got fed up with Pippa’s tennis ball act and literally said, “If I can’t play, no one can.” Okay she didn’t say it with words, but with deeds. The interesting thing about the video of Zoë burying the ball is that this is very typical behavior of Carolina dogs, though in their natural environment they often do it with their poop. Zoë doesn’t bury her poop, though she does like to kick some leaves over it. But she has a long track record of burying: bones, squirrels, chipmunks, sticks, and now, Pippa’s tennis balls. Meanwhile, Gracie is fine. And I’m sure my wife’s cat is doing okay somewhere. Oh, and reports from my Mom’s house are that Fafoon continues to judge you.

ICYMI…

Last week’s G-File

The Disruptors to Come

Ilhan Omar’s Lazy and Anti-Semitic Tweets

Oh, FAQ Me

Northam’s Vanity Project

Glop Ep. 112: Dirty Laundry

The Remnant Episode 86: Venezwailin’

Trump Can Win Again Only If Democrats Keep Moving Leftward

There Is No New Deal

We’ll Regret This

New Deals (Even Green Ones) Are Bonanzas For Big Business

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Valentine’s Day links

Rabbits surfing on sheep to escape rising floodwaters

Barsik the cat voted more popular than other mayoral candidates in Siberian city

Henry VII’s bed has unknowingly been used by guests in a hotel

Canadians being Canadian and freezing their hair

Snowball fight turns into a riot near West Virginia University

Wildlife center will name salmon for your ex, feed it to a bear

Monopoly on love

Good dogs

Man hits his brother with a lamp in a fight over who owns their cat

Aircraft carrier launches a truck off its deck

Dogs before Instagram

The Westminster Dog Show

Woman attacks a store with a baseball bat because they were out of her favorite patties

Border collie perfection

We all knew this was true

Get her the breadstick bouquet she really wants

Naked pooping

The tragic death of American hero: Mars rover Opportunity

In case you ever felt like eating breakfast in a stadium bathroom

Black Leopard

The real reason Will Smith turned down The Matrix

Runner (not Jack) fights off mountain lion

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of the Democrats who wore blackface but forgot to tell anybody),

Where is Gary Larson when you need him?

I loved Calvin and Hobbes, Peanuts, Dilbert, and Bloom County, but I was in awe of The Far Side. Larson could do more in one panel — daily — than the best often did in three. And he was weird, and I like weird (you’d know that if you could see what I’m wearing right now).

Anyway, I could write about Larson all day long, so long as the armadillo I have under my breastplate doesn’t need to go to the bathroom.

But I should get to the point.

Larson loved cows, and he made them into cultural things like no one before.

“I’ve always thought the word ‘cow’ was funny,” Larson once said. “And cows are sort of tragic figures. Cows blur the line between tragedy and humor.”

And that’s why we need him now.

Contained within the FAQ for the Green New Deal is one of the greatest sentences ever written with the intention of being taken very, very seriously:

We set a goal to get to net-zero, rather than zero emissions, in 10 years because we aren’t sure that we’ll be able to fully get rid of farting cows and airplanes that fast.

I love this sentence so much I want to stand outside its house holding up a boom box blasting Peter Gabriel’s “In Your Eyes.”

I love the attempt to seem pragmatic. We’re not crazy radicals here, we’re just going for net-zero emissions rather than zero emissions in ten years because we are part of the reality-based community.

This is like the straight man in a comedy team saying something banal and serious to set up his partner for the punchline. “We just need a little more time to get rid of the farting cows and the airplanes.” It’s like Ben Franklin’s “Fart Proudly” essay, except they’re not really in on the joke.

And this is where we need Larson. The Green New Dealers don’t want to get rid all of the cows because bovine genocide is not part of the Commissar’s Ten-Year Plan. But fear not, we’ll get there one day. And even the farters have a little more than a decade to get their affairs in order. But make no mistake: We’re coming for you flatulators (shut up, I need that to be a word). We’re like Kurt Russell in Tombstone, and there’s gonna be a reckoning for you cud-chewing milk-beasts because while we like the cheese we get from you, you must be liquidated for the sin of cutting the cheese.

Leave aside that “Farting Cows and Airplanes” would make a great band name. Forget that it can be read in such way that the airplanes fart too. How many Far Side cartoons could we get out of the image of cows turning on each other for the sin of letting one rip? Remember, all cows fart. (I want to thank the Powers that Be for giving me the opportunity to write that sentence in the context of a serious public-policy debate.) So singling out just the “Farting Cows” as if they are a separate class of animals — the hooved climate kulaks of Al Gore’s Animal Farm remake — conjures images of cows throwing each other under the bus when the Green Commissars show up.

“It was Clarence!” Shouts a cross-legged cow.

“Shut up, Bessy! The Inspector knows that whoever smelt it dealt it!”

You know what you call the cows that successfully survive the purge? The laughing stock.

(On that note, as Dom DeLuise shouted from his trailer before coming out in a Speedo, let me apologize for what you’re about to see next.) It would be udder chaos as each cow tried to be neither seen nor herd because the steaks would be so high. I know I’m milking this by butchering a very serious topic. I don’t want to steer you wrong, and I understand why you might have beef with all of these puns that have moved pasture your lactose tolerance.

They Put It in Writing
Don’t have a cow — I know I am having too much fun with this. And, yes, I know that the methane from cattle is a serious issue. But come on. Just look at this whole thing from a hard-nosed political perspective and you have to see what an unbelievable gift this whole thing is to the very people whom believers in the Green New Deal hate the most.

If you tilt your head and squint, this whole thing looks a bit like Jerry Maguire.

If you’ve never seen the movie, you should. It’s good. But I’m going to assume you did and not recap the whole thing. The kid of a hockey-player client makes sports-agent Jerry Maguire feel guilty about how he exploited his dad. Combined with a bout of indigestion, Jerry writes a 25-page manifesto on why his firm should have fewer clients. He distributes the memo to all of his partners and they all applaud, knowing in their cynical hearts that he signed his own career death-warrant. Soon, he’s asked out to lunch by his Beta — excuse me, Beto O’Rourke-esque partner Bob Sugar to get the bad news. “You did this to yourself. You said ‘fewer clients.’ You put it all on paper,” Sugar explains.

Later, Jerry realizes the full scope of his screw-up and why he’s “cloaked in failure.”

They will teach my story to other agents on “do not do this” day in agent school. Why? Lets recap. Because a hockey player’s kid made me feel like a superficial jerk, I had two slices of bad pizza, went to bed, grew a conscience and wrote a 25-page Manifesto of Doom!

Now, I know some of you are thinking, “How’s that armadillo doing?” He’s fine. Don’t worry. I also know that others of you are thinking that I self-owned myself because Jerry Maguire has a happy ending. Well, here’s the thing: This isn’t a movie.

I’m not going to go over all of the reasons why anything like the Green New Deal will never happen — though I covered a couple in my column. All you have to do is contemplate the tens of millions of jobs — automotive, oil and gas, manufacturing, agricultural — that would be destroyed to understand why politically the Green New Deal, as proposed, might as well be a call to mandate that vegan unicorns crap iPhones. And you can promise to tackle farting cows and planes down the road all you like, it won’t sound any more reasonable to the voters who decide every election. I mean, it’s never a good sign when Nancy Pelosi — who considers climate change her defining issue — brushes you off like she’s a high school principal handed a student petition to abolish homework.

And yeah, I know, the Green New Dealers have an answer: Think of all the jobs we’d create building a new electric grid and high-speed rail system, retrofitting every building in the United States, not to mention the Great Round-Up of the Gassy Cows.

Even if one were to take all of that seriously — an if larger than Egon’s hypothetical Twinkie in Ghostbusters — you don’t have to be Mancur Olsen to understand that the interests invested in the economy as it is aren’t going to bite at your offer of magic beans, and not just because beans make you fart.

Don’t Uncork the Champagne
Nancy Pelosi has many faults, but she understands the facts on the ground. It was Pelosi more than Obama who pulled off Obamacare because she understood that you have to co-opt the “stakeholders,” not declare war on them, to achieve anything significant. She knows that if she were to embrace the Green New Deal (or Medicare for All) it would be the greatest gift she could give to Donald Trump and the GOP, because the stakeholders would stampede, like a herd of cattle fleeing the fart police, to the party that promises to save them.

There’s a reason President Trump proclaimed in the State of the Union last year a few days ago, “Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.” If Trump is going to get reelected — another giant-Twinkie-sized if in my opinion — he needs to reignite the Flight 93 Binary Choice panic that allowed him to pull off his win in the Electoral College last time. (As of now, there’s almost zero chance he can win the popular vote.) The White House is reportedly — and understandably — giddy over the Dems’ lurch left. Kamala Harris recently told Jake Tapper that she would like to erase the insurance plans of more than 100 million Americans and destroy private insurance companies wholesale. Where will those voters and insurance PAC dollars go if they took her seriously?

Yet none of this means all is good with the world. Many conservatives — including yours truly — are having great fun watching leading Democrats embrace something that can so easily be turned against them.

It’s a quaint memory now, but the goal of the conservative movement was not to make the GOP more conservative. That was step one in a two-part plan. The real goal was to make the country more conservative. That requires moving the center of gravity in politics rightward. How does that project look today?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpUWrl3-mc8

So while it may be good news in the short-term for Republican politicians for the Democrats to veer wildly to the left, it’s not good news for the country or our cause that conservatism has been redefined as Trumpism for millions of Americans (including millions of conservatives). When large swaths of young voters — the largest bloc of voters in America — look to someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as their spokesperson, the Overton window moves in a direction conservatives should not celebrate because it is likely to slam shut on our squishy bits. Many of the people spinning the largely frivolous Trump State of the Union as a masterstroke are implicitly endorsing his moves leftward on legal immigration, infrastructure, trade, paid family leave, and — I would argue — foreign policy.

The larger point is that when you ask for and get a “disruptor” in the Oval Office, you don’t necessarily get to choose the form of the disruptions you get. Conjure a Stay Puft Man or Godzilla all you like, there’s no guarantee that the behemoth will only smash the things you want smashed. Retaining walls that serve valuable purposes will likely get smashed, too.

The Democrats have become radicalized in no small part because of their hatred of Donald Trump. And because that is the defining mindset of the Left these days, it creates breathing room for other forms of radicalism. The people pushing Trump to declare a national emergency to build his wall will undoubtedly rationalize the move on the grounds that he was elected to be a disruptor and the fact that the Democrats are so “obstructionist.” Maybe he’ll get the wall, maybe he won’t. But he will leave in his path enough flattened barriers to executive power that the next Democrat will have no problem using the exact same talking points for her or his emergency declaration. (As I write in the new cover story for National Review, the Left is much better, and has a far richer history, at declaring national emergencies to justify its power grabs.)

More broadly, the Trump years may mark some significant policy and political victories, but culturally it has been a boon for the Left. Just in the last week or so, we’ve seen the Democrats come closer than ever to literally — not figuratively — endorsing infanticide and socialism. Again, that’s arguably good news for partisans looking at the next election, but it’s a nightmare in the larger context, in part because the Democrats could still win despite that baggage. And while the Unicorn Caucus will never get everything that it wants, you can come well short of the slaughter of the farting cows and still do profound damage to the country.

Various & Sundry
Canine Update: It’s generally been a good week on the dogger front, though last night Zoë got angry about all of the attention I was giving Pip. People following my dog tweets understandably think Pippa is the star of the Goldberg Canine Show because she brings so much action, but the truth is Zoë is still the alpha and gets the alpha’s share of the spoils. And sometimes, she’s even the star on Twitter. Still, Pippa was feeling good about herself because she conquered a personal goal earlier in the day. And she gets her share of attention too. Oh and here’s a special treat. While cleaning up my hard drive I found some old Puppy pics of Zoë.

The real challenge on this front is meeting the unexpected demand for Fafoon content. Fafoon is one of my mom’s three cats and I’m constantly asked for more Fafoon tweets (mostly by @ComfortablySmug). Since I’m only up at grandma’s so often, it can be difficult to make supply meet demand.

I’ll be on Face the Nation this Sunday.

As I mentioned above, I have the cover essay in the new issue of National Review (which prompted Rich Lowry, for the first time ever I believe, to cite something I wrote as one of his Editor’s Picks on the Editor’s podcast. Though he did deliciously grumble about my shots at nationalism).

We’ve had a string of great Remnant podcasts of late, including two this week with Noah Rothman and Daniel Hannan.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

My Rundown appearance

My now out-of-date SOTU prediction column

Lord of the Rings is not racist

My now out-of-date plugging of my now-out-of-date SOTU prediction column

No one will host the Oscars

The Virginia mess

Rothman Remnant

On Cold War movies

The dangerous Green New Deal

V&S

Debby’s Tuesday links

Mutant squirrels

Good dog

Closet monster

Using the internet in the 21st century

D.C.’s Beltway, elsewhere

Was James Brown murdered?

How the Klan almost bought a university

Crypto misfortune

Bigfoot lives?

Your lost family photos might be in seal feces

The bunny murderer

Papal ninja upgrade

China’s tiny garbage men

Goat invasion

Florida politician face licker resigns

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those looking to pounce on this “news”letter),

One of my three favorite essays by George Orwell begins:

Somewhere or other Byron makes use of the French word longeur, and remarks in passing that though in England we happen not to have the word, we have the thing in considerable profusion.

Well, I have need of a word, not for a thing so much as for a kind of word.

I need a word for the kinds of words that people think are universal and objective but are used by those same people only selectively and subjectively.

For example, for years I’ve written about how almost everybody believes in censorship, but they only use the word censorship to describe censorship they don’t like. There are people who genuflect to “Banned Book Week” but also insist that The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn should be pulled from libraries because it uses the N-word. But they don’t call that censorship. There are people who are totally for free speech, but if you ask them if it should be legal to broadcast hardcore porn on Saturday morning broadcast TV, they suddenly start replacing the word “censorship” with things like “reasonable regulation” and “community standards.”

One of my favorites is “hate.” Decrying hate has been a thing for a long time. JFK was visiting what became the “City of Hate” when he went to Dallas (unfortunately for the narrative-mongers, he was killed by a different kind of hater: a Communist). And I’m sure people paid lip-service to hating hate long before that. But the volume really got amped up with the gay-rights movement in the 1980s. Somebody made bank on those “Hate Is Not a Family Value” bumper stickers.

But the thing is hate is a family value. By a show of hands, who thinks I’d be a great dad if I said to my daughter, “I don’t hate Nazis” or “You shouldn’t hate racism”? Yeah, I know Christians have that whole “Hate the sin, not the sinner” thing, but the point stands. You’re supposed to hate what is hateful. As Proverbs says, “To fear the Lord is to hate evil; I hate pride and arrogance, evil behavior and perverse speech.”

Once you start looking around, you see these kinds of words all over the place — fair, pragmatic, realist, et al. — that claim to be universally true but are really used selectively. They’re not euphemisms, per se, because the people using them think that they’re using them sincerely.

Consider certainty. The late Times man Anthony Lewis insisted that one of the two great lessons he learned over the course of his career was that “certainty” is a great evil: “[C]ertainty is the enemy of decency and humanity in people who are sure they are right, like Osama bin Laden and John Ashcroft.”

How I wish I could have asked him if he was certain about that.

But more to the point, this is ridiculous. Was Martin Luther King Jr. the enemy of decency and humanity because he was certain that black people had a right to be treated with decency and humanity? As they say on Twitter: big if true.

Of course, part of what I am talking about is simply the plague of double standards. But that’s not exactly it, either. First, because behind every double standard usually resides a hidden single standard someone is afraid to admit. But also because there are some words that are supposed to evoke a single standard. Wealth isn’t that kind of word because everyone understands that wealth is relative. Tall, short, fat, hot, cold, and a thousand other adjectives all assume a context. Hot compared to what? Tall compared to whom? Phoenix in July is hot, but it’s downright frigid compared to the surface of the sun. Andre the Giant was tall, but not next to a redwood.

Meanwhile, the words I have in mind are categorical. Rape and murder are wrong. Everywhere, always. If you’re in a situation where you think a rape or murder might not be wrong, it’s probably either because there was doubt about whether it was really a murder or rape or because you’re a terrible person.

This is what Kant meant by a categorical imperative — something that is true regardless of context. For Kant, the one clear categorical imperative was essentially the Golden Rule: “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” We should all “act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end, and never as only a means.” I’ll be the first to admit that’s a tall order.

Moral progress, or the story of civilization, is a scavenger hunt for categorical imperatives, a search for truths that are — or should be — true everywhere. And that process is best understood as dogma formation.

If I should ever accomplish enough that people try to find a theme in the great swirling pudding of my collective writings, they could do worse than to say I sought to restore the good name of dogma.

Dogma, Now and Forever

Whenever I hear someone opine how dogma is dangerous or bad or a sign of closed minds, I always wonder whether they realize how dogmatic they sound.

Dogma derives in part from the Greek dokein, meaning that which seems good. “Seems” is an important word here, because sometimes what seems to be true isn’t. And therefore, responsible thinkers should question dogma from time to time. But intellectually serious questioning isn’t synonymous with undermining, dismissing, or destroying. It’s like an inspection of a machine or a barracks or a business model. Sometimes you discover everything is working the way it should. If I check to make sure my daughter is sleeping safe and sound, I don’t wake her up if I find her as expected and hoped. I leave her be.

Since at least Rousseau and Nietzsche, and straight through the American pragmatists, questioning dogma has come to mean dismantling dogma. And this, in itself, has become a kind of dogma.

We teach people that they should reject everything from the conventional wisdom to the teachings of organized religion. Be a maverick. Be true to yourself. Don’t be a conformist. It’s gotten to the point where a superficial nonconformity is the new conformity. Herds of independent minds think that they are rebels by rebelling in great ravenous packs against anyone who disagrees with them. Like flocks of starlings they move in awesome tandem, thinking they are soaring independently when they are in fact swarming together to the beat of their own dogma.

This gets to the heart of why I am a conservative. Civilization is a verb. In our natural environment, murder wasn’t defined as the unwarranted or unjust taking of a human life, but of the unjust or unwarranted killing of a member of my tribe. And even then, the definition of “unjust and unwarranted” was unjust and, often, unwarranted. Rape of the enemy’s women wasn’t evil — it was a right, a just dessert. It was only through thousands of years of trial and error, of religious discovery and cultivation, that the definition of good and evil got closer to the categorical.

In short, we learned some lessons. Even today, among the supposed anti-dogmatic free-thinkers, the majority of their most strongly held moral convictions are dogmatic ones. Are you dogmatically opposed to racism, or do you like to take such questions on a case-by-case basis? What are your views on rape? Murder? Genocide? Do you have an open mind on these things? Do you need to hear both sides?

Abraham Lincoln was right when he said the following in 1861:

The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.

Shall we — in the name of open-mindedness — revisit the “dogmas of the quiet past” and treat slavery as an open question, or shall we all agree, dogmatically agree, that the question of slavery is settled?

The notion that conservatives are the dogmatists and progressives are the free-thinkers is one of the greatest triumphs in the history of the intellectual marketing of bullsh**. Conservatives simply acknowledge that we have dogma, that some questions are settled, and that while they can be questioned or revisited, the amount of new evidence required to overturn them should be monumental and decisive, not faddish and rationalized in the emotions of the moment.

If anything, progressives are the more dogmatic precisely because they think that they are free of dogma, free to fly from one conclusion to another as the crow flies, with no concern for the trial and error that came before. Social justice is not a philosophy. If it were, its practitioners would not struggle in vain to come up with a definition for it. It is priestcraft. It is a self-justifying writ for the power of a mob that is sure it is right. Because they think that they are free of dogma, whatever feels right at any given moment must be right.

As Chesterton said, “In truth there are only two kinds of people; those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don’t know it.” Conservatives have been wrong and will be wrong again. But at least conservatives wait for the truth to fully reveal itself, because we recognize the danger of overturning dogma without a good reason.

This is the main point of my book(s). Declaring war on your own civilization because it’s not changing at the pace you want it to be is a kind of autoimmune disorder, an intellectualized childishness. Children think they are ready — to drive, to cross the street alone, to drink alcohol, whatever, before they are. They say, with frustration, “I know how” when they do not.

The importance of family; the value of “bourgeois norms”; the right to be free to speak, pray, defend yourself, reap the fruits of your labors; the dangers of centralized planning, arbitrary power, faction, and the mob: All of these things are part of my dogma. I know this. I celebrate it. And I am happy to debate it all, because I know what my dogma is, and I know that it was learned at a cost paid for with the blood of billions of humans over thousands of generations.

The reason I get into so many fights with my fellow conservatives these days is that many of them have grown contemptuous of their own dogma. The free market is now just a tool, the Brain Trusters of the New Deal were right after all: If you put the right people in charge, they can plan your life better than you can. Meanwhile the pagans of the alt-right call constitutionalists “paper worshippers,” “vellum supremacists,” and “parchment fetishists.”

Acknowledging your dogma is like acknowledging your biases; it’s a necessary step to thinking seriously. Chesterton said it best: “Man can be defined as an animal that makes dogmas. As he piles doctrine on doctrine and conclusion on conclusion in the formation of some tremendous scheme of philosophy and religion, he is, in the only legitimate sense . . . becoming more and more human.” He continues:

When [man] drops one doctrine after another in a refined skepticism, when he declines to tie himself to a system, when he says that he has outgrown definitions, when he says that he disbelieves in finality, when, in his own imagination, he sits as God, holding no form of creed but contemplating all, then he is by that very process sinking slowly backwards into the vagueness of the vagrant animals and the unconsciousness of the grass. Trees have no dogmas. Turnips are singularly broad-minded.

On Infanticide

What put me in this frame of mind is the latest debate over abortion (which I write about here). I have complicated views on abortion that don’t line up perfectly with most pro-lifers. But my views on infanticide are not complicated. It’s murder. And until very recently, it was normal. “Infanticide has been practiced on every continent and by people on every level of cultural complexity, from hunter-gatherers to high civilizations, including our own ancestors. Rather than being an exception, then, it has been the rule,” writes anthropologist Laila Williamson.

I am perfectly willing to concede that the number of women who seek to “abort” fully viable, born, or near-born babies is small as a statistical matter. But so what? It’s not zero. (If it were, Kermit Gosnell wouldn’t be in jail.) The number of truly innocent people put to death via capital punishment is smaller. That doesn’t make killing an innocent person any less outrageous. Barbara Boxer famously suggested that it’s not a baby until you bring it home from the hospital. That is grotesque. It’s like a magical incantation that rewinds the clock of human progress by millennia, made no less barbaric because it was said on the Senate floor. Indeed, saying it on the Senate floor made it more barbaric. When barbarians hacked and cleaved one another in the Black Forest, their barbarism seems natural. When they sacked Rome, the backdrop sets off the barbarism.

When we talk about capital punishment, opponents and supporters alike pay tribute to the importance of safeguards and due process. When supporters of abortion on demand talk about abortion, they make it sound like any talk of safeguards is an outrage and any outrage over the murder of a baby is religious extremism and — shudder — dogmatism.

Various & Sundry

It’s on! The National Review Institute’s Ideas Summit is coming to Washington, D.C., on March 28 and 29! This year’s conference, “The Case for the American Experiment,” will bring together the conservative movement’s most influential thinkers and policy makers to debate our dogma. Space is limited, so please register today!

And since we’re on the subject of grand conservative confabs, on March 30, ISI will announce the Conservative Book of the Year. And, I’m proud to say, I’m in the running. Details here.

Canine Update: The quadrupeds are doing better with the weather than the bipeds. Some #TeamPippa loyalists were concerned that Zoë was being too rough on Pippa this week. Fear not. They roughhouse all the time, and Zoë knows that if Pippa uses her safe word (it’s very hard to spell given it’s a high pitched squeal), the Dingo will back off. This doesn’t mean they don’t have their arguments. And that’s understandable because Zoë and Pip just have different priorities. Even if they share certain passions.

The worst part of my week was when Pippa squealed even worse at me. On Sunday night, while I was trying to unfurl a poop bag to pick up the Paul Krugman column Pippa left on a neighbor’s lawn, Pippa was barking at me to kick her tennis ball. I kicked it hard, and it beaned Pippa right in the eye. She squealed and ran in a circle. Given her previous eye problem, I was consumed with guilt and worry. It turned out okay. It was a little swollen for a day, but now she’s fine.

Oh, one last dog-related thing. On the latest episode of The Remnant, Kristen Soltis Anderson came on to talk about politics, polling, etc. But more importantly, we spent the first fifteen minutes talking about dogs and her new beau Wally, a Turkish Golden Retriever imported to America to do jobs American dogs won’t do.

ICYMI…
Last week’s G-File

(The B-side)

The Trump/AOC double standard

Me on Glass

The latest GLoP

The new gridlock

Feelings vs. facts

Poor John

The left takes the low ground on abortion

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Tuesday links

Debby’s Friday links

Robot loses job

Avalanche dog training

Confused dog

Hero dog

The bear necessities?

[Citation needed]

What Alec Guinness thought of Star Wars during its production  

Florida Man doesn’t disappoint 

Unexpected whimsy

No, you’re not high

Sled dog

Frankenfood

A good decision

Foiled again!

Awww…

Oldest animal ever discovered by scientists

Newfound Distant Space Rock May Be Missing Link of Planet Formation

Scientists Prepare for Mission to Jupiter’s Icy Moon Europa

There’s a snowman in space

Stranger Holds Umbrella for Deputy Paying Tribute in the Rain to Fallen Comrade

Man bites croc

The World’s First Smart Toilet for Dogs Has Arrived

Ancient Egyptian wine cellar containing coins and ceramics discovered by archaeologists

Giant Teddy Bears Are Taking Over Paris

Editor’s Note: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (And everyone who won so much from the government shutdown),

World-renowned rodent fornicator Roger Stone was arrested this morning, providing a wonderful moment to be literal, figurative, and literary all at once: for it would take a heart of Stone not to laugh. This lexicological ménage à trois should not be confused with the sort of threesome Roger solicited in Local Swing Fever.

By the time you get this “news” letter, you will probably know the details, so we won’t linger over them the way he lingers over his own pecs in the mirror or the glutes of the single dude who answered Stone’s Web ad:

Hot, insatiable lady and her handsome body builder husband, experienced swingers, seek similar couples or exceptional muscular . . . single men,

And some of Stone’s defenders call me a “cuck.”

My point is, this isn’t like the situation with Michael Flynn, a man who gave decades of courageous service to his country and ended up straying from the path (to one extent or another). Even Paul Manafort, who shares many of Stone’s ethical and moral shortcomings — going back at least to their work together defending various Third World dictators as leaders of the “Torturers’ Lobby” — is a different creature than Stone. Manafort at least maintained the pretense of decorum and decency in public. The defining attribute of Manafort is simple, swampy greed. Stone literally brags about his sleaziness. He wears it on his immaculately tailored sleeves. When a New Yorker writer asked him why he moved to Miami, he quoted a Somerset Maugham line: “It’s a sunny place for shady people. I fit right in.”

It’s funny because it’s true.

It was thanks to his contacts with the Florida sex industry that Stone successfully orchestrated the downfall of Eliot Spitzer. While I am the first to concede that there were some silver linings to seeing that thuggish Javert removed from the public stage, that doesn’t compel me to admire the man and his means (including, for instance, his threatening prank call to Spitzer’s 80-year-old father).

Similarly, the predawn raid on his home may have been over the top (time will tell if Mueller had a good reason for it), but the idea that it should arouse so much sympathy for a man who boasts of his lack of sympathy for others, his alleged threat on a man’s dog if he cooperated with Mueller, his habit of wishing death on inconvenient women and of hurling dimwitted racist taunts, not to mention his bottomless record of dirty tricks, strikes me as a moral red herring.

Speaking of bottoms, I’m more torn about the plethora of jokes on the Twitter on how he might enjoy prison given his proclivities. And I’m not referring to his back tattoo of Richard Nixon, which would make for a great visual as he worked out à la Robert De Niro in Cape Fear.

I’m torn because jokes about prison rape are justifiably condemned these days. Like any rape, it’s a heinous crime. But that’s not what I’m getting at.

You see, Stone is an avowed “libertine” who says “I’m trysexual. I’ve tried everything.” So while Stone doesn’t hesitate to say, “Die, bitch,” or express hope that his interlocutor kill herself, I am not wishing any violence on the man. Even his threat to disappear a man’s dog — which raises particular rage in me — should not cause one to stoop to his level (even though it says in the Bible, “Verily, ye may bathe in the blood of lawyers and sophisters, a man’s dog is beyond the reach of vengeance”— okay, it’s implied).

Stone often wooed the ladies by noting that, thanks to his tat, “you’ll never meet another man with a d*** in the front and a d*** in the back,” another bon mot that might become both literal and figurative — if not quite literary — should he be incarcerated.

More seriously, I understand that the party line keeps moving from “Nothing happened” to “If it happened, what’s the big deal?” to, sometime soon, “You’re damned right it happened, and thank God it did!”

But working with foreign adversaries to criminally hack the servers of an American political party would be bad, regardless of what you — or I — think of Hillary Clinton (and to be clear, Stone has not been charged with that, yet). And no amount of shrieks of “But Uranium 1!” or “But her emails!” can change that fact. If the situation were reversed, the “But her emails!” people would be the first to admit this.

Moreover, lying to Congress and witness tampering are bad, too. That these are the charges Mueller is leveling at Stone lends credence to the appointment of Mueller in the first place. People are correct when they say that Congress is the proper venue for such investigations. But since Congress seemed uninterested in pursuing or exposing these lies, who else but Mueller was going to do it?

Regardless, if Stone is proven guilty, he should go to prison. And if he does, Stone should enunciate clearly, for, given his reputation, some of his confrères might be forgiven for mistaking his “But her emails” rants for a casting call for buttery males.

The Suicide of America, an Allegory
I was mugged a few times as a kid. In each instance, the mugger was black or Hispanic. If I were to write that, due to these experiences, I know all I need to know about black or Hispanic people, I’d be open to all manner of charges — racism and stupidity chief among them — and rightly so.

You know what else happened to me as a kid? Someone I didn’t like smirked at me (including a couple of the muggers). Why would it be any less idiotic to suggest that I now know everything I need to know about the smirkers amongst us? And yet, this week, a lot of people did exactly that:

From elementary school through college I went to school with sheltered upper middle class white boys who could DEVASTATE with a smirk. A facial gesture that weaponized their privilege. Infuriatingly you can’t fight that f***ing smirk with a punch or words.

— Alex Cranz (@alexhcranz) January 19, 2019

One theme of the conversations over the past 24 hours = how deeply familiar this look is. It’s the look of white patriarchy, of course, but that familiarity — that banality — is part of what prompts the visceral reaction. This isn’t spectacular. It’s life in America. pic.twitter.com/TmziDwAjYA

— Anne Helen Petersen (@annehelen) January 21, 2019

THIS leering, privileged little s***. pic.twitter.com/K9eafNwnJq

— Patton Oswalt (@pattonoswalt) January 19, 2019

Of course, they weren’t offended by all smirkers, just the white male smirkers — or white male Catholic smirkers. But the point is the same.

The Covington-kids controversy exposed what lies at the very heart of what ails our society these days. I’m not referring to the very real bigotry against Christians in general or Catholics in particular. Nor do I have in mind the equally real problems with social media or the various battle lines of the culture war. These are all expressions or manifestations of the underlying problem.

I am referring to the problem of identity. In mathematics, the transitive property of equality holds that if X equals Z, and Y equals Z, then X and Y are the same. But the social concept of identity holds that if person X is white, and person Y is white, then person Y is the same as person X. The language is rarely so simple as that, but the idea is.

During the Kavanaugh brouhaha, I wrote a column arguing that the fight was so intense because it was essentially an allegory. Why was Kavanaugh so angry about being called a drunkard and rapist, I asked? My answer:

The most common explanation — the hot take so hot it melted the conventional wisdom and forged a new concrete groupthink — is that Kavanaugh was so angry because he represents White Male Entitlement.

The WME explanation is a form of allegory, not argument. In allegories, the characters aren’t real people so much as metaphors for certain ideas. For instance, in The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678), the main character is named Christian, and on his trek he encounters other abstractions in human form, such as Mr. Worldly Wiseman.

Kavanaugh is now Mr. White Male Entitlement, and as such, he is by definition wrong because that is his assigned role.

In the Covington spectacle, all of the players were assigned allegorical roles that stripped away any notions of true individuality. For untold thousands — or millions — of people, all you needed to know about the individuals involved was that they fit into pre-assigned roles of identity. The kids were white, they were Catholic, and some even wore MAGA hats. Nathan Phillips, the drumbeating Native American, was a Native American, he was old, and he was a veteran. Even when the truth started to trickle — and then flood — out, invested observers couldn’t let go of their original idea of how the story in their minds was cast.

The kids were harassed by a cult of bigots known as “Black Israelites.” But since they were black, countless people, from Phillips to the folks at the New York Times, struggled mightily to minimize or dismiss their pernicious role. Even when it was revealed that Phillips was at best, extremely deceptive, or more accurately, deliberately dishonest, people clung to the idea that he was the wronged party.

And, as Rich Lowry chronicles, even after it was revealed that the kids mostly behaved admirably, the witch hunters fell back on condemning them anyway because they wore those talismanically evil hats. As someone at Vox wrote: “The hats extinguished pretty much any benefit of the doubt a liberal observer might have given these kids.” David Simon declared: “Once a campaign prop, a MAGA cap now fronts for such raw evil.” Leading public intellectual Alyssa Milano declared that MAGA hats are “the new white hood.”

I want to move beyond the Covington thing to stay on my larger point, but it’s worth addressing one last example. My colleague Nicholas Frankovich penned a blog post that joined in the pile-on, because he made the understandable mistake of believing the initial video and the press coverage of it. His post wasn’t National Review’s editorial position any more than this “news” letter is.  When the truth was revealed, we deleted the post, and he and the magazine apologized. Since then, we’ve run some of the most thoughtful pieces condemning the pile-on. But because transitive-property thinking is so powerful, there are still hordes of people out there who simply refuse to let go of their anger at National Review and all its writers. They know the facts, they just don’t care because they are committed to a larger manifestation of this mindset. Despite numerous pro-Trump or Trump-sympathetic writers at National Review, despite all we’ve published about the Covington controversy that aligns with their views, we are seen as traitors to the cause among those who’ve invested themselves totally in Trump, Trumpism, and their fantasies of the glorious world Trump will deliver — or would deliver, if their allegorical hero had not been stabbed in the back. We are an evil “Them” now, and there’s no desire to rewrite the script to fit reality.

Me, Us, Them
“Identity,” Leon Wieseltier once suggested, might be thought of as “the solution to the problem of individuality.”

Wiseltier also argued that “individuality is ancient, identity is modern.” I understand what he meant, but I think he was wrong. Both are ancient concepts — timeless, actually — in the sense that both ideas lie at the heart of what it means to be a human. We all, to one extent or another, think of ourselves as unique, if for no other reason than the fact that we have access to our own minds and emotions, but not to other peoples’ — at least not in the same way. We don’t experience life through anybody else’s senses. The motivations of others may be knowable from time to time — and even shared — but they aren’t felt the way we feel our own wants and desires. (I should probably note that Wieseltier had some difficulty controlling his wants and desires when they conflicted with those of some women he worked with.)

What is true is that the idea of individuality, how we think about the rights and privileges we attach to the individual person, have changed across time and locale. But the individual conscience, the idea that “I am me,” has always been there because it is an emanation of the instinct to survive, which we all have.

Meanwhile, identity, the notion that the Me shares something important with others like Me, is eternal as well. We are a cooperative species that has managed to survive this long only because we figured out how to work together. For most of human history, tribes invested huge importance in the equivalent of MAGA hats. It was important — vital — to distinguish Us versus Them. So how one group wore their hair, painted their faces, or whatever else was a signal to distinguish friend from foe and was every bit as vital as the different uniforms of opposing armies. In a state of war, which is man’s natural state, the transitive property is a survival mechanism. One enemy warrior — or, for that matter, a bear or tiger — is no different than another, and not just because they look (or dress) alike.

In a modern, liberal democratic civilization, this form of thinking is dangerous. But because the tide of prosperity is sweeping away the traditional warrens of meaning and belonging, people are searching for off-the-shelf individuality, which is really a form of conformity to some flavor of identity. A certain amount of identity is inevitable — and often healthy — because we all belong to abstract categories that have meaning for us (though it’s always better to find meaning in more-substantial sources of identity). But the drive to replace individuality is often a sign of shallow and cheap individuality.

If one fears to be judged on your own merits because you know, deep in your soul, you’ll be found wanting, you’ll attach yourself to some abstract identity that gives you meaning you did not earn. The man who never served who claims to be a veteran, the veteran who never saw battle who claims to have fought bravely, the loser who falls back on his white skin to claim to be better than others, the minority who blames his failures or bad luck on the innate evil of the majority, the young activist who insists she must be listened to solely because she was born more recently than her more-informed elders: These and so many others are types of people who want to buy status on the cheap. And it is the very cheapness of the identity that causes us to cling to it ever more angrily. Women are more liberated than ever before, but they grow louder about their oppression. White supremacy has been erased from most hearts and from the law books alike, but we are told that this has only freed the menace to grow.

“An affiliation is not an experience,” Wieseltier writes. “It is, in fact, a surrogate for experience. Where the faith in God is wanting, there is still religious identity. Where the bed is cold and empty, there is still sexual identity. Where the words of the fathers are forgotten, there is still ethnic identity. The thinner the identity, the louder.”

Our system cannot work if we don’t honor the moral obligation to take people as we find them. And yet everywhere you look, you hear or read supposed intellectuals and moral influencers reducing vast swathes of people to abstract categories. From Black Lives Matter activists who only see skin color — or police uniforms — to supposed deep thinkers who make sweeping statements about Christians or the products of Christian education. Ta-Nehisi Coates is an intellectual rock star for reducing millions of people to their skin color. Elizabeth Warren, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and their allies see “billionaires” as evildoers to be punished or eradicated solely for their membership in a class of people. Blacks rightly complain about the phenomenon of being singled out for the crime of “driving while black.” For the new levelers, the wealthy are guilty of the crime of existing while rich.

Large swathes of the Right are equally guilty, and not just the poltroons of the alt-right. In Texas, some Republicans wanted to defenestrate a Muslim Republican solely because he was a Muslim. Many on the right reflexively behave like the mirror image of Black Lives Matter, instantly crediting anyone who wears a police uniform, regardless of what they did.

When President Trump announced his candidacy he said:

When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

Since then, the argument has changed somewhat. To his credit, he emphasizes the distinction between illegal and legal immigration more, but he also talks less and less about any “good people” coming here illegally. Instead, illegal immigrants are increasingly an undifferentiated mass of criminals, rapists, drug dealers, and sex traffickers. Of course, some are. And we have every right to fight illegal immigration, even when the illegal immigrants are good people.

But utterly lost in Trump’s increasingly desperate attempts to paint all illegal immigrants as an undifferentiated blob of danger is any attempt to recognize the humanity of the individuals involved. With the help of his enablers, every evil illegal immigrant is held up as X and every illegal immigrant, we are led to believe, equals X. And it’s a lie.

The transitive property is what makes identity politics and allegorical thinking possible, and it is incredibly dangerous to what this country is supposed to be about. I know a**holes who wear MAGA hats and I know great people who wear MAGA hats. I know wonderful, compassionate people steeped in a Christian education, and I know people who use their Christian credentials as a racket. There are illegal immigrants who should get the chair or rot in prison, and there are illegal immigrants who live honorable lives making wonderful contributions. Reducing millions of people to abstractions, indicted by collective guilt, because of the actions of a specific individual is the habit of mind that has led to more deaths — by which I mean murders — and systemic cruelties than any other in human history.

For God’s sake — and ours — try taking people as you find them.

Various & Sundry
My apologies for the epically long “news” letter today. As often happens, I planned to write about one thing and then the gods of the news cycle intervened. And I felt like I couldn’t let the Stone thing go, if for the only reason that I think it’s so funny to say “But her emails” five times fast and have it turn into “Buttery males.”

Canine Update: The girls are prospering — perhaps a bit too much. We’re increasingly worried that Zoë is getting too Rubenesque. The thing is, we really don’t overfeed her, and she gets plenty of exercise. Also, any diet that she interprets as favoritism toward Pippa could be a problem, not least because Zoë has no problem with eating Pippa’s food when she feels entitled. Any suggestions about how to deal with this are welcome. In the meantime, they’re loving life in the cold weather — and in the warm confines of our home. Though Zoë sometimes finds the mid-morning wait for adventure a melancholy affair, there are remedies for that. But Pippa is really enjoying her ability to show off her camouflage skills, and the ice doesn’t last long. Even the denial of mud service imposed by Old Man Winter can’t take the waggle out of Pippa’s caboose. And few things are more exciting than the return of the mater familias.

And now the other stuff

This week’s first Remnant, with Charles Lane, was a fun one. And hopefully by the time this reaches you the second Remnant will be up, on missile defense with Tom Karako. You can look here or wherever you get your podcasts.

Last week’s G-File

Last week’s G-File . . . B-side?

Will Trump get a primary challenge?

America doesn’t need a helicopter-mom-in-chief

Missing details

The mess we’re in

Good news for Suicide of the West (the book)

What might have been

Congressional Republicans and shutdown blame

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Thursday links

Debby’s Friday links

Last words

Drunks for hire

Dog bites man, then . . . dog’s owner bites man

Nature’s revolt

Nature is revolting

Always wondered why no one ever did this

The world’s largest airport terminal

I bless the rains

“Bohemian Rhapsody” on a carnival organ

Reporter rescues drowning jogger

The Seventh Seal has been broken

Behold: the blood moon

Beware the EMPs

Tanning-salon Godfather

Staying safe on ice

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of the TSA Agents who’ve replaced woke children as the voices of wisdom in American life),

In my eons on the internet, one lesson I have tried to take to heart — not always successfully — is that in the long run, it’s best to stand on the sidelines of the great race to be wrong first.

To that end, I’ll just say that I don’t know if the BuzzFeed story alleging that Donald Trump ordered Michael Cohen to lie to Congress, and other nefarious doings, is true. One of the main reporters may or may not be trustworthy. All of the sources are anonymous. The story claims that there are documents supporting the charge, but the reporters may not have seen them, so if the sources are lying about the major facts, why wouldn’t they lie about the corroborating facts as well? As Brit Hume often likes to note, exclusive bombshells don’t stay exclusive for very long. If we go much longer without another news outlet corroborating the story, it’s likely because it can’t be corroborated for a reason.

But are the charges believable?

Trump defenders are right that we’ve been here before. Blockbuster allegations are reported. A few days later, the story either falls apart or deflates significantly. But here’s the interesting thing. Between the time of the initial report and the correction, one rarely hears the professional defenders say, “This story is unbelievable and false.” It’s only when the correction comes that they are suddenly overcome with indignation that anyone would suggest such a thing. Only after they have a factual backstop do they shriek, “you had to be suffering from Trump derangement syndrome to have believed the report in the first place!” These rhetorical lacunae are revealing, because I think it shows that the praetorians believe the charges are possibly true. (Also revealing: The tendency to stop shouting “Fake News” whenever MSM reporting is beneficial to the White House.)

But here’s the question: In your heart, do you think it’s believable that the president told Michael Cohen to lie to Congress? I mean, do you really think given his character, history, and temperament that it’s inconceivable that he would do such a thing?

I think it’s believable because we already know that the president has no problem with lying and encouraging others to lie about his dealings with Russia (and a few other things). During the campaign and after being sworn in, he categorically denied business dealings — ongoing or potential — with Russia. Before Cohen told Mueller that he had lied to Congress, Trump’s position was unequivocal.

Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA – NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 11, 2017

After the Cohen testimony and other evidence came to light (including this signed letter by Trump), he didn’t say Cohen made it all up. He said it was no big deal that he looked “lightly” into such a deal. This is a recurring pattern.

So yeah, sure, the BuzzFeed story may be wrong in whole or in part, and if it is, BuzzFeed should pay dearly for it. But the fact that the story is so believable is both damning and significant.

Think of it this way: If your wife or husband thinks it’s entirely believable that you might be committing adultery, your marriage is in trouble regardless of whether or not you actually are cheating. That it is utterly believable that the president would do such a thing is an indictment of his presidency in and of itself.

This same logic applies just as forcefully to the FBI as well. I don’t subscribe to the various Deep State theories being peddled by the praetorians, but it is damning nonetheless that such theories are remotely plausible.

Changing Gears
So I’m doing something weird here (thank God there’s no video with this “news”letter), but that’s my business. I’m also doing something unusual. I just cut the rest of what was my nearly completed G-File to switch gears entirely. I’ll post the rest of my argument about Trump on the site, and hopefully by the time this thing goes out, there will be a link to put here.

I just caught my friend and colleague David French on MSNBC defending Karen Pence and the Christian school she’s going to teach at. I love listening to David defend Christian teachings in the MSM because he manages to be simultaneously unapologetic about his apologetics and wholly decent and un-scolding in the process.

Anyway, one of the points David made is right in my wheelhouse: He wants there to be as much freedom as possible for different schools and other institutions to teach their faith. If you’ve read or listened to me rant about federalism and civil society you know how dorkily passionate I am about this topic.

And that put me in mind to a question I got from an academic from a religious school last weekend when I was speaking at a conference for AEI’s Values and Capitalism program. After my usual rant about federalism and the importance of civil society, this guy asked me what’s wrong with First Things editor Rusty Reno’s calls for rethinking the Founding and the Enlightenment in pursuit of some new kind of Catholic-informed, New Deal-style project of national solidarity.

National Solidarity is Overrated
And that reminded me that Rusty has returned, like a dog to his vomit, to his attacks on me. If you recall, Rusty wrote a dumb review of my book a while back which began with the declaration: “Jonah Goldberg exemplifies the decadence and dysfunction of today’s public discourse.” For reasons I explained here, I thought this was impressively stupid, revealing the decadence and dysfunction in Reno’s Rusty-thinking.

In his latest effort, he puts the decadence and dysfunction on display yet again. But he also says some interesting things, and if you’ll forgive the self-congratulatory tone, they’re interesting because they track an argument I make at great length in my book. He argues that elites haven’t held up their end with regard to the rest of America. This is not a new argument, of course. It can be traced from Joseph Schumpeter to James Burnham to Irving Kristol and Christopher Lasch to Charles Murray in his prophetic Coming Apart.

As I discussed here last week in the context of Tucker Carlson’s jeremiad, I have no problem criticizing elites, but I think people are focusing mostly on the wrong elites.

My disagreement with Reno — aside from all the snide nonsense and bad faith — is the same problem I have with all of these arguments for centralizing power in Washington to “bring the country together” or some similar treacle.

Which brings me back to David French’s comments and Reno’s little project.

There’s an old joke about how the best form of government is the “good Czar.” The problem is that if you create a system dependent on the wisdom of a good Czar, you leave society defenseless against the rise to power of a bad Czar.

This insight, perhaps more than any other, is at the heart of the American political system envisioned by the founders. If men were angels, we wouldn’t need government, and if you could guarantee that every Czar is an angel, you wouldn’t need democracy, checks and balances, or divided government of any kind, either.

National solidarity is awesome when it’s on your terms. It’s only when people you don’t like get to define what constitutes national solidarity — which is synonymous with some notion of “national purpose” — that its proponents suddenly realize the problems. Then, when the people who say that “there’s no such thing as someone else’s child” or think that the Knights of Columbus is an ersatz hate group come into power, they’re suddenly like Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge Over the River Kwai asking, “My God, what have I done?”

The Founding, Again
The founders were acutely aware of this, which is why they opposed an established church like the Church of England. They saw how minority faiths had been persecuted in the name of national solidarity. The exhaustion after the religious wars of Europe minted the right to be wrong in the eyes of the majority or the state. In other words, they championed pluralism. As Ben Sasse writes in Them, we should all see ourselves as members of minorities.

Madison encouraged everyone to conceive of themselves as creedal minorities.

Assume that if you believe anything important or hold anything dear, it will not always align with majority opinion. Wise republicans (small-“r” republicans) — by which he meant all citizens of this new experiment in liberty, who had just observed a century-plus of religious war in Europe — should be aiming to preserve space for peaceful argument and thoughtful dissent. Government isn’t in the business of setting down ultimate truths. It doesn’t decide who’s saved and who’s damned. Government is merely a tool to preserve order, to preserve space for free minds to wrestle with the big questions. Government is not the center of life but the framework that enables rich lives to be lived in the true centers of freedom and love: houses and communities.

Reread George Washington’s letter to the Hebrew Congregation at Newport:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

The founders, especially James Madison, understood that the kind of national solidarity Reno desires and Rousseau celebrated is not scalable for a large, diverse, ultimately continent-spanning nation — at least not while preserving liberty. Even Rousseau thought his (largely totalitarian) conception of the General Will could not work on a polity larger than his beloved Geneva.

The way to prevent tyrannical invasions into the liberties of others was to divide power, not just between the three branches of government, but between the central government and the states and smaller jurisdictions. Each state has divided government, as do most cities and even towns and counties. And it’s not just state power. Institutions, starting with organized religion, must be given substantial immunity to interference by the state – at any level.

Divide power and then divide it again and again, and you prevent factions from grabbing power and imposing their will on the whole. As Madison writes in Federalist No. 51: “Extend the sphere and you take in a greater variety of parties and interests; you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens; or if such a common motive exists, it will be more difficult for all who feel it to discover their own strength and to act in unison with each other.”

Delaware’s John Dickinson put it well at the Constitutional Convention: “Let our government be like that of the solar system. Let the general government be like the sun and the states the planets, repelled yet attracted, and the whole moving regularly and harmoniously in their several orbits.”

This idea, which evolved organically and slowly out of English culture, became a philosophical program (See Hume’s Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth) and ultimately a “new political science.”

But don’t tell that to Reno. He ridiculously thinks he’s caught me in a great contradiction by celebrating Hayekian trial and error while heaping scorn on the “Bold persistent experimentation” of the New Deal. He writes:

But wait a minute. By Goldberg’s account, we’ve gotten to the Miracle by trial and error. It’s taken thousands of generations of experimentation. Thus, the Miracle, too, has been arrived at by “the very definition of the authoritarian method.” In other words, the liberal miracle is in the upshot of a crypto-fascist approach. This explains why Suicide of the West is full of denunciations of those who disagree with Goldberg. That’s what ideological authoritarians do. They don’t argue with reason and decency. They pillory, ridicule, and smear.

This is preposterous. The New Dealers wanted to crush the normal divisions of power (and had considerable success). Planners like Rex Tugwell thought they were smarter than the market and could set the prices for everything from Washington. They believed individuals could have enough knowledge to plan other peoples’ lives better than they could. That’s not bottom-up-trial and error from the little platoons of society (nor is it Catholic subsidiarity). It’s what Hayek called the Road to Serfdom. A previous editor of First Things, the late great Father Neuhaus, recognized this. As he and Peter Berger wrote, policymakers had to recognize and respect the role of intermediating institutions to advance e pluribus unum. “unum is not to be achieved at the expense of the plures. . . .the national purpose indicated by the unum is precisely to sustain the plures.”

It’s fine if Reno likes the New Deal — progressives of all parties tend to. And it’s certainly true that the New Deal borrowed influences from Catholic social thought, particularly from folks like Father John Ryan (and for a time Father Coughlin). But this is mind-bogglingly dumb, dishonest, or ignorant (or maybe all three).

The philosophical pragmatism of the technocratic progressives was the exact opposite of what I talk about in my book, and if he can’t see that, no wonder he gets so much else wrong.

But here’s the point. If you want to knock out what remaining safeguards there are against another New Deal, green or otherwise, you should ask yourself: Who will run it? And what will that mean for the things you hold dear? And how long will it be run by the good Czars you like?

After all, Obama wanted a new New Deal. How did his administration treat Catholics? How would it treat the schools David French is talking about? I understand that Rusty thinks he’s very persuasive, but count me skeptical that his new corporatist (in the real meaning of the word) New Deal  — or whatever he would call the tangible result of his gaseous wish casting — would have a particularly Catholic flavor or would treat Christian schools, charities, adoption agencies, or the Knights of Columbus as full partners in the project.

And even if this ridiculous pipe dream were to come to be, how corrupting would it be of those institutions in the long run? The very thing that has corrupted the elites Rusty denounces would in all likelihood corrupt the new elites too. How faithful is Catholicism in China today? How much witness did the Russian Orthodox Church bear in the old Soviet Union? Hell, give some religious “leaders” a taste of good radio ratings or a sweet land deal and a little fame these days and you can see how far they stray. Imagine what compromises they might make for the greater good and for the cause of national solidarity when they had real power. Power and status are more seductive than 30 pieces of silver.

Rusty bleats a lot about “Conservatism Inc.” as if it were a particularly clever or novel epithet. But oddly he also thinks he’s using it correctly. Here I am invoking the central arguments made by conservative thinkers from the founding until 2016 — including, for most of its history, his own magazine. I am defending the vision of the founders, the insights of Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, Friedrich Hayek, William F. Buckley, and the causes of religious and economic liberty which have made this country one of the most glorious accomplishments in all of human history, and he’s whining about how I’m being mean to the New Deal, which put an immigrant in jail for charging too little for pressing a suit and tried to erase religious practices that did not align with its central planning.

That’s not Conservatism Inc. That’s conservatism. American conservatism.

Conservatism Inc. these days is the lusting for the power, relevance, and fame we see all around us, and I guess Rusty wants his slice.

Various & Sundry
Canine Update: For the most part, all is great with the beasties. But there was one very bad incident for which we haven’t forgiven Zoë. The Dingo hasn’t gotten into a scrap with another dog for months, and she’s generally been an amazingly good girl about such things. We actually kind of thought we turned the corner. But then, while I was in Florida and my wife was shoveling snow, the Dingo got out of the house off leash at exactly the wrong moment. There are two very nice miniature spaniels on our block, and Zoë hates them with a blinding passion. Out in the park, she’s not territorial, but on our block she’s a member of Hezbollah and every other dog is an Israeli settler. She went after the dogs — who always try to pick fights with her, I should add — and she hurt them in the ensuing tussle. They’re okay now, but they did have to go the vet and we’ve obviously offered to pay the bill and have apologized profusely. Still, we need to revisit our security protocols. These things happen, but we hate it and we take it very seriously.

On the lighter side, that same weekend, the Fair Jessica had the dogs on a snow-covered trail along the Potomac. The only other person on the trail was a guy on a mountain bike riding in the snow (I didn’t think this was a thing). The guy said to her “Are those Jonah Goldberg’s dogs? Zoë and Pippa?” My wife thinks he thought she was the dog walker, so she said, “Yeah, those are <sarc> Jonah Goldberg’s </sarc> dogs.

I do think that one of the reasons Zoë was bad is that snow definitely brings out the wild side in her (and also the regal side). She doesn’t listen as well to the humans because it’s all so exciting! Pippa’s the same way, but as America’s Most Harmless Dog® it doesn’t really matter, and she always stays near the ball thrower anyway. But man do they love the snow! Pippa doesn’t even mind that no one noticed her new hairdo. The snow is also great because it depletes their batteries at an accelerated rate (once you get them inside). It also just makes them more photogenic.

ICYMI. . .

I’ve lost track of how many people said this latest episode of The Remnant podcast was among their favorites.

In fairness, I’ve also lost track of how many people have said “Shut up, cucks.” Decide for yourself.

Last week’s G-File

Will the shutdown ever end?

Chuck and Nancy vs. Nancy and Chuck

Trump’s “jokes”

The Russia muddle

What will the 2020 election be about?

Nancy Pelosi. . .is. . .right?

Giuliani isn’t helping Trump

How the media could hurt Democrats

The return of interbranch conflict?

Trump’s MacGuffin wall

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Thursday links

What’s the loudest sound in the universe?

Did you get that memo?

RIP one of the greatest Americans who ever lived

The past resurfaces

We have a lot of cheese

The swing at the end of the world

Lab-grown human blood vessels

I thought this was America!

Pizza for eels

King Tut’s space dagger

Maine’s giant ice disk

2018’s award-winning ocean photos

Otters on a water slide

Vatican track team

Don’t do this
Fat clubs

Curing potato depression

Accidentally tasting peppermint

Whack-a-mole for dogs

How each Michigan county got its name

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Even those otherwise occupied by their doorbell love),

Like Jeffrey Epstein when the new Sears Junior Miss catalogue comes out, I don’t know where to begin.

About 20 minutes ago (my time), I caught some of Senator Kamala Harris’s road show on Morning Joe. If there were a platitude-eating fungus that rapidly reproduced, by the end of the segment, everyone would have died from the crushing weight of the world’s largest mushroom.

I don’t really take offense at the platitudes, given that we are talking about a politician and also a U.S. senator running for president. What did bug me quite a bit, though, was how she oozed the sense that she was just nailing it. And no, this isn’t a sexist thing. I know we’re in the phase of the asinine conversation when we’re supposed to believe that finding a specific liberal woman annoying or unlikable proves that you hate all women.

I reject all of this and all attempts to bully me into compliance. I belong to the school that says women are human beings, and that means they are distributed up and down the likability scale, just like men. I find Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez likable, but not as likable as Amy Klobuchar, and more likable than Elizabeth Warren. And, just to establish a baseline,  compared to, say, the late Helen Thomas (the Stygian goblin who used to roost in the White House press gallery, her scaly talons glistening under the camera lights), they’re all so likable I’d join their cross-country Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants if it meant not sitting next to Thomas on a short flight.

Anyway, former senator Bill Bradley had the same quality as Harris. He’d say something like “Elections are vital to democracy” and then stop talking, as if the audience needed time to absorb the shockwave of a truth bomb of such magnitude. I read somewhere that Bradley didn’t like to hear applause at the end of his speeches because he interpreted silence as a sign of the audience’s awe at his wisdom.

Harris wasn’t that bad, but it was close.

The Ties that Bind

But there’s a more important point to make. I caught her in the middle of a dense disquisition on how diversity and unity are not in conflict because we all have so much more in common than what separates us. I wasn’t taking notes, and there’s no transcript, but fortunately National Review ran a piece three days ago that has all of these supposedly spontaneous observations from this morning verbatim.

Here’s that version of those remarks:

“The vast majority of us have so much more in common than what separates us,” Harris said. “When people are waking up in the middle of the night with the thing that has been weighing on them . . . they aren’t waking up thinking that thought through the lens of the party with which they’re registered to vote. They are not thinking it through some demographic upholster.

When they wake up thinking that thought, it usually has to do with one of very few things: It usually has to do with their personal health, about their children, or their parents,” she continued. “Can I get a job? Keep a job? Pay the bills by the end of the month? Retire with dignity?”

Now, taken as a platitudinous slurry of pabulum — and how else could one take it? — this is largely true of all Americans. But you know who else it’s true of? Canadians. And Germans. The French. And many, many other humans. Admittedly, in places like Yemen or Syria the middle-of-the-night concerns are more stark: “Will my house get bombed?” “Will the militia conscript my son?” But what Kamala Harris is really saying here is only slightly more interesting or profound than noting that Americans are united by their bipedalism or need for oxygen.

Harris’s riff reflects a profound tension running through contemporary progressivism that has roots going back more than a century.

I don’t think I need to remind readers that I have my problems with the new fad for nationalism on the right. But it may be necessary to remind some that I have been railing against the nationalism of the left for 20 years. For all of its problems, right-wing nationalism at least draws on important and diverse wellsprings of meaning — history, culture, religion, tradition, and, most obviously, the concept of a nation. Left-wing nationalism draws its power almost entirely from a single source: the state. Indeed, the most remarkable thing about left-wing nationalism is that it doesn’t even acknowledge its nationalism. AOC may want to nationalize industry in the name of national unity, but because she calls it “socialism” it’s not scary.

As I noted in my column about the Green New Deal (and in dozens of other columns, scores of blogposts, and at least two books), the through-line of 20th- and now 21st-century liberalism has been William James’s idea of the moral equivalent of war. From the progressives of the Wilson era to the progressives of today, the idea has always been to use the state to unify the country by turning citizens into clients of the government in Washington. Wilson and FDR had elements of right-wing nationalism to them because they were products of an age when liberals could still invoke traditional concepts and customs that today are considered atavistic carbuncles on the body politic. But programmatically, they were left-wing nationalists in the sense that they wanted to use the government in Washington to guide the whole country in a single direction.

Real freedom required abandoning the individual pursuit of happiness and instead pursuing collective endeavors. As James’s disciple John Dewey argued, notions of individual rights and liberties were outdated impediments to getting us all to work together. “Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology . . . organized social control” via a “socialized economy” is the only means to create “free” individuals.

The great thing about war, according to James and his disciples, was that it caused people to abandon their sense of individuality and rally around the state for large causes. James was a pacifist, but he loved that aspect of war, which is why he thought America should organize as if we were at war to conquer nature (the idea behind the Green New Deal — that we must organize as if we are at war to conquer climate change — has some ironic differences, but it’s basically the same notion). FDR wanted to use the technique of war to fight the Great Depression. From Kevin D. Williamson:

Roosevelt’s statement upon signing the NRA’s enabling legislation (the National Industrial Recovery Act) on June 16, 1933, clearly invoked the holy grail of sacrificial solidarity: “The challenge of this law is whether we can sink selfish interest and present a solid front against a common peril,” the president explained. Roosevelt specifically called upon the memory of the First World War: “I had part in the great cooperation of 1917 and 1918,” he said, “and it is my faith that we can count on our industry once more to join in our general purpose to lift this new threat and to do it without taking any advantage of the public trust which has this day been reposed without stint in the good faith and high purpose of American business.” F.D.R. was hardly modest in his claims for the act: “It is the most important attempt of this kind in history. As in the great crisis of the World War, it puts a whole people to the simple but vital test: — ‘Must we go on in many groping, disorganized, separate units to defeat or shall we move as one great team to victory?’”

So let’s look again at the things that Harris says unite us. Concerns about personal health, the health of loved ones, the ability to work, pay the bills, and retire with dignity.

I am not saying that there is no role for government in addressing these concerns. But two things are worth noting: Nowhere does she say that the things that unite us are a concern about our rights and freedoms. Nowhere does she say that what we all share is a desire to pursue happiness as we see it, enjoy the fruits of our labors, or be allowed to practice our faiths or to raise our children the way we want to. Her definition of national unity hinges on the idea that we should all come together as clients of the federal government. In this, she’s offering nothing new to FDR’s “Economic Bill of Rights.” All she’s doing is coating the pill with a film of cliché.

My Elite Problem — And Theirs

Until yesterday, I’ve stayed mostly quiet on the Tucker Carlson debate raging across the right. One of my frustrations, I must say, is that there were more worthy and timely opportunities to debate these issues than a cable-news diatribe aimed at defending the current administration and the forces it has unleashed. This debate is long overdue, but there were better touchstones for it, like Charles Murray’s Coming Apart or J. D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy or even Rick Santorum’s presidential bids.

Anyway, here’s a very brief summary of the relevant and smart disagreements (there are a plethora of irrelevant and dumb disagreements) that probably leaves out way too much nuance. Tucker argues that “elites” have rigged the system for their own benefit and that they have done so deliberately. David French and David L. Bahnsen concede that elites have made some poor policy decisions, but they do not subscribe to the conspiracy-theory version of this tale. More importantly, they argue that the real problem is cultural and can be summed up in the phrase “personal responsibility.” Government policies — and larger economic forces that government has little control over — may have made circumstances more difficult for some Americans, but that doesn’t mean they should be treated as victims or see themselves as such. I agree with them.

Meanwhile folks such as Michael Brendan Dougherty and Reihan Salam argue that personal responsibility is of course hugely important, but that doesn’t absolve elites from their culpability, nor does it mean we shouldn’t fix the policies that have led to various problems. I agree with them, too.

Where I disagree with pretty much everybody is that we are mostly looking at the wrong elites. With the complicated and limited exception of the immigration question, I share David French’s skepticism that if we only had listened to the Oren Casses, Patrick Deneens, Tucker Carlsons, and Michael Brendan Dougherties of ten, 20, 50 (or in Deneen’s case 300) years ago, we wouldn’t have many of the same problems we see today.

The supposedly halcyon age of the 1950s and early 1960s was not as idyllic as the nostalgia merchants often claim (just ask blacks, women, Jews, gays, cancer victims, the disabled, people born too late for the polio vaccine, Korean War vets, et al).

More to the point, the factors that made the 1950s economy seem so desirable depended on things that cannot be easily replicated and/or were largely outside the power of policymakers to meaningfully effect. The Great Depression and World War II created enormous pent-up consumer demand at precisely the moment that America was singularly well-positioned to exploit. Europe was in rubble, and our industrial base was massively expanded. Returning soldiers were eager to get to work, and technology was poised to make all manner of gadgets and geegaws affordable.

The idea that all of our problems since then can be attributed to our trade, monetary, or industrial policies, and that we’d be better off if only the propeller heads at the OMB or Commerce Department had embraced economic nationalism, strikes me as wildly unpersuasive, and at times vaguely Marxist.

For instance, post–World War II feminism has many authors, but among the most important are technology and education. For centuries, the division of labor between home — where women ruled — and outside work, largely a male domain, was fairly equitable. Men did not have it great in the fields, factories, mines, or trenches, but the work required to maintain a home was no picnic. Modern technologies freed wives and mothers from often backbreaking and always exhausting labor. And that’s a good thing. Mechanization reduced the need for a strong back, and education opened the opportunities for women to do much of the same work that men did, sometimes better. And that’s a good thing. Betty Friedan’s claim that being a housewife was like being a Jew in a “comfortable concentration camp” was grotesquely asinine, but the more basic point that morally, philosophically, and practically there was no good reason to keep women barefoot and pregnant — when they didn’t want to be — was hard to argue with. Similarly, as Daniel Patrick Moynihan pointed out, the birth-control pill had more to do with the breakdown of all sorts of norms than anything Gloria Steinem wrote, just as the automobile had done more to transform sexual norms than any French novel or German philosopher.

I bring this up because to the extent that the problems facing marriage and the family are the result of elites making bad policy decisions, the policy decisions that would have prevented most of those problems are ones few of those cheering Tucker’s monologue would consider reversing. I mean maybe Mike Pence in his heart would like to get rid of birth control as the first president of Gilead, but that’s not going to happen.

So which elites do I have a problem with? Let me put it this way. For years, conservatives have quoted my late friend Andrew Breitbart’s pithy rephrasing of a very old idea: “Politics is downstream of culture.” The odd thing is that, almost overnight, many of the same conservatives now argue as if industrial and trade policy is upstream of culture. Some even shriek about how the “neocons” don’t understand that the free market is just a tool, when it was the neocons who had made this argument for decades and were chastised by the “true conservatives” for it (see Irving Kristol’s “Two Cheers For Capitalism” or “When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness”).

Where I agree with many of my new nationalist brethren on the right is that patriotism is important. Assimilation is important. Gratitude for this wonderful country and all that it has done is important. Forget important, these things are vital. The elites who have helped fray the social fabric, who have argued that self-expression is more important than self-discipline, that religion is for suckers, that morality is situational but judgmentalism is immoral, that instant personal authenticity is the only ethical lodestar, these are the elites I have a problem with, because they have done more to undermine notions of personal responsibility than all of the U.S. trade representatives combined.

Capitalism does play a major negative role in all of this, as Schumpeter predicted and as I discuss in my book. It forces efficiencies on institutions that depend on their quirkiness to be attractive, erodes both good and bad customs and traditions, and makes instant gratification ever more attainable. But the solution to these problems must be cultural and rise from the bottom up, not statist and imposed from above.

I have been arguing with conservative nationalists for a couple of years now that my problem with nationalism as an ideological imperative is that by its own logic it must be centralizing, because the state is the only institution that can speak for the whole nation. The perplexed expressions from my friends in response to this critique has perplexed me. But in the wake of Carlson’s diatribe, many of the same conservatives have made my point for me. The government in Washington is now, all of a sudden, upstream of culture, and once good-intentioned nationalists control the knobs and buttons of the state, we’ll fix all of the problems with our culture. They sound a lot more like Kamala Harris than they realize.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: The dogs were very, very happy to greet us upon our return from vacation. They’ve been very good girls, though Pippa’s sense of entitlement is getting out of control. Yesterday, after we got back from our morning walk, she kept barking at the Fair Jessica and me, demanding additional fun in the backyard. When I manfully yelled “No!” she walked off in a huff to the dog bed and pouted. She would not even look at me. Indeed, both of them tend to look at me these days as if I owe them money or I forgot their birthday. But before you take their side, let me assure you that I still give them lots of attention. In other news, I’m taking my daughter with me for a speech in Florida today. But the Fair Jessica will be taking Pippa to the beauty salon for a new ’do. Fear not: We will not get rid of her trademark toupee, even though it sometimes leads to static problems.

ICYMI . . .

The last G-File

Dogs are good

Trump’s character

Military eminent domain is dumb

On the doorknob licker

Trump can’t declare an emergency to build the wall

This week’s first Remnant, with Oren Cass

The Green Leap Forward is dumb

Trump’s border wall speech was lacking

The Green Leap Forward is stale

Someone says I need to smoke more, doesn’t know me very well

Why the UN is awful

The free market is more than a tool

Steve King’s bigotry is anti-American

This week’s second Remnant, with Michael Strain

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s New Year links

Vegetables and sound effects

Lusty toads

Hangover cures

Combat hummingbirds

The Passion of Dr. Strangelove

Isaac Asimov’s predictions for 2019

Goodbye Burger City

The dogs of 2018

How to recognize fake AI-generated images

The temple of the flayed lord

Digitally tour the Brazilian museum consumed by fire last year

Nature’s parasites

Ultima Thule gets a theme song

Spilled chicken

Vulcan

Nebraska’s navy

Bounty hunters don’t exi–

The tunnels of Traverse City state hospital

J.R.R. Tolkien reading Lord of the Rings aloud

Wholesome

Aliens

Who among us…

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (particularly those disappointed to find out that we ran out of Dear Reader gags and weird links one week before the end of the year),

I’m writing this from the Big Island. I said the Big Island, not “Big Island,” the sinister sobriquet for the cartel behind all island-related industries.

In other words, I’m in Hawaii, with my family and a big chunk of her family. I could tell you it’s not lovely, but it is. I could tell you I’d rather be back in Washington, but who would believe that?

Almost 36 hours into island living, I’ve had time to reflect. And one of the things I’ve learned is that I don’t want to work too hard at this “news”letter, but I also feel, as many Hawaiians who work at road repair do, that I should at least put in the bare minimum.

My column today is on how the most important factor driving our politics isn’t ideology or partisanship, but symbolism. Rather than repeat the whole argument again, I’ll wait while you go read it.

Okay, whether you did or not, here’s my thing. Symbols are enormous storehouses of meaning, identity, and experience. They are not trivial. We tend to talk about “interests” as being largely economic. But people can have deep interests in symbols, because symbols often represent our conception of the moral order that we want to live in. The rich Saudis who fund madrassas do not do so for profit, yet they consider it in their interest just the same.

Ever since Marx — or perhaps since Cicero, the popularizer of the phrase cui bono? — there have been people who want to reduce politics to a battle of economic interests. The fact that politics cannot be reduced to mere economic interests can drive some of these people nuts. Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? was a classic example of this frustration.

“People getting their fundamental interests wrong is what American political life is all about,” Frank wrote. “This species of derangement is the bedrock of our civic order; it is the foundation on which all else rests.” According to Frank, working-class people should support politicians who will serve their economic interests — and that’s it. A pro-life Catholic truck driver is a fool to vote for anyone who will not be good for truck drivers. Of course, we almost never hear the reverse of this argument: A pro-choice truck driver should vote for a pro-life politician so long as the politician looks out for truck drivers.

This form of analysis is itself a kind of derangement. Nowhere in the world, at any time, in any place, in any culture, has economics been the only consideration in political life. Fighting for the “Glory of Rome” is not an economic rallying cry. The split between Sunni and Shia may have economic components, but only a fool would argue it is fundamentally about economics. Even economists increasingly understand that economics is not really the study of “homo economicus,” or at least they understand that reducing humans to this mythical creature has explanatory power for only a fraction of our lives.

The Marxist historian who feels compelled to prove that commitment to the Confederate flag was rooted solely in class interest might truffle-pig out some evidence, but the dots he connects won’t yield a picture that represents reality.

Some symbols can be rational. The oak leaves that designate the rank of major in the U.S. Army are symbolic, for the simple reason that military organizations need ranks to function. Other symbols can be rationalized — the 50 stars on the U.S. flag, for instance, one for every state — but the meaning captured by the symbol is hardly purely rational. Both flag burners and flag wavers can agree on one thing: The flag has meaning beyond the merely instrumental necessity of having a piece of cloth that identifies a legal jurisdiction.

The Politics of Disgust

In The Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt describes how our brains are preprogrammed with the ability — the need — to categorize some things as sacred or profane. And when we encounter something truly profane, the part of our brain that activates a sense of disgust is triggered.

Without any sense of sanctity, debates about abortion and cloning would be entirely utilitarian. Absent an instinct for sanctity, environmentalists would not recoil in horror at the paving of forests and would not have lapsed into epileptic fits of disgust at the BP oil spill, and the only arguments conservationists would offer in opposition to PLT sandwiches — Panda, Lettuce, and Tomato — would be about costs and benefits.

In other words, this is not a right–left thing. Ideological and religious considerations often determine what one faction or another is disgusted by, but the tendency to see the world through these lenses is universal.

And when I say sacred, I do not mean in a theological sense, though that is obviously one of the major outlets of sacralization. In our natural environment, we did not have bright lines between magic and science, superstition and reason, individual identity and group identity, or between religious dogma and hygiene. Indeed, as Haidt notes, our intuitions about sacredness and hygiene are deeply linked. The instinct for disgust probably evolved as a way to keep us from eating tainted food such as rotting carcasses, feces, or 7-Eleven sushi. But because humans are social animals, the disgust instinct became an important tool for social cooperation.

Rules about food preparation, sex, and bathing, and rules about moral hygiene, are, historically, tightly bound together in virtually every society. Hindus and Hebrews aren’t just overrepresented at Ivy League universities, they also share a rich history of merging notions of moral and religious hygiene with notions about food, sex, and cleanliness.

The rules manifest themselves differently in different places, of course. You can tell me that the people who freak out about genetically modified foods are dispassionate slaves to the facts, but you’ll have to work pretty hard to persuade me that their passion isn’t fueled by pre-rational associations of sacredness and hygiene. The fights over gender-neutral public bathrooms touch on a lot of different concerns, but it’s hard to deny that at least some of the outrage over the issue isn’t driven by these instincts (pretty much every family has gender-neutral bathrooms at home).

The Body Politic

Michael Burleigh has written several books exploring all of this from a very different angle. He argues that all of the supposedly secular ideologies that replaced the world of the divine right of kings were at root religious projects by another name. Nazism and Leninism were political religions, moving the lines between the sacred and profane in revolutionary ways, but ultimately keeping the lines themselves (Burleigh’s The Third Reich was a big influence on my first book).

The “body politic” — the idea that society is akin to a living organism — can be traced back to antiquity. But with the advent of the scientific revolution and, later, Darwinism, the metaphor was plucked from the realms of theology and mysticism and grounded in science. Nations were like living things, and all of the people and institutions within them were supposed to function like organs of the body. This meant that dissenting or wayward institutions or populations were seen as tumors or intrusions of foreign objects. The first German nationalists talked of foreign languages and customs as poisons and contaminates. Jews were parasites, an invasive species leaching the purity of the German essence. They often sounded like 18th-century versions of Colonel Ripper from Dr. Strangelove, who fretted over the purity of our precious bodily fluids.

The Nazis were obsessed with different notions of hygiene, most famously racial hygiene. The first victims of Nazi slaughter were “defective” Germans themselves, who were seen as a cancer on the body politic. The American progressives pursued the same line of thinking, albeit with less horrific results. But “less horrific” than the Holocaust leaves a lot room for horror, and the forced sterilizations, the persecution of “hyphenated Americans,” and other atrocities committed by American progressives are not absolved simply because they fell short of Hitler’s standard.

When I hear President Trump or his defenders argue for a wall in order to keep out diseases and to keep the country from becoming “dirtier,” I don’t hear Hitler or even Woodrow Wilson, but I do hear appeals to hygiene and sanctity far removed from strict public policy arguments.

My Year in Review

I hadn’t planned on writing this “news”letter this week because I’m on vacation. But since I can’t write one next week because of travel hassles, I figured I should grind this one out. It’s not a great hardship to sit by the pool smoking a cigar, my wife’s dirty looks notwithstanding. (Somehow they do not abate when I tell her it’s just the moral hygiene center of her brain talking.)

All in all, it’s been a better year than I feared it would be, but perhaps not as great as I might have hoped, had I not embraced the fact that hope is simply the word we use for the false confidence that comes between kicks to the groin.

Still, I have a lot to be grateful for. I’ll skip being overly sentimental about family and friends, while stipulating they are the sources of my deepest gratitude. I’ll stick to the professional stuff.

My book did well. It lingered on the bestseller lists for a respectable period of time, sorta like the creepy dude at the newsstand perusing the cooking and business magazines before “stumbling” on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition. And it’s still selling nicely enough that should I ever be drunk enough to agree to write another one, it won’t be huge financial risk.

I don’t mean to make light of the work I put into Suicide of the West (the book, not the phenomenon). I think it had some real impact and moved the debate to some modest degree. Yes, it would be nice if the impact were more of a crater and less of a dent, but even moving the needle a little is a victory to be proud of (and, please don’t harangue me about mixed metaphors. I mix metaphors like a blender beating a dead horse).

Nor do I want to give the impression that I only care about the filthy lucre. I know there are people who write books — or put their names on books somebody else wrote — just for the money. But that’s not me — at all. If it were, you can be sure I’d have had fewer pages and footnotes.

I don’t mean to sound superior, because the truth is, most of the people in my line of work aren’t in it for the money. Certainly no one at National Review chose this career because they thought it would be the fastest or most surefire route to a segment on MTV Cribs. Ramesh Ponnuru, for instance, could have used his Vulcan brain on Wall Street quite easily. Or he could have gone to medical school like pretty much every other Ponnuru in Kansas. Heck, David French and Andy McCarthy actually went to law school and worked as fancy-pants lawyers. They could have monetized their expertise and experience on a grand scale. With that accent of his, Charlie Cooke could be making bank narrating nature documentaries or starring in commercials asking the guy in the next Bentley if he has any Grey Poupon. Instead, once every two weeks, we all line up in front of Rich Lowry’s office to be paid in chickens, because this is the life we’ve chosen.

Don’t worry, this isn’t a set up for a National Review Institute fundraising pitch (but if you’re so inclined, helping out would be great). It’s simply to say that I feel very fortunate to be doing what I’m doing and being able to provide for my family in the process.

Oh sure, I still have my grievances. Indeed, I initially thought I might air them here, for grievances are among the greatest of all muses for a writer, particularly for “news”letter writers such as yours truly. And I won’t pretend that if sufficiently prodded I couldn’t give voice to my desire to visit the sort of wrath most associated with the God of the Hebrew Bible on various people. But that’s because writing a book is like having a kid in all sorts of ways. The people closest to you are very happy for you — at least after the first one — but no one really cares as much as you do. The small slights seem negligible to observers at a distance and like grievous and unforgivable wounds to the parent. But after a while, you come to understand it’s just part of life.

But back to the year that was. I’m enjoying hosting a podcast far more than I thought I would. And with the exception of Episode Eleven, I find that the physical toll it takes to be negligible.

My biggest concern, again professionally, remains the same as it was at the end of 2017, and 2016. And it should be utterly familiar to readers of this “news”letter or listeners of the aptly named Remnant. At a time when I’ve lost my taste for tribal, partisan fan service, the market for tribal, partisan fan service is raging — across the ideological spectrum. It causes me to worry for the country and the conservative movement — which are far more important considerations than my own prospects, of course. But since I’m talking about me (“Gosh, that’s a refreshing change of pace for this ‘news’letter” — The Couch), it’s also profoundly disorienting. Even if I could keep it from being personal — which I struggle to do, not always successfully — the fact is it is personal for others. Indeed, the whole reason politics have grown so ugly is that everywhere you look “the personal is political” — a phrase once the rallying cry for feminists and post-modernists. The personalization of politics is now the animating spirit of our age.

Earlier this week, I wrote a column about Donald Trump’s bad character, and, as I predicted, hordes of people took it personally. Many thought the smartest rebuttal was to attack me personally, as if proving I am a bad person would somehow disprove my argument. I understand the reaction. But the reaction doesn’t change the facts or how I see them. I’ve been writing against the psychology of populism for 20 years, I don’t see why I should cave to the spirit of populism at the precise moment I’m being proven right.

But the fact remains the times are changing, and I’m not inclined to change with them, at least not on the important things. That makes navigating the new landscape challenging in ways it’s never been before. So I just want to say thank you to you, dear readers, who have stuck it out with me as I’ve groped my way through it all, like Bill Clinton playing pin the tail on the donkey at the Playboy mansion.

Here’s to 2019, when we’ll all look back nostalgically on the sobriety and reasonableness of 2018.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: We’ve left the beasts behind. It’s for the best given that I don’t think either of them are well-suited to air travel. But I must say the dogs would love it here, particularly Zoë. The house we’re staying in is up in the hills of the big island on a nice plot of land. There are wild turkeys wandering the property, not to mention mongooses (mongeese?), and the occasional wild pig. I don’t know how Zoë would fare against either (though I definitely suspect the pigs would be too big a bite, as it were). But man would she love the challenge. There are also enough lesser rodents to keep her self-esteem high. It’s funny though, both my wife and I like hiking (she more than me, to be honest), but we both feel like hiking without dogs defeats some of the purpose. We were in Utah before Hawaii, and it took a huge amount of effort not to keep talking about how much Zoë and Pippa (and occasionally Gracie and Ralph — the good cat and my wife’s cat respectively) “would love it here.” Somehow, Gary is no substitute for the Dingo & The Spaniel.

We’ve left Zoë and Pippa in the best possible hands (sorry Jack Butler). Kirsten our dog walker is house-sitting, and the girls love Kirsten at least as much as they love us (of course, she’s like the fun aunt who feeds the kids ice cream and lets them stay up late). She is sending regular “proof of life” updates from home, which I’ve been posting on Twitter. It’s amazing how much easier it is to enjoy yourself when you know your dogs aren’t miserable — or trying to tunnel out of a kennel. Though we do feel bad for Kirsten sometimes, since she has to deal with this sort of thing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (including all you mole-rat monarchists),

One or two times a year I wake up in a Japanese family’s living room with people screaming at me (oddly, they scream at me in flawless Gaelic). But none of that is important right now. Unrelatedly, one or two times a year I also write this “news”letter in advance of the morning it’s due.

For reasons I’ll explain at the end of this “news”letter, today is a crazy day for me. But it’s also turned out to be a crazy day for everyone else (or at least for everyone else in the world of politics and eccentric parenthetical stylings). General Mattis’s resignation, the border-funding fooferall (which is not a real word, but I’ll neologize as much as I want), Trump’s capitulation to both Ann Coulter and the president of Turkey, and whatever happened in the last few minutes since I checked Twitter has people across Washington lamenting that they picked the wrong week to stop sniffing glue.

All of this came after a federal judge floated the idea that Michael Flynn was a traitor (I’m persuaded by Andy McCarthy that this was a pretty outrageous error by Judge Sullivan, fwiw), James Comey admitted he broke FBI protocol to get a government official, the stock market continued to slide into the worst December since the Great Depression, and the Trump Foundation announced it would close down, leaving Palm Beach residents to wonder who will pay for Donald Trump’s portraits of Donald Trump now.

Also this week, reports that The Weekly Standard would be shut down and harvested for subscribers were confirmed.

Conservative Facts

Which brings me to the intended subject of this “news”letter. I’m not going to rehash the whole story here (John Podhoretz’s take is pretty much my own). Rather, I want to address what its shuttering brought to light: the bizarre need of some of Trump’s biggest fans to be dumb or dishonest in his defense.

There was always a yin-yang thing to conservatism. Its hard-headedness and philosophical realism about human nature and the limits it imposes on utopian schemes appealed to some and repulsed others. For those who see politics as a romantic enterprise, a means of pursuing collective salvation, conservatism seems mean-spirited. As Emerson put it: “There is always a certain meanness in the argument of conservatism, joined with a certain superiority in its fact.” That’s what Ben Shapiro is getting at when he says “Facts don’t care about your feelings.” The hitch is that the reverse is also true: Feelings don’t care about your facts. Tell a young progressive activist we can’t afford socialism and the response will be overtly or subliminally emotional: “Why don’t you care about poor people!” or “Why do you love billionaires!?”

The problem conservatism faces these days is that many of the loudest voices have decided to embrace the meanness while throwing away the facts. This has been a trend for a long time now. But Donald Trump has accelerated the problem to critical mass, yielding an explosion of stupid and a radioactive cloud of meanness.

It’s as if people have decided they should live down to Hillary Clinton’s “deplorable” epithet. More on that in a moment. But first, since I already wrote the section below, allow me a not-quite-brief, not entirely non-sequitorial aside about neoconservatism. Feel free to skip ahead to the screed at the end if you’re not interested in the eggheadery.

What Is Neoconservatism?

Well, it depends on whom you ask. But let’s work on some common definitions, or at least descriptions.

Here’s the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia page for neoconservatism:

Neoconservatism (commonly shortened to neocon when labelling its adherents) is a political movement born in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party, and the growing New Left and counterculture, in particular the Vietnam protests. Some also began to question their liberal beliefs regarding domestic policies such as the Great Society.

This isn’t terrible, but it gets the chronology and emphases somewhat wrong (the Encyclopedia of American Conservatism gets it right, btw). The first neocons were intellectual rebels against the Great Society and the leftward drift of American liberalism (The Public Interest, the first neocon journal, was launched in 1965. It was dedicated entirely to domestic affairs, not foreign policy). Unable to reconcile the facts with the feelings of liberalism, a host of intellectuals decided they would stick with the facts, even if it meant that former friends and allies would call them mean for doing so.

The socialist writer Michael Harrington is usually credited with coining the term in 1973 as a way to disparage former socialists who moved rightward, but people have found earlier mentions of the term (Norman Podhoretz, for instance, called Walter Lipmann and Clinton Rossiter “neoconservatives” in 1963. And Karl Marx(!) called Lord Beaconsfield a Neo Conservative in 1883). It’s certainly true that Harrington popularized the label. Harrington’s essay supports my larger point, though. The Harrington essay that cemented the term “neoconservatism” in American discourse was titled “The Welfare State and Its Neoconservative Critics.” In other words, the original neoconservative critique wasn’t about foreign policy, but domestic policy.

According to William F. Buckley, the neoconservatives brought the rigor and language of sociology to conservatism, which until then had been overly, or at least too uniformly, Aristotelian. The Buckleyites (though certainly not folks like Burnham) tended to talk from first principles and natural laws and rights. The neocons looked at the data and discovered that the numbers tended to back up a lot of the things the Aristotelians had been saying.

The original neocons’ gateway drug to conservatism was the law of unintended consequences. Once eager to tear up Chesterton’s fences wherever they saw them, they discovered that reforms often yielded worse results. As Francis Fukuyama wrote over a decade ago, “If there is a single overarching theme to the domestic social policy critiques carried out by those who wrote for The Public Interest, it is the limits of social engineering. Ambitious efforts to seek social justice, these writers argued, often left societies worse off than before because they either required massive state intervention that disrupted organic social relations; or else produced unanticipated consequences.”

Another understanding of neoconservatism is that it was a movement of ex-Communists who moved rightward. There’s a benign version of this story and a malignant one. The harmless version is basically descriptive. Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, et al., were once briefly socialists or Trotskyists, and as they grew more disillusioned with such utopianism they moved rightward. The invidious version of this story, still common in some feverish and swampy corners of the Right, is that they never let go of their underlying Trotskyist tendencies and were some kind of fifth column on the right. This version has sizable overlap with anti-Semitic fantasies about neoconservatism. More on that in a minute.

Part of the problem with even the benign version of this story is that there are so many exceptions that the explanatory power bleeds away. For instance, Bill Kristol, the supposed Demon Head of neoconservatism these days, was never a Communist or any other flavor of leftist (and he still isn’t). Neither were John Podhoretz, William Bennett, Jean Kirkpatrick, James Q. Wilson, David Brooks, and many, many others often described as neoconservatives. Another problem: If being a Communist-turned-conservative makes you a neocon, then many of the founders of National Review were neocons too. Frank Meyer, Whittaker Chambers, Max Eastman, and James Burnham were all far more committed and accomplished Communists than Irving & Co. ever were. Eastman was one of Trotsky’s close friends and his English-language translator. Burnham co-founded the American Workers Party with Sidney Hook. Chambers was a Soviet agent.

The idea that neoconservatism was primarily about foreign policy, specifically anti-Communism, further complicates things. Part of this is a by-product of the second wave of neoconservatives who joined the movement and the right in the 1970s, mostly through the pages of Commentary. These were rebels against not the welfare state but détente on the right and the radical anti-anti-Communists of the New Left (National Review ran a headline in 1971 on the awakening at Commentary: “Come on In, the Water’s Fine.”) Many of those writers, most famously Jeane Kirkpatrick, ended up leading the intellectual shock troops of the Reagan administration. But, again, if vigorous anti-Communism and hawkish military policy in its pursuit that defines (or defined) neoconservatism, then how does that distinguish those neocons from National Review conservatism and the foreign policy of, say, Barry “Rollback, not Containment” Goldwater?

It is certainly true that the foreign-policy neocons emphasized certain things more than generic conservatives, specifically the promotion of democracy abroad. In ill-intentioned hands, this fact is often used as a cover for invidious arguments about the how the neocons never really shed their Trotskyism and were still determined to “export revolution.” But for the most part, it can’t be supported by what these people actually wrote. Moreover, the idea that only neocons care about promoting democracy simply glosses over everything from the stated purpose of the First World War, the Marshall Plan, stuff like JFK’s inaugural address (“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty”), and this thing called the Reagan Doctrine.

And then there are the Joooooz. Outside of deranged comment sections and the swampy ecosystems of the “alt-right,” the sinister version of this theory is usually only hinted at or alluded to. Neocons only care about Israel is the Trojan horse that lets people get away with not saying the J-word. Those bagel-snarfing warmongers want real Americans to do their fighting for them. Pat Buchanan, when opposing the first Gulf War in 1992, listed only Jewish supporters of the war and then said they’d be sending “American kids with names like McAllister, Murphy, Gonzales and Leroy Brown” to do the fighting. Subtle. (By the way, Leroy Brown must have ended up fighting in the Gulf War after all. How else can we explain how quickly it ended? He was, after all, the baddest man in the whole damn town.)

Even the non-sinister version of the “neocon equals Jew” thing is a mess. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, many of the most vilified neoconservatives were people like Michael Novak, Father Richard Neuhaus, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Jeane Kirkpatrick, William Bennett, and later, even George Weigel. During the Iraq war, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, John Bolton, and virtually everybody who supported the war were called neocons. Funny, they don’t look neoconnish.

Whatever neoconservatism is, or was, its time as a distinct thing has been over for a while. In his memoir, Irving Kristol, “the Godfather of the Neoconservatives,” argued that the movement had run its course and dissolved into the conservative movement generally. This strikes me as inarguably true. Most of the people I’ve checked off — who are still alive — including Bill Kristol, don’t call themselves neoconservative anymore, and the few who do mostly do so as a nod to nostalgia more than anything else.

So today, neoconservatism has become what it started out as, an invidious term used by its opponents to single out and demonize people as inauthentic, un-American, unreliable, or otherwise suspicious heretics, traitors, or string-pullers. The chief difference is that they were once aliens in the midst of liberalism, now they are called aliens in the midst of conservatism. And it’s all bullsh**.

American Smallness

Which brings me to Chris Buskirk’s ridiculous manifesto of conservative liberation in response to the demise of The Weekly Standard. The editor of American Greatness, a journal whose tagline should be “Coming Up with Reasons Why Donald Trump’s Sh** Doesn’t Stink 24/7” opens with “Neoconservatism is dead, long live American conservatism” and then, amazingly, proceeds to get dumber.

Nowhere in his essay does Buskirk reveal that he has any real grasp of what neoconservatism was or is — and the best defense of his insinuation that neoconservatism was un-American is that it can be chalked up to bad writing.

But Buskirk doesn’t need to demonstrate fluency with the material because for him, “neoconservative” is an anathematizing word and nothing more. He says, “the life and death of The Weekly Standard is really the story of the death and rebirth of American conservatism, which is nothing more than the modern political expression of America’s founding principles.” A bit further on, he asserts that “for years, neoconservatives undermined and discredited the work of conservatives from Lincoln to Reagan . . .” This is so profoundly unserious that not only is it impossible to know where to begin, it’s a struggle to finish the sentence for fear the stupid will rub off. Does he have in mind the Straussians (Walter Berns, Robert Goldwin, et al.) at that neocon nest the American Enterprise Institute who wrote lovingly about Lincoln at book length for decades? Does he think Irving Kristol’s essay “The American Revolution as a Successful Revolution” was an indictment of the founding? Were these essays, on Abraham Lincoln published in The Weekly Standard or by its writers elsewhere, perfidious neocon attempts to topple him from his historic pedestal? What about Andy Ferguson’s loving book on Lincoln?

And what of the scores of neoconservatives who worked for Ronald Reagan and helped him advance the Reaganite agenda? Were they all fifth columnists? Or perhaps they were parasites attaching themselves to a “host organism,” as Buskirk repugnantly describes Kristol?

He doesn’t say, because Buskirk doesn’t rely on an argument. Save for a couple of Bill Kristol tweets out of context, he cites no writing and marshals no evidence. Instead, he lets a wink, or rather the stink, do all of his work. He knows his readers want to hear folderol about neocons. He knows they have their own insidious definitions of what they are and crave to have them confirmed. Bringing any definition or fact to his argument would get in the way of his naked assertions and slimy insinuations.

And what absurd assertions they are. I’m not a fan of tu quoque arguments, but the idea that American Greatness has standing to position itself as an organ dedicated to larger principles and ideas is hilarious, given that the website’s only purpose is to attach itself like a remora to Donald Trump, a man who doesn’t even call himself a conservative, even for convenience, anymore. Just this week, American Greatness’s Julie Kelly mocked Nancy French’s childhood trauma of being sexually abused. When I criticized her for it, Kelly snarked back something about how “Never Trumpers” have a problem with the truth. It’s like these people don’t see it. You cannot claim to care about the truth while being a rabid defender of this president’s hourly mendacity.

Anyway, Buskirk’s whole indictment of the amorphous enemy of neoconservatism is that they were transactional in their relationship to the GOP and conservatism. My God. Take away the largely defensible transactional arguments for Trumpism and what are you left with? Grotesque mockery of disabled people, Gold Star families, and other inconvenient people? Occasionally amusing reality-show spectacles and tweets that read like they’re coming out of a bourbon-bottle-strewn bunker dimly lit by DVR’d episodes of Justice Judge Jeanine?

I know I keep bringing it up — because it’s so damn funny — but American Greatness ran a piece floating the idea that Trump’s “covfefe” tweet just might have been a brilliant piece of historically and linguistically literate statecraft. That’s actually plausible compared to the idea that Trump is Moses saving conservatism from a “a purified strain of backward idolatry.”

Who is in conflict with the best principles of America: the magazine that for 23 years lionized the founders, Lincoln, and Reagan or the website that rationalizes literally anything Donald Trump does — from crony capitalism to denigrating the First Amendment to paying off porn stars — as either the inventions of his enemies or a small price to pay for national greatness? Not every contributor to American Greatness is dedicated to the art of turd polishing, but that is the site’s larger mission.

Don’t get me wrong, I had my disagreements with The Standard, but The Standard was dedicated to the morally serious work of grappling with ideas and persuading people to their various causes. American Greatness is dedicated to cramming American ideas into a Trump-shaped hole.

The larger point, however, is this larger trend. Trump’s sense of persecution is as contagious as his debating style. Facts are being subordinated to feelings, and the dominant feelings among many Trumpists are simply ugly. And even those who have not turned ugly see no problem working hand in hand with those who have. And how could they, given who they herald as their Moses.

Various & Sundry

If anybody’s left reading after all that, I should say that it’d be great if you could support National Review Institute this season. My full plea is here.

So I’m finishing this in an Uber to BWI Airport. I will be in Utah and then Hawaii with family until the new year. I just recorded a new episode of The Remnant with Sonny Bunch (with a special cameo by Matt Continetti to indulge in some rank punditry). This means that I will not see — in person — any of my quadrupeds until 2019. But I will try to send proof of life pics as I get them.

Canine Update: The timing of our departure worked out well. Kirsten, our dog-walker and house-sitter, picked up the beasts before we started to pack so the doggers didn’t get depressed when we took out the luggage. They’ve been having a good week, though. We gave them some toys this week, after a two-year ban because Zoë used to be very territorial about her toys with Pippa. But now they get along well enough it’s not a problem — yet. Pippa has been working hard and digging all of the mud puddles, and I’ve been spending some quality time with both of them. I’ll miss them, but they’re in good hands and will get to see their friends, so I’m pretty guilt-free over the whole thing, and I definitely need a break.

Thanks again to everyone who has stuck with this “news”letter and with The Remnant podcast this year. May 2019 be less crazy.

ICYMI. . .

Last week’s G-File

The Big Bang Theory and the modern economy

Climate change and the caravan

Emerald Robinson and lies

The latest Remnant

2020 and Trump’s dubious strategery

Congress and its abdication

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Arctic feces

Humongous fungus

Smoked reindeer heart

Nebraska Christmas spirit

Unpublished Vonnegut

Florida Scrooge

Ant memories

A very Die Hard Christmas

12 Days of Die Hard Christmas

Divine inspector

Cool Christmas choo-choos

Happy baby

Island for sale

Spider artist

Christmas for nerds

Cool science

Why did humans lose fur?

The best Christmas present

Scholar dog

Crowded apartment

Florida man

Package thief vs. glitter bomb

How Hollywood fakes snow

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including those of you just standing there eating Zarg nuts),

I had a bad idea. It wasn’t a terrible idea, like asking a meth addict to housesit or swimming with alligators to commune with nature (“these stoic guardians of our wetlands are so misunderstood!”). But it was a bad idea.

I thought it would be fun to ask NR readers (specifically that anointed tribe of lightworkers known as “NRPlus members” to pick the topic of this august “news”letter. Well, it’s 10:07 a.m. — and I just got the list. There are 294 requests. I have no idea whether that’s the raw junk, or if the guys in New York cut it down or stepped on it with baby powder (Sorry, I just re-watched The Wire and that’s where my head is at).

To get a sense of why this was a bad idea, let me review quickly a few entries almost at random. (Query: If there is no such thing as true randomness, can something be “almost random”? Isn’t saying “almost random” like saying “nearly infinite” or “mostly unique”?)

One reader suggested I write about “The continued baleful influence of German philosophy in American political and cultural life” — and then proceeded to offer an 800-word exploration of Santayana’s essay on German freedom. Another reader requested, “Anything about Melania, good, bad indifferent.” Another asked, “Does anyone actually like Christmas pageants?” Another asked, “The reasons NR has become the latest to succumb to Stockholm Syndrome under Trump — why is HR starting to sound like Trump’s Greek Chorus?” One person just wrote, “La Société pour L’encouragement des Autres,” while another flew this up the flagpole: “The inherent conservatism of fantasy (e.g., Star Wars) vs. the (seemingly) inherent radicalism of sci-fi (e.g., Star Trek). And where those boundaries break down (e.g., Robert Heinlein).” I was particularly intrigued by this request: “Make an argument that people of color should be oropendola to conservative thought.” And a sage named Cliff asked, “Write about how soliciting NRPlus for G-File ideas is totally not like the scene in Boogie Nights where Burt Reynolds and Heather Graham make a porno in the back of a limo with some random guy pulled off the street.”

Let me work through some of these right now so none can say I was totally unresponsive.

Better in the Original German

I am torn about the topic of German philosophy’s baleful influence on American political and cultural life. On the one hand, I think it’s absolutely true. As I have written at great length elsewhere, American progressivism represented a flowering of German ideas in America. Thousands of the academics who formed the intellectual backbone of progressivism studied in Germany or under German or German-trained academics. A generation or two later, another wave of German thought infected America. What Alan Bloom called “value relativism” crossed the Atlantic and remains the rage in many quarters. It wasn’t all bad, of course. It made it possible for Bloom to write this sentence: “The image of this astonishing Americanization of the German pathos can be seen in the smiling face of Louis Armstrong as he belts out the words of his great hit ‘Mack the Knife.’” More recently, as the reader suggests, many of the most serious and passionate defenses of nationalism can be traced directly back to Johann Fichte and Johann Herder (and presumably to some other Teutons not named Johann). Santayana’s point that the need for collective identity can masquerade as freedom has a lot of explanatory power. You can see this in the rhetoric of “national liberation” movements that use the language of liberty to defend both the sovereignty of nations and the legitimacy of nationalist regimes to claim that statism is a form of freedom when it is pushed in the name of “self-determination.” The problem is that self-determination for a nation can lead to the negation of self-determination of individual citizens. Mussolini wanted self-determination for Italy but not for individual Italians.

On the other hand, my views on how intellectual history works have been evolving of late. I think people use ideas to justify their desires more than the ideas shape their desires. But that’s a topic for another day.

Fair Melania

I like Melania Trump, to the extent I can figure out what she’s really about. I am not afraid to admit that one of the things I like about her is that she is very nice to look at. She’s certainly the most striking first lady of my lifetime. And, I suspect that she’s the best-looking first lady ever, no offense to Abigail Filmore.

Beyond the way she pings the radar of the male gaze, I like that Melania seems to have a very low tolerance for B.S., including, one suspects, from her husband.

Two Cheers for Christmas Pageants

I can’t say I am a huge fan of Christmas pageants per se, but I love local parades and virtually any other expression of local civic engagement. So I come down on the pro-pageant side. I have no idea if that is the majority position in America, but I doubt I am a minority of one on the issue.

Hostages to Trump?

I don’t think NR is suffering from Stockholm syndrome under Trump (and I assume HR is a typo, unless I’ve missed a bunch of MAGA memos from Human Resources). I do have my disagreements with some of my colleagues on specific facets of the stygian disco ball that is the current moment, but a few specific examples notwithstanding, I think what the reader is seeing has more to do with the battles various writers at NR are picking than their actual personal views. What I mean is, this is a conservative magazine with a heterodox group of writers. Many choose to spend their time arguing with liberals and liberal positions which, after all, is one of the reasons we’re here. For those who feel very strongly that the only issues worth debating involve Trump’s shortcomings, this can often seem like a defense, and sometimes it is. But, in a sense, to write is to choose what not to write about. Last week, I wrote a G-File about climate change. I heard from a bunch of people complaining that I should have been writing about whatever the controversy of the day was about Trump. They seemed to think that not writing about Trump amounted to giving Trump a pass. That’s not how it works. We live in a moment where lots of people only want to hear Trump praise or Trump criticism. It is impossible to get it right with some people in that climate.

Oui

I’ve never heard of “La Société pour L’encouragement des Autres,” and my very weak French tells me this means, “Make room, the Germans are coming.”

But Google Translate tells me that this means “The Society for the Encouragement of Others.” This sounds like a very nice society, and barring some new information, I am for it. Indeed, I think they should hold a Christmas pageant.

[SATURDAY MORNING UPDATE: Since this came out, I’ve heard from a bunch of people explaining what this is and why I’m a dufus. Sometimes the dufus claim is related to this section, and sometimes it’s not. And I will admit: I do feel like dufus. The “society” thing threw me off. But as a bunch of folks have noted this is a reference to the Voltaire quote which, once reminded of it, makes me feel dumb for needing to be reminded of it.]

Ecce Homo

I really like the question about the conservatism of fantasy and the radicalism of sci-fi. I’m not sure the distinction is a hard and fast one. There’s a lot of conservatism in sci-fi, because there’s a lot of conservatism in fiction. I don’t mean conservatism in the political, programmatic sense. I mean in the more fundamental sense that human nature is the universal constant of all literature. It is what makes the events on the page, whether in Mordor or on Mars, relatable to the reader. The idea that human nature cannot be perfected, that the interior life of human beings is guided by the same doubts, desires, and concerns we all share (to one extent or another) is what makes literature speak to larger truths. There is a radicalism that finds purchase in some sci-fi, because the dream of the perfectibility of man is the defining feature of utopianism, and most forms of the Enlightenment-influenced radicalism. Whenever I hear Jean-Luc Picard talk as if humans had moved past the atavisms of status, money, etc., I want to say, “Oh yeah, like you wouldn’t complain if you were busted to ensign?”

Ironically, fantasy lends itself more to realism about human nature precisely because it simply plucks humans out of a familiar world and places them in a different one. Perfectibility would ruin the conceit, so it’s left for elves or whatnot.

Whither the Oropendola?

I am fascinated by this question: “Make an argument that people of color should be oropendola to conservative thought.”

At first, I assumed this was just a typo and the reader meant to say “open to.” But oropendola is an actual word. From professor Wikipedia:

The oropendolas formerly comprised two or three genera of South and Central American passerine birds in the Icteridae New World blackbird family.

All the oropendolas are large birds with pointed bills, and long tails which are always at least partially bright yellow. Males are usually larger than females.

Maybe autocorrect changed a typo to oropendola? If so, I have a strange new respect for autocorrect software.

Anyway, I do not think people of color should be passerine birds towards conservative ideas, unless that implies they should flock to conservative ideas, in which case I am all for it. Conservative ideas about race, at least in the classical-liberal tradition (which should be the only way conservatives should think about such things), are the only moral and sustainable path forward for a diverse society. As a matter of coalitional politics, there are short-term gains for various groups trying to get more from government. But in the long run, this society can only survive if we take to heart the idea that we should treat people as individuals and not representatives of different groups, especially with regard to government policy. Coalitions will always exist, but they should be coalitions of belief, tradition, and shared interests grounded in the institutions of civil society, not abstract and arbitrary characteristics. The Founders recognized this, which is why they took coalitions — a.k.a. factions — into account.

But conservatives need to take their own ideas and rhetoric into account as well. I believe passionately in assimilation, but the definition of assimilation can’t be dictated by old white people nostalgic for one version of America that didn’t actually exist the way they remember it. The Madisonian vision creates room for different groups to live as they wish so long as they don’t become a powerful faction, using the power of the state, to impose their One Way of living on others. That means conservative Christians and social-justice warriors alike should have the freedom to live according to their values, but they should also have the imagination and tolerance required to let other communities go their own way.

It seems to me that this vision should appeal to people of color as much as anyone else, and in some cases more than most. Identity politics puts people in cages of meaning, reducing them to someone else’s idea of what a black (or Asian or whatever) person should think and do. Identity, whenever put to the test, always becomes an argument about loyalty to a group identity or abstract idea.

An oropendola can never be anything more than what it is. The behavior of one essentially describes the behavior of all. Humans are animals, but we are not just animals. Identity politics, taken to its extreme, reduces humans to animals.

Boogie Punditry

And finally, there’s Cliff’s Boogie Nights analogy. I thought it was really funny, in part because it’s kind of true. I don’t mean that in an insulting way. No offense to the profession, but there’s less skill to pornography than some might assume. Sure, you have prodigies like Ron Jeremy who can autofellate (a charge metaphorically leveled at this “news”letter from time to time). But basically, porn stars don’t do anything normal people can’t do. They may gild the lily with six-inch heels and trapezes or whatnot, but the main attraction is pretty universal.

The vast majority of questions I got were from basically normal people, and they were good questions. I am going to save the list for column and podcast topics down the line. Journalism, including opinion journalism, is a bit like pornography. It’s a specialty but not a science. The constitutional right to commit journalism isn’t a special right for a select few (despite what some in the guild might tell you), it’s a right we all have, just as the right to bear arms isn’t reserved solely for police. Over the years, I’ve learned more from NR readers than I have from any single professional expert. Indeed, my readers are in fact experts, some on a specific subject, but all of them are experts on their own views and concerns. Asking them for suggestions doesn’t feel debasing at all. It feels like a privilege.

So why was this a bad idea? Because there was no way to deal with all of these questions. I feel like Robin Williams in Moscow on the Hudson shopping for coffee.

But I also feel like I’m talking to a madman. I don’t mean this as an insult to anybody. It’s a problem I’ve had for years. From the earliest days of the G-File, I’ve had a tendency to lump all of my readers into a singular entity, like I’m writing to a single person. This is one reason why this “news”letter is so unpredictable and oropendola.

This also explains why every now and then I get persnickety with some reader who doesn’t deserve my persnicketiness (Persnickitude? Persnickitality?). I can get 20 emails complaining about something, and the 21st complaint triggers that defense mechanism that goes off when you feel like someone won’t leave a topic alone; “You keep saying that! Shut up already!”

The thing is the 21st emailer only said it once, but it feels like the 21st time to me. I had this problem on the recent NR cruise. A whole bunch of great people wanted to talk to me about the guy in the Oval Office. Individually they were all perfectly polite and sincere, but when you get the same question — or the same assertions — over and over again, it can be a drag. I really love the cruisers — and they love NR, if not always me — but it was a struggle for me to wait patiently as I heard the same arguments over and over.

I’ll close with a bit of an epiphany I had on the cruise. Over dinner, a lovely woman complained that many of the panels seemed to be avoiding the elephant in the room — i.e., Trump. I’m not sure I agreed with the complaint, in part because she also told me she walked out of a panel that was almost entirely about Trump. Regardless, I explained that even on a NR cruise, Trump is a divisive and polarizing figure. What I hadn’t really realized is how divisive and polarizing he is, not just among people but within them. The woman who walked out of a panel because someone had been too critical of Trump went on to explain how much she hates Trump’s behavior. A man at the table began a conversation about how the country will be ruined if Trump isn’t reelected in 2020 (prompting me to gird my loins for a lengthy argument about Flight 93ism). But over the course of dinner, he vented about how much he wished Melania or Jared could get him to stop being so crude, particularly on Twitter. In other words, there’s a huge amount of cognitive dissonance even among Trump’s biggest supporters.

Many of the most articulate Trump defenders will often use a rhetorical tactic of conceding Trump’s shortcomings, usually in compact “to be sure” asides (“Obviously, Trump’s tweeting isn’t always helpful,” “It would be better if Trump could articulate his position more artfully,” etc.). Once they’ve checked that box, they proceed to go hammer and tongs against any critics on the right or left who are less dismissive of Trump’s foibles. In other words, they concede the critique — but they just consider it less important than others do. I get the reverse criticism. I’ll praise his judicial appointments or offer support for regulatory reform, but I won’t ignore or minimize his defects or attribute to him nobility or genius his defenders claim to see behind his superficial shortcomings.

What I find simultaneously maddening and reassuring in all of this is the fact that what a lot of conservatives really want is way to reconcile these conflicting realities. It’s not that they all disagree with me about the man’s character, it’s that they wish I didn’t remind them of it. But I could stop writing tomorrow and the underlying problem would endure. Conservatism is being wracked by the collision of different tectonic plates. The need to celebrate the leader of the tribe is smashing into the need to defend not just ideological commitments but traditional notions of leadership and decency. The desire to push back on the left is crashing into the need to remain intellectually consistent. The subsequent earthquakes aren’t just on display on screens but in our own heads. And sitting motionless in the hope that will all be over soon, like Mike Pence in the Oval Office, won’t get anyone through. The process is just going to have to play itself out. My only hope is that we’ll have more than rubble to build on when it’s all over.

Various & Sundry

Me Update: I can’t tell you how delighted I am to be winding down my crazy travel schedule. Since Thanksgiving alone, I’ve been to New York City twice, Ithaca, Syracuse, Chicago, the Caribbean, and Concord, NH. I haven’t had a full week at home since September. I do have a bunch of travel coming up, but it’s all for and with family (minus quadrupeds, alas), and I’m so giddy about it I feel like Morgan Freeman should be narrating my walk on a beach. Still, I shouldn’t complain. It’s a good problem to have, given the givens.

Canine Update: The beasts are good but getting needier by the day.  It’s probably because I’m a sucker for them after being on the road so much. But they’re keeping their priorities straight. One strange development: I think Zoë knows that my phone takes her picture and she’s increasingly reluctant to hold still for photos like this (though if I bribe her with scritches, she’ll put up with it). She clearly has a much richer interior life than Pippa. Though sometimes she does seem to be thinking something other than “Ball.” Sometimes she’s thinking “one more hour until Ball.” Pippa’s eye seems to be completely on the mend, which is great. And, since people keep asking me, Zoë has stopped expressing interest in tennis balls.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Legalism and morality in partisan debates

My latest NPR hit

My latest Fox News hit

Legalism and morality in partisan debates

Chocolate river

Pence the Destroyer

Political standards after Trump and Clinton

Why are we antagonizing Vietnam War refugees?

Mea culpa

The latest Remnant, with Tyler Cowen

Trump can’t win in 2020, but Democrats can lose

And now, the weird stuff.

Friday links

The Chicago way

Good news, everyone

How Middle Earth shaped classic rock

RIP the ripped kangaroo

Bad news, everyone

Not what I ordered

Cursed beer

The urban/rural divide deepens

You’re driving wrong

This house outdoes yours in Christmas spirit

Mr. Dickens goes to Washington

Thor’s Well

Millennials have peaked

Last item:

Heart’s in Seattle

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (including all passengers on Spaceship Earth),

So, as often happens, a weasel crawls up your tailpipe (I mean of your car, sicko). It then gets caught in the doohickey connecting the thing to thing that goes mmmm-chicka. And now your car is busted. The mechanic says it will cost $5,000 to de-weasel your diesel engine.

But you don’t have five grand lying around. So what do you do?

Obviously, you ask the mechanic how to raise $5,000. I mean, he’s an expert on how to fix your car, he must also be an expert on how to pay for it. Right?

Of course not.

My point here — or at least my first point — is that expertise doesn’t necessarily transfer over from one field to another.

A second point: Some problems cannot be undone simply by reversing the steps that led to the problem in the first place.

If someone stabs you in the chest with a metal spork (very difficult to find, by the way), you don’t necessarily want to pull it out immediately. That could cause you to bleed out. You can’t un-spill milk or un-spork your victim.

That leads me to a third, closely related, point. Just because someone can identify a problem — a weasel in the tailpipe, a spork in the chest, whatever — doesn’t mean they know the best way to fix it.

I’m no doctor, but if I see a spork handle protruding from your chest, I can give you a pretty good diagnosis of what your problem is — at least your medical problem. I may not be able to tell you why someone thought it necessary to stab you with a spork in the first place. But, beyond saying, “Dude, you should probably get that looked at” or, “I think you need to have that removed,” I’m not going to be a hell of a lot of good to you, save perhaps as a ride to the hospital.

I love those scenes in movies and TV shows where the medieval king or Roman emperor is sick with a fever or some other ailment, and the doctors come in and do a pretty good job of identifying the symptoms, if not necessarily the underlying malady. But when it comes time to prescribing treatment, they might as well be toddlers with beards. “Have his excellency eat the tails of four newts every morning before the sun clears the horizon. Then he must snort the dandruff of a Corsican beggar no older than half the King’s age minus seven. But not if the beggar is a ginger, for they are touched by the devil.”

A fourth point: Some enormous problems have no immediate solution, which means that committing massive amounts of energy and resources to fixing them now is a waste. When I was a kid, I read a science-fiction short story about humans embarking on an interstellar trip to a far-off habitable planet. The hitch: They didn’t have faster-than-light technology. I can’t remember whether their solution was to use suspended-animation chambers so that they could sleep for the several centuries it would take the ship to reach their destination or whether they planned to reproduce en route so that their descendants would colonize the planet (both standard devices in these kinds of stories). Either way, just as they were on the outskirts of the solar system and about to fully commit to the journey, an alien spacecraft appeared on their scanners or out the window (again I can’t remember). And then, suddenly, the alien ship vanished — traveling faster than light speed.

The captain’s response always stuck with me. “All right, let’s go home.”

The captain didn’t want to go home because he feared anal probing or anything like that. Rather, he realized that taking 500 years getting to some other planet was an enormous waste of time. Now that he knew it was possible to travel faster than the speed of light, there was no point to their journey. By the time they — or their great-great-great-great-great grandkids — made it to Alpha Centauri, or wherever they were heading, humans on Earth would surely have cracked the puzzle. Indeed, the fact that he knew it was possible made it infinitely more likely they’d figure out the technology because they now understood it was doable.

So what am I really getting at here? I’m trying to explain how I think about climate change.

Among the Believers

Max Boot, as part of his conservatism-renunciation tour, has been pestering me about climate change. Once a skeptic, he now proudly shouts all of the shibboleths of climate-change alarmists. He “believes” in science. And science speaks in one voice about the issue. The scientists — a monolithic bloc in his telling — have not only incontrovertibly diagnosed the problem, but they have also prescribed the only solution. And anyone who disagrees with either the diagnosis or the prescribed remedies must be doing so for one of two reasons: They are either prostitutes for the fossil-fuel industry or science-denying brainwashed ideologues.

Much like a man who thinks he can ride a wild polar bear to work because that way he can use the HOV lanes and park in the electric-car spots at his office garage, this is a stupid idea, I think, for a lot of different reasons.

First of all, while Boot’s depiction of Big Oil might be music to the ears of the green Left that still thinks the world looks like a Thomas Nast cartoon — with titans of industry portrayed as pigs at a trough or fat cats in fancy suits — that’s not the reality. Max wants a carbon tax. That’s an intellectually defensible position. But you know who else favors a carbon tax? ExxonMobil. You know what else ExxonMobil does? They spend huge amounts of money on low-carbon R&D. They just closed on the biggest wind and solar deal in the industry.

As for the notion that everyone else who disagrees with him is an ensorcelled science-hating ideologue, Boot needs to get out more. There are scads of people who are vastly more well-versed in the science than either of us who reach an array of different conclusions other than those of the chicken-little caucus. That doesn’t mean they’re all right — they can’t all be right because they have meaningfully different points of view — but it also doesn’t mean they’re all luddite ideologues. Roger Pielke, John Horgan, Judith Curry, Matt Ridley, Bjorn Lomborg, Ronald Bailey, Steve Hayward, and many others are serious people, many of whom concede the reality that man is changing the environment and climate in undesirable ways, but they get demonized by the climate-change industrial complex for poking holes in, or dissenting from, the groupthink.

From where I sit, it looks like Max, understandably dismayed by the realization that the people he relied upon to do much of his thinking for him are not who he thought they were, has simply decided to let a different group of people do his thinking for him.

But enough (already) about him. My own view of the climate change issue is that it is real. I do not think it is a hoax, though I do think there are plenty of people, institutions, and interests that use the tactics of hoaxers to hype the problem. I assume that the vast majority of them are what you might call “hoaxers in good faith”: They think the problem is grave enough that it is worth exaggerating the claims, hyping the threat, and hiding contrary evidence in an effort to rally public opinion. Others suffer from confirmation bias, immediately believing the worst-case scenarios from wildly complex — and historically unreliable — computer models without checking the math. Just last month, the authors of a widely publicized study saying the oceans were heating up much faster than thought had to issue a major correction.

The 2007 IPCC report claimed “science” proved the Himalayan glaciers would be gone by 2035. In 2010, they had to retract the claim:

The UN’s climate science body has admitted that a claim made in its 2007 report — that Himalayan glaciers could melt away by 2035 — was unfounded.

The admission today followed a New Scientist article last week that revealed the source of the claim made in the 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was not peer-reviewed scientific literature — but a media interview with a scientist conducted in 1999. Several senior scientists have now said the claim was unrealistic and that the large Himalayan glaciers could not melt in a few decades.

Three Cheers for Skepticism

There are really two kinds of skepticism at work here. The first is the skepticism about the science itself, the other is skepticism towards the vast array of interests that benefit from climate hysteria, psychologically, politically, or economically. Both forms of skepticism are utterly defensible. But they shouldn’t be lumped together.

Science is skepticism. Science is questioning, testing, replicating, and re-verifying. Yes, there are some things that are “settled science” — the decay time of some isotope, the existence of gravity, the superiority of New York pizza — but what science is primarily about is unsettling settled science. All — all — of the great scientists in human history were, to one extent or another, great because they shattered or transformed the scientific consensus of their time.

The second skepticism isn’t about science, but about scientism — the effort to use the language, techniques, constructs, and imagined mindset of science to do things science cannot do. “Scientism,” writes the philosopher Edward Feser, “is the view that all real knowledge is scientific knowledge — that there is no rational, objective form of inquiry that is not a branch of science.” I would go slightly farther and say that scientism is a form of religious thinking that thinks it is unreligious because it rejects traditional notions of religion. Back when engineering was considered the cure-all to our problems, “social engineers” (once a positive term) argued that they should be empowered to guide human affairs because science was the only legitimate source of truth.

In this way, scientism is a kind of priestcraft — a term coined by the writer James Harington to describe the way clergy would use their divine authority (back when everyone saw God as the ultimate source of truth) to serve their own interests. Or as Bill Murray says in Ghostbusters, “Back off man, I’m a scientist.” Neil deGrasse Tyson is a leading practitioner of this secular priestcraft, arguing that we should pick up where the Jacobins left off and organize society around the rule of scientific reason as determined by people, well, like him.

There is a profound irony at work when people such as Boot insist that his opponents are driven by self-interest when they disagree with him. Is it inconceivable that, say, Al Gore — who has made hundreds of millions as a climate-change Jeremiah — has a vested interest in climate change? This isn’t to say that Gore is lying. I’m sure he believes what he’s saying. But couldn’t he be a bit like Colonel Nicholson in Bridge over the River Kwai? A man so invested in a single idea he can’t see the costs of his actions or the possibility he’s taken a good idea too far?

Ultimately, I have no fundamental problem with people who think climate-change “deniers” are suffering from groupthink of some kind. What enrages me are the scientific practitioners of priestcraft who cannot imagine the possibility that they suffer from the same human foibles. I mean, they aren’t even consistent champions of science. They cherry-pick the issues where science lends political and cultural power to the stuff that they want to do anyway. When the issue is sex and gender, many of these same people might as well start a bonfire using medical and biology textbooks as kindling. The science has been slipping away from these people when it comes to abortion, particularly late-term abortions, for decades, but you won’t find these “believers in science” changing their positions any time soon.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is pushing a “Green New Deal.” As I’ve written 7 trillion times (give or take), progressives have wanted a “new New Deal” even before the first New Deal was over. Painting an age-old progressive idol green has nothing to do with science and everything to do with marketing.

So What Would I Do?

As I suggested in the bit about the science-fiction story, I don’t think there is very much to do right now. Oh, I am very much in favor of R&D for all sorts of things. Cold fusion would be the equivalent of discovering faster-than-light travel. Personally, I am very interested in geoengineering — the science of actually fixing the problem. I am convinced the world has a low-grade fever that could get dangerously high in the future. That fever isn’t all bad by the way: E.g., it extends growing seasons and accelerates tree growth.

But if you eat bad clams and get a fever, doctors treat the fever. They may also talk to you about your diet, but they first address the illness. We don’t have anywhere near the expertise or confidence to start seeding the atmosphere with particles that would reflect more sunlight, but we could get there in the next generation or two. The funny thing is that whenever I talk to people about this sort of thing, the science worshippers suddenly freak out and say, “What if the scientists are wrong!” That’s a great question. But not only when someone proposes something you don’t like.

And I’m open to a carbon tax and things of that sort, but the thing people lose sight of is that the United States really isn’t the big problem. They want a New Deal regardless, and the green part is just a rationalization. Meanwhile, China, India, Africa, etc., very much want to be rich (or at least not poor), and they will not agree to anything that substantially deters that mission. And we should want them to get rich. Wealthy societies protect their environments as treasured luxuries, poor societies use their environments as useful resources (and don’t get me started on the violence the first New Deal inflicted on nature).

In the meantime, climate change is crowding out concern for, and resources from, all sorts of other problems that have far more immediate effects. I worry far more about eroding biodiversity, over-fishing, ocean acidification, plastic pollution, and the like than I do about climate change. Climate change contributes to some of these problems, particularly ocean acidification, but these are far more fixable right now. Elephants aren’t being wiped out by climate change. And a Green New Deal won’t save them.

Various & Sundry

I’m writing this from the verandah of my cabin on the R.M.S. Oosterdam. It’s been another lovely and fun National Review cruise with a bunch of great people. If you’re wondering why I didn’t even mention Donald Trump in this “news”letter, it is because I am unbelievably exhausted with the topic (also, news seems to be moving fast on the Trump front, and I’m not too dialed into what’s happening). There has been all manner of fruitful, fiery, yet always friendly conversations about the man and the times, and I just couldn’t muster anything more on the subject. Also, I don’t have much to add to what I wrote last week.

Canine Update: The night before I left for the cruise, my wife and I were having dinner in front of the TV to watch the final episode of this season of Man in the High Castle, when Pippa came up to request a piece of the Fair Jessica’s steak. Normally, in these times, Pippa deploys her most powerful weapon: her puppy eyes. But there was a problem: One of them seemed to be looking off in the wrong direction. Given that she was abnormally tired to begin with, we thought she might have had a seizure or some kind of stroke or something. So, I rushed her to the money depository that operates as a veterinary hospital. Zoë was enraged that I was taking Pippa at dog-walking hour without her. The Dingo was clearly convinced that we were going to some canine amusement park, where instead of whack-a-mole, you get to play crunch-a-mole. Anyway, Pippa was very excited for a car ride at first but was more terrified than I’ve ever seen her when we got to the vet. She ran to the back of the beat-up Honda Element that is our dog car and curled into a quivering ball. In the waiting room, she kept jumping up and crawling over me like there must be some hidden bunker in my body that she could hide in. It turns out that she probably had an infection or maybe an ulcer than causes Horton’s syndrome, which can make an eye go droopy. She’s in no discomfort as far as we can tell, and she should be fine, but it was a bit scary. I really want to express my appreciation to everyone on Twitter who showed their concern for the girl.

I don’t know whether readers actually follow the links to the doggo pictures, but if you do, I’m sorry I can’t do it this week. Twitter is not loading for me right now.

I will be on Meet the Press on Sunday.

Last week’s G-File

RIP GHWB

GHWB in NR

My all-Goldberg Constitution Center panel

What was PETA (group-)thinking?

RIP GHWB, part II

The latest Remnant, with Charles Cooke

What AOC and DJT have in common

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Wednesday links

Debby’s Friday links

Arizona man thinks he’s a Florida man

Old liquor

A happy ending

I thought this was America

Fiat lux

Civic activism

Nerd wish-fulfillment opportunity

RIP Vishnu

Chick-fil-A supercentenarian

Cheesecake Factory uprising

Hot grease fight

Sloth history (cc: @senatorshoshana)

The Butlerian Jihad must begin now

The last French sword duel

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader: The quickening is upon us. What I mean is that, while few people really have any clue what is going on, many are certain that It’s About to Go Down.

And so the Great Loin-Girding has begun.

In Green Rooms, in Editorial Rooms, in Conference Rooms of every hue and shape, and even in bathrooms where stewed bowels are uncorked like a confused drunk opening the emergency exit at 35,000 feet, people are preparing for what can only be described as the Mother of All Shinola Shows, only it won’t be shinola on the main stage. Reporters are rereading ten-year-old New Yorker profiles of bit players just so they can be ready to drop an obscure reference about a Russian oligarch. A striver at Breitbart is researching Robert Mueller’s family tree going back to the Duchy of Pomeria. Behind the scenes at Fox & Friends, things are more somber: There are a lot of prayer circles and quiet moments of solitude, as various hosts and producers stare out the window onto Sixth Avenue and ask themselves if they are ready for what is to come.

Over at Morning Joe, the preparations are more animated, as they contemplate the prospect of entering Cable-News Valhalla.

On the Hill, House Democrats, flush with the stench of midterm victory in their nostrils, are storming the vacated bunkers of the former majority, like Vikings sweeping into an unprotected English village or the caddies into the Bushwood pool on Caddy Day. The walls are being covered with photos of Trump and his associates, each held up by a pushpin and tied by red string to another pushpin holding up another photo and another, until a batwing-shaped web connects Trump to Vladimir Putin, the Saudi crown prince, Roy Cohn, and, thanks to Senator Cruz, both the Zodiac Killer and the real culprits in the Kennedy assassination.

Over on the Senate side, Chuck Schumer walks into a conference room and spots a fresh-out-of-Harvard self-styled freedom fighter, hunched over next to an oil-drum fire, sharpening pencils with the blade of a pair of child-safety scissors.

“All that hate’s gonna burn you up kid,” Schumer says.

“It keeps me warm,” replies the former senior-class president, as he throws an 8-by-10 glossy of Roger Stone into the fire.

Meanwhile, Republicans across the Hill are grabbing everything they can to bunker-in and target-harden. Book cases full of the proceedings of the Senate? Slide those mofos in front of the doors! Studies showing the scope of the fiscal crisis ahead of us? We may need that for toilet paper. Hapless tourists from Osh Kosh or Eugene visiting the rotunda are knocked over and shoved aside, their selfie-sticks clanging on the cold marble, their Smithsonian shopping bags full of astronaut ice cream and miniature Washington Monuments sent flying, as young Republicans roll giant water-cooler bottles down the hallway to prepare for the siege. “Sorry, ma’am, I don’t think you want to be here,” one of the more polite kids from Orrin Hatch’s office yells as they barrel past. “This is going to be bad.”

For reasons no one knows, but everyone understands, an old lady is standing outside the gallery shouting, “Flores! Flores para los muertos!”

Meanwhile, over at the White House, everyone is sweating like they ate gas-station sushi an hour ago and don’t have any change left for the coin-operated bathroom stall. You can’t even make a Downfall video joke without John Kelly screaming, “Stow that crap soldier!” Cigarette burns mar every desk and carpet, the smoke blending in with the stench of panic and intern urine. In the hallway, Mike Pence barges past a meeting trying to catch a chicken. No one bothers even to ask why.

Stephen Miller hasn’t been seen for days, but staffers hear the familiar rapid-fire sound — whock-whock-whock-OW! — emanating from his office as he plays Mumblety-peg with the pointy-end of a Statue of Liberty paperweight.

And then there’s the Oval Office, where the president keeps re-watching DVR’d episodes of Lou Dobbs, pausing every 15 seconds to growl at Rudy Giuliani: “See! Lou gets it! Why can’t you say something like that!? I should make him attorney general.”

Rudy’s constant, uncontrolled, and unprovoked laugher, punctuated by broad flashes of his new teeth, is as disorienting as it is hypnotic. “It’s all going great!” Rudy says with an enormous smile, tears streaming down his face.

“It’s all fine . . . this is fine.”

Two and Half Cheers for the Sidelines

Okay, I exaggerate — a little.

But the truth is that it really does feel like things are coming to a head.

I have no idea what Mueller will reveal, and I have no idea what Trump will do in response. But I am sure that we’re going to hear a lot of “Whose Side Are You On?” once Mueller walks to the cameras in his Grim Reaper’s cloak and swings his scythe.

For me, the answer is simple: I’m on nobody’s side. I don’t have a dog in this fight. To mix metaphors like a special blender for metaphors, I’m going to play the ball, not the man — or men. What I mean by that is that if the truth or facts or evidence is on Trump’s side, I’ll defend that. If it’s not on his side, I won’t be either.

That’s not going to be true for a lot of people who, for one reason or another, have invested way too much in Donald Trump and in the idea that he deserves their loyalty. That ain’t me.

I’ve spent the last couple years perhaps a bit too vexed by some of those people. I’ve finally figured out a way to make peace, in my own mind, with at least some of their behavior.

In print and in podcast, I’ve been talking a lot about how the two parties are shells of what they once were and how outside groups and institutions have filled the voids left behind by their shrinkage. The parties used to choose candidates and issues. Parties educated voters. Over the last 50 years, that function has essentially been outsourced to interest groups, media outlets, think tanks, etc. As a result, the dividers between different lanes shrunk or vanished. Writers and intellectuals on the left and the right became de facto political consultants and party activists. Many political consultants acted like public intellectuals or pundits. Intellectuals became entertainers and entertainers pretended to be intellectuals. Politicians quit their jobs to be TV talking heads, and TV talking heads run for office.

I look back on the last two decades, and, in hindsight, it’s easy for me to see all of it now, not just in others but in myself. Back in 2016, I didn’t understand how so many people, who had basically the same job description as I did, could reach such wildly different conclusions. Now, I feel like I understand it better. In this business, people like me wear a lot of different hats, figuratively speaking. Among the hats we wear: journalist, writer, author, TV pundit, intellectual, partisan, etc. In those roles, one can sometimes be a critic or a cheerleader for a party or a politician or a policy.

The point is that most of the time, it’s pretty easy to switch out one hat for another without feeling conflicted. Making the Republican case and the conservative case often seems — or seemed — like the same thing. In hindsight, I think I was too much of a partisan during the Iraq War, but it didn’t feel like I was being partisan at the time. I just thought the party and the president deserved defending from their critics on the left.

You Can Leave Your Hat On

Lots of people have argued that the rise of Donald Trump was a stress test for various institutions, and I think that’s right. But whereas I once thought a lot of people failed the test, I see it a little differently now.

The rise of Trumpism demanded that everybody decide which hat they were going to wear. Or to put it a little differently, they had to decide which hats were they willing to take off when push came to shove. For some people, the party hat (I don’t mean the type that kids wear at birthday parties) was the one hat that they wouldn’t take off. For others, it wasn’t so much a GOP thing as it was a populist thing. They hated the “establishment” — especially the Republican establishment — and because “Donald Trump” popped into someone’s head when Gozer demanded, “Choose the Form of the Destructor,” they went with him even though many might have preferred a different vessel. For many religious and social conservatives, they had to discard the Public Scold Hat (or at least the Credible and Morally Consistent Public Scold Hat). When you believe all of that “It’s War” crap, the only hat you’re supposed to wear is a helmet. And a lot of people, strapped one on for the cause.

For others, including self-described “Never Trumpers,” they — we — chose to discard the party hat and the populist hat. I don’t know the right label for the one I’m stuck with, in part because they all sound pretentious: intellectual, journalist, conservative, whatever.

I don’t know if thinking about it this way is helpful for anybody but me, but I find it clarifying and a bit reassuring. We all have lots of different roles or identities in us, and when a test comes, some people will choose one identity over another. I’m not going to lie, some people have disgusted me in how they’ve made “Trump-loyalist” their primary identity, jettisoning principles, reputation, and rationality in order to nimbly defend the guy. But a lot of people haven’t done that. They’ve simply tried to make the best out of a difficult situation.

There’s a reason why the Kavanaugh spectacle was the only time the broader American Right has unified during Trump’s presidency; it was because Donald Trump wasn’t the issue, even if he at times tried to make it about him. It was the one-time moment when all of the hats could converge or overlap each other.

There are those on the right who very much want the coming donnybrook to be like that again. It’s possible it will. It’s possible the Democrats will overreach or that Mueller will live down to the slanders grifters on the right have concocted about him. But I doubt it will happen. This will be about Trump. And while impeachment may not be warranted, he will not look good in this fight, because his true nature — and the nature of the creatures he surrounds himself with — will once again be exposed.

I’m not going to the mattresses in any of this, because I see no reason to give the president — or many of his most rabid opponents — the benefit of the doubt, never mind loyalty. The only major player here who deserves the benefit of the doubt right now is Robert Mueller. Because while we may learn that he made mistakes or overstepped, as of now, the one thing I know he cares about is the facts. About his slander-spewing right-wing critics — and to some extent his left-wing sanctifiers — I know no such thing.

Various & Sundry

Update: All of the above was written on Friday, in drips and drabs, as I wended my way from Syracuse to Chicago to home. Amidst all that, I tweeted an NPR story about Donald Trump Jr. that turned out to be wrong. Some Trump defenders pounced. That’s fine. The only thing remarkable about it was that many people seemed to think that I had some deep investment in the story or that I had egg on my face for tweeting a link to a news story. I just don’t see it that way, for several reasons. The first reason, you can find above; whatever the truth turns out to be is fine by me. Second, it was an entirely plausible story. If you don’t think it’s possible that Donald Trump Jr. might lie to Congress — you’ve been watching a different show than me.

But since we’re on the subject: There is this fascinating tendency among Trump’s praetorians to seize on every false or flawed news story — and there have certainly been many — as if it proves all of the stories about Trump are false. They simply aren’t. But, more to the point, some of these praetorians make it sound like they care very, very, very much about telling the truth. And yet there is precious little, if any criticism, about the president when he lies. And he lies very often. Then — when Trump lies — we get a lot of treacle about how “the American people knew what they were getting” or “he’s a disruptor” or “that’s just his style.” I concede that it’s a little bit apples and oranges. The press is supposed to be dedicated to reporting facts, and when journalists get it wrong, they should be held accountable. But the president should be held accountable too, particularly by people who are also in the press. If you only object to untruths when they are inconvenient to the president, you don’t actually care about the truth. You just want to use it to protect someone who doesn’t care about it either.

Canine Update: Something very strange is going on that may have reverberations in the Goldberg family for years to come. For as long as we’ve had her, Zoë has not cared much or at all about chasing tennis balls. Even after we got Pippa, Zoë didn’t get what the big deal is. Then, this week, Zoë decided that she had had enough.

The question is: “Enough of what?” Enough attention being heaped on Pippa? Enough with the incessant barking and bouncing? We don’t know. But Zoë’s suddenly interested in the tennis ball.

Just today, Kirsten (our invaluable dogwalker) took them out with the pack. She texted this (light typo fixes notwithstanding):

This is Zoë’s face after she grabbed the ball from Obi, Sampson and Pippa then danced around with it for 3 minutes THEN she proceeded to bury it, and as we were walking away Pippa ran back but Zoë beat her to it and laid down on top of where she put it making stinky faces. I finally dug it up and confiscated it, and this is her at the empty burial site. She is perplexed to say the least.

There’s even some late breaking video.

This report suggests to me that dog economics has finally kicked in. As Megan McCardle and I once discussed on The Remnant, dogs are deeply invested in the concept of the positional good. A stick only has value because other dogs want it. That’s why, at the dog park, you’ll see a long train of dogs chasing whoever has “The Stick,” even though there are more than enough sticks for everybody. What matters is to have The Stick — or in this case The Ball — that the other doggers want.

Now, it’s possible that this is just Zoë being a jerk. That wouldn’t be unprecedented. She’s a bit of a kick-down, kiss-up kind of gal. But that doesn’t explain another monumental development. On Thursday, Zoë let Pippa think that she was the “predator” in a grand game of dog-zoomie-hide-and-seek (over 77,000 views so far).

We think she may be having a midlife crisis or maybe some kind of epiphany. I just hope Pippa can cope.

Oh, and if you wanted to hear a genuine Carolina dog “arrooo,” this is it. Apparently, it can be triggering to other dogs, so play it in private (or send me video of them responding).

ICYMI . . .

The previous G-File

My C-SPAN Book TV interview

An AOC Theory

The pre-Thanksgiving Remnant, with James Kirchick

The poison of “stolen election” narratives

Trump’s odd definition of “America First”

A conflict of visions

The perils of symbolic nationalism

In re: Max Boot

Hillary Clinton almost has a point

The racist orcs are back!

The latest Remnant, with Mike Gallagher (and a bonus Jack Butler solo performance at the end)

America’s history of rejecting identity politics

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Thanksgiving links

A good man

Dart farts

Bear propaganda

Drunk curlers

Panoramas

Exorcise more

A happy ending

Strangely satisfying

The ocean’s Twilight Zone

LEGO digestion

A good dog

Avoid NYC subways

Another good dog

A piece of musical history

Good dogs

The origin of the sloppy joe

Florida Men — 1 Disguised in Bull Costume – Allegedly Tried to Burn Down Ex-Boyfriend’s Home With Spaghetti Sauce

Bee closeups

Bob Seger says goodbye

I’m not crying, you’re crying

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (And especially Martha McSally’s dog),

As I often note, I increasingly tend to see the political scene as a scripted reality show in which the writers don’t flesh out the dialogue so much as move characters into weird, wacky, confrontational, or embarrassing positions. It’s a lot like The Truman Show, except most of the cast isn’t fully in on it. Sometimes I imagine some writers’ room in the sky where a bunch of exhausted hacks with coffee breath struggle amidst the pizza boxes and broken pencils to figure out how to ratchet up the intensity from scene to scene or season to season. “Let’s have them just leave Reince on the tarmac!” “How about we put Jared in charge of Middle East Peace!” “Let’s have some fun with George and Kellyanne, I think there’s huge sitcom material there.”

“If only Roger Stone were still alive.”

“He is.”

“Whoa. Call his agent. We gotta have him on. A little goes a long way with that guy, but he could steal the show like Christopher Walken in Pulp Fiction talking about that watch he kept up his own a**, except instead of the watch we can use Stone’s whole head.”

The writer who came up with the whole “Anthony Weiner texting junk pics” got a lot of grief for a storyline that was a bit too on the nose, as it were, given Weiner’s name. But it was a ratings killer, and it set up much of the story arc for the next couple of seasons.

The trick is often in the little details that make this seem like a fully realized alternative reality, like the grittiness of Mos Eisley in the first Star Wars, or, more apt, the fake movie trailers at the beginning of Tropic Thunder.

Or, for example, the Trumpy Bear commercials.

Personally, I think this latest subplot with Jim Acosta and Donald Trump has been really boring. It would have been much cooler if President Trump owned the libs by pressing a button that opened a trap door beneath Acosta, and for added drama maybe he tried to grab hold of the microphone-carrying intern to prevent his fall. All we hear is a thud and then lions roaring. Or maybe Acosta falls alone but is only injured and just complains a lot like Will Ferrell when Dr. Evil sent him to his doom.

If I had to bet, the writers will have CNN credential Stormy Daniels next season, so she can ask weird sex questions — I mean weird questions about sex, not normal questions about weird sex. (BTW, “What’s the difference between erotic and kinky? Erotic is when you use a feather; kinky is when you use the whole chicken.”)

There are other times, when I like to imagine it’s less like a mashup of the writers’ rooms at the Sid Caesar Show, Desperate Housewives, and WWE, and more like we’re living in the world of the Gamesters of Triskilion, in which disembodied heads gamble with our puny lives for fun and profit.

“10,000 Quatloos they claim Acosta assaulted the intern!”

“20,000 Quatloos Corey Lewandowski pretends to be outraged by the manhandling of young women for partisan reasons.”

“No bet.”

“Okay, understandable.”

Basta!

I don’t want to beat a dead horse — unless it’s a zombie horse, in which case that might be necessary. But I cannot make up my mind about whether or not the Michael Avenatti storyline is one of the comedic subplots or part of the main dramatic narrative.

I have no idea what to make of the news that he was arrested for domestic abuse. His denials might be legit. The testimonials from his ex-wives seem credible to me. But I’m also skeptical that the LAPD would arrest a celebrity porn lawyer on completely bogus charges. And while I would love for Avenatti to be telling the truth when he accused Jacob Wohl of setting him up, I’m skeptical about that too. I mean, Wohl’s not as dumb as he looks, but that’s setting the bar very low. When it comes to organizing conspiracies, Wohl seems as useful as a white crayon.

I’m very conflicted about Avenatti because on the one hand I would very much like him to just go away. He started out as kind of interesting, but he’s turned into a really grating character. It’s like someone took the staggering self-regard of James Comey and wrapped it around a part-time Viagra-commercial actor who does all of his shopping at Duty Free boutiques at Middle Eastern airports. And that catchphrase — Basta! — is so unbelievably grating that he’s sort of turned into the Poochie or Urkel of this storyline, only with the oily sheen of a made-for-Cinemax movie about a creepy porn lawyer.

On the other hand, there’s part of me that really wants him to be innocent of these charges for the simple reason that when he tried to destroy Brett Kavanaugh he used the “Believe All Women” mantra as way to hide his impressively dishonest and unethical behavior from the press and the public. It would be wonderful to watch the smoke come out of his android brain-processor as he dealt with the feminist version of the “no true Scotsman” fallacy: “All women are telling the truth but this woman is a liar . . . zzzztt spork, sizzle.”

It Would Take a Heart of Stone Not To Laugh

Before you get all sanctimonious about me making light of domestic abuse or sexual assault, let me say “pull my finger.” No seriously, I take domestic abuse and sexual assault very seriously, and if Avenatti is proven guilty he should face the full weight of the law. But, more broadly speaking, what choice does one have but to laugh at the endless spray of crazy that streams out of every iPhone and TV screen like water out of a giant clown’s fake flower on a daily basis?

This is why I respectfully disagree with Bill Kristol here:

Republicans chortling about Avenatti might recall he never showed any strength in 2020 polls of Democrats. Trump won the GOP nomination in 2016 and for now has the support of most Republicans. I’m not sure we Republicans have much of a moral high ground from which to chortle.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 15, 2018

This is all technically correct, I suppose. But it misses the point. Just because some Republicans may be hypocrites for chortling at Avenatti doesn’t mean he’s not chortle-worthy. Nor does it mean that the most important thing about Avenatti’s continual self-beclowning is Republican hypocrisy. That hypocrisy is grating, of course. But let’s not lend aid and comfort to one jackass in a misplaced desire to condemn someone else’s jackassery.

Everyone Needs to Lighten Up

The single most exhausting feature of the Trump era is the soul-crushing humorlessness of so many Trump critics and Trump defenders. For many Trump critics, particularly but not entirely on the left, everything is a crisis of existential proportions. For Trump defenders, any criticism of Trump is a direct attack on his supporters.

I usually understand where it comes from, I think. Trump does represent a serious stress test not just for conservatism and “democratic norms” but also for many of the assumptions that liberals held dear about the arc of history. Few things are scarier than being knocked off the horse of your teleology. It’s a bummer when you think you have a rendezvous with destiny, and you end up waiting for Godot.

For Trump defenders, it requires incredible effort to keep yourself convinced that he’s the man you want him to be rather than the man he actually is. Orwell was right when he said, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” But the opposite is often true as well. It is incandescently obvious that Donald Trump is not the world’s best negotiator or an honest person, among other glaring truths. But for people either emotionally or professionally invested in Trump, any admission that the Trumpian eminence front is a put-on is a threat of one kind or another. Maintaining the fiction that the emperor’s new clothes are glorious and resplendent takes a lot of effort, too. (For instance, imagine the energy it takes even to attempt to argue that Trump’s accidental “covfefe” tweet was a “genius move that is a very powerful demonstration of his ability to persuade”).

I’m convinced that one of the things that causes Trump disciples to get so angry at conservative Trump critics is that we make it so much harder to sustain the fiction. Of course, Trump makes it much harder than we do, but Trump gets a pass because he is the object of the adulation, while we’re supposed to be in the pews yelling, “Amen.”

The order of the day is to maintain message discipline with Pence-like dedication. That would be hard enough without us snickering and jeering from the cheap seats. This explains the wildly veering claims about “Never Trumpers” (a label I reject, but that doesn’t matter to them). We’re at once utterly irrelevant and incredibly dangerous saboteurs, fake conservatives and ridiculously doctrinaire ideologues, who’d rather prattle about “muh principles” than rack up so many wins we’ll beg Trump to stop all the winning. We’re the ignorable pests they cannot ignore.

In Defense of Bill Kristol

Again, Bill Kristol is a friend of mine and I like and respect him a great deal. When people claim he’s not a conservative because he’s not a reflexive cheerleader for the president, I have to cover my ears for fear my eyes will roll out of my head. But that doesn’t mean I always agree with Bill on how he’s responded to the Trump era (something I can say about 92 percent of my fellow conservatives, in both the pro- and anti-Trump camps). But my disagreements don’t fill me with rage or drive me to grab a partisan Billy club so that I can chase him out of the Right. The effort to claim he’s not a conservative — solely because he’s a Trump opponent — is precisely the sort of thing I wrote about in last week’s “News”letter:

Indeed, more and more, liking Donald Trump is coming to define whether you’re on the team, and if you don’t like him — by which I mean, if you don’t celebrate his whole catalog the way the Bobs celebrated Michael Bolton’s — you’re part of the problem. Heck you’re not even a conservative.

Consider the fact that no president in American history succeeded in bending conservatism to his personality more than Ronald Reagan. And yet Reagan had plenty of critics on the right. Richard Viguerie lambasted Reagan. Howard Phillips called him a “useful idiot for Soviet propaganda.” Joel Skousen, the executive editor of Conservative Digest, said in 1983, ”Mr. Reagan is now seen as untrustworthy by many conservatives who believe he has betrayed his own principles in an effort to appease his critics.”

George Will, William F. Buckley, and numerous writers at National Review were personally fond of, or close to, Reagan, and usually supported him. But when the situation required it, they could be quite blistering in their criticisms. And yet, no one — or no one serious — claimed that Will and Buckley weren’t conservatives.

What changed? Well, lots of things. But one of them has been the populist takeover of the conservative movement. (I have an essay on this in the latest issue of NR.) Populist movements can vary in ideological content but they all share the same psychological passions. Independent thought, naysaying, and insufficient ardor are seen as a kind of disloyalty. Better and earlier than most, Matt Continetti recognized the crisis of the conservative intellectual this takeover represents.

I know I’m repeating myself, but it is just remarkable how the definition of a conservative for many people is primarily measured by support for Trump and/or hatred of Trump’s critics. My disagreements with Bill are entirely tactical and tonal, but I am at a loss to understand how any of my disagreements make him any less of a conservative today than he was five or 15 years ago. Bill Kristol is a conservative. About the people who say he isn’t one just because he won’t say the un-obvious, I’m not so sure.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: Because all of our go-to house- and pet-sitters are selfishly going home to be with their families on Thanksgiving, we’re probably going to have to bring the beasts to my mom’s for the holiday. It’s not ideal for a number of logistical reasons, among them the fact that Grandma has three extremely aristocratic cats. We can’t put them in a kennel because Zoë does not deal well with kennels. When she came out of one last time, something bad happened and she turned extremely hostile to other dogs. It took months to train that out of her. Pippa doesn’t deal with strange dogs very well either. Recall that when Zoë got into a scrap with some Corgis in apparently terrifying glow-in-the-dark collars, she ran more than a half-mile home to our house (crossing any number of streets). This brings me to a squabble I got into yesterday. A fight over at the D.C. bureau of the Daily Beast spilled out onto Twitter. Asawin Suebsaeng‏ argued that cats are superior to dogs because they are more convenient pets.

The daily beast dc office just erupted into a heated argument about a) If cats are a health hazard to the owner and, b) if dogs are superior to cats.

Righteous Team Cat: me, @JuliaArciga

Decadent Dog Partisan: @woodruffbets @ErinBanco

— Asawin Suebsaeng (@swin24) November 15, 2018

I responded:

Typical millennial self-centeredness: Cats are better than dogs because they're more convenient. Just live down to your standards and get yourself a pet rock. That way you can go to your avocado toast parties without any worries at all. https://t.co/PgBTBqj2Jn

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) November 15, 2018

A large number of people took me way too literally (I like Suebsaeng), but that happens on Twitter. But they should take me seriously on this point: I have two dogs and two cats. I love three of them (I’m merely fond of my wife’s cat). Cats can be affectionate. It’s far more debatable whether they are “loyal” in any meaningful sense. And cats are definitely more convenient. But convenience is not everything. Anyone who’s read this “news”letter or followed me on Twitter knows I invest a lot of time, money, and energy in my dogs. And that’s not for everybody, so by all means get yourself a cat until you’re ready for the major leagues of pet ownership. But dogs give back far more than cats do. I could get all poetic about this, but science is on my side. Dogs love us. They evolved to love us. They picked a side. As I wrote 17 years ago:

The dog is the only animal that volunteers for duty. If we want other animals — horses, oxen, mules, falcons, bears, or parrots — to come to our aid, we must either force them or bribe them. You might even call horses our slaves: Their spirit must actually be broken before they will agree to do anything for us. And, if the comparison of the jovial dog to the jovial Briton is a fair one, then the conclusion is unavoidable that cats share many attributes with our friends the French: They are coquettish when called, unavailable when needed, and always self-interested. If Lassie had been a cat, the barn would have burned down and Timmy would have starved to death at the bottom of the old well.

Anyway, my wing-gals are doing great. They continue to love the weather and express that love with zoomies and smiles and even a little soulful contemplation. The other day, Pippa lost her ball on the trail (it happens). So we had to resort to some old school stick throwing, to get the ya-yas out of her. She was particularly fond of one stick, which is now in the back of our car. But she’s found others, too.

They’re good dogs, and dogs are good.

Now for the sundry.

I’ll be on Special Report tonight.

I’ll be speaking at the Miami Book Fair tomorrow.

Oh, and next week we’re going to try something fun. By now you’ve heard of NRPlus, and if you haven’t signed up yet, you should. As an added bonus for NRPlussers, we’re going to let you decide what next week’s G-File should be about. I will take requests and try to accommodate as many of the suggested topics as possible while not descending into a pure Ask Me Anything listicle. We’ll announce details on the Corner next week.

Last week’s G-File

2020 will be crazy

Remembering Stan Lee

And now, the weird stuff.

Spy pup

Ralph Bakshi vs. LOTR

Where you can eat with your dog in NYC

Politics and porn: A history

The Crenshaw Moment

No jury would convict

On the other hand…

Hmmm. . .

Cats and art

Movie hacking

The first synthesizer

LEGO Helm’s Deep

Just don’t step on it

How to get a role in Bill and Ted 3

Nature is weird

Japan’s understanding of American history, circa 1861

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (And those of you who identify as Readers),

I’m on a flight to Florida, and I have to get an essay done for the magazine and work on a new speech for tomorrow, so as Jeremy Corbyn said when asked to provide a list of things he loves about the Jews, I need to keep this short.

I keep seeing all of this stuff about how the midterms were everything from a blip to a huge victory for Trump and that he’s more likely than ever to get reelected. Ehhh . . . maybe. I can see the argument. I just don’t understand the confidence. Just consider the fact that were it not for the Benghazi hearings, Hillary Clinton would probably be president today — because it was those hearings that put her server in play.

I’m a skeptic about the Russia-collusion stuff, but the notion that there’s nothing for a subpoena-powered Democratic House to find in Trump’s closet just strikes me as nuttier than Mr. Peanut’s pool party.

Also, Trump won with a minority of the popular vote. He’s less popular today than he was in 2016, and the Democrats are way more motivated. The GOP coalition has shrunk while the Democratic coalition has expanded. I get that the Democrats have remarkable a gift for screwing things up. But I just can’t understand why anyone would have any confidence about predicting what happens next. The writers of this timeline, after all, put a huge emphasis on the crazy. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if in 2020 the president of the United States were a talking flounder.

But instead of looking at the fact that the Democratic coalition is bulging with young people, while millions of Republicans are leaving the GOP due to the ironclad rules of life expectancy, people are looking at things like Trump’s press conference as proof that 2020 is in the bag.

For example, here’s my friend Hugh Hewitt in the Washington Post:

President Trump will win reelection. Anyone who watched Wednesday’s presser after Trump’s big night Tuesday knows in his or her bones that it will happen, because the president is getting better and better at the job.

I found the whole column so strange. As Hugh admitted to me in a Twitter exchange, the point wasn’t to be empirical. Fair enough. We can chalk up the sweeping claim that anyone who watched the press conference knows in his or her bones that Trump will get reelected to poetic license. I mean, I don’t know that, though in fairness I didn’t watch the whole thing. I merely listened to a bunch of it on the radio, so maybe there was something subliminal in the video — like in The Ring or in those Silver Shamrock commercials from Halloween III — that compels one to believe he will be reelected simply by virtue of the fact that he displayed his usual press-bashing vindictiveness towards Republicans who don’t suck-up to him, and his usual, often entertaining turd-polishing of bad news.

But the fascinating thing about Hugh’s column is that he has redefined the job of the president into “combatant in chief.” What Hugh says about the political culture is largely true. Americans like combat — political, virtual, mortal (Finish him!), etc. — but I don’t understand why Hugh should celebrate the idea that the president of the United States should encourage and amplify that tendency. I’m sure he’d be more critical of a Democratic president doing anything like what Trump does. Moreover, just because the president is “good” at combat doesn’t mean his combativeness attracts more voters to him. Rather, it activates combativeness in his opponents. Not a lot of Democrats are going to say, “I love combat. Trump is better at combat than Nancy Pelosi. Therefore, I will vote for Trump.”

Beyond the wishcasting, these kinds of arguments — which are everywhere on the right these days — seem like Trump-norming to me. In gender-norming, women are rated on a curve. A female applicant can only carry a 110-pound dummy through an obstacle course? Let’s make that the standard for women on the firefighter’s test! Donald Trump can’t act presidential? Make “combativeness ”the new standard for presidents. We take the measure of the man — and make the man the new measure.

What Went Wrong

Let’s talk about the content of Trump’s combativeness. Jonathan Last has an interesting essay on the midterms, arguing that the combat closest to Trump’s heart is with the GOP itself:

It is important to understand that for all the talk about how Trumpism is a reaction to leftism and social-justice warriors and political correctness, the truth is that it is principally an intra-party fight. It’s the final crackup of Cold War Republicanism; a cultural revolution in which the lumpenproletariat seized control of the party from the pointy heads and exiled them to the labor camps. And like the Maoists, the Trumpers aren’t really interested in picking a fight with the other superpower. They’re much more concerned with controlling the near abroad — which is to say, the Republican party. That’s why they tend to focus their hatred on Republicans and conservatives who decline to get on board, rather than on Democrats and liberals. Jeff Flake is the enemy; Kamala Harris is just a random nonplayer character.

Always remember that Trumpers — the people who believe in him, not the remora fish looking for their bits of chum — care very little about the left. Their real opponents are other Republicans. Seen from that perspective, Tuesday’s vote was a huge success. Because for Trumpers, it’s never a binary choice. Wherever a Trump-skeptical Republican was running against a Democrat, Trumpism couldn’t lose.

I think Jonathan overstates a few things, but his central point strikes me as largely correct, particularly when it comes to Trump himself. He mocked candidates who lost because of him but insisted they really lost because they failed to embrace him. This is not a brilliant strategy for winning in 2020; it’s a blunt strategy for Trumpifying the party further. It’s also ridiculous on the merits. The idea that if only Barbara Comstock “embraced” Trump more, her D.C.-suburb constituents would have changed their mind is ludicrous. As Jonathan notes, Carlos Curbelo has a 72 percent Hispanic district, half of which is foreign born. No doubt they voted Curbelo out because they wanted more talk about diseased foreigners and sh**hole countries, not less.

But Trump either believes that the GOP loss of the House proves “people like me” wrong or he at least wants you to believe that. And it’s working.

Indeed, more and more, liking Donald Trump is coming to define whether you’re on the team, and if you don’t like him — by which I mean, if you don’t celebrate his whole catalog the way the Bobs celebrated Michael Bolton’s — you’re part of the problem. Heck you’re not even a conservative.

That’s why Katie Arrington, who defeated Mark Sanford in a primary by promising to be a loyal foot-soldier for Trump, blamed Sanford for her loss of a reliably Republican seat:

“We lost because Mark Sanford could not understand that this race was about the conservative movement — and not about him.”

I heard my friend Mollie Hemingway on Fox refer to the traditional suburban Republican voters the GOP lost as basically “Never Trump elitists.” I know Mollie has very strong views about how Trump-skeptical pundits shouldn’t be given much airtime anymore, but why write off the voters the GOP needs to be a majority party?

Conservatism Norming

My friend Henry Olsen, who is a brilliant election analyst, doesn’t quite do that. In today’s Washington Post, he notes that:

The party’s devastation in traditional, high-income suburban bastions is unmistakable. Nearly every House seat it lost was in these areas. Districts in suburban Atlanta, Houston and Dallas that voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 by between 15 and 24 points went Democratic. Districts that Republicans had held for decades outside Chicago, Los Angeles and Philadelphia fell. The blue tide even swept away a GOP seat in Oklahoma City. This trend was more than a coastal fad.

Henry argues that the GOP is “irretrievably on a new path. Either it re-creates a William McKinley-style coalition based on the working-class voter or it dies.”

As a matter of pure political calculation for the GOP, I think Henry’s analysis and prognosis has a lot of merit, and if my overriding concern were winning elections, I might sign up. But Henry’s prescription has some problems if that’s not your only concern. I have no principled problem with the idea of the GOP putting the working class at the forefront of the GOP coalition (though as a policy matter, refusing to deal with entitlements in order to pander to the working class seems like a bad idea). But he wants to launch a long-term transformation of the GOP (and by extension, the conservative movement) based upon Donald Trump’s personality. His term for the working-class voters he wants behind the driver’s seat is literally “Trump Is Great Republicans” or TIGRs.

Henry wants some suburbia-friendly policies in the platform “but not to the extent they conflict with TIGR priorities.”

Can you see the problem yet?

Many — most? — of the people who think Trump Is Great are not primarily driven by public policy. The folks who watched that press conference and said, “This is awesome!” or shouted, “What a statesman!” do not think Trump is great because of policy X or Y. They think policy X or Y is great because Donald Trump says so.

The opposite is true as well. The voters who are horrified by Trump’s style, rhetoric, or personality are not going to be won over with policy. The college-educated suburban women who fled the GOP because of Trump aren’t going to be won back with child-tax credits, at least not as long as Trump is around.

Henry is absolutely right that there is an opportunity here for the Republicans — in the abstract. But in reality, Trump isn’t the guy to sell it. Trump’s chief priority isn’t anything like creating a lasting William McKinley–style coalition; it’s to be the center of attention.

What I find so interesting is how so much has changed so quickly. Just a few years ago, all of the arguments on the right were about how to better bend the GOP to conservatism. Jim DeMint said that he’d rather have 30 pure conservative senators than 60 squishy ones. Now, almost in the blink of an eye, the argument is how to bend conservatism to the GOP. If a woman can’t meet the physical standards, change the standards. If the GOP can’t meet the standards of traditional conservatism, change conservatism.

I have problems with both points of view. The DeMintian position was ridiculous. Majority parties always have diverse coalitions, because it is only by collecting a diverse coalition that you can assemble a majority. FDR’s coalition had everyone from socialist Jews and blacks to Klansmen in it. Goldwater’s coalition was much narrower, and he was trounced.

But the idea that all conservatism should be is a branding operation for the GOP to win elections is an awful idea too. Because that means its ultimate concern is winning, not being right.

Of course, humans have an almost bottomless capacity to convince themselves that they are right about whatever serves their interests. So, I have no doubt we would see such rationalizations about whatever path we went down.

This isn’t just conjecture.

Exhibit A: American liberalism. The starting point for American liberals, for generations, has been: “In our hearts we know we’re right” so therefore the priority shouldn’t be arguing about principles but arguing about how to get or keep liberals in power. The underlying principle was power as its own reward.

Exhibit B: The GOP right frick’n now.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: The girls are doing just fine. They continue to love the fall weather, though Pippa enjoys the autumn rains — and puddles — more than Zoë does. That’s not to say the Dingo won’t partake of such joys on occasion. The beasts are back at home, being watched by my researcher-producer-amanuensis-majordomo Jack Butler. I believe he understands the full scope of his responsibilities.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Midterm humility

China’s national kibbutz

Who are the RINOs?

Midterm chicanery

More midterm chicanery

DeSantis and felon voting

On the Ross Kaminsky Show

Our weak parties

The 69th Remnant

Max Boot’s confusion

An encomium for Jeff Sessions

The second Remnant of the week

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Elephant listens to piano

Roman toilet humor

Tilda Swinton’s spaniels

Conspiracy theory for sale

Stanley Kubrick for sale

Humanity is good sometimes

When you get drunk one night and wake up in another country the next morning

Chasing Bigfoot

A lost duet, found

Llama salvation

That escalated quickly

Cool dog vest

Ducklings on a water slide

Florida man

This seems dubious

I’d like to be, under the sea

The dogs of Capitol Hill

Election Day and porn habits

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Especially all incompetent conspiracy plotters),

When I was in eleventh grade, my English teacher, Mrs. Bab, made me sit in the front row right by her desk to keep me from getting into trouble or talking to friends. One day, when we were reading Beowulf, Mrs. Bab called on my friend Henry (I’ll leave his last name out of it) and asked him to summarize the story so far. Henry was a very capable B.S.er, but he was no match for Mrs. Bab.

Henry, who had not done the reading, offered an improvisational tour de force, repeating back random words he picked up from the classroom conversation. “Grendel and the Geats are fighting with Wiglaf for blah blah blah . . .”

Mrs. Bab offered a two-word rebuke: “Dreadful, Henry.”

But Henry didn’t pick up that he was being rebuked at all. He thought that she was giving him a hint. “Right,” Henry replied. “And then the Dreadfuls came down from Denmark . . .”

At this point, all time slowed down for me. I turned to Mrs. Bab and, with my best Puss ’n Boots eyes, I plaintively whispered, “Please. Let. Him. Go. On.”

I wanted to hear Henry go on and on about the marauding Dreadfuls. Perhaps after a while, he could have added the heroic tale of Sir Awful and his band of Incompletes and Unacceptables. But it was not to be.

I hadn’t thought about all that for a long time, but that rich bouillabaisse of feelings — schadenfreude (joy at the misfortune of others), fremdschämen (embarrassment for others who don’t have the good sense to be embarrassed for themselves), and plain joyful mirth and glee — came rushing back to me recently. This time, however, there was the added spice of Justice and Comeuppance in the broth. (Henry was at least my friend.)

The Limits of Civility

Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman are awful people. Now, let me admit my own hypocrisy here. As part of my growing disillusionment with partisan politics and disdain for raw tribalism, I’ve been trying — with only modest success — to pull back on the sort of casual mockery and demonization that was once part of my kit bag.

But the essence of serious thinking is the ability to make serious distinctions between superficially similar things (and finding similarities between superficially different things — such as nationalism and socialism). And if we can’t mock denizens of the coprophagic phylum inhabited by parasitasters such as Wohl and Burkman, then no one save the inhabitants of the handful of lower orders of garbage people — Nazis, terrorists, pedophiles, various Florida Men — can be mocked. That’s not a world I want to live in. Civilization isn’t achieved by eradicating social stigma, but by training it on the most worthy subjects.

Let’s Just Do It and Be Legends, Man

So, as I was saying: For the last 48 hours or so, these two jackwads have been beclowning themselves across such a broad spectrum of asininity that the mind reels to capture the glory of it. Only Hollywood could come up with a visual metaphor of their almost Nietzschean will to so completely live down to their reputations.

I suppose that I should back up. Jacob Wohl (rhymes with troll — for a reason) is a Twitter gadfly and former financial grifter who once claimed at the age of 18 to have had decades of experience as a hedge-fund manager. Jack Burkman’s first claim to fame came when he led an astroturf freak-out about an NFL quarterback being gay. Burkman’s own (gay) brother explained that it was “just an attention grab and a media grab to pander to those folks who pay him to lobby on their behalf.”

Perhaps in the same spirit, Burkman became even more famous by peddling conspiracy theories that Seth Rich was murdered because of his involvement in the leak of the DNC emails. I should also add that they both became Trump sycophants from afar, no doubt sensing opportunities for grift and the fame that could create more opportunities for grifting.

Which brings me to this week. Burkman and Wohl announced that they had learned of evidence that Robert Mueller had “brutally raped” a woman named Caroline Cass.

https://twitter.com/jaredlholt/status/1058030991846133760

This evidence came from Surefire Intelligence, a supposedly highly regarded investigation firm.

Before their Thursday press conference, Wohl denied having anything to do with Surefire Intelligence. “I don’t have any involvement in any investigations of any kind,” he told NBC News.

But Wohl apparently had no idea that the journalism profession contains individuals who know how to use the Internet. Many of the photos on the Surefire Intelligence website were stock photos, including one of the Israeli model Bar Refaeli. Another shadowy image, when brightened, revealed Wohl himself. When NBC called the listed phone number for Surefire, it went straight to Wohl’s mom’s voicemail.

John McCormack has more details, but you get the point. These guys are idiots. Yes, they are funny idiots because it’s always funny when idiots celebrate their idiocy as genius. Burkman defended Wohl’s age at the press conference, insisting that “Jacob is a child prodigy who has eclipsed Mozart.”

(FWIW Mozart’s first public performance was at the age of five. At six, he played for the royal court. By seven, he played across Europe. At twelve, he wrote his first opera. And so on).

When Wohl was pressed for evidence that Mueller’s accuser even exists — she almost surely doesn’t — he offered a picture of a woman with her face blocked out.

It turns out that, again, Wohl underestimated the wizardry of the computer age. The woman in the picture was his “girlfriend.”

I put that in quotes because that woman denies she ever dated him.

https://twitter.com/DonnyFerguson/status/1058382324302315520

It’s like Wohl is in his own Choose Your Own Adventure book, and every direction he goes leads him to a room where he has to punch himself in the crotch, while women he never dated point and laugh. No wonder this guy was Gateway Pundit’s ace reporter.

But just because they are idiots, that doesn’t mean they aren’t evil. Cesar Sayoc, the mail bomber from last week, was apparently an idiot too. We don’t know for sure yet, but it appears he really did think his bombs would work. If that’s the case, his incompetence has no bearing on his villainy. Likewise, these wormtongued rantallians wanted to falsely accuse Mueller of rape.

If you were outraged by what Brett Kavanaugh’s enemies tried to do to him, you should be no less outraged by what these peddlers of malicious jiggery-pokery tried to do. By all means laugh, I certainly am. But these guys need to go to jail all the same.

Maybe in prison, Wohl can fulfill his destiny as a child prodigy by inventing toilet-brewed pruno that Mozart could never have imagined.

Identity for Me, Not for Thee

I loved this line from CNN’s Don Lemon:

“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them.”

As I said on Twitter, that sentence is like a snake eating its own tail. In a funny way, it reminds me of John Locke’s “Letter Concerning Toleration,” which was a hugely important advance for mankind and the ideas of religious tolerance and pluralism. Paraphrasing it in Lemonesque terms, Locke said, “We have to stop oppressing people of different faiths and realize that the biggest religious threat in this country is from Catholics, most of them radicalized by the evil pope in Rome, and we have to start doing something about them.”

In fairness, if you listen to the broader context, Lemon’s not quite as demonizing of all white men as it seems from just that one soundbite. But it remains the case that if a Fox News host said virtually the exact same thing but replaced “white men” with “black men” or “Muslim men,” you can be sure that Don Lemon would be among the first to decry the racism or bigotry on display, and no appeal to broader context or data would change his mind.

Oh, and about that data: Color me skeptical. The chart most frequently tweeted showing that right-wing white-male terrorism is America’s most serious threat begins in 2007, which is a pretty convenient date. But my skepticism isn’t really about the numbers. It’s the effort to lump in all of these different mass shooters as “right-wing” “white male” “terrorists.” For example, this article at Vox includes in its list of white-male killers the Las Vegas shooter and the Republican baseball-practice shooter. The former’s motives are unknown and the latter’s were left-wing. Again, I think that white-nationalist or white-supremacist groups are a real threat and that they should be taken seriously. But that’s not typically how it’s discussed on cable news or Twitter. In part because of Trump hatred but also Trump’s rhetoric, enormously important distinctions are blurred, and sweeping guilt by association is the order of the day.

Consider the understandable passion around the Squirrel Hill synagogue shooter. You would get the sense that anti-Semitic hate crimes in America are the sole provenance of angry white men. But anti-Semitic incidents (none nearly as horrific as the synagogue shooting) are remarkably common — far more common than anti-Muslim hate crimes. In New York City, where most of the media figures decrying the anti-Semitism unleashed by Trump live, not a single anti-Semitic act has been attributed to far-right groups in the last 22 months. And, again, anti-Semitic incidents are frequent in the Big Apple.

Contrary to what are surely the prevailing assumptions, anti-Semitic incidents have constituted half of all hate crimes in New York this year, according to the Police Department. To put that figure in context, there have been four times as many crimes motivated by bias against Jews — 142 in all — as there have against blacks. Hate crimes against Jews have outnumbered hate crimes targeted at transgender people by a factor of 20.

It’s almost as if anti-Semitism is a huge problem only when it can be used as a partisan cudgel.

The notion that white men — about a third of the U.S. population — are a terror threat is a real “Big, if true” statement. The problem with Lemon’s claim isn’t the point he was trying to make but the glibness of how he stated it — and how he thinks about it. And he’s hardly alone. You can find similar lazy bigotry on MSNBC and CNN daily.

Tucker Carlson made this point last night on Fox.

I agree with a lot of what Tucker says here. My only problem is that you can find the “right-wing” version of the same phenomena on Fox and elsewhere on the right all the time. Though, I will say that it’s less naked, in part because of the double standards we have about what you can and can’t say about white people and non-white people. And, unlike Lemon who has doubled-down on his comments, when Fox hosts cross a line, they often — though hardly always — apologize.

Party Proxies Everywhere

But there’s one thing Tucker said that I would like to focus on.

If you want to know what Democrats are thinking, watch CNN and MSNBC. Which over the past couple of years have come to function much as the DNC used to function, as the Democratic Party’s Brain Trust and mouthpiece.

I think this is indisputably true. I’ve been amazed of late to hear the folks on MSNBC’s Morning Joe openly exhort viewers to vote Democrat. It’s not remotely subtle anymore.

But can anyone dispute that something very similar can be said about Fox News?

There’s an important distinction to be made. There’s an asymmetry between Fox and MSNBC and CNN. Fox has a distinct separation between its opinion shows and news shows. The separation can get fuzzy for viewers, depending on what pundits are asked to come on as guests. But the actual news anchors — Bret Baier, Shepherd Smith, Chris Wallace, Bill Hemmer, etc. — do not hector viewers to vote Republican or go on opinion-laden stemwinders about how Comrade Trump will deliver the greatest wheat harvests man has ever seen. With a handful of exceptions, mostly at CNN (Jake Tapper and Wolf Blitzer come to mind), many of the news people at CNN and MSNBC often indulge in sweeping partisan punditry. I think Chuck Todd tries to be even-handed, but people such as Lemon, Chris Cuomo, Stephanie Ruhl, Andrea Mitchell, and Christiane Amanpour go back and forth across the line between news and opinion constantly.

This is one reason why Trump’s “fake news” and “enemy of the people” rhetoric works. Viewers see people who claim to be heroic guardians of objective reporting go on endless anti-Trump tirades that often drift into sweeping denunciations of Trump voters and even white people generally.

That said, the opinion side of Fox and Fox Business — where I still have quite a few friends — is top-heavy with people who serve as the de facto Brain Trust and mouthpiece for Donald Trump (with the most notable exceptions being Dana Perino and Neil Cavuto, both of whom I have a lot of respect for). There’s a reason why Fox & Friends is called the “President’s Daily Brief.”

My point here is one I keep returning to these days. Each team wants to say that the other team is violating norms — and they’re right. And each team says in response, “You’re a hypocrite” or, “Who are you to cast stones when so-and-so said X.” And they’re right, too.

Career-wise, it’s probably insane for me to write any of this. But I just don’t care anymore. This timeline is so bizarre that if I saw an old-fashioned British phone booth in my driveway, I’d jump in and hit every button I saw.

Maybe if I was lucky, it’d take me to the timeline where Mitch Daniels is president. Or maybe, even better, it’d take me to Spaniel Heaven.

Various & Sundry

There are two — two! — new Remnant podcasts this week. The first Remnant with Reihan is a freewheeling wonk-a-thon on immigration, nationalism, conservatism, and Reihan’s dismaying Bismarkian tendencies.

The second is double-whammy: a conversation with laid-off Uber driver Ben Sasse, and then some purely rank punditry from me.

Canine Update: The beasts love Fall. They love, love, love, love, love, love it (the cats like it too). We do have to look them over for ticks quite a bit these days, but they are on the junk that keeps the pests from actually attaching. A staple conversation between the Fair Jessica and me is how much Zoë and Pippa would like this place or that. Whenever we drive past a farm or ranch, we’ll say, “Oh, the Dingo would like it there” or some such. I’ll often say Zoë would like some place because it looks like it’s full of critters that she can hunt and kill. But my wife has always argued that Zoë’s true earthly Valhalla is suburbia. And it’s true. She loves being off leash running around through people’s yards chasing critters that think they are safe. We can’t really let her do that in our neighborhood because there are too many small dogs around, and Zoë has a number overlapping prejudices. She’s very territorial about her neighborhood — no other dogs but Pippa should be allowed here. She’s also a bit of a kick-down/kiss-up type. She’ll growl at big dogs on her turf, but she knows her limits. Nonetheless, I’ve always thought — with some evidence mind you — that Zoë’s semi-wild status came out most gloriously on mountain hikes and the like.

I’ve come to change my mind. The other morning, I had to get to the NPR studios very early. So we did a walk around the neighborhood around 5:00 a.m. I know from experience that no one walks their dogs that early around here. So I took a chance and let her off the leash. And Oh My Stars and Garters did she love it. She zoomed up and down the block, investigating one rumored rabbit bunker after another. She zipped around silently mouthing, “This is great! This is so great!” She didn’t catch anything. But it did dawn on me that not only was my wife right, but that this only buttressed her serial-killer status. So many of the great serial killers — Michael Myers, Freddy Kruger, the dude in the closet in When a Stranger Calls — preyed in suburban hunting grounds.

Meanwhile, Pippa’s a lover, so her favorite thing about suburbia is running up to people and dropping tennis balls at their feet. He true joys are water, mud, and tennis balls, preferably in combination. And while the water can’t come to Pippa, she’s perfectly happy chasing a tennis ball in the backyard or a tennis court or pretty much anyplace else.

Gracie meanwhile is more refined. Which Zoë and Pippa can appreciate.

ICYMI . . .

The latest GLoP

Last week’s G-File

Howard Dean is foolish

Trump is corrupting nationalism

My UNC–Chapel Hill speech

Trump didn’t cause the Pittsburgh massacre, but he’s not helping

John Locke on zombies

The upside of Trump’s Twitter obsession

My interview on Planet Hawkins

When NR’s fastest talkers collide

America shouldn’t become a parliamentary system

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

American saves Magna Carta

Americans drink Iceland’s beer

Fried brain sandwich

Are cats evil?

Are dogs good?

Well . . . are they?

A house of the future . . . as envisioned by 1945

The world’s first car

The last lighthouse keeper in Capri

If the Pentagon tried to build the Death Star . . .

Mr. Feeny for the win

Deep-sea octopi

Forgotten Supreme Court history

Zombie ants

Beauty can be yours

Champagne supernova

Reagan was awesome

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including the creepy dude in the raincoat who keeps asking people to inspect his suspicious package),

Last year I went through an IRS audit. I got through it okay. But it was exactly as much fun as you’d expect. Then last week, I came home from a grueling trek on the road to discover I was being audited again, this time for two different years’ tax returns — one of them for the year I had just been audited for! In case the IRS is reading this, let me say I am overjoyed to once again work with the fine and upstanding patriots of the Internal Revenue Service to ensure that I am paying my fair share.

It’s also a wonderful opportunity. At the risk of being charged with over-sharing with you, my dear readers, I am also in need of a colonoscopy. I am going to try to schedule it around the same time so that I can test the accuracy of a commonly used metaphor regarding these fiscal inspections.

Anyway, I bring this up because I keep getting asked, usually half-jokingly, “Do you think it’s because you criticized Trump?” My short answer: “No.”

Causation and Correlation

It’s a very human reaction. Superstition and reason are often pitted against one another as opposite forces, but they are both born from an evolutionary adaptation that allows us to connect dots. In our natural environment, our understanding of cause and effect often boiled down to the fallacy of correlation equaling causation. Countless dietary and hygiene rules were based on the fact that certain benefits accrued to those who followed them. Kosherism is more than a guide to healthy eating — but one can see how staying Kosher thousands of years before pasteurization, refrigeration, etc. might correlate highly with better outcomes.

But one of the key points at which superstition and reason part company is the fact that superstition is non-falsifiable. If the king sacrifices an ox to Baal in the hope he will end the draught, and it rains, Baal will get the credit for the rain. If it doesn’t rain, Baal doesn’t get the blame. Instead, it must be that Baal wanted two oxen — or maybe a virgin maiden or the head of Alfredo Garcia, whatever. If you keep offering sacrifices, it will eventually rain, and when it does, “Praise Baal!”

The Seduction of Conspiracy

Superstition takes many forms in modern societies — not just carrying around rabbit feet and playing lucky numbers at the casino. Conspiracy theories are a form of superstition. They work on the assumption that bad things must be willed by human actors. What makes conspiracy theories so compelling is that they are like a complex molecule in which Reason and Superstition stick to each other in just such a way that they can get passed the blood-brain barrier and, like a virus, wreak havoc in our minds. They make us think that we are reasoning our way toward some deeper truth: All those Post-It notes and red strings connecting 8×10 glossy photos can’t be wrong!

The central fallacy here is the idea that conspiracy theories are reasoning toward anything at all. It is in fact a form of pseudo-reasoning: thinking backward from the proposition that a bad event must have been caused by dark forces, which (allegedly) benefit from it. Like the drunk who only looks for his car keys where the light is good, the truth-seeker only looks for evidence to support the proposition. The levees in New Orleans did not hold, Spike Lee observed, so it must be because George W. Bush had them bombed.

Of course, everything becomes so much more complicated by the fact that sometimes there are conspiracies. But they are rare, they are almost never vast, they usually fail, and when they succeed it is most often more from luck than will. Whenever you hear someone insist that “there are no coincidences,” they are revealing that they live in a world of magical realism where powerful unseen forces are treating us all like pawns. It’s a form of secular demonology.

The Unravelling of the Conservative Mind

I’ll be honest: I am far more annoyed by conservatives who traffic in conspiracy theories than liberals who do so. My reasons are twofold. As a practical matter, it bothers me because they make conservatives look bad, and I consider myself more invested in protecting my “side” from making an ass of itself. More generally, it bothers me because conservatives are supposed to understand, as a matter of philosophy, the limits of planning.

For instance, it’s one thing for liberals to claim simultaneously that George W. Bush was an idiot and that this idiot nonetheless managed to orchestrate a massive conspiracy to attack the United States on 9/11. It’s another for conservatives, presumably trained in the laws of unintended consequences, the limits of reason, and the fatal conceit of planning, to argue that the hijackers were just a bunch of patsies for an operation that would have involved hundreds or thousands of American agents — without a single whistleblower among them. This can best be visually represented by someone turning Occam’s Razor into a heavy spoon or soup ladle and beating Friedrich Hayek about the head and neck with it. But that’s what happened to people such as Morgan Reynolds and Paul Craig Roberts. Worse, these people have to believe their colleagues and ideological comrades — whom they knew and for whom they often worked — were in fact brilliant mass murderers.

In the latest example of the massive race to be wrong first that spontaneously erupts after any mass shooting, terrorist attack, or similar calamity, a host of conservatives and “conservatives” sprinted to shout, “Cui Bono!?”

“Cui Bono” — literally “to whom is it a benefit” — is like the starter’s pistol for conspiracy theorists to strap on their helmet lamps and go spelunking into their own posteriors for an explanation that affirms their superstitious view of the world.

A case in point: Lou Dobbs.

“Fake News — Fake Bombs,” he tweeted from deep behind his own sphincter. “Who could possibly benefit by so much fakery?”

Ironically, I found the exact text of this tweet at CNN.com because Lou has blocked me. (It’s pretty funny that I had to go to a supposedly “fake news” source to find out what Dobbs actually said about fake news.)

Dobbs was hardly alone, and I’m not just referring to Candace Owens, Rush Limbaugh, and Donald Trump:

Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows – news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018

I’m referring to the millions of people who create a market incentive for pundits and politicians to float this garbage.

I am rethinking my glee over Alex Jones’s social-media defenestration, because it’s almost as if his banishment left a vacuum that more mainstream figures feel the urge to fill.

Literally the first thing I encountered in the vicinity of the Cruz/Trump rally was Alex Jones screaming at a pile of shit pic.twitter.com/lxmPgjAmB5

— Elizabeth Nolan Brown (@ENBrown) October 22, 2018

And while I enjoy watching a man scream at excrement in the middle of the street as much as the next guy — who can forget Isaiah Berlin in ’46 laying into that mound of manure? — I still feel like there are slightly better uses for Jones’s time. Besides, you’re not supposed to yell at your food.

All of this stems from the tribalism of the moment, where each side has concluded that persuasion is impossible and total victory is the only option. They work on the assumption that anyone who is not “us” is “them.” But the reality is that most Americans are neither, and any serious political movement should be interested in attracting the people in the middle to our side. Instead, by embracing our most unattractive façade, we make it that much easier for the other side to say, “See, they’re all like that.”

https://twitter.com/drvox/status/1055871331886018560

Now, don’t get me wrong. I thought it was possible — though very unlikely — that some lone left-wing kook took it upon himself to send these bombs (or “bombs”) as a one-man “false-flag operation.” There are enough racial hoaxes on college campuses alone to demonstrate that some people are so desperate to make the world fit their paranoid vision that they will do whatever it takes to midwife it into reality. But the idea that George Soros or “The Democrats” or “The Fake News” plotted this out in some organized way is just staggeringly insipid and paranoid. How would that work? Would Soros, Maxine Waters, Robert De Niro, et al. meet like the Legion of Doom and plot to commit a felony that could put them in jail for the rest of their lives?

The Trump Contagion

Earlier this week, the president was nigh-upon insistent that the Democrats must be behind the immigrant caravan heading our way, with all of the speed of a steamroller in an Austin Powers movie. To be fair to Trump, it’s possible this is just rank cynicism given that the caravan is — or at least was — a political gift to Trump, not the Democrats. But the people who believe it don’t have that excuse.

And that’s why I increasingly feel more like a spectator to American politics than I ever have before. It’s really quite liberating, if exhausting. Because I have zero personal loyalty to, or emotional investment, in Donald Trump, I feel no need to defend him from legitimate criticism, never mind bend my understanding of conservatism to his behavior and rhetoric. This was a point I tried to make in my debate with Charles Kesler about the Trump presidency. Because humans are wired to believe that their leaders are worthy of being the leader, they bend their views to extol the character traits and priorities of the leader. Today, definitions of good character are being bent to fit Trump’s character, and the yardstick of what amounts to being presidential is being shaved down to a nub to match Trump’s conduct.

(Similarly, because I have no investment in the Democrats or the Mainstream Media, I feel no compulsion to rush to their defense either. As far as I am concerned, they are all living down to my expectations. They’re all making things worse, too. I’m certainly not going to do what Max Boot at times seems to be doing: constructing a revisionist history of conservatism to fully justify his abandonment of it. To be fair, Boot hasn’t gone Full Jen Rubin, but he does seem to be struggling to find a foothold on his descent in that direction.)

Newt Gingrich is a great example of how everything must be bent to the president’s personal needs. The man who led the expansion of NATO and the passage of NAFTA long ago cast aside these essential parts of his legacy, like so much ballast, in order to stay afloat on the Trumpian tide. But on Thursday, he reached a new low. When asked about a possible Supreme Court fight to release Trump’s tax returns, Gingrich said, “We’ll see whether or not the Kavanaugh fight was worth it.”

I’m sorry, the 40-plus-year fight to get constitutionalists on the Court wasn’t about protecting Donald Trump from embarrassment or criminal jeopardy. The reason why the Kavanaugh fight united nearly the entire conservative and Republican coalition wasn’t about circling the wagons around Trump. Indeed, the only reason the Right unified around Kavanaugh was that it wasn’t about Trump. If Trump had picked Jeanine Pirro, you would not have seen the Federalist Society, The Weekly Standard, Commentary, National Review, et al. rush to support her. During the confirmation fight, before the sexual-McCarthyism phase, conservatives — including, most emphatically, Kavanaugh himself — insisted that the charge that Kavanaugh would be a Trump crony on the bench was everything from wrong to an outrageous slander. Newt himself described the stakes very differently. When the fight was on, it was all about decency and patriotism.

Now that the fight is over, Newt is saying “never mind.” None of it would be “worth it” if Kavanaugh doesn’t protect the president’s tax returns — which candidate Trump said he would release! It profits a man nothing to lose his soul for all the world, but for Trump’s tax returns?

Tribalism is a helluva drug.

Transactional Shmansactional

This is the fatal flaw with the “transactional” defense of Trump. Very few people seem capable of sticking to it. The transactional argument holds that one can be critical of the man while celebrating what he is accomplishing (or what is being accomplished on his watch by Cocaine Mitch and others). In private, most of the conservatives I talk to around the country offer some version of this defense. And I find it utterly defensible, as far as it goes. Indeed, my own position of praising the good and condemning the bad is a version of the transactional defense, even if I was a critic of making the transaction in the first place. But anyone who actually acts on this view in public is instantly pilloried for his or her refusal to “pick a side.”

My biggest beef with Trump apologists these days: They admit Trump lies and says irresponsible things, but they denounce anyone to their right as disloyal for saying so and anybody to their left for hypocrisy because X said something bad too.

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 25, 2018

Indeed, the president’s job description is being retroactively rewritten as Media Troll in Chief.

Can’t you just enjoy what he does to the dishonest bias corrupt media? He makes them loses their minds and any sense of decency.

— patrick hawkins (@patrickhawkins7) October 25, 2018

And, as always happen with tribal logic takes over, the next phase of the argument is, “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” or, “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

Strap on a helmet, Jonah! We're out here in the Twitter trenches taking grenades and you're out walking your dogs!

— Gatekeeper of Tweets (@ZuulOfSD) October 26, 2018

I’m gonna take pass on all of it. I’ll strap on my helmet and defend what’s worth defending, and criticize what’s worth criticizing, from a conservative worldview. And if that pleases neither side, that’s alright with me. Sometimes you have to stand athwart the asininity.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: As many of you know, when we first adopted Pippa, Zoë’s immediate reaction was the canine equivalent of the robots in the old video game Berserk. “Intruder Alert! Intruder Alert!” For the first several months, constant vigilance was required to keep Zoë from annihilating Pippa. Those days are over, but once every now and then, they get into a scrap. I hate saying that it’s always Pippa’s fault for not understanding she’s not the alpha, but it’s pretty much always Pippa’s fault for not understanding she’s not the alpha. That’s because, if Zoë shows aggression to Pippa, Pippa will usually back down. But if Pippa shows aggression to Zoë, Zoë pretty much will never back down. So it escalates quickly.

The other day, I took a nap after the morning walk because my plane didn’t get home until crazy late. Both doggers joined me. Pippa up on the couch with me, Zoë on the floor below. Everything seemed fine. But about 20 minutes after I fell asleep, I awoke to growling. It was Pippa growling at Zoë, and Zoë sorta growling back, more bemused than angry: “The spaniel can’t possibly starting something with me.” But she was. I don’t really know what happened, but my best guess is that Zoë grew tired of being in the beta spot on the floor, and Pippa, all snugly in a blanket and at my side, thought she shouldn’t have to relinquish her spot. The growling got worse, with Zoë starting to curl her lips in that canine gesture that means, “It is about to go down.” I grabbed Zoë and pinned her to the floor, which Pippa insanely mistook as my signal to make this a two-on-one situation. Pippa went after Zoë and the Dingo was like, “On no she didn’t!” and tried to go after Pippa. The Spaniel, shocked that I was now holding down the two of them, one arm apiece, looked at me like I was pulling a “Leeroy Jenkins,” blowing her carefully crafted plan to depose Zoë from her throne. It was crazily tense for a minute or two, until I kind of tossed Zoë backwards and dragged Pippa away, forcing her to go upstairs. All the while she was fuming, “This is our shot! You’re blowing it!”

Pippa went and sulked in her fancy kennel and Zoë was like, “That was weird.” And it ended. But it really put me on edge for a while. The last time something like this happened was when we were out of town and Zoë and Pippa got into a fight over some pieces of gutter chicken (not a euphemism: People, when you throw chicken bones in the street you are inviting bad things for dogs). Pippa ended up needing stitches. And again, it was because Pippa wouldn’t back down when Zoë, like the toughest guy in prison, said, “This is mine.”

Anyway, now they’re fine, sharing Zoë’s love for logs, and Pippa’s for hilarious jokes, and having a wonderful autumn with the pack (when they’re not fighting crime). Just today, they joined me on the very same couch to hear me record the latest episode of GLoP. They weren’t riveted. But they’re always excited to see the real alpha of the house. Zoë doesn’t always hold me in the same high regard.

My apologies for last week’s missing G-File. The travel schedule finally caught up with me, and there was just no way I could get it done. But given the relative dearth of complaints, I’m not sure it was particularly missed.

Thanks to everyone across the country who has come out to my various appearances. In general, the crowds have been among the best I’ve ever had — either qualitatively or quantitatively.

Things are slowing down a little bit. I only have one out of town gig next week — at UNC Chapel Hill. If you’re around, come on by.

ICYMI . . .

In defense of ideology

On voter apathy

The latest Remnant

The Saudis and Khashoggi

On The Axe Files with David Axelrod

Our vendetta politics

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Thursday links

Dog gets legs

Would traveling back in time destroy the universe?

A hero passes

Giant spider?

Runners live forever

The history of horror movie music

Furious mongoose

Stolen colon

Miracle dog dies

Behold: Titanic II

Crime smells

Rectangular iceberg

Arctic agony…

Frank Sinatra’s spaghetti and meatballs

Pokémon Go to Church

An octopus on ecstasy

Pregnant Minnesota woman gives birth after performing CPR to save husband

Naughty Marines

Bee parasite

Ancient shipwreck

Rational response

Dear Reader (Even those of you who didn’t seem to notice or care that I failed to file this “news”letter on Friday),

So I’m sitting here at Gate C6 at O’Hare waiting for my flight home. I am weary, pressed for time, in desperate need of a shower, and filled with a great sense of dread for the work ahead of me, sort of like the stripper with an hour left on the clock realizing that Eddy “Sweaty Sponge” Spaluko just walked in from his job draining Porta-Potties.

Meanwhile, a few minutes ago (which would actually make it erstwhile), I saw a man eating a pre-made salad — no doubt put together in some giant salad sweatshop outside Cicero, Ill. He dropped a crouton, covered in so much dressing it looked like some strange sea creature that exudes creamy ranch as a defense mechanism against predators.

When the crouton hit the blue airport carpeting, time slowed to a crawl, the background sounds of a busy airport vanishing as if the Almighty Himself had hit the mute button. The man picked it up barehanded, unconcerned by the squid-ink defenses of this soaked bread product. He looked around, mouthed something I can only assume was a silent prayer to the god of the Five Second Rule, and slyly popped it into his mouth.

In my mind’s eye, I pointed at him like I was Donald Sutherland at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers but shouted, “Noooooooo!” like Bruce Campbell at the end of Evil Dead 2.

In reality, I just sat there (here actually) and stared. I kept staring, even as he walked out of my field of vision, wandering off to some future where many a soggy floor-nugget repast awaited him. Perhaps it was the deep contrast between someone inclined to both eat sensibly — a salad! — and insensibly: Every strand of airport carpet lint is a feudal city state inhabited by hydrothermal worms, and ranch dressing is known to cause severe cases of worm-gigantism in them.

This Hydrothermal Worm (under a microscope) would rip your heart right out of your body if it was just a few thousand times bigger 😂 pic.twitter.com/p2PPsPdMHB

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) October 11, 2018

Perhaps it was because I am so overwhelmed with weltschmerz that I could find myself day-dreaming even as a ranch-dressing metamorphic hydrothermal worm ate my foot.

But, whatever the reason, I just sat here, numb to the horror.

Comfortably Numb

Numb is a funny word — and not just when the “b” isn’t silent as when spoken by Mushmouth in Fat Albert. Its original meaning is “taken” or “seized” from the Old English niman: “to take, catch, grasp” in the way one is taken by palsy, seized by paralysis or shock, or, especially, overcome with cold. What’s interesting about this is that a loss of feeling wasn’t central to the word. Rather, it’s the sense that some powerful affliction takes over you and, I presume, renders you indifferent to other sensations or feelings. As when you feel so cold that you grow numb — and I assume that’s where the modern meaning comes from.

One of the oldest critiques of modernity is the claim that it breeds a kind of numbness of the soul. We become seized or grasped by the demands of the disenchanted modern world, and we in turn become deadened to the important things that give life meaning.

That’s essentially the point of Patrick Deneen’s book Why Liberalism Failed. For Deneen, this condition is an inevitable product of liberalism — and here he and I mean the liberalism birthed from Locke and Hobbes, Hume and Bacon (mmmm Bacon). But for Deneen, it’s also the liberalism of Rousseau and Dewey. He believes the political arguments between left and right these last 500 years are far narrower than most of us think. What he calls “progressive liberalism” and “conservative liberalism” are both at the end of day poisonous fruits from the same tree:

The only path to liberation from the inevitabilities and ungovernable forces that liberalism imposes is liberation from liberalism itself. Both main political options of our age must be understood as different sides of the same counterfeit coin.

I think this is profoundly wrong. But this is not to say that I think Deneen’s book is profoundly wrong. In a panel on Thursday night, I compared Why Liberalism Failed to The Road to Serfdom — a deeply valuable and prophetic book, which detractors often mock because Hayek’s prophecy turned out not to be true (yet). But prophecies are not scientific predictions; they are warnings. And when a people heed a prophecy, the prophet’s cataclysm is avoided.

Prophets and Losses

I want to write a longer essay on all of this, so I won’t dwell on Deneen’s argument here. Instead I want to dwell, briefly, on what I think Deneen gets right: the prophetic part. Like a biblical prophet, he surveys American society and catalogs the numbness of it all. People are seized, grasped, taken by a spirit of a distorted, selfish individualism that expresses itself as the satisfaction of appetite and the desire for status, and in the process, they are growing numb to the real sources of human flourishing.

At the end of the day, happiness is derived from love — love for others and others’ love for you. When I say “love” I do not mean simply romantic love, though that is obviously one of the greatest wellsprings of true happiness. I mean the love one feels from friends, and the love for places and things that brings people together for shared purpose.

Deneen chronicles how individualism was once understood as both the culmination of, and dependent on, virtue. The law was conceived of as a device, a technology, for making the virtuous path easier. But it was always understood that liberty comes with obligations. As the line goes in “America the Beautiful,” Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law.

This idea, which I write about at length in my book, recognized that the great enemy of virtue and individualism rightly understood is human nature itself. Classical liberalism is very different from classical or pagan libertinism. Adam Smith and John Locke never wrote anything like, “If it feels good, do it.” This is why I placed so much importance in my book on the idea of “God-fearing.” A free society, in which people act as if God is always judging them, will look very different from a free society in which the only god you care about is your own gut.

When you are your own priest, it’s always easier to get a dispensation for whatever is you want to do.

This is one reason why I do not see the “progressive liberalism” of the romantics — who glorified the primacy of feelings — or of the more modern pragmatic philosophers such as Dewey — who heaped scorn on all metaphysical, cultural, or traditional constraints on egoistic reason — as part of the same project as classical liberals.

In fairness to Deneen, he concedes that the classical liberals would never have thought that the “If it feels good, do it” mantra was part of their project either. He just argues that it was inevitable that one would flow from the other.

And I think that’s wrong. Indeed, we both agree that at least one solution to our problems is to foster more localism (and I gather all of this is in Ben Sasse’s new book, which for some reason I haven’t seen yet. If only I knew someone over there).

The modern doctrines of diversity and multiculturalism are a kind of homogenizing totalitarianism. Its acolytes want every institution to be filled with people who look different but think alike. What our society needs is not more “diversity” of this sort but more variety. Different communities and institutions need to be able live differently, because it is only with this kind of variety that a diverse people can find places where they all feel at home and where they can all find a kind of meaning that suits them as individuals.

To put it in the language of economics, institutions and communities need to be able to exploit their comparative advantages. It’s not just that the Marine Corps demands more from its members than the Peace Corps; it’s that the Marines demand different things. For some people, being a Marine would be a kind of living Hell; for others it is a reason to live. That’s what the individual pursuit of happiness means.

One of the great things about liberalism is that it allows for more paths for just that pursuit. In tribal society, there was little to no division of labor beyond what was rooted in age and sex. In feudal monarchies and modern totalitarianisms alike, there is division of labor, but it is imposed on people by rulers: “You will be a soldier.” “You will be a fry cook.” “You were born to be a slave or a serf.” In a free society, you have choice. It’s not perfect: You can’t choose to be a Marine if you do not meet the requirements, but you are free to try. And it is precisely those requirements that make the pursuit desirable. Not all people want to strive, but all people who’ve succeeded in life recognize that the striving was what made the success precious.

Arbeit Macht Tugendhaft

The new socialists insist that capitalism is not that different from authoritarian or totalitarian regimes because it makes us work. “The socialist argument against capitalism isn’t that it makes us poor,” writes Corey Robin. “It’s that it makes us unfree.”

When my well-being depends upon your whim, when the basic needs of life compel submission to the market and subjugation at work, we live not in freedom but in domination. Socialists want to end that domination: to establish freedom from rule by the boss, from the need to smile for the sake of a sale, from the obligation to sell for the sake of survival.

There are two major problems with this view. The first is that there has never been a society in all of human history where the average person did not have to work. Sure, some crapulent prince could lay around all day and do nothing, but everyone else had to till the soil or pound the anvil or carry a spear.

Second, work is good. Work is virtuous and inculcates virtue. Work gives people a sense of meaning and of being needed. Obviously, not everyone feels such satisfaction in the job they have now, but that dissatisfaction is precisely the motivation people need to find the job that might provide it. That motivation inspires virtue, too.

Some people work just to make the money to support the other things in their life that provide meaning, be it a family or a cause or a hobby that may seem silly to you or me but is central to their individual pursuit of happiness. Some people don’t work for money at all. Priests, stay-at-home parents, and volunteers in a thousand different institutions aren’t pursuing wealth; they are pursuing meaning through love and love through meaning.

The socialists are romantics in that they want to curate their lives entirely based on their own feelings. Marx saw the division of labor required by a free society as a form of slavery that put each laborer in specific role. “Each man,” he writes, “has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood.”

Marx imagined a utopia at the end of history where each individual could do whatever he pleased, because “the society” controlled the means of production. Thus Communism “makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.”

The first obvious problem is that this is batshit crazy. Who in this “society” is baking the bread — when everyone wants to fish? Collective ownership of the means of production must give power to someone in order to make sure people can eat. And that someone will invariably abuse his power:

States have a habit of forming when the rules say “line starts here for free stuff.” Whoever manages the line becomes the “state” after a while. https://t.co/j9nwYwFZ06

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) October 10, 2018

The real problem, however, with this vision is that it gets it exactly backward. The only society in which it is remotely possible for people to design their lives in the manner Marx fantasizes is one that is incredibly rich and incredibly free. We are nowhere near there yet, but it’s worth pointing out that if you plucked any laborer from another era and toured him or her around America today, they’d think that we were remarkably close.

What I like about Deneen’s argument is that he recognizes this, and he finds it wanting. It’s easier than it has ever been to imagine a Jetsons– or Westworld–like society where robots do all of the work for us, and we are “free” to indulge our wants and desires on a whim. But just as that kind of world is coming into view, so is the realization that it might not make us happy. Because a world without necessity is a world without striving. A world where there is no limit on our personal appetites is a world where virtue is too hard and other people are too much work. Why buy the cow when you can get the sex robot for free?

Various & Sundry

My apologies for the tardiness of this “news”letter. Last week’s schedule was beyond brutal. I think it’s the first week in over a decade when I couldn’t even post to the Corner. My travel schedule isn’t a walk in the park yet, but I promise to be a bit more regular going forward.

Canine Update: The celebrity of Zoë and Pippa continues to grow. When I got to my hotel at Notre Dame the other night, there were two goody bags in my room. Much to my chagrin, neither contained brown liquor, but one contained presents for Zoë and Pippa, who could not attend the conference, alas. One of the great things about dogs is that they are not plagued by the vices of modernity. Their bond with humans is literally prehistoric, and they still value the things that bring true happiness: friendship, work, and the simpler pleasures. So, I’m happy to tell you that they do not care one whit that they are canine celebrities (Zoë doesn’t even think it’s a big deal she can walk on water). Indeed, while I was finishing this “news”letter, Pippa was doing everything she could to prevent its completion. Still, I suspect the cats wouldn’t mind more public adulation.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Our politics will get uglier than the Kavanaugh fight

The latest Remnant

Nikki Haley’s excellent timing

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Debby’s Wednesday links

Debby’s Monday links

NSFW: Neutron star collision

Liam Neeson’s horse friend

When dinosaurs roamed New Mexico

What would happen if you vaped Venom goo?

Animals love the suburbs

Corgis!

A friend of Pippa’s?

First they came for the squirrels . . .

CPR Spotify playlist

The oldest shipwreck in Lake Erie?

The Butlerian Jihad must begin before it’s too late

Life imitates The Prisoner?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Particularly everyone I threw ice at in my youth),

One of the articles of faith of my personal definition of conservatism is to be deeply distrustful of enthusiasm. Chalk it up to misanthropy or enochlophobia if you like, but whenever crowds — real or figurative — get worked up, I grow suspicious. It’s why I don’t like populism or pep rallies; the worst political sins are almost always accompanied by the cheers of one mob or another.

That is one of the reasons I have been so appalled by the riot of anti-Kavanaugh hysteria that has spread these last few weeks. But it is also why I have misgivings about the price of victory.

I believe that confirming Brett Kavanaugh is vital, but I also believe it is the least bad option before us. Herewith, a screed-y walkthrough of my thinking. I still find myself largely agreeing with this thread:

Here's a #TerribleOpinion for you:
1) I think Kavanaugh is likely innocent
2) It may be better for the country (and SCOTUS) if he withdraw
3) He can't do that w/o essentially committing reputational and career suicide
4) No one should ever have to be in that position

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) October 1, 2018

My ideal scenario is for Kavanaugh to withdraw on the condition that Senate Dems take out a full page groveling apology to him and his family in the NYT.
Then Dems can get what they want, but only if they can give up the cultural political win it would have provided them.

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) October 1, 2018

Last thing: For Kavanaugh to withdraw, you would have to convince the right that the *next* nominee would be treated fairly.
That is impossible.
The die is cast, the ship has sailed, the right firmly believes the next nominee will see the same vilification.

— PoliMath (@politicalmath) October 1, 2018

Kavanaugh’s “partisan” defense of himself, while wholly justified on human and emotional grounds, poisoned the well for many people. It does not matter, as I wrote last week, that their arguments are substantively absurd and often drawn from bottomless reservoirs of cynicism and bad faith.

Judges are not typically expected to remain dispassionate when they’ve been accused of gang rape, nor should they be. If you don’t believe me, let’s haul, say, Justice Breyer before the Senate and see how he responds to unverified, uncorroborated, and patently ludicrous allegations — hyped endlessly in the press — that, when in high school, he kept a bunch of kidnapped girls in his basement and pimped them out to biker gangs.

“Senator Feinstein, thank you very much for your input. While all perspectives are valid, I feel that if you scrutinized my record you would find yourself in significant error,” Justice Breyer said while trimming his cuticles.

But the fact remains that millions of people, including many leading legal lights, have fallen back on this preposterous version of sexual McCarthyism that we might as well call “Bed Baiting.” Accuse someone of rape and then use whatever response they offer as proof that they’re unfit for the job or simply a monster. When Martha MacCallum asked Kavanaugh about the gang-rape allegation, he was too calm and dismissive. And his attempts to explain himself were then picked apart as fresh evidence of new deceits. When the Senate asked about them, he was too angry.

It’s like a high-stakes version of the Wayne’s World bit where Mike Myers mumbles, “Sphincter says what?” and when the person responds, “What?” everyone giggles.

Democrats proclaim, “Rapists say, ‘How dare you!?’” Then they call Kavanaugh a rapist, and when he says, “How dare you!?” Democrats say, “Ah-hah!”

Hourly, we hear people say with invincible confidence and a tone of haughty feigned reasonableness that this Supreme Court confirmation process is nothing more than a “job interview,” when they must know that if Kavanaugh were to withdraw, it would be the end of his career, the end of his reputation, and a total victory for the people deploying these tactics — setting a precedent for their use again and again. When you point out how unfair this is to Kavanaugh, the response is eye-rolling or even  “Boo hoo.” When you point out how dangerous this precedent is, you get such a spray of bovine excrement that it becomes a fog of nonsense.

When Merrick Garland Is Blocked, All Is Permitted

My favorite fecal nugget in the fog is the reply, again offered hourly, that Republicans have no right to complain about “hardball tactics” because Mitch McConnell declined to give Merrick Garland a hearing. Even if you concede — which I emphatically do not — that what Cocaine Mitch did was an outrage, this argument is so obtuse, so morally stunted, so non-sequiturially nonsensical it fills me with a vein-popping rage that would ruin my chances for confirmation as dog catcher (for which I am eminently qualified, by the way). “Two wrongs don’t make a right” barely scratches the surface of why this is so wrong. No conservative magazine ran articles painting Garland as a drunkard or rapist. Fox News didn’t run round-the-clock discussions based on the assumption that rumors of Garland’s rapeyness should be taken at face value. Even if blocking Garland was wrong, the response from Democrats is like an apocalyptic version of the “Chicago Way”: If they bring a knife, we bring a ten-kiloton warhead and wipe out the city.

You can’t have it both ways. If a confirmation hearing is “just a job interview,” denying someone a job interview cannot be an outrage on par with setting out to destroy Kavanaugh by any means necessary. In fact, it cannot be an outrage at all. Employers deny job interviews all of the time, and the Constitution gives the Senate all the authority it needed to deny Garland one. The Senate has yet to offer me a job interview for anything, and I’m not miffed about it one bit.

Meanwhile, the Senate minority leader said out loud that “there is no presumption of innocence” in the Kavanaugh fight. That alone should tell you all you need to know about the danger of letting Chuck Schumer’s party win this contest. Oh, and before you get your knickers in a twist, I realize that the full quote is, “There’s no presumption of innocence or guilt when you have a nominee before you.” It’s all about fact-finding. What a reasonable guy.

The problem is that Schumer is lying (you could tell because his lips were moving). Countless members of his party were quite open about how they were working from a presumption of guilt. Every senator who said, “I believe Dr. Ford” or, “believe all women” or celebrated Ford’s courage for “speaking truth to power” was openly declaring that they also believed Kavanaugh was guilty. Senator Hirono (D., Liberal Bubble) told Jake Tapper (one of the handful of mainstream journalists who hasn’t grabbed a torch or pitchfork and joined the mob) that she believed Ford because Kavanaugh’s judicial philosophy magically makes unsubstantiated charges of rape plausible. Where the fffffff**k is the fffffffact-fffffffinding there?

What about the Facts?

The liberal response to all of this is that I am taking for granted that Kavanaugh is innocent of the charges against him. So let me address that.

It’s basically true. What I mean by “basically” is that I think the things he’s provably guilty of shouldn’t matter. I think he drank “too much” in high school and college (so did I). I don’t need The New Yorker to tell me that because he has admitted to it. He’s also admitted that, when he was young and immature, he behaved immaturely. I am sure he threw ice at a bar. But while I am at least very skeptical about whether he drunkenly exposed himself at a party in college, even if he did, the evidence suggests that this was a piggish prank that is retroactively being turned into sexual assault. If it really took Deborah Ramirez, the second accuser, six days of lawyer-guided meditation to convince herself it happened, we can presume it wasn’t nearly as scarring an event as is now being claimed. If it happened at all.

Here’s the thing I’m not agnostic about: While The New Yorker humiliated itself by running not one but two stories on the allegation, neither of which corroborated the allegation in any way, the stories did corroborate that The New Yorker has lost its mind. They used a rumor to “corroborate” the allegation and then, in a follow-up story, found the alleged source of the rumor, who promptly declared that he has no idea what The New Yorker or Ramirez were talking about.

The Julie Swetnick gang-rape allegation was and is unbelievable codswallop. When interviewed by NBC, what started as a claim that Kavanaugh was the Cruise Director of the H.M.S. Gang Rape turned into a charge that he might have been seen standing by a door or a punch bowl or something. Michael Avenatti’s only defense for his scam is to feign outrage that a “survivor” isn’t being taken at her word. Kavanaugh should sue him, and Avenatti should be disbarred so that he can spend his time selling waterbeds as God intended.

Then there’s Dr. Ford, whose claim is the only one that is both serious and sufficiently credible to warrant serious consideration. And that is what she got.

Still, what evidence there is about the time period in question, outside of Ford’s testimony, overwhelmingly supports Kavanaugh. The relevant witnesses at the time either do not corroborate or affirmatively refute key facts. Her story lacks crucial details, and other crucial details have changed over the years.

Moreover, many of Ford’s claims about why and how she came forward are profoundly fishy. Was she really never told that investigators would come to her in California as an alternative to the televised Senate hearings? Her story about the polygraph gets weirder with the slightest scrutiny. Her claim that she’s claustrophobic and terrified of flying has been rebutted both by sworn witnesses and plain facts. The only documentary evidence she had, her therapist’s notes, which she referenced in her testimony, she now refuses to hand over to the Senate — unless the FBI takes a very long, and very politically convenient, time collecting it. Joseph McCarthy used to say that he had a documentary proof of his charges — “I have in my hands a list of Communists” — but when asked to provide the list, he always found an excuse to keep it secret.

I still believe something terrible may have happened to Ford. I still think it’s not impossible that she’s telling the truth — but she has been behaving in a way that suggests that she is more eager to play political games, or that she is willing to let her lawyers play political games on her behalf, than she is in telling the complete truth.

Meanwhile, the Boofer-Truther Media has endeavored mightily to argue that, while Ford’s story may be unprovable, you have to look at the totality of the allegations against Kavanaugh. Hence, the desperate attempt to chum the waters with innuendo and insinuation: He must have blacked out from drinking (because that would mean his memory is unreliable); if he threw ice while drunk, that proves he was the kind of belligerent drunk who could rape somebody or even run a rape gang; if “boof” means buggery, he’s a sexual reprobate; and if “Devil’s Triangle” means a three-way, it means he wasn’t a virgin, and, again, “Raaaaape!”

But even if these inventive interpretations were true — they’re not — it’s not proof of anything other than the fact that his yearbook page was juvenile. The press, however, has worked tirelessly to insist that no single allegation has to be proved true; what matters, according to them, is that the totality of unproved slanders, insinuations, and innuendos should be taken as a miasma of guilt, a soup of slander. The boof, they insist, is in the pudding.

Perhaps the greatest proof of the media’s malfeasance can be found in that fact that, according to new a Harvard poll, when voters are told that there is no corroboration for the allegations against Kavanaugh, support for him spikes 20 points. Thank God for pollsters doing the hard work journalists won’t do.

The Downward Spiral

For these and countless other reasons, I want the anti-Kavanaugh mob to lose. I’m less enthusiastic about the pro-Kavanaugh forces winning.

Chuck Schumer was technically correct in his floor speech Friday morning. There are plenty of other judges who’d be just as good, or possibly better, on the Supreme Court from a conservative perspective. And, if all the senators and journalists complicit in this grotesque scandal were to publicly apologize and atone, like Henry in the snows of Conossa, for what they have done, vowing to never do it again, and admitting that they’ve been fiendishly unfair to Kavanaugh, I’d willingly swap another contender from Trump’s list for him.

Kavanaugh the man is not indispensable, and even though I think his critics are wrong, his presence on the Court will have costs. It will lend credibility — unwarranted in my mind — to arguments about the illegitimacy of the Court and any decisions that break 5-4 with Kavanaugh as the deciding justice. I absolutely agree with my colleagues, however, that these concerns are overblown and disingenuous when offered by anti-Kavanaugh forces, who will say anything to win. But the mere fact that they feel so free to say it has consequences is because actual American citizens will believe it.

The Widening Gyre

When a bunch of lawyers announced that Kavanaugh’s “temperament” disqualified him from the Supreme Court, Glenn Reynolds replied:

https://twitter.com/instapundit/status/1047678258584666112

Obviously, I think there’s truth to this. But I think such issues are better understood with dynamic scoring. I’m on record arguing that Trump has had a corrupting effect on conservatism and democratic norms, generally. I still believe that, rather passionately.

But the point here is that whatever blame Trump deserves needs to be set in the context of a wider corruption. Trump was nominated and elected in substantial part because many conservatives rightly believed the system was already corrupt. Hillary Clinton, the matriarch of the Medicis of the Ozarks, was a profoundly corrupt figure. As was the vast network of organizations dedicated to extending the Clintons’ grift back into the White House. Donald Trump didn’t invent the Right’s animus for the press, he simply concentrated it into a kind of barbaric yawp.

Sick of a Republican party that tried too hard to work within the borders of what the mainstream media deemed acceptable rhetoric and tactics, his voters loved it when he gleefully singled out reporters by name, like a kid going after ants with a magnifying glass on a summer day. As I wrote earlier this week, the press has been asking for this treatment — literally for decades.

The problem for journalists is that, having refused at every turn to learn their lessons, from Walter Duranty to Daniel Schorr to Dan Rather, they have repeatedly responded by doubling down on their worst instincts and groupthink. And now, as Trump turns his MAGAfying glass on them, they are intensifying their worst habits.

But it’s not just the press; it’s everybody. In other words, it’s not so much that Trump has exposed the corruption of various institutions and individuals; it’s that everyone feels warranted to respond to his norm-breaking with norm-breaking of their own. The New York Times’ Anonymous op-ed writer did something terrible because he thought Trump gave him an excuse to do it. Cory Booker lacked the testicular fortitude to actually be Spartacus, but he rightly recognized that everybody wants either to be a Spartacus or to rally to one.

If Kavanaugh is confirmed, you can be sure that liberals will feel entitled to respond with even more grotesque violations of norms. After all, if denying Merrick Garland a hearing justifies — in their minds — the witch-hunt against Kavanaugh, what horrors will they come up with if he’s confirmed? Already Michael Avenatti, that Torquemada of sleaze, is calling for packing the Supreme Court should the Democrats take back the Congress.

Again, I think the Senate should — must — confirm Kavanaugh, because the consequences of rejecting him are worse than the consequences of confirming him. But there will be bad consequences no matter what, because we now live in a world where sub-optimal outcomes are the only choices available. It’s crap sandwiches all the way down the cafeteria menu, everybody — you just get to choose your condiments.

Various & Sundry

I am exhausted. In the last few weeks, I’ve been to St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, Dallas, Claremont, Phoenix, and Milwaukee, just to name a few. I got back this morning from Boston, or I guess Cambridge. I spoke to the Institute of Politics there last night. And Saturday, I leave for Santa Barbara where I will be speaking this Sunday at UCSB. If you’re in the area, it’d be great if you could come on out. It’d be nice to have some friendly faces in the audience. Oh, and on Tuesday, I’ll be at Cedarville University. And on Thursday and Friday, I’ll be at Notre Dame<. I’ll be having a conversation with Charles Kesler about Donald Trump and on a panel discussing Patrick Deneen’s new book.

And on that note, let me say how deeply grateful I am to all of the folks who came out to these other events. I know from experience that the folks who really hate me don’t show up at these things, so the sample is skewed. But the turnout has been great, and the encouragement almost makes up for all the hassles of travel. It also gives me a good deal of hope.

Canine Update: Oh, so speaking of travel, it’s always great to hear from people who tell me to stay the course or stick to my guns. But it’s funny how vastly more people tell me — almost in a threatening tone — that I’d better not listen to the haters who say I should stop it with the dog tweets and canine updates. It’s just funny how big of a deal the canine duo has become. About two weeks ago, when I was out of town, my wife was driving the beasts back from their morning perambulations, when someone pulled up next to her and yelled, “Hi Zoë! Hi Pippa!” and then drove off. Then, yesterday, the same thing happened to me. It was particularly funny because, when the guy looked at me, he acted like I might as well have been an Uber driver or some celebrity’s assistant. Just a little nod was all I got.

Anyway, the doggers are excellent. They still get super mopey whenever I take out the luggage, which is all-too-frequent. Pippa had a bit of a limp earlier this week but it seems to have been a temporary glitch. She was in rare form when she got back from her midday adventure today (and even Zoë busted out the playfulness). This is one of the weird things about Pippa; even when she gets back from a real workout, she gets a sudden burst of energy for about 10-15 minutes that needs to be ignored so that her rest subroutine can kick-in. Similarly, one has to tread with caution when she’s in rest mode — very different than full-sleep mode — because she can be triggered into spazzy “where’s the tennis ball?” mode very easily. Meanwhile, Zoë’s having a great time chasing foxes, getting reunited with her best friends (Pippa’s more of a sister), and chasing bunnies, even though Pippa keeps ruining it for her. Zoë’s even being slightly more tolerant of Pippa taking her coveted spots. But don’t worry, Zoë still gets the scritches.

The latest Remnant is out, and I think it’s definitely one of the best conversations we’ve had in a while. Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff are really impressive, and their book is insanely important.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Kavanaugh is not a tribalist automaton

My latest Special Report appearance

The latest Remnant, with Jonathan Haidt and Greg Lukianoff

How the press has made the Kavanaugh spectacle worse

My interview with Chris Stirewalt on Pat Buchanan populism

Justifying Kavanaugh’s “anger”

The press’s Kavanaugh groupthink

SS-GB is great

The latest GLoP Culture podcast

Kavanaugh wouldn’t be a partisan justice

And now, the weird stuff.

A horse walks into a bar . . .

Royal drama

What could go wrong?

Obscure VHS tapes

Magnetic fields are powerful

Selfie deaths

Fat-bear week

Academic hoaxes

Drunk birds

Urine-addicted goats

Hoarding acorns

Dancing raccoons

We have our queen

Europe’s oldest intact book

Charles Dickens’ pet ravens

The bubble nebula

Line-based illusions

The most Swedish thing ever

Guy adopts stray dog that ran with him

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including everybody who’d just like a time-out),

Maybe it’s because I’ve been getting so much grief from left and right for the alleged sin of “both sides-ism” over the last few years, but Thursday (yesterday for me) was both clarifying and cathartic. Oh, don’t get me wrong: It was horrible and possibly tragic for the Court and the country, but it was also oddly — and probably momentarily — liberating, at least for me.

Because, finally, there was a left–right fight about which I am largely un-conflicted. This wasn’t a brouhaha about Trump or any of the usual stuff. The issue here was that the Democrats and their abettors in the media simply behaved atrociously.

For example, on Thursday, nearly every conservative and Republican was respectful towards Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, finding her testimony moving and credible. But when Brett Kavanaugh spoke, also movingly and credibly, the instantaneous response from much of the liberal and Democratic chorus was “Ermahgod! Raaaaaapist!” or “How dare he be angry!” or “You can’t have a partisan madman like this on the Court!”

Look, I actually agree that Kavanaugh’s anger towards Democrats in the hearing — though morally and emotionally justified — isn’t a good thing over the long run if he were to make it on the Court. But this idea that he can’t be a Supreme Court justice because he wasn’t dispassionate in the face of multiple bogus allegations that he’s a rapist is both grotesque and grotesquely dumb.

with him screaming and interrupting senators I could imagine him putting his hand over someone's mouth.

— Jennifer 'the election is over' Rubin (@JRubinBlogger) September 28, 2018

https://twitter.com/ezraklein/status/1045412138343440387

Sen. Feinstein on Kavanaugh's testimony: "I have never seen a nominee for any position behave in that manner. Judge Kavanaugh used as much political rhetoric as my Republican colleagues—and what's more, he went on the attack." https://t.co/kgAR78zAcn pic.twitter.com/EfLGRsopSy

— ABC News (@ABC) September 28, 2018

First of all, is there any doubt in your mind that, if Kavanaugh had been coldly dispassionate, dismissive, and reserved, the Jen Rubins of the world would be screaming, “See! He’s an emotionless monster! He doesn’t even have the basic human decency to take offense at being called a rapist!”?

Second, contrary to the tsunami of smug sorrowful opining, judges are not expected to be cold and dispassionate in the face of charges about themselves. That’s why they recuse themselves from cases in which they have personal interests. Here’s an idea for you: The next time you’re in a court of law, shout at the judge that he’s biased because he’s an alcoholic rapist perv. See what happens.

Dianne Feinstein — who is more to blame for this three-ring-fecal-festival than any other actor — began her questioning of Kavanaugh by raising an allegation that he ran a rape gang. He responded angrily. And now she’s offended by the partisanship? Please. Judicial nominees aren’t supposed to be like the guards at Buckingham Palace: “Let’s see how many absolutely horrible things we can say to his face before he loses his temper — and then when he does, let’s berate him for not doing his job.”

This is what I mean when I say that the hearing was clarifying. It’s no secret that I’m a Trump critic, but I do my best to stay rational and fair about it. I keep hearing from other, even more ardent, Trump critics that people like me should vote for — and endorse — the Democrats because the Republican party has been utterly corrupted by Trump. I get that argument, and I don’t think it’s as insane as some of my friends on the right do — at least on paper. But when you actually look at how the Democrats have behaved . . . Great Odin’s Raven, I don’t want anything to do with any of that.

I’ll stay in my Remnant, thank you very much.

The Blame Game

At a 30,000-foot level, I do think Quin Hillyer has a point.

To those who voted for Trump not despite, but becuz, he fights dirty,b/c 'the only way we'll win is by fighting as dirty as the Left'..The Kavanaugh hit job shows we can NEVER fight dirtier than they; using such tactics,we ratify sense that tactics MUST be so low-which helps THEM

— Quin Hillyer (@QuinHillyer) September 26, 2018

As I’ve been saying for a long time, when the president violates norms, it creates a permission structure for everybody to violate norms, including in his own administration. Every bad act by one party is over-interpreted by the other party, and the urge to counter-punch twice as hard is indulged.

But here’s the thing: Virtually any other Republican could have or even would have nominated Brett Kavanaugh, and most of the garbage we’ve heard over the last two weeks — he’s evil, he doesn’t deserve the presumption of innocence, he must be guilty because other men or white men or prep-school men are sexual predators, he’s guilty because Mazie Hirono thinks his rulings on abortion are proof of rapey-ness, he floats on water just like wood, etc. — would be spouted by these people all the same. Sure, you can put some of the blame on Trump for the climate in Washington. You can blame him for making it harder to speak credibly about sexual misbehavior since there are so many credible allegations against him.

But you can’t blame him for Democrats believing that Brett Kavanaugh ran a rape gang in high school. Nor can you blame Trump for all of the liberals who know it must be a lie and refuse to say so. That’s on them.

Let’s stay on that, because unlike the Ford question, which I think reasonable people can disagree on, the idea that Brett Kavanaugh helped run a regular rape operation is true witch-hunt groupthink. Why not just accuse him of having turned someone into a newt or moth with his blood magic?

Brett Kavanaugh’s Rape Club

I truly and sincerely don’t want to make light of sexual assault. Rape is evil. Which also means that false accusations of rape are evil. And treating each additional, wholly unverified accusation as if it is more proof is evil.

But it’s worth thinking about the hysterical stupidity of the moment we are in.

In a morally ordered republic loosely bound by the rules of logic, reason, and what was once called common sense, men in white jackets would have escorted Michael Avenatti to a quiet, padded room for observation long ago. This week we should have seen at least one of his television interviews cut short by a tranquilizer blow dart hitting him in the neck.

“I’m telling you! The Fs in Ffffffffoooooourth stands for fffffff…<thud>.”

I want to be open-minded. So I will concede that the allegation is not theoretically impossible, given the depths of depravity that humans in every generation and every civilization and at all strata of class and privilege are capable of.

But it would be highly unlikely, to say the least. I say this having some insight, however imperfect, into the social milieu from which Kavanaugh hails. I didn’t grow up in Washington, but I did technically go to a prep school.

(My school was not as prestigious as Georgetown Prep. There was always a raging debate about my alma mater: Was it the best school on the B-List or the worst school of the A-list? But it was a prep school.)

I knew kids at various schools like Kavanaugh’s. They could be, to borrow a term from social science, dicks. I’m not saying he was. But even if he was, that doesn’t mean he was a rapist. Though, to listen to various liberals, you’d think stereotypes about sex, race, and class are always true so long as you’re talking about white preppy Christians.

Still, I will confess I have my own biases. I never took high school too seriously, so I had a certain amount of resentment towards those who did. The kids who constantly worried about their permanent record; the kids who did everything they could to please teachers or gussy-up their college applications; the kids who seemingly without much effort checked boxes as both jocks and academic grinds; the kids who were always worried about getting in trouble for fear of having to go to a state school: These were kids that I didn’t gravitate towards precisely because I couldn’t be one of them. But I will grant them this: They seemed really unlikely to organize rape gangs if for no other reason than that such things look really bad on your application to Yale.

Again, I don’t mean to be unfair to Brett Kavanaugh. I have no doubt that a regular churchgoing kid had other reasons not to do the logistical heavy-lifting of drugging and raping teenage girls on a regular basis. I’m just assuming the worst while still employing Occam’s Razor. And I just have a hard time believing that the Rapey McRapeFace who Avenatti and his fans describe is the real Brett Kavanaugh.

Virgin Territory

Here’s the thing: When Brett Kavanaugh admitted that he’d been a virgin in high school and the mob took it as corroboration that he was a rape-gang impresario, that’s when I knew we were looking at the madness of crowds and figured it was time for me to start cutting myself again.

In fairness, many were simply too excited to check that Kavanaugh was responding to a question specifically about being a part of a rape gang, and instead went to town on a false assumption, “well, actuallying” everyone about how being a virgin doesn’t mean he couldn’t have assaulted Ford. Others suggested that admitting he was a virgin was damning:

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1044347595093659648

Others just lost their damn minds:

Kavanaugh just defended himself by saying, "I was a virgin through high school and college." Exactly. Rape is not sex. And only a rapist wouldn't know that. The only court Kavanaugh should be sitting in is a criminal one.

— Thank You Bernie (@David_Feldman_) September 25, 2018

https://twitter.com/twmentality1/status/1044410408621273088

Either Kavanaugh is a rapist or was a misogynist frustrated virgin pretending to be a player who is clueless about the sexual assault endemic on campuses.

Either way, he should not be a judge making the law determining the fate of victims across the country. https://t.co/QJDa2vPfpK

— Nathan Newman 🧭 (@nathansnewman) September 25, 2018

As for Avenatti, who is perversely invested in the plausibility of this allegation, both because he could be sued for his role in popularizing slander and because he thinks his metaphysical ass-clownery is his primary qualification for being president of the United States, he insinuated that Kavanaugh’s admission might just be a legalistic evasion. Kavanaugh could have done all sorts of other things, Avenatti insisted in his “oral” presentation, delivered with his usual restraint. After all, only the most profane rapists try to deny the charge of really raping someone by falling back on the — dare I say it? — Clintonian legalism that they never did, you know, that stuff.

One problem with this neck-vein-popping theory is that it makes people want to drink drain cleaner. Another problem is that Kavanaugh would have needed to consider this technicality valuable when he was a teenager. This was nearly two decades before Bill Clinton came up with the novel theory that a woman servicing him could be considered to be engaged in sexual relations with him but that, so long as he stayed very still, he wasn’t having sexual relations with her. Are we to believe that beer-loving Brett maintained this distinction in his own mind while organizing gang rapes at one party after another?

“You guys go ahead — I’m gonna stay a virgin and just do the other stuff to these girls we drugged because I have to make sure this doesn’t go on my permanent record.”

Why?

Why the Hell are people losing their minds? I don’t know. Why did St. Vitus’ Dance sweep Europe? Why did tulips get so expensive during the Tulip Craze? Why did the witches hang?

I suspect what’s happened is a convergence of things. First the #MeToo movement, which mostly has been a force for good, is entering its moral-panic phase. Second, the Internet accelerates groupthink and extremism for all the familiar reasons. Third, a lot of Democrats have concluded that the only way to win the party’s presidential nomination is to prove you can be the most fearless jackass in the herd (See, Cory “Almost Spartacus” Booker) and the presence of Michael Avenatti in the market has put inflationary pressure on everyone’s asininity. Fourth, as I keep writing (even at book length), we are turning politics into a form of tribal entertainment where it’s easy to convince ourselves that our opponents are existential monsters.

And fifth, as politics has become a secular religion, the Supreme Court has become like a Roman Temple and people are terrified that Kavanaugh is a less indulgent priest. If the Supreme Court wasn’t the institution where a single swing justice — not coincidentally the one Kavanaugh is slated to replace — decides how human beings should define themselves in the world, people wouldn’t be freaking out nearly so much.

But here we are.

Various & Sundry

Alas, the Canine Update will have to be truncated. I’ve been on the road all week, and I have to head to AEI to debate nationalism with my friend and colleague Michael Brendan Dougherty. But the beasts are good and had a nice time while I was gone. I got to see them for a few minutes before heading back out. They were almost as happy to see me as I was to see them.

Oh: I’m heading to UCSB in a week. It would be great if folks in the area (or out of it) could come out. I know costs a little money, but I promise to do my best to make it worth it.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

My appearance last Sunday on Meet the Press

The Kavanaugh hearings and the nature of belief

Should the FBI investigate Kavanaugh?

My controversial NPR hit from earlier this week

On Avenatti’s “claims”

My appearance on The Adam Carolla Show

Me on Trump’s “doctrine of patriotism”

The latest Remnant podcast

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Tuesday links

A sign of the end times

Texas shelter puppy finds home

The first animal was . . .

The best picture of 2017’s eclipse

Spider web takes over Greek beach

Behold the fire tornado

What happens when you give octopi ecstasy?

The spice must flow

How coming close to death affected William Shatner’s life

Bees!

82-year-old fights off robbers

Kyle MacLachlan on his most famous roles

The dead beneath London’s streets

Dogs welcoming their owners home

What dogs do when they’re home alone

Dog feeds carrot to three rabbits and a pig

WWII codebreaker buried in Nebraska with U.K. military honors

Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

Not a movie

All right all right all right

Dissecting the dad joke

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including my guilty doppelgängers),

On my many travels this year (I am writing this quickly from the bar and lounge area at the Fort Worth Hilton), I have made what I believe to be many crucial observations. For instance, have you noticed that, increasingly, most Starbucks only put out the carafe of half-and-half these days, not bothering with whole milk or that semi-translucent bluish saccharine filth known as “skim milk”? This is fine with me, as I only use half-and-half. And, at home, we use heavy cream in our coffee because nutritionally skim milk is sugary garbage water that literally looks and tastes like the liquid that accumulates at the bottom of dumpsters.

But none of that is important right now. I’ve also noticed that there’s a whole lot of crazy out there (“Right, unlike here in your head where it’s totally normal” — The Couch).

I wrote my column yesterday (sitting under a tree outside the Oklahoma City Policy Center so that I could smoke a cigar) on how the Kavanaugh hearing is causing the Democrats to throw out millennia of moral and political progress in the name of tribal passion.

I’m not going to rehash all of that here. But there are a few points I’d like to explore further. I saw this tweet last night:

I’m hearing a lot of “so men are just supposed to be scared of women now?” I mean, if that’s what needs to happen for you to be cool to us, maybe. We’ve been scared of you for like six thousand years. You’ll get used to it after a while.

— Whitney Cummings (@WhitneyCummings) September 20, 2018

Like the man said when he went to the vet to pick up his dog only to be given an aardvark on a leash, “I have questions.”

What does Ms. Cummings think the state of mind of women 6,001 years ago was? And where exactly are we talking about? Is this some feminist Rousseauian idea that, prior to some “wrong turn” in Western civilization or the Judeo-Christian tradition, women lived an idyllic life free of fear of men?

More to the point, does she really think that society would be better off if men live in fear of women? Why?

It seems that the answer for many people is, Yes.

It’s like we’re living in one giant feminized version of Seinfeld, where all manner of things can be justified for spite.

I know this one tweet isn’t worth dwelling on when it is but one drop in an ocean of intellectual skim milk. But look at one of the popular replies:

When guys have to carry their keys fanned out between each finger when they walk to their car at night — then we’ll call it even

— Dana Calvo🇺🇸 (@danascalvo) September 20, 2018

Yes, that will be a much better society.

I find the concept of historic grievances fascinating. There is something very “sticky,” in an evolutionary sense, to the idea of getting payback for the crimes committed against your ancestors. If you find this to be an astonishingly novel insight, here’s a list of history books you should read: all of them.

The human — never mind the Hebrew — in me can relate to some of this (Damn Jebusites, you haven’t suffered nearly enough!). But a Jew born in, say, 1980 shouldn’t have any hate in his heart for a German born the same year, never mind an Egyptian. A German born four decades after the Holocaust isn’t responsible for the Holocaust any more than an Egyptian today is responsible for Hebrew bondage millennia ago.

I am making a moral point rather than a political or geopolitical one. Nation-states, for example, can hold grievances against other nation-states on all sorts of issues. It is right for Armenians to demand an apology from Turkey for the Armenian genocide, even if it was long ago.

But at the ground level, intergenerational guilt is one of the oldest and nastiest bigotries, because it is among the most natural. For much of human history, people were born into communities that were in large part defined by their hatred for other communities.

We see it all over the place on the issue of race. Some argue that white people today should carry some of the guilt for slavery. Never mind that many white people today are descended from people who: did not immigrate here until after slavery ended, were not slaveholders in the first place, were not considered “white” when they moved here, etc.

But, as much as I find such arguments unpersuasive and often ludicrous, I can at least understand them on an emotional level.

I can’t quite get my head around the idea that men today should suffer or be treated unjustly to make amends for how men, now long dead, treated women, now long dead.

And yet, this is now the very definition of a woke take.

Enough with the “he said, she said” storyline. If this is he said, she said, then let’s believe the she in these scenarios. She has nothing to gain, and everything to lose. For 250 years we have believed the he in these scenarios. Enough is enough.

— Matthew Dowd (@matthewjdowd) September 17, 2018

Someone get Matt a copy of To Kill a Mockingbird stat!

One common response among the more asinine rejoinders to my column is that I am arguing for “men’s rights” or some such. I’m not. First of all, I don’t believe in men’s rights, because I don’t believe in group rights. I believe in things such as natural rights, human rights, American rights, or, simply, individual rights. I understand that this can get tricky when whole groups or classes of people are denied rights wholesale. This is why, for example, it was perfectly proper for suffragettes and early feminists to talk about “women’s rights.” But while the bigotry that is associated with the denial of group rights is offensive, the bigotry itself isn’t the crime or injustice, the denial of individual rights is.

Second, whenever I see a man receive a Nobel prize or win an election, I don’t pump my fist in the air and yell, “Yes! Another win for the Penis People!” Nor do I wave my “Men No. 1” foam finger in the air.

I understand that many people, not just women, do have this kind of reaction when women achieve important things, and that’s usually fine by me. But what I really don’t get is the zero-sum thinking that says men must suffer or be punished simply because they are men.

It shows you how frayed or even severed our connections to traditional — or simply, normal – forms of identity and association have become that we can demonize whole categories of people who are our fellow citizens, co-religionists, and, most importantly, our fathers, sons, and brothers.

Maybe liberals have sent their Rawlsian veil out to the cleaners, but a big part of the rule of law and justice is the idea that, when you walk into a court of law, your class, your heritage, and your connections should not matter. That’s why judges wear black robes and sit up on a high bench — to signal they are partisans of no cause or class. It is absolutely right to say that we do not always live up to that ideal; it is quite another to say we should discard that ideal to get some payback.

The notion that we should automatically believe the accuser because the accuser is white, black, male, female, or whatever is wrong, full stop. To argue that we should be wrong in the “other direction” to make amends for past wrongs is a perfect distillation of the tribal thinking running amok in Washington and the country.

What is really remarkable is how easily people can turn this thinking off and on as the moment requires. Yesterday, my friend and colleague Ed Whelan, justifiably furious at the effort to destroy Kavanaugh with unverified allegations, made a mistake by making unverified allegations against someone else. Ed, to his credit, realized his mistake and apologized.

I wish Ed hadn’t done it, but judged purely on its merits as trolling, it was spectacular. The very people who have been insisting that it is not only acceptable but morally necessary to destroy someone with unverified allegations were suddenly aghast by the use of unverified allegations.

Random question I have: Why are journalists retweeting unverified allegations?

— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) September 20, 2018

Fox and Friends is spreading Ed Whelan’s smear of Kavanaugh’s classmate. Totally irresponsible. pic.twitter.com/mrK1ZqtV9J

— Renato Mariotti (@renato_mariotti) September 21, 2018

We live in an age where any rule, custom, or norm that benefits the people we hate is wrong or irrelevant and any rule, custom, or norm that benefits the people we support is vital to the health of our democracy.

Last week, I ended this “news”letter with a quote from Thomas More in A Man for all Seasons. I should have saved it for this week. But since I can do whatever I want in this space, I’ll just use it again:

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: I’ve been on the road most of this week, and I feel terribly guilty about it, in part because this was a bad week — and month — to leave the Fair Jessica with all of the canine and other domestic responsibilities. These beasts can be demanding. More to the point, I don’t have a whole lot of canine updating for you (though I do talk about the doggers at length at the end of this week’s podcast). I do miss them mightily and I hope they miss me too. Kirsten was out sick at the beginning of the week, so I had the midday walk on Monday. It was insanely muddy, particularly on one section of the trail. I barely managed to keep from falling over in the muck. So, when I came back around, I took a fork in the trail to avoid that spot. Instead I discovered a perfectly formed mud hole for Pippa. Anyway, I will see them tomorrow and Sunday before I have to head back out on the road. I will try to get in a week’s worth of dog tweets.

I’ll be on Meet the Press on Sunday.

I’ll be on the Adam Carolla podcast . . . soon.

I will be speaking at Claremont on Tuesday

I will be in Milwaukee speaking at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Gala on Thursday.

Check out JonahGoldberg.com for more upcoming things.

ICYMI . . .

My latest Fox News hit

Last week’s G-File

It’s not the economy, stupid

Socialism is so hot right now

Discussing my book with Mark Reardon

Clarence Thomas and Brett Kavanaugh

Dianne Feinstein is the only unambiguous villain in the Kavanaugh saga

Discussing my book with St. Louis Public Radio

The latest Remnant

The Kavanaugh saga and partisan politics

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Wednesday links

Boy dying of cancer gets one last Christmas

Why women live longer than men

Snail kidnappers

The uselessness of Spidey Sense

William Shatner reflects on his career

Baby squirrels rescued

The man who swims to work

Don’t try this anti-aging method

How to get mice to kick the cocaine habit researchers gave them

The creepy midnight nursery rhyme

Lake Michigan shipwrecks

Noah’s school bus

Whoa

The creation of the original Predator costume

Dog finds treasure

Texas grandma kills twelve-foot gator to avenge death of her miniature horse

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all the depressed Sex and the City fans),

As Tonto said when the Lone Ranger wanted to shoot his favorite grizzly, bear with me.

You may not have noticed, but a lot of prominent people have conducted themselves poorly in our public discourse lately. One need only dip a spoon into the bubbling caldron of asininity, crudity, and viciousness to illustrate the point.

The president of the United States alone has a greatest-hits album that we are all familiar with at this point, so I need not move on that subject like a b****.

His former campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, not long ago made a mocking “wah wah” sad-trombone sound while someone described a child with Down syndrome being distraught over being separated from her mother and put in a cage. His former campaign chairman, Steve Bannon, told a crowd full of nativists, xenophobes, and racists, “Let them call you racist. Let them call you xenophobes. Let them call you nativists. Wear it as a badge of honor.” On the same tour, the man who wanted his former website to be the “platform for the alt-right” and who made a defender of “ephebophilia” one of its early stars, praised the virility and fashion sense of Mussolini.

More recently, would-be Spartacus of the Senate Cory Booker said that anyone supporting the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh was “complicit in evil.” Last week, to cheers of many in the media, protesters relentlessly beclowned themselves in a Senate hearing, offering barbaric yawps to punctuate the more refined smearing and character-assassination perpetrated by elected officials. The same week, a senior official in the White House anonymously confessed to being part of a secret cabal working against an “amoral” president.

The other day, Hillary Clinton peddled a lie just to sow paranoia and rage. Supposedly serious commentators invoke polls of an uninformed electorate to argue that constitutional procedures should be ignored. Others argue for court packing, while less serious people ask, “Where’s John Wilkes Booth when you need him?” Others brandish a replica of the severed head of the president, apologize for it, and then apologize for the apology.

Once you start thinking about it, trying to come up with these kinds of examples becomes like trying to take a sip from fire hose.

Pastors have defended a child predator on the grounds that King David did something or other. Conspiracy theories now count as “Breaking News” on cable-news shows, and commentators float the idea that the people want a “dictator.” When the president behaved churlishly in response to the death of a war-hero senator, his defenders insist that the dead man started it.

Behold, My Decadence

I bring all of this up to explain why, when I read the opening sentence of R. R. Reno’s “review” of my book, you may have heard a guffaw from me so loud and sudden that it frightened pigeons from their perches and caused dogs to bark at an unseen threat: “Jonah Goldberg exemplifies the decadence and dysfunction of today’s public discourse.”

Now I will admit, I do have a tendency to wallow in my own crapulence. Indeed, I have a hangover right now, and I’m treating it with a cigar.

But that’s not what Reno has in mind.

The editor of First Things thinks my effort to defend the Miracle of Western civilization and the glorious principles of the Founding and to imbue people with a sense of gratitude for this nation is a sign of civilizational and moral rot.

I won’t go line by line through Reno’s typing, not least because I feel little need to respond to every distortion and dishonesty in a review written by someone who gives little sign that he actually read (or, at least, comprehended) the book. There have been a few of these sorts of reviews by people who are more interested in demonstrating their courage by slaughtering strawmen. But I will say that it’s an at-times truly shabby effort in which Reno takes words and phrases out of their context, rips away the explicit meaning I give to those words and phrases, and then slaps on different meaning in order to make a more convenient target. He’s a bit like a man who takes a bear out of its environment, sedates it, and then, after having it tied to a stake, shoots it from a great distance and declares himself a mighty hunter.

The only concession I will make is that I made it a bit too easy for some to indulge their instinct to be triggered. The book begins with the sentence, “There is no God in this book.” Alas, for some people, the first bite of an appetizer is enough for them to render an opinion on every course of the meal.

As I’ve explained many times now, including in the book itself, what I tried to do is offer an argument that can break through to people who do not believe in God or who cannot be appealed to through arguments derived from His divine authority.

In short, I tried to cut through the “decadence and dysfunction of today’s public discourse” and engage in good old-fashioned persuasion and argument. I admit that I’m not the twinned feminine reincarnation of Cicero that is Diamond and Silk, but I did my best.

But back to the rot. Contra Reno’s best efforts to insinuate otherwise, I write at considerable length about how many of our gravest problems stem from the shrinking of organized religion and the declining centrality of God in our lives. Indeed, I argue that most of our woes are caused by the fact that civil society — family, faith, community — is crumbling, and, as a result, we are looking to the government and politics for meaning in our lives.

And that appears to be what Reno — and many other conservatives are doing — too. Last year, Reno wrote:

Our political struggles over nations and nationalisms are best understood as referenda on the West’s meta-politics over the last three generations, which has been one of disenchantment. The rising populism we’re seeing throughout the West reflects a desire for a return of the strong gods to public life.

I agree with this. The only difference between us on this point is that I, the weakly observant Jew, lament it while Reno, the devout Catholic, welcomes the return of the old, strong gods. He welcomes the end of the “neoliberal” order in favor of something more “substantial,” specifically nationalism: “It is not good for man to be alone, and it is a sign of health that our societies wish to reclaim, however haltingly, the nation, which is an important form of solidarity.”

I find it amusing that Reno denounces me for saying that turning away from the Miracle of liberal democratic capitalism — toward socialism or nationalism — is “reactionary” when that is not only precisely what it is but also precisely what Reno is.

I won’t recount my arguments about nationalism here, save to repeat that I think a little nationalism is healthy, while too much is poisonous. It is worth pointing out, however, that the “strong god” of nationalism is a jealous god that demands fealty. Nationalist movements are every bit as capable as capitalism — and very often more so — of waging war on competing sources of authority. From Bismarck’s Kulturkampf to Hitler’s Gleichshaltung, German nationalists opposed particularity, pluralism, and, of course, liberty (a concept Reno puts remarkably little value upon).

Reno argues that we should look to Augustine’s concept of a “community of love,” which sounds fine by me. But nationalism’s record of fostering such communities is mixed at best, particularly when yoked to the power of a centralized state.

Which brings me to the most shocking and telling passage in Reno’s outburst.

Condemning every political challenge as a threat to “the liberal order” shirks responsibility.

In Goldberg, the habit of denunciation reaches absurd heights. He rehearses the tiresome conservative trope that Democrats are not true liberals but illiberal progressives. According to Goldberg, Trump voters are ingrates, moral hypocrites, and tribalistic “reactionaries.” So are Clinton and Sanders voters. He believes that ever since Woodrow Wilson, what goes by the name “liberal” in America has in fact been an anti-liberal form of reactionary regression from the Miracle. Anyone who defines Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt as enemies of the liberal order is a political propagandist, not a thinker concerned with understanding our populist-driven challenges.

Leave aside the irony of an author who opens with a denunciation decrying the “habit of denunciation.” Also, ignore the fact I do not consider every political challenge a threat to the liberal order or characterize voters the way he claims. That Reno is tired of hearing that modern liberals are not in fact classical liberals doesn’t make it untrue, and why an ostensible conservative would be racing to claim otherwise is astonishing.

Consider Woodrow Wilson, a figure I will never tire of denouncing. Wilson denounced the Bill of Rights and the classically liberal structure of the Constitution. In office, he created the first modern propaganda ministry in Western civilization. He unleashed undercover propagandists to whip-up nationalist war-frenzy. He jailed thousands of political prisoners, many for simply committing thought crimes. He shut down newspapers. He oversaw a wave of anti-German sentiment that makes even the most hysterical visions of an anti-Muslim backlash seem restrained and sober. He considered “hyphenated Americans” to be enemies of the people: “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.” He lent aid and comfort to violent, jingoistic vigilantism. He lamented that the South lost the Civil War, and he re-segregated the federal government. He admired Lincoln’s tyrannical means but detested the ends he sought. That sounds like an assault on the liberal order to me. It certainly doesn’t sound like a “community of love” either.

But since none of that seems to count for the editor of a Catholic organ, Wilson also had some choice words for the Catholic Church, calling it “an organization which, whenever and wherever it dares, prefers and enforces obedience to its own laws rather than to those of the state.”

FDR wasn’t the monster Wilson was — but the president-for-life who militarized the economy, tried to pack the courts, called for supplanting the Bill of Rights with a new “economic bill of rights,” who argued in the same speech that returning to the democratic “normalcy” of the prosperous 1920s would amount to a domestic surrender to “fascism,” and who in word and deed sought to transcend the order of liberty in the name of “bold, persistent, experimentation” was in no way shape or form a liberal under the old understanding of the word. Indeed, it was FDR more than anyone else who is responsible for the progressive hijacking of the word “liberal.” Progressives had so poisoned the label “progressive” with the American people that they needed to rebrand, leaving the word to be picked up and further soiled by Communists for the next few decades.

The New Statists, Same as the Old Statists

Reno is just one soldier in a larger rearguard assault from segments of the Right, who denounced phrases like “economic patriotism” when it passed Barack Obama’s lips but nod and cheer when similar phrases come out of the mouths of “nationalists.” They see the state as the key to fostering a new social solidarity because it alone speaks for their new idol — or “strong god” — of the Nation. Passionate nationalists, like passionate socialists, ultimately believe that the State can love you, and if the right people take it over, the divisions that are inevitable in a free society will be knitted together by some government initiative. But that is not love, it is lust. It is a lust for power and victory for your vision over all others.

And it’s not new. These same claims about capitalism or (classical) liberalism being a spent force or outdated or bankrupt have accompanied every attempt — failed and successful — to expand government or yoke it to the interests of some group that claims to have found a “third way.”

Their reactionary statolatry renders them deaf and blind to an idea obvious to the Founders and once obvious to conservatives committed to conserving the liberal order: You will not always have your hands on the reins, for you will not always be in the saddle.

Even now, you can hear the growing clamor for the government to take control of Facebook or Google because the libruls there don’t like us. I’m open to sensible regulation, and if more is needed, fine. But if the idea that bringing these businesses under the control of the state — make them utilities! — is merely economically and philosophically blinkered if Republicans are in office, it becomes an incandescent bonfire of insipidity when you realize that one day — perhaps one day soon — progressives will take charge. Thinking that the same people who favor silencing speech, spiking politically incorrect science, and using the government to punish institutions that are non-compliant with the progressive agenda (I’m looking at you wedding-cake bakers, birth-control-eschewing octogenarian nuns, and Catholic adoption agencies) would shirk from using these shiny toys for their own ends is absurd.

Moreover, as we learned — or should have learned — under Wilson and FDR, when the government “reins in” business, businesses often grab the reins of government. U.S. Steel, AT&T, and other corporate behemoths welcomed regulation precisely because they understood that the government was uniquely equipped to protect them from competition. Cartelized social media wouldn’t become friendlier to conservatives; social media would then have men with badges and guns to enforce their hostility to conservatives.

The liberal order depends on impersonal rules that do not change when the factions controlling the execution of those rules change. As I wrote earlier this week, this simple, glorious idea that as much as any other helped create the Miracle is melting away in partisan heat. We are weaponizing norms, using them as a battle shield when they can protect us and as a sword when they can hurt our enemies, but never honoring them when wielded by others. We want to simultaneously fight fire with fire and denounce our opponents for using fire. The only solution in a free society isn’t some final and eternal victory, but to use the torches not as weapons but illumination for the eternal threats to the Miracle: the unconstrained tribalism that denies others the right to be wrong.

I’ll close with my favorite scene from A Man for All Seasons:

Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law!

More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?

Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!

More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down — and you’re just the man to do it — do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law for my own safety’s sake.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: Last night at the American Enterprise Institute’s annual dinner, it was heartening, if a little weird, to have so many strangers come up to me and ask about Zoë and Pippa. I’d pass along all the kind words, but one of the great things about dogs is that they just don’t care. If I told Pippa that her fans on Twitter have a ball watching her adventures, all she would hear is “BALL!” Anyway, the beasts are good. I had the midday walk yesterday, and Pippa got to do her favorite thing in the world: “accidentally” drop a tennis ball in a muddy creek and then retrieve it. She’s also very fond of sticks lately. She likes to bring her favorite stick into the car with her, even if she has a little trouble sometimes. Both of them are fully adjusted from the cross-country adventure, even if that comes with the usual sense of entitlement and impatience or making due with more bourgeois pastimes. Zoe even got to harass her oldest friend, Sammi.

If you’re in St. Louis come see me Tuesday night. On Thursday, I’ll be in Oooooooklahoommmaa where the wind comes sweeping down the plains.

If you’re seeing this on Friday, I’ll be on Special Report tonight. If you’re seeing this Saturday, I was on Special Report last night.

I had a great conversation with Ben Sasse on the latest episode of The Remnant. Where else can you hear a sitting senator ask, “Do you think the cat thinks I have nipples on my back?”

On Tuesday, another essay adapted from the Apocrypha of my book will appear in Commentary as the lead article. Here’s the cover.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Last week’s G-File . . . appendix?

The weaponization of democratic norms

Thanks, Will

No thanks, Pat

The latest GLoP

The latest Hillary lie

And now, the weird stuff.

Omar and Salty

When the Coast Guard led an evacuation bigger than Dunkirk

An eagle’s view of the sky

A cave home for millionaires

Giving a traumatized dog a new life

Rat pulls fire alarm

Telepathic drone swarms?

Thyroid Mona Lisa?

Don’t hold in farts

Sidney Blumenthal? Is that you?

Life imitates art

Detroit-area fatberg removed

Paul McCartney on his own music

Yes, teen birds also love sleeping in

Dorothy’s stolen ruby slippers recovered

The man who drew Middle-Earth

Hmmm . . .

When fighting pythons drop from the ceiling

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of you at Kasowitz, Benson & Torres to whom I may or may not have spoken about the Mueller investigation),

There’s not much new to say about Senator Cory Booker’s performance this week. The proud-yet-fake defiance of Senate norms and rules, the preening, and the bro-bravado (“bring it!”) — most commonly associated with dudes who know that their friends over by the keg will hold them back and barking poodles confident that they will not be let off their leash — have been well documented by numerous observers (including yours truly). But as a longtime admirer of the “World’s greatest deliberative body” (stop laughing!), I look to the wisdom of the great senator Mo Udall, who famously observed, “Everything’s been said, but not everybody has said it.”

So once more let me don my kicking boots and give this dead horse another whack, not simply because Booker deserves it or because I take joy in it, but because there’s a lesson here for everyone.

Our friends at the Free Beacon put together this helpful montage:

.@CoryBooker: I've never been the bad boy. pic.twitter.com/ZAsvK3tcnj

— Free Beacon (@FreeBeacon) September 7, 2018

If we are going to plumb the depths of popular culture, however, I think Frasier Crane may offer a more apt comparison than George Costanza.

The only difference is that Booker, figuratively speaking, wasn’t running with scissors; he was running with a picture of scissors, or maybe a heretofore unknown discontinued Hasbro product: Nerf scissors.

For those of you who don’t know, Cory Booker heroically® (according to his P.R. operation) defied Senate rules and risked expulsion from that chamber in order to release confidential documents that the American people desperately needed to see. The people needed to understand what the dangerous bigot whom Trump nominated to the Court had written in an email about racial profiling while working in the Bush White House after 9/11.

There were only a couple of problems: The email in question was already cleared for public release (and Booker knew it), and the substance of the email revealed that the Monster Kavanaugh opposed racial profiling. It was as if Cory Booker — once a famous, if choreographed, good Samaritan — saw a mugging, leapt out of his car, tire-iron in hand, to save the day only to stop 20 feet from the assailant in front of some TV cameras, and proceed to smash the makeshift weapon into his own crotch. “I am Spartacus! Ow! I am Spartacus — Ooof!”

Like so much of life today, it all gets dumber. Booker is like the dweeby model student (treasurer of the chess club, three-years running!) who was “radicalized” by the edgy kids at theater camp and became determined to be a rebel for his senior year. The only problem: Booker seemed to have picked up his idea of being a bad boy by watching Saved by the Bell and various after-school specials. “Greetings fellow cool people: Check out my pleather biker jacket!”

On TV, Booker insists that he did in fact break the rules (“I am breaking the rules.”) but in committee, when it seemed like the Republicans believed him, he couldn’t stand his ground — even though he wanted to — and insisted that there was no rule that he had moments earlier boasted of violating. It was as if he were dragged before the principal and asked if he really had toilet-papered the math teacher’s house (as he had told people in study hall) only to confess that he was simply taking credit for it. Now, he’s back on TV reverting to his original story with a “How dare you ask if my awesome earring is a clip on?” tone.

Who Is Spartacus?

Perhaps the most telling sign that Booker cannot commit to his bad-boy routine is the actual quote so many people are inaccurately summarizing. Booker didn’t say, “I am Spartacus!” He didn’t even say, “This is my ‘I am Spartacus moment.’” He said: “This is about the closest I’ll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus’ moment.”

One of my ancient grievances about the pre-Orb GOP was the tendency of Republican politicians to read their stage directions rather than just play the part they wanted to play. George H. W. Bush literally read, “Message: ‘I care’” out loud. Bob Dole told an audience, “If that’s what you want, I’ll be another Ronald Reagan.”

Booker’s “this is about the closest I’ll probably ever have” formulation does something similar. His base wants a Spartacus. He desperately wants to be their Spartacus. But he can’t actually commit to being Spartacus because he has no idea how or it’s just too scary, requiring an authentic and sincere commitment that he only knows how to fake or pay lip-service to. He might as well have said, “My super-model girlfriend in Canada — who can’t make the prom — says I’m like Spartacus all the time.”

The Perils of Resistance

I’m also pretty sure that Booker has a thumbless grasp of what saying “I am Spartacus” even means (even though he didn’t say it).

While I was listening to one of the quirky, obscure podcasts that I sometimes dabble in, John Podhoretz reminded me that the “I am Spartacus” line from the 1960 Kirk Douglas movie was written by Dalton Trumbo, a committed Stalinist, who pushed the Soviet line at every turn. (When Stalin signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler, Trumbo dismissed concerns by saying, “To the vanquished all conquerors are inhuman.”) Howard Fast, the author of the book the movie was based on, was also a Communist. I supposed I should note that Kirk Douglas tried to take credit for the line, but that that’s unlikely. I could also point out that Karl Marx considered Spartacus the “finest fellow antiquity had to offer.”

But, like so much of the universe these days, none of this matters. The whole point of the “I am Spartacus!” scene — which is great – is that Spartacus’s comrades showed existential solidarity with the real Spartacus. Crassus wanted to execute the leader of the slave rebellion, but Spartacus’s comrades were saying, in effect, “Take me!” It’s been suggested that the scene was inspired by the apocryphal story of the Danes donning yellow stars in solidarity with the Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark.

How exactly, you might ask, is this remotely comparable to releasing publicly accessible emails exonerating Judge Kavanaugh of the insinuation that he supported racial profiling under the pretense that you’re breaking the rules? (No cheating off Marco, people.)

Take your time. I’ll go sculpt a model of Devils Tower out of mashed potatoes in order to figure out where the alien ship will land while you bust out the grease board to connect those dots . . .

Need help? Well, it’s a trick question. Because, on one level — the level Booker thinks he’s working on — it makes no sense whatsoever.

But on another level, it actually makes some sense. Here’s a hint: The heroism involved in saying “I am Spartacus” lies in the fact that it was a lie. Those guys weren’t Spartacus; they were pretending to be at great personal sacrifice.

Booker’s close-to-an-I-am-Spartacus-moment line was also based on a lie, but it was decidedly not in the form of tragedy — it was farce. Which is why the spectacle of all of those Democrats joining Booker in fake solidarity about a fake issue was so perfect. They were all shouting, “I’m Cory Booker!” and “Expel me too!” in the hopes his bravery would rub off on them, when there was none to rub off in the first place.

Booker wants to be president, and he thinks — rightly — that the base of the Democratic party wants a heroic rebel who will fight the Caesarian Trump at all costs and by any means necessary (yes, I know there were no emperors in the time of Spartacus, but shut up: I’m on a roll). The problem is that Spartacus lost, and all his fellow gladiator-slave compadres who said, “I am Spartacus” were martyred for a lost cause, too. Obviously, this effort to defeat Kavanaugh was a lost cause.

But the greater irony is that the Resistance is likely to be a lost cause, too — if it keeps going in this direction. Trump’s greatest vulnerability in 2020 stems from the fact that he never stopped being a chaos agent. Many current and formerly Republican-leaning voters hate all the drama that sustains the GOP base and radicalizes the liberal base. These voters — particularly college-educated white women — may like many of Trump’s policies and appointments, but they feel like they’re overdosing on crazy pills or trying to elude a monkey that escaped from a cocaine study. The more Democrats act like would-be Spartacuses, the more the craziness on both sides of the equation cancel each other out. That leaves a (presumably good) economy and the devil they know in the White House as a potentially preferable option to the devils promising “socialism” and a left-wing culture-war agenda.

Letting Your (Imagined) Enemies Define You

As I wrote earlier this week, liberals are increasingly desperate to live in an alternate reality in which calling themselves “the Resistance” isn’t ironic but heroic. For example, this week we literally saw Handmaid’s Tale cosplayers pretending they weren’t making fools of themselves, playing make-believe to own the cons.

We’ve seen this before, of course — just not on this scale. Naomi Wolf and her crowd were utterly convinced that George W. Bush was Hitler. It never dawned on them that if Bush were Hitler (or even Mussolini or, heck, Woodrow Wilson), people like her would never be allowed to say so. It’s bravery on the cheap. I don’t think anyone who reads this “news”letter needs to be reminded that I am not big booster of Donald Trump. But the guy isn’t Hitler, for any number of reasons, the most important of which is that Americans aren’t Nazis. We’re not even Germans. Hitler’s rule was possible because there was a market demand for a Hitler and a wider tolerance for a Hitler.

By all means, let us ridicule and ostracize the Tiki-Torch Brigades and their alt-right sympathizers. But cherry-picking your enemies and holding them up as representative of millions of Republicans and Trump voters isn’t merely slanderous, it’s incredibly stupid, and not only because it’s wrong morally and factually — it’s also wrong because doing so fuels radicalism on both sides.

(Let me head-off the Whataboutist assault: The same is true of many on the right who play the same game leftward. The Democratic party may have been the party of the Klan, but it’s not today. By the way, the weird overlap between left-wingers and right-wingers who think my book, Liberal Fascism, “proved,” or tried to prove, that contemporary liberals are Nazis is both dismaying to me and flatly wrong.)

The Nazi philosopher Carl Schmitt famously said, “Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are.” I despise Schmitt, but he was brilliant nonetheless, and this aphorism has deep insight behind it. Whether you want to consult evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, or the literature on negative polarization, we live in an age in which many of us define who we are by who — or what — we hate.

This is a big enough problem on its own, but it gets monumentally worse when you liberate yourself from the shackles of reality. What tactic isn’t justified if you convince yourself that your opponents are “literally Hitler”?

Here’s what Senator Booker said when Trump nominated Brett Kavanaugh, an eminently qualified judge who would have been on any Republican’s shortlist including, by the way, John McCain’s.

This “has nothing to do with politics” but with “who we are as moral beings.”

“I’m here to call on folks to understand that in a moral moment, there is no neutral. In a moral moment, there is [sic] no bystanders,” he said. “You are either complicit in the evil, you are either contributing to the wrong, or you are fighting against it.”

I bring up John McCain for a reason. We’ve just been through a melancholy riot for the lost world of John McCain, in which every establishment Democrat openly pined for McCain’s style of bipartisanship. Well that cuts both ways. McCain can’t be a hero for refusing to demonize his opponents while it’s okay to claim that anyone who disagrees with you about Kavanaugh is complicit in “evil.”

Booker’s you’re-with-the-forces-of-good-or-you’re-with-the-forces-of-evil shtick surely plays well with the base of his party, as does Donald Trump’s similar garbage rhetoric on the right. But that’s the point. They’re opposite sides of the same sh***y coin.

And say this for Trump: He seems to honestly believe it. Booker’s playing a role precisely because the politics of this craptacular moment demand it, and, like a leaf on the wind, he’s going where the strongest breeze takes him.

I very much doubt Booker will ride those winds to the White House, because he’s a fugacious firebrand, and the script we’re stuck in demands the real deal to the play the role. The sincerest form of flattery is imitation, and the Democrats now want their own Trump knock-offs (which is great news for celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti).

That’s always been the greatest danger of Trump’s corrupting influence on the GOP and the country: that his violations of norms would invite return fire, only more intense (just as Obama’s violations invited Trump). The next Democratic president (in 2020 or 2024 or whenever) likely won’t talk like Trump, but if we stay on the track we’re on, he or she will also act like a war president, where the real enemy isn’t a foreign power but fellow Americans the base doesn’t like. That’s the inevitable consequence when you define yourself by a caricature of your enemy.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: All is well enough at home. The beasts were definitely excited when we completed our 3,000-mile drive, but then it dawned on them that their schedule at home wasn’t going to be as thrilling as it had been in Montana, Idaho, and Oregon. The comedown wasn’t as severe as Al Pacino’s in Scent of a Woman after he got to drive the Ferrari, but there definitely was a sense of “We’re back to this?” It’s not all bad. I’ve been taking them on the usual morning adventures (though not as much as Pippa would like), and just today Zoë was reunited with her best friend Sammie. (For those who’ve asked what happened to her boyfriend, Ben: He had to leave the dogwalker pack for reasons related to being an intact male. Zoë was forlorn for a while.) And of course, things at home aren’t horrible either. Though Gracie wants to know who the dudes housesitting for us were.

There were two Remnant podcasts this week. The first was probably the most eggheady we’ve done yet. Peter Boettke, Hayek Master, came on to talk All Things Hayek. If you’re even remotely interested in such stuff, I think you might like it. It started a little intense, but I think it became more accessible pretty quickly. The second podcast is with just me and one of the dudes who took care of Gracie. It’s a weird one. You can find the links below.

Also, I have a bunch of speeches coming up in the next couple months, as the book tour restarts. I will be at Arizona State this coming Tuesday, and you can meet me in St. Louis at the Show Me Institute the following Tuesday. I’ll be at the Oklahoma Institute for Public Affairs on September 20. And I’ll be giving an address at the Philadelphia Society in Dallas on the 21st. On the 25th, I’ll be speaking at Claremont. On the 27th, I’ll be at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. On October 7, I’ll be at the University of California, Santa Barbara. On the 9th, I’ll be at Cedarville University. On the 17th, I’ll be at Hofstra. Watch this space for more.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Steve Bannon’s latest whatever

Why aren’t liberals patriotic?

Me on the Matt Lewis podcast

This week’s first Remnant, with Peter Boettke

Who wrote the op-ed, and why?

This week’s second Remnant

Our absurd confirmation hearings

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Wednesday links

A car made of LEGO

The pirates of the Great Lakes

Diving dog

A human tower

Britain’s smallest baby

A killer robot submarine

When the U.S. government tried to induce rain with dynamite

How realistic are sci-fi starships?

What was lost in the Brazil museum fire

Creepy-crawlers stolen from Philadelphia for some reason

The tree that bleeds metal

What it would be like to run a marathon on Mars: part one and part two

The science of Black Panther

Wearable robotic arms let two people share one body

“Fighting” corgis

Whales are old

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Including all of the citizens of the World who should take equal pride in Neil Armstrong’s accomplishments. Thank you, Belize!),

I’m writing this from the passenger seat of a Winnebago heading East out of Burns, Ore. — which was named after the Scottish poet, Robert Burns, not the chinless wonder from M*A*S*H. Which reminds me, why didn’t the “H” in M*A*S*H get an asterisk? That always bothered me.

Burns looks like it’s seen better days, but it still appears much nicer than the neighboring “city,” Hines, Ore., at least from what we could tell (Burns’s taxidermist shops seem much more professional and less like the guy inside would be perfectly happy to stuff and mount a pseudo-intellectual demi-Jewish pundit from the Upper West Side). We stopped in Burns for the coffee, as one does, and to switch drivers. I got us from Bend to Burns and the Fair Jessica will take us into Boise. We didn’t plan on only stopping in places that begin with B, but that’s just one of the great things about the road: the serendipity of it all.

John McCain, RIP

John McCain is being held in state today and lain to rest Saturday. We intend to listen to the memorial service as we drive. I wrote a column earlier this week on McCain and Trump and the differences between them. It was one of those columns that was like pulling teeth for me to write because I had vacationitis and it’s hard to get back into pundit mode, particularly from an inconvenient time zone.

An additional point I wanted to make is that, while the differences between Trump and McCain are obvious and profound, they originate from an important similarity. I am honestly not sure what word best describes it: Vanity? Ego? Pride?

It’s worth recalling that McCain’s obsession with campaign-finance reform stemmed largely from his experience in the Keating Five scandal in the late ’80s. The details don’t really matter; McCain was cleared of all charges. But he felt that his involvement — even his mere association — with the scandal was a stain on his honor, and he spent the following decades trying to repair that wound to his reputation by becoming an obsessive on the issue of campaign finance.

Doubtless, he believed in the cause he fought for, but the passion he brought to campaign-finance reform was born of a certain kind of old-fashioned vanity that ranked personal honor higher than the mere facts or abstract principle.

One can find other examples of this sort of thing in McCain’s record, which is why McCain the politician could annoy so many conservatives. He loved being a “maverick,” and if you could convince him he was being a maverick in a moral cause, that’s all it took for him to become a bulldog. Sometimes he picked the right cause — the most obvious example being the Surge in Iraq — but sometimes he’d go a different way or he’d be so caught up with the narrative that he’d ignore some relevant facts (not every rebel in Syria or Libya was a “freedom fighter” for instance).

I don’t want to belabor the point, because anyone familiar with his history on the right knows what I’m talking about. McCain was deeply enamored with heroic narratives, no doubt in part because that was the story of his own life. The problem is that not every public-policy issue fits neatly into a good-vs.-evil framework, and McCain sometimes allowed himself a definition of heroism that won praise from the crowd that always celebrates when a conservative confirms liberal prejudices.

I don’t mean this to sound too harsh, or even harsh at all. I admired McCain a great deal. I certainly have no desire to lend aid and comfort to the swamp-dwelling ogres sending me bilious nonsense about how McCain was an “evil” man, while also saying that Donald Trump is a righteous instrument of Jesus.

Oh the Byrony

Which brings us to Trump. I will pay you the courtesy of presumed sentience and not run you through all of the evidence that the president has his own kind of vanity (nor will I go to any great lengths to demonstrate that the president is bipedal, an only slightly more obvious observation).

But whereas McCain’s vanity was invested in his commitment to certain ideals (or narratives) — patriotism, heroism, sacrifice, courage, etc. — Trump’s vanity is invested closer to home, as it were, to his ego. I’m not sure one could even describe him as a Byronic hero, because even the Byronic hero plays by his own rules, and it’s not obvious that Trump has many rules at all (and for the umpteen billionth time, I am not making these observations out of animus towards Trump; I’ve been writing about things such as “do-it-yourself morality, informed by personal passion rather than old-fogey morality” for quite a while).

While I think both men could be led astray by their vanity, I am not making a moral-equivalence argument. McCain was courageous; Trump is not, save for the fact that being shameless can be liberating — one is willing to risk embarrassment if one is incapable of being embarrassed. McCain subordinated himself to the needs of his country and his fellow POWs. As a senator, he visited war zones countless times, not to preen but to support the troops and their mission. Our commander in chief has yet to visit one. “Courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point,” C. S. Lewis wrote.

What I find interesting is how both men represent the way vanity, ego, pride, amour propre (I’m still looking for the right word) can take people in such different directions. Every politician has a robust ego or high self-regard, but the test is in what issues or causes they invest that ego — in themselves or in a cause.

I think David Hume’s famous line about how “reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions,” is often misunderstood. Hume certainly believed in reason. He simply understood that reason is a tool that must be made to further higher ends. We cannot scrub our passions from the crooked timber of humanity; we can only channel them productively.

McCain’s egoistic passion led him to surrender himself to the faith of his fathers, or a cause larger than himself, as he might put it. Trump’s egoistic passion is dedicated to making himself as large a cause as possible. The irony is that the former’s approach made McCain seem the larger man, while the latter gets smaller by the day.

Various & Sundry

This is the third G-File in a row written literally — and, I suppose, figuratively — at about 70 miles per hour. The feedback from long-time readers has mostly been along the lines of “Why does it take me so long to read? Do I have a disability?” Other readers familiar with this sub-genre of my “news”letter oeuvre understand where I am coming from. But some complained, either to me or on Twitter.

“It’s just a stream of consciousness!” they yell at me as if I were their waiter at a fancy French restaurant and I talked them into ordering the snails instead of those toasted cheese sandwiches they wanted. “Sir, there is a discussion of assless chaps in my absolutely free newsletter no one forced me to read! How dare you!”

So let me explain to folks who are new around here: They’re all streams of consciousness.

Speaking of streams, about 15 minutes ago, we passed the sign for Stinkwater Creek and just now we passed the sign for Drinkwater Pass. Call me crazy but I think these things are way too close to each other.

Where was I? Oh right: They’re ALL streams of consciousness! (Imagine me yelling this with veins bulging out of my neck like Mugatu sending back a frothy latte or Howard Dean revving up his followers after losing the Iowa caucuses or, come to think of it, the image of Dean sending back a frothy latte works well too). I write about 50 G-Files per year. Some are serious. Some are jocular. Some are like a centaur except where the top half is a grizzly bear and the bottom half is an electric AMC Pacer.

“That makes no sense,” you say.

Well, I have two responses to that: First, I know that the Pacer was never an electric car. And B) Forget it — it’s Chinatown. The point is that out of the 50 “news”letters I write every year, I might start one or two earlier in the morning than is their due. And when people tell me I can’t right goodly or that I’m not smaht based on this thing, I feel like they’re the little kid from Airplane! and I’m Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: “Listen kid, tell your old man to pound out this many nouns and verbs every Friday morning after drinking as much as I do the night before . . .”

Anyway, next week, we’ll get back to normal, which I am sure will be a great relief to the people who like pull-my-finger jokes and Chesterton quotes at a safer speed.

Canine Update: Oh man, oh Manoshevitz, are the dogs going to be bummed when we get to the acridly effulgent atmosphere of Washington, D.C. While the humans had a good time, the beasts had a truly great vacation, save for the fact that it’s not clear that they understood it was a vacation. I suspect they think this is our new life now: Long trips in the moving dog den, punctuated by strange beds and thrilling sorties into wild lands full of intoxicating sniffs and excellent places to get exhausted.

This trip definitely had the biggest effect on Zoë. Pippa was just like, “Oh this is a much better place to chase a ball (or stick). Why don’t we come here more often?” But for Zoë, it was like a switch had been flipped. She’s much more like the wild — and wildly jealous — dog she was a few years ago. We shared a house with my brother-in-law and their kids and their chocolate lab, Penny (who’s a lovely singer by the way). Zoë spent days keeping Penny from getting close to either me or Jessica or her food bowl — or Pippa’s. In other words, her position was: “These humans, their affections, and their food stores are mine, strange dog!”

The problem is that Penny, being a chocolate lab, is such a happy-go-lucky girl that she’d forget there was any conflict every ten minutes or so.

Penny: “Oh Hello, Hooman, would you like to pat me or maybe throw a ball?”

<cue “Flight of the Valkyrie” music> Enter flying snarling Dingo: “Away Canadian interloper!” (Penny’s actually from Washington State, but that’s not how Zoë sees it. She’s a bit of a nativist).

Repeat.

There were remarkably fewer tensions outdoors, though. Zoë didn’t want much to do with Penny outside, but she wasn’t a big concern. When you add in the thrill of being able to swim in cold, clean water, chase varmints, wake up to brisk weather, and go on very long hikes with the whole Goldberg pack, I think the girls had a grand time.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

This week’s (first) Remnant

Wednesday’s column

Thursday’s GLoP/Remnant

Friday’s column

And now, the weird stuff.

Lazy crocodile

Parasite vs. parasite

Three ways to destroy the universe

Canada’s mystery lights

How to make a water rocket

Artists with their dogs

The Mall to Y’all water tower

Giant Everglade snakes coming . . .

The surprising sex lives of Neanderthals

When rhinos roamed Washington State

When was the earliest Internet search?

Actual combat footage of the Battle of the Philippines Sea

St. Columba and the Loch Ness Monster

Nazi Germany’s most deadly fighter ace

Florida man arrested for tranquilizing and raping alligators

Florida political candidate says alien abduction doesn’t define her

Clever dog plays fetch with itself

Placebos . . . work?

Man accused of taunting bison sentenced to 130 days in jail

Security guard films all of his flatulence for six months

Sexually frustrated dolphin ruins French beach

Wasps getting drunk, going on stinging rampages

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (But not the guy who refused to get out of the left lane back in Minnesota. You’re dead to me),

I’m starting this “news”letter behind the steering wheel of a rented RV in a parking lot in downtown Sandpoint, Idaho. I have no idea where I’ll be when I finish, but I’ll update you as we proceed.

It’s very strange being on a family vacation out West during what many are saying is the craziest week of the Trump presidency. I’m not sure it’s true that this was the craziest week, though Tuesday was like Magilla Gorilla’s tasting menu: bananas. Conventional writers would never have had the Manafort verdict and the Cohen plea deal happen within minutes of each other. But part of the problem is that it’s so hard to tell what’s weird anymore. Really, ever since 2015, the writers of this timeline have gotten so desperate to keep the audience off balance that it’s hard to get your bearings. Everything is accelerated. Bret Baier likes to say that the news cycle needs to be converted into dog years. The Omarosa thing happened like two weeks ago. The Helsinki summit was last month. That Mike Pence press conference where he started pole-dancing in assless chaps in the Rose Garden to the tune of “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” to celebrate the latest Space Force victory was only like six weeks ago.

Oh whoops, sorry — that’s a sneak peek from the 2019 season finale.

(Oh that reminds me: You know how there are certain idioms that are irrational or illogical but nonetheless convey meaning? For instance “I could care less” makes no sense logically to express the idea that you don’t care at all. But save among pedants, it works just fine at conveying that idea. Well, “assless chaps” is another irrational term. After all, all chaps are assless. But for some reason, this term has emerged as the way to describe that gay-biker look of wearing chaps without any pants underneath. So just as “I couldn’t care less” is logically the correct way to express the idea that you don’t care, “assfull chaps” should be the correct term for the biker look. But, what are you going to do? Language is an emergent system not a slave to reason.)

So where was I? (Well, I was in the Sandpoint parking lot. I’m now on I-90 West heading, uh, west).

Oh right, everything seems off, like the roast beef at a Canadian deli or a universe where the Triumvirate touched the Orb. Time hasn’t just accelerated; it seems less linear. Odd moments from the past are suddenly relevant again. Who knew that the Clinton impeachment would be so relevant again? Who predicted that Lanny Davis would be brought back into this story like Bobby Ewing in the shower at the end of the ninth season of Dallas? I would never have guessed that Cory Lewandowski was the Three-Eyed Raven.

It’s like every morning we need episode recaps — “Previously on The Trump Show . . .” — to remind us what to look out for.

I’ve explained — at book length — that I think that this tendency to see politics as a form of entertainment goes a long way toward explaining why our politics have gotten so nasty. Entertainment is a shortcut to the more primitive parts of our brains, where the formal, procedural, and rational rules of the extended order have little sway. No one cares when the hero does something illegal in a movie or TV show so long as it’s clear that he or she is the hero.

Nowhere is this more true than in the mobster genre. Whether it’s Tony Montana, Tony Soprano, or some other criminal protagonist not named “Tony,” we cheer him on even if he does horrible things. This seems relevant given how The Trump Show has veered into some of the most clichéd writing of the series, with the president openly castigating snitches and praising omertà.

The problem is that this isn’t a TV show.

American politics isn’t a TV show about the mob. And it’s not a courtroom drama either. One of the points I used to make all the time during the Clinton impeachment saga is that legality is a separate lane from morality. Speaking of flashbacks, here’s an excerpt from an essay I wrote for National Review 20 years ago:

Greta Van Susteren and her colleagues have carried this mode of analysis into the political arena. It has had a lobotomizing effect on civic discourse. For example, on September 21 on Larry King Live Judge Robert Bork asserted that a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court would be, and should be, impeached if he was sexually serviced by an intern in his chambers — even if he never lied about it. That someone should be punished for something that is not a crime flummoxed Miss Van Susteren to the point of incoherence, “Maybe if he’s a bachelor, may — have — what if he’s a . . . bachelor? . . . as consenting adults?”

There was a time when poor manners and dishonorable behavior were judged as reprehensible as committing a crime. In Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Claude Rains tries to commit suicide on the Senate floor because he has disgraced himself, not because he’s going to jail. Today if one has violated every tenet of decency but stopped short of violating criminal law — a constantly moving goalpost — then one is merely expressing oneself (like Larry Flint) or minding one’s own business (like David Cash, the vile Berkeley student who stood aside as his friend raped and murdered a young girl). We are greeted constantly with the images of scoundrels triumphantly leaving courthouses celebrating the fact that their repugnant behavior was found not to have technically violated the law.

Now the president of the United States benefits from this new standard.

(Fun fact: Van Susteren refused to ever look me in the eye or speak to me after I wrote that essay.)

In my Friday column, I try to make a point that seems very difficult for some people to understand: Rudy Giuliani’s defense of the president is entirely defensible because Giuliani’s job is to protect Donald Trump, full stop. But his arguments in defense of the president aren’t transferable. Donald Trump isn’t your client; Donald Trump is your president. In other words, your expectations of the president and the presidency are entirely different from Rudy Giuliani’s.

Imagine one of your kids drew a picture on the kitchen wall with a red Sharpie. You assemble the kids at the scene of the crime and ask the most likely culprit — the one with ink all over his hands — “Did you do this?”

Before the literally red-handed child can answer, his sister interrupts: “I have advised my brother not to answer your questions. I think you are trying to railroad my client into a perjury trap.”

You might laugh. You might not. You might admire your daughter’s loyalty to her brother. But you probably wouldn’t take it very seriously.

My point is not to compare the president of the United States to a toddler (that’s Dan Drezner’s beat). It’s simply to illustrate that standards vary with the context. Defense lawyers get a pass in our society to make horribly dishonest arguments in the name of keeping the system fair and just. But we’re not supposed to internalize those arguments as a standard in every realm of life. A Catholic in the confessional won’t get far with the priest if he declines to answer on the grounds that he wants to avoid a perjury trap. A husband with strange lipstick on his collar would be well advised to pursue a different defense as well.

It used to be a standard argument among conservatives that issues of right and wrong shouldn’t be replaced by legalistic arguments about legal and illegal. It’s in the president’s self-interest not to testify. It may be even in his interest to fire Jeff Sessions. But would it be right? Would it be consistent with his obligations as president?

There are non-ludicrous arguments for contending that the president’s self-interest and the national interest are aligned. But you don’t hear them much, do you? Oh sure, every now and then you hear that the president shouldn’t be distracted by the Mueller probe when he’s achieving peace in our time in North Korea and all the other winning. But the real passion of his defenders is all about the supposed persecution of the president and Whataboutism about Hillary. And even when you do hear the allegedly high-minded arguments, it might be useful to ask yourself: Would these people be making the same argument if Hillary Clinton were president?

When Evil Becomes Inconvenient

I know we’re pretty far along now (just outside Spokane in fact), but the point I actually wanted to make wasn’t about any of this stuff. In my first column of the week, I noted that nearly every political evil can be found on display in China: slavery, discrimination, religious persecution, xenophobia, tyranny, mass-political indoctrination, colonialism, cultural genocide, and so on. And yet, the outcry against these things in America and the West is a tiny fraction of what it was with regard to South Africa in the 1980s or Israel today. Why?

Some of the political answers are pretty obvious — and have much merit. A few that come to mind: China is non-Western, and many of these sins are supposed to be unique to white Europeans; China is a victim (or “victim”) of colonialism, and so we shouldn’t judge it harshly; China is very powerful, and realpolitik dictates that we be diplomatic; and so on.

But there’s another reason. As you may have noticed, I’ve become much more interested in evolutionary psychology of late, particularly the topic of coalitional instincts. The coalition instinct is the programming that helped us form strategic groups that advance our self-interest. We are a social species and cooperation is what helped us skyrocket to the top of the food chain. John Tooby, one of the founders of the field, explains, “The primary function that drove the evolution of coalitions is the amplification of the power of its members in conflicts with non-members.”

He continues:

This function explains a number of otherwise puzzling phenomena. For example, ancestrally, if you had no coalition you were nakedly at the mercy of everyone else, so the instinct to belong to a coalition has urgency, preexisting and superseding any policy-driven basis for membership. This is why group beliefs are free to be so weird. Since coalitional programs evolved to promote the self-interest of the coalition’s membership (in dominance, status, legitimacy, resources, moral force, etc.), even coalitions whose organizing ideology originates (ostensibly) to promote human welfare often slide into the most extreme forms of oppression, in complete contradiction to the putative values of the group. Indeed, morally wrong-footing rivals is one point of ideology, and once everyone agrees on something (slavery is wrong) it ceases to be a significant moral issue because it no longer shows local rivals in a bad light. Many argue that there are more slaves in the world today than in the 19th century. Yet because one’s political rivals cannot be delegitimized by being on the wrong side of slavery, few care to be active abolitionists anymore, compared to being, say, speech police. (Emphasis mine).

Note the causality here. The moral repugnance of slavery is derived from the fact that a rival coalition supports it. Now, I don’t think Tooby is saying that hatred for slavery is simply a product of coalitional us-vs.-themism. But I do think he makes a very good point that when some objectively evil practices are no longer convenient as cudgels against coalitional rivals, they lose much of their power and intensity. This is one reason why I think the anti-Israel movement will get much worse in the West in the near future — because support for Israel is becoming polarized between rival coalitions.

Much of the stuff that liberals hate about conservatives — and vice versa — is driven by similar coalitional dynamics. It helps explain so much of the seeming (and real) hypocrisy of our time. Bill Clinton was the Big Man of his coalition back in the day, and so feminists and other liberals who had spent so much time denouncing sexual harassment abandoned, bent, or suspended their principles in order to defend his behavior. Today is almost a mirror image of those days. Trump is the Big Man of his coalition. His sexual behavior — proven and alleged — is as inconvenient for the virtuecrat and “Character Counts” Right as Bill Clinton’s was for the feminist Left. The people who once defended — even celebrated — Clinton’s sexual escapades are now horrified by Trump’s, and the people once horrified by Clinton’s behavior are now insisting that King Solomon got a lot of tail on the side, too. The people who once hitched their wagons to petty legalisms are now waxing poetic about norms and the spirit of democracy and the people who once espoused commitment to higher authorities and deeper morality over the mere letter of the law are excusing behavior they wouldn’t tolerate from their plumber.

One can only imagine what’s in store in potential future spinoffs, such as Avenatti Presidency or The Pence Show.

Various & Sundry

Canine Update: This could be a very long Canine Update, but as my laptop is almost out of power and cell reception may not last much longer, I’ll keep it short. The simple fact is that there have been days when it’s not so much that we took our dogs on vacation than that they brought us along for theirs (Pippa really loved Lake Michigan). And when we try to do any vacationing without them, They Are Not Amused.

Now, as I discuss in the next episode of The Remnant, one of the unforeseen problems on this trip has been the fact that Zoë and Pippa do not understand the point of the RV (BTW, we are not driving that behemoth pictured in last week’s G-File. That was a stock photo. We’re in a smaller vehicle — a Winnebago Trend to be exact). A big reason we opted to rent the RV wasn’t because we’re so into camping. I’m a great indoorsman raised in New York City. My wife is an Alaskan with a deep skepticism about camping in the Lower 48. No, a big part of the reason we got this thing was so that my daughter wouldn’t have to be stuck in the back seat for 6,000 miles with two, often stinky, dogs. Well, the stinkers didn’t get the memo. On the road, they spend all of their time crammed up front with us. Anyway, they had a grand time in Montana and an even better one in Idaho. Pippa has gotten to do an enormous amount of swimming and Zoë is giddy with all the varmint scents and critter chasing. Yesterday, we really wore them out at Green Bay (the one in Idaho, not the one with the socialist football team). Tiring out one’s dogs is one of the great under-appreciated satisfactions in life. Anyway, more to come, I’m sure.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

This week’s Remnant, on book publishing

China’s Jim Crow

Rudy Giuliani’s selfish defense of Trump

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

The 50th anniversary of “Hey Jude”

WWII shipwrecks around the world

Cowabunga

The first face transplant

Stranded cows

The universe is disappearing

The end is near

Cold War codebreakers

Because of the erotica? Why so many people still believe in Bigfoot

Why kids hate their vegetables

Venezuela hyperinflation

An escape through fire

A calculator made from rollercoasters in Rollercoaster Tycoon 2

What would happen if you detonated a nuclear bomb in the Marianas Trench?

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader (Especially future contributors to my GoFundMe page),

I am currently in the passenger seat of our family fun mobile, passing mile marker 138 on I-70.

I will confess that the fun hasn’t actually kicked in yet. The daughter is not, uh, completely sold on the whole concept of RVing across America and, frankly, neither are the dogs. They’ve spent the first couple hours to Breezewood, Pa., jockeying for position and trying to get us to lower the windows. The daughter has been looking at a screen while perfecting her sighing powers (she can multitask!).

Even though I got up extra early to exercise the beasts before we got on the road, the doggos became so anxious that we felt we had to give them some mild tranquilizers because it had become clear that they had convinced themselves of some QAnon–type conspiracy theory: Apparently, we rented this massive family truckster to take them to a vet hundreds of miles away. It took a long time for the canine ludes to kick in. And even then, Zoë refused to get out of the front passenger seat or even lie down. She’d just stare at the open road until her eyes closed and her head dropped, like Vic Hitler the Narcoleptic Comic in Hill Street Blues or pretty much anyone tasked with reading 350 editorials on the threat to the free press. Meanwhile, poor Pippa keeps trying to hide in the foot space under the dashboard, only to occasionally pop up as if she forgot to tell you something really important, like, “Nobody Expects the Spaniel Inquisition!”

Anyway, leaving Breezewood, we missed the correct exit and headed in the wrong direction for about 8,000 miles (at least it felt that way). When this trip is over, there will be a major Truth Commission to determine who was to blame for this human error, me or my wife’s husband.

Oh, and for those of you who don’t know, Breezewood, Pa., (Hellmouth 46.B according to the Department of Transportation), is neither breezy nor woody. While it does have a long tradition of existence, its charms can be summarized by its unofficial slogan: “All of the Amenities of Pedro’s South of the Border, None of the Entertainment Value.”

Our plan is to keep driving until we get to someplace past Chicago and then “camp” in the parking lot of a Walmart or some similar four-star patch of asphalt.

Our ultimate goal, of course, is to collect all of the Infinity Stones, but that’s not important right now. Our ultimate destination on this trip, however, is the Pacific Northwest, first the San Juan Islands (where we got married) and then Oregon.

People often ask me, “Why are you eating off my plate? Do I know you?”

But that’s not relevant either. Others ask me why the Goldberg Family takes to the road so often. This is a question that I’ve asked myself many times, usually somewhere in South Dakota. The short answer is we kind of have it in our blood. We’ve been doing it for a long time now. We were cross-country vets even before we drove from Fairbanks, Alaska, to Washington, D.C., in an old caddy . . .

[Cue flashback-sequence sound effect] The year was 2002. The Fair Jessica was pregnant with what would become the eye-rolling–sighing-machine in the back of the RV. Cosmo the Wonderdog was young and frisky and full of canine pride, having actually chased a herd of caribou in the Canadian Rockies. And then we had our run-in with the law.

Good times.

Anyway, as I’ve argued many times, I think it’s a particularly useful thing for people in my line of work to drive around this country. And I don’t mean in a reportorial sense, though that’s good too. I just mean that it’s useful to remind yourself how big and diverse this country is. And when I say “diverse,” I don’t simply mean in the rainbow-flag sense of different kinds of individuals — I mean in the full sense: There are diverse communities, diverse geographies, economies, traditions, climates, you name it. Whether you’re on the left or the right, it’s important to be reminded that it is literally impossible to run a country of this scope and breadth from Washington. Or at least it’s impossible without doing incredible damage to this country and its traditions.

I don’t want to get into a wonky or even partisan discussion here. Right now, both parties are full of people who think this country can be run by a relative handful of people — or even one person – sitting in Washington. They think they’re smarter than the market or the people closest to the problems on the ground. I’m sure you could drive across this country and still be confused about such things. But it’s got to be harder. And that’s a start.

Anyway, I’m gonna cut this thing short because I’ve gotta start driving again soon. If you follow me on Twitter, look for updates from the road. I don’t know how frequent they’ll be, but I’ll try to chime in from my patch of four-star asphalt.

Various & Sundry

Oh, speaking of asses and faults. Despite all of the stress of getting on the road and trying to figure out why the fridge doesn’t work already, coping with the fistful of dingo hair that I’ve already inhaled, and all of the other stuff that — so far — has us far short of whistling zippidy-doo-dah out of our nethers, I am still downright ecstatic to be getting out of Washington and away from political Twitter, if only for a day or two.

I feel like Morgan Freeman’s narration of my departure should only be interrupted by the thundering crescendo of “Solsbury Hill” playing in the background.

I’ll spare you all the details for now because I’m trying to use this trip like Andy Dufresne’s bar of soap after he emerged from that river of John Cardillo’s tweets.

But suffice it to say that I am stunned that so many people can simultaneously argue that Trump is a man of great character and that it is outrageous for me to suggest otherwise even though it doesn’t actually matter if he’s not a man of great character because character doesn’t matter, and yet I am a man of low character because I said character matters at a time when we’re at war, and saying “character matters” undermines Donald Trump even though character doesn’t matter and even if it did, he’s got character out the ying yang.

Anyway, I don’t want to waste any of your time or my time rebutting this nonsense in detail — I just hated leaving town without making it clear how incredibly stupid I think all of it is. (Also: Here’s a tip to the uninitiated: If you email me or tweet me horrendously vile things about my wife, daughter, dogs, or deceased family members, I’m not going to consider your character reference for the president very persuasive. I’m also not going to engage you in a lengthy conversation.)

Also, since there’s no canine update this week (you got that at the top), I needed to put something here.

Here’s the other stuff.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Omarosa’s revenge

The racism double standard

The Trump White House NDAs

Me on Special Report

The latest Remnant, with Matt Continetti

Whither the center?

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Scientists find “world’s oldest cheese” in a 3,300-year-old Egyptian tomb, but you can’t eat it

The Bermuda Triangle mystery . . . solved?

A hero of the Holocaust

Coffee-wielding preteens defeat would-be kidnapper

Should the U.S. Air Force bomb forest fires?

How to fall asleep in 120 seconds

Illinois woman chooses Taco Bell for 101st birthday, is “hooked” on Nacho Fries

America’s hottest export is . . .

Robots falling down

Robots can hypnotize children

When people thought lambs came from plants

A mummy recipe

A history of the tube sock

Why elephants don’t get cancer

WWII Navy hazing rituals

Texas man claims 3-mile shot

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is Jonah Goldberg’s weekly “news”letter, the G-File. Subscribe here to get the G-File delivered to your inbox on Fridays.

Dear Reader,

“Save Ike from the Kikes.”

I’d better explain.

This weekend marks the one-year anniversary of the Nazi troll armies’ march on Charlottesville, Va. To commemorate it, there will even be a march in Washington. No doubt many a parent’s fridge will be drained of provisions for the arduous journey to the nation’s capital.

While all attention will surely be on these sad events, it’s worth noting that we missed the 60th anniversary of another Washington protest just two weeks ago: The above-referenced “Save Ike from the Kikes” rally outside the White House on July 29, 1958.

It was led by George Lincoln Rockwell, the head of the National Committee to Free America from Jewish Domination.

The rally cost Rockwell some of his financial backers and hurt him with his own family too. But Rockwell, while shaken by the failure of the event, had his confidence restored when he was, in his telling, visited by Adolf Hitler in a series of dreams. He went on to found the American Nazi Party (and for a time tried to form a popular front against the Jooooz with the Nation of Islam. He called Elijah Muhammed the black Adolf Hitler. History is fun.).

But I get ahead of myself.

Right from the Beginning

That was 1958. In 1955, National Review appeared.

“A vigorous and incorruptible journal of conservative opinion is — dare we say it? — as necessary to better living as Chemistry,” wrote William F. Buckley in the mission statement in the first issue. Buckley also noted, “We begin publishing, then, with a considerable stock of experience with the irresponsible Right.”

That experience would only get more extensive over the years to come.

One of the first challenges came from the venerable magazine The American Mercury — of H. L. Mencken and Albert Jay Nock fame — which had been bought in 1952 by Russell Maguire, a thoroughly anti-Semitic crank, in the tradition of Henry Ford and other tycoons who thought that the perfidious Jews were behind all that was wrong with the world. (I’m sorry to tell Charlie Cooke that Maguire also counted the Thompson Machine Gun business among his holdings.) At first, Buckley would later recall, Maguire kept his Judeophobia out of his magazine. But as Maguire grew more confident, the once-admirable Mercury sank deeper into the swampy muck.

“In the first three years of National Review Buckley and the editors had expressed their antipathy to the ‘irresponsible right’ by ignoring rather than criticizing it,” John Judis writes in his useful biography of WFB. But by the spring of 1959, “he was forced to go further.”

In January of 1959, The Mercury had run an editorial “revealing” a Jewish conspiracy of world conquest along the lines of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Buckley was under pressure from backers of NR and others to publicly rebuke and denounce The Mercury. But some on the NR board worried that it would cost the fledgling magazine many of its subscribers. One board member, Mrs. A. E. Bonbrake, whom Judis describes as “a Forest Hills housewife whom Buckley had promoted to the board as a representative grass-roots activist,” asked, “Since when is it the job of National Review to attack supposedly anti-Semitic publications?”

(More about that “supposedly” later.)

“But Buckley felt hypocritical at remaining silent,” Judis recounts. “He wrote Bonbrake, “I do not feel comfortable criticizing Liberals . . . for not disavowing objectionable Liberals, when I do not myself [disavow objectionable conservatives].”

Buckley first settled for a compromise: National Review’s editors would not write for The Mercury nor would National Review publish anyone associated with it. If you were on their masthead, you couldn’t be on ours. Remember, The Mercury had long been a respected publication on the right, and many of the writers at National Review had cut their teeth writing for it. Many were on both mastheads, in one capacity or another. No longer. You can be with us or with them, but not both. All but one writer sided with National Review.

James Burnham and Whittaker Chambers enthusiastically agreed with Buckley. Chambers welcomed the memo as a “liberation.” “How good, and how strong, it is to take a principled position,” Chambers wrote to Buckley. “It defines, and defining, frees. Now what is good and strong outside us can draw to us, about whom there is, in this connection, no longer question, equivocation. The dregs will be drawn to the dregs, and sink where they belong.”

A few subscriptions were canceled, but not many. Quickly, other leading conservatives followed NR’s example and repudiated The Mercury.

Maguire was furious that Buckley had broken the popular-front orthodoxy of the Right. Maguire soon shriveled up to a footnote in obscure books; Buckley went the other direction, to understate it dramatically.

Now, I am not trying to whitewash National Review’s history. NR would go on to make some morally grievous editorial errors, particularly on civil rights. It would also rally to the defense of cranks, anti-Semites, and demagogues on too many occasions, albeit on free-speech grounds or in the name of the noble cause of anti-Communism.

And with the advantage of hindsight, one can argue that NR dawdled in excommunicating other elements of the irresponsible Right. That is always an issue with conservatives, who, by nature and design, prefer to measure at least twice before cutting even once. (“I must bear with infirmities until they fester into crimes,” as Edmund Burke said.)

But the principle that National Review should see itself as a steward of the responsible Right was not only established, it was tested, often. For example, see Al Felzenberg’s excellent account of Buckley’s decision to defenestrate the John Birch Society or Buckley’s famous essay “In Search of Anti-Semitism.”

In other words, if you want to argue that NR imperfectly lived up to its ideals, I can offer no categorical refutation. But I am unaware of any human or human institution that can be exonerated from such a charge. Indeed, no realistic moral principle is wounded by the charge that humans fail to execute it perfectly.

I bring all of this up because I am fairly disgusted by the current state of affairs.

As I recount in my latest column, the debate over whether or not social-media platforms should ban or shun Alex Jones is a sweeping indictment of the collective failure of countless institutions and individuals in our present age.

I am not referring to specific arguments, pro or con, on the question of what Facebook or Twitter should be doing. I find merit on all sides of that debate. I find myself in the darkly shaded portion of the Venn diagram between Jonathan Last’s camp and David French’s.

What bothers me is how high these bucks had to go before anyone thought, “Maybe it should stop with me?”

I’ve been writing a lot about how entertainment values have corrupted our politics. As I write in my book, “When we suspend disbelief, we also suspend adherence to the conventions and legalisms of the outside world. Instead, we use the more primitive parts of our brains, which understand right and wrong as questions of ‘us’ and ‘them.’”

This helps explain so much of the kayfabe nature of the Trump presidency, including the “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat” swag among supposed “America First” “nationalists,” Laura Ingraham’s nativist remarks the other night, and this sort of nonsense from Jeanine Pirro.

This isn’t purely a literary or metaphysical argument. The world that the Internet and cable television created flattened the landscape. National Review may still see itself as a gatekeeper, but the high walls that housed the gate, and gave the gate purpose, have been toppled. Tribalism isn’t just about us-vs.-them, it’s also about deferring to fame and status, investing in personalities rather than principles. As institutions lose their hold on us, we put our faith in celebrities.

Fame becomes its own defense, and instead of invoking principles to stigmatize and shun the irresponsible famous, we yoke convenient principles to the cause of rationalizing our feelings. The round peg of the First Amendment is crammed into square holes. Populist and anti-elitist boilerplate is slapped together to protect the indefensible from criticism. So-and-so has an “authentic constituency,” “Who are you to say what is a legitimate point of view?” “Who put you in charge of policing speech?”

Or as Mrs. Bonbrake once put it, “Since when is it the job of National Review to attack supposedly anti-Semitic publications?”

Under the right conditions, swamps grow. Like water seeking its level, bogs claim whatever they are allowed to claim until stopped by nature or man. That “supposedly” is the rhetorical device that says, “Let the swamp grass grow, it’s not my responsibility to prune it.” There was no legitimate defense of The Mercury against the charge of anti-Semitism. But by saying it was only “supposedly” anti-Semitic, Mrs. Bonbrake was really saying, “I choose not to care about the true or the good; instead I will let evil thrive, sheltered by a benefit of the doubt both unearned and unwanted by the rightly accused.”

I am not a huge fan of the argument that says, “The only cure for bad speech is more speech.” But if that argument is to mean anything at all, it must be applied seriously. In other words, if you want to defend the speech of Alex Jones or the bigots swarming out of the swamps, you cannot then denounce, belittle, or mock the exercise of anyone’s right to condemn that speech.

When it falls to a bunch of giant corporations — or the federal government — to decide what speech is permissible, it is usually a sign that the rest of civil society has failed to do its job. It is axiomatic that in a free society with a limited government, customs and norms should be strong and robust. Authoritarian and totalitarian regimes require that all the rules be set from the top. The people have no right to organize institutions around values of their own choosing.

Back when Steve Bannon was still ginning up the alt-right and trying to turn Breitbart into a platform for it, the response from many on the right was to adopt a popular-front mentality and genuflect to the popularity and fame of performance artists such as Milo Yiannopoulos. Some of this was motivated by simple ignorance of the truth — an ignorance people such as Bannon and Yiannopoulos were all too eager to fuel. My view then, and now, is that everyone should not only be forced to choose between traditional conservatism and the alt-right but that they should force that choice on others. The correct response to the question, “Who am I to call out supposed bigots?” is “You’re a human being, an American, a Christian, Jew, conservative, liberal, or citizen.”

The same goes for cynical psychopaths such as Alex Jones. It was outrageous for Donald Trump to go on his show and praise him. It is outrageous and irresponsible that mainstream outlets blithely give airtime to clickbait hucksters and racist rabble-rousers.

The other day, I saw Candace Owens on several Fox News shows. I am not a fan of Owens, but my objection is not that she appeared on Fox or that Fox invited her to appear. My objection is that she has been a guest on Alex Jones’s Infowars.

Now, it is unfair to say that Owens should be banned for violating a rule that did not exist in the past. After all, lots of people have been getting the message that celebrity is its own reward and that anything done in service to your “personal brand” is justified if it “works” — in the form of getting you more clicks, ratings, or YouTube subscribers. But there would be nothing wrong and much that is right if Fox simply said, going forward, “If you exercise your free-speech rights by appearing on Alex Jones’s show, we will exercise our free-speech rights and bar you from ours.”

Oh, and if you think such niceties are unnecessary today because “winning” is the highest principle in an existential war with “the libs,” bear in mind that Buckley, Chambers, Burnham, and the other happy few conservatives at NR were far more outnumbered in 1955, and that the institutional forces arrayed against them were far more daunting, than anything conservatives face today. And yet Buckley understood, as he put it in Up from Liberalism, that “conservatism must be wiped clean of the parasitic cant that defaces it.”

Cultures are shaped by incentives. The GOP has been grievously wounded and deformed by the refusal of conservatives, in and out of elective office, to lay down the correct incentives. By refusing to defend conservative dogma against “supposedly” racist and nativist forces, our dogma is being erased like the battlements of a sand castle when the tide comes in.

Various & Sundry

About Rockwell: I did not mention it above because it was irrelevant to the point I was making. But I know that some will play Gotcha! and point out that George Lincoln Rockwell briefly (less than six months) worked for National Review around the time of its founding. He had nothing to do with the editorial side of things — he was hired as a contractor to sell subscriptions on college campuses. When Rockwell’s anti-Semitism and Hitlerphilia manifested itself, Buckley condemned him. Years later, when the Liberty Lobby accused Buckley of having a close working relationship with Rockwell, Buckley sued and won.

Author’s Note: I apologize for the tardy nature of this “news”letter. On Friday, I had to appear on Fox News in the a.m. from NYC. I’m here because I had to pick up my daughter at the NYC drop-off for summer camp. And tending to an emotionally and physically exhausted 15-year-old took precedence. She went to bed at her grandma’s house last night at 5:30. As of this writing (10:30 a.m.), she is still asleep.

Animal Update: Because I am here at my mom’s pad, I am hanging out with her very, very fancy cats. This is Fafoon, and she will not be trifled with. Paddington, meanwhile, is actually a very cheery and fun feline, but he has very strong views about selfies. I’d show you a picture of Winston, the Scottish Fold, but he despises paparazzi. Meanwhile, Zoë and Pippa are doing great. Kirsten has taken them on some wonderful adventures this week. Would that we could all enjoy the simple pleasures of being a well-tended spaniel. I particularly love this picture. There was only moment of drama this week, when Pippa, frightened by a thunderstorm, got herself stuck under our enormous and enormously heavy bed frame. I will be home tomorrow to resume normal protocols.

ICYMI . . .

Last week’s G-File

Dude, where’s my God?

Sarah Jeong, Schumpeter’s child

David French is right about Alex Jones

Stephen Colbert is (was) wrong about Trump and me

Trump’s kayfabe

The latest Ricochet GLoP Culture podcast

My magazine essay about They Live (paywall)

Is Alex Jones our fault?

And now, the weird stuff.

Debby’s Friday links

Goat Simulator IRL

A low-speed chase

Double twin marriage

Florida Man achievement unlocked

New Ernest Hemingway short story being published

Rabid wolves attack helpless child

China’s bikeshare graveyards

How 2,000-year-old roads predict modern prosperity

D. B. Cooper mystery solved?

Abandoned Russia

Dogs steal package

How a textile shortage led to the invention of the bikini

How to steal a shark

The black sarcophagus opens

Swimming the English Channel

Aww

Man with Down Syndrome runs sock business

The black sarcophagus opens

Swimming the English Channel

Aww

Man with Down Syndrome runs sock business