Jonah Goldberg is promoting his latest "nanny-boo-boo liberals!" coloring book, and Steve Inskeep of NPR basically got him to admit that's exactly what it is. After Inskeep smartly got Goldberg to agree that his book was railing against "politically poll-tested phrases that are designed to shut down debate rather than open it up"—Inskeep fired three fastballs by him.
INSKEEP: Although I'm sure that there are people who can say, well, if you guys can call President Obama a socialist, he's certainly able to call you a social Darwinist. There's probably more evidence for the latter than the former.
GOLDBERG: Well, to a certain extent, sure.
Strike one.
INSKEEP: Well, let's be fair. There are plenty of conservative labels that are applied on the rivals of conservatives. We could go back to the past administration: You're with us or against us. Are you with America, or are you with the other guys? There are plenty of rhetorical devices that are used to shut down debate on the other side, to make it - to not just appeal for unity, but to make it seem unpatriotic if you don't agree.
GOLDBERG: Yeah, no. And some of these things - I absolutely agree.
"Yeah, no"? Strike two.
INSKEEP: So you're opposed to these catchphrases that substitute for arguments. You're opposing making too many assumptions. I want to ask about one that is commonly set on the right, though: Government is the problem - said again and again. In fact, you imagined, I think, in September of last year, a speech that you wished that President Obama would give, and the last sentence was: Government is the problem. Is that an oversimplification? I mean, you're not against having a government.
GOLDBERG: No, I'm not against having a government. Yeah, and it's - I don't know, actually, if that qualifies as the kind of cliche that I'm talking about...
Yer out, Jonah.
Very nice work by Inskeep exposing Jonah for the hack he is—all with a breezy smile.
MORGAN: I'm curious what you're thinking what (inaudible).
GOLDBERG: I would put it [the Bin Laden raid] at -- I don't know, $50 million, $40 million.
MORGAN: Wow. That's cheap in the Republican world?
GOLDBERG: That's cheap in comparison to what the cost of the war on terror is.
MORGAN: No wonder the country got into the mess it did.
GOLDBERG: I suppose that that's supposed to be a really telling point. I'm not quite sure how it is.
MORGAN: I'm just saying the Republican administration obviously led to a huge financial collapse. You wouldn't dispute that.
GOLDBERG: I would and I would also say Barack Obama has spent much, much, much, much more money than the Republicans.
MORGAN: Would you dispute that after eight years of Republican administration the country went into a huge economic collapse?
GOLDBERG: No, but that's a timeline question.
Don't you just love that last bit where Jonah shrugs off Bush/Cheney's presiding over the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression as "a timeline question"? The party of personal responsibility blaming everyone else strikes again!
But Jonah is, of course, totally, hilariously, absolutely wrong about this supposed spending binge under Obama.
"Obama's record spending spree is bankrupting the nation" is yet another Big Lie right-wingers like Goldberg -- who incidentally was a cheerleader for Bush/Cheney while they were turning record surpluses into record deficits -- are telling about Obama. It's a lie Mitt Romney will tell during the campaign.
And it's a lie that the media will probably them get away with.
Pictured: American children enjoying Gilded Age, ca. 1900.
Professional wingnut revisionist historian Jonah Goldberg was very upset that President Obama called the GOP budget -- which pays for tax cuts for rich people by cutting services for poor people -- "Social Darwinism". In a nearly fact-free piece, which he wrote for the Weekly Standard (undoubtedly in crayon), he argues that...
...it’s worth noting that the so-called red-in-tooth-and-claw Gilded Age was a time of massive, historic economic growth. It was when America overtook Britain as the economic powerhouse of the globe. That’s one reason the left has always hated it. When Europe was boldly embracing socialism, America was proving that capitalism was better at generating wealth and lifting people out of poverty.
What a mess.
First, the Gilded Age is generally regarded as the era after the Civil War (ca. 1870s) until the Progressive Era (ca. 1900s). Which European countries were "boldly embracing socialism" before 1900?
Second, anyone who thinks the Gilded Age was an era in which the masses were "lifted people out of poverty" is pathetically, horribly misinformed.
While the rich wore diamonds, many wore rags. In 1890, 11 million of the nation's 12 million families earned less than $1200 per year; of this group, the average annual income was $380, well below the poverty line.
And here's the best part. Jonah argues that it's unfair to characterize the extreme laissez-faire economics of the Gilded Age "Social Darwinism," because that term was simply an invention of a "liberal" historian in the '40s.
But congrats to those of you who recognize left to right, Jonah Goldberg, Sarah Palin, Miss USA herself, Pammy Atlas, and Michelle Malkin, we did leave Ann Coulter (Miss Congeniality!) out on purpose.
Methinks Levin has been reading Jonah Goldberg. How else can you explain his attempt the other day to claim that "liberal historians" have it all wrong, and that the Ku Klux Klan was never a right-wing organization.
Levin: You see, the left tries to write the history for this nation. And the left does that because it wants to encourage people, incentivize people, to move left. To support some kind of a statist agenda. Not the Klan's agenda, but the radical left's agenda -- which, in the end, are pretty similar, frankly. In the end it's all one big circle that meets at a point. Tyranny is tyranny, however it's dressed up. You have tyrants who wear suit and ties, and you have tyrants who wear goofy white uniforms.
Well, as we explained to Jonah, the 1920s Klan was the very epitome of right-wing politics in America, and it has remained so ever since:
The Klan was about much more than mere racism, which was more an expression of its larger mission -- enforcing, through violence, threats, and intimidation, "traditional values" and what it called "100 percent Americanism." It was essentially populist, certainly, but there was no mistaking it for anything "progressive." The latter, in fact, was its sworn enemy.
... And it is not as if the Klan has gone away since. In the ensuing years, it has remained the implacable enemy not merely of civil rights for blacks, but for any minority, including gays and lesbians. Its activities have remained associated with violence of various kinds, including a broad gamut of hate crimes committed against every kind of non-white, or non-Christian, or for that matter non-conservative.
In the recent past, it has revived its nativist roots by becoming vociferously active in the immigration debate, openly sponsoring anti-immigrant rallies at which the Klan robes have come out ...
Indeed, you can look around the Web at various Klan websites, if you care to give them the traffic, and see that this is still the case. For example at Thom Robb's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan site, a page is dedicated to their agenda.
Here it is. See if this looks like a "radical left" agenda to you:
The recognition that America was founded as a Christian nation.
The recognition that America was founded as a White nation.
["America was born as an extension of White European heritage. Those who formed the very ideals that we cherish such as freedom of speech, trial by jury, innocent until proven guilty, free enterprise, etc. were of White European heritage. All of the early laws of the United States from its very inception restricted citizenship to White people and all of the early charters, laws, compacts, etc were signed into effect by White people."]
Repeal the NAFTA and GATT treaties.
Put America FIRST in all foreign matters
Stop all Foreign Aid Immediately
Abolish ALL discriminatory affirmative action programs
Put American troops on our border to STOP the flood of illegal aliens
Abolish all anti-gun laws and encourage every adult to own a weapon
Actively promote love and appreciation of our unique European (White) culture
Outlaw the purchase of American property and industry by foreign corporations and investors.
Drug testing for welfare recipients
Repeal the Federal Reserve Act.
Balance the budget
Rehabilitate our public school system.
A flat income tax should be introduced to allow for the funding of community, state and federal projects.
Abortion should be outlawed except to save the mother's life or in case of rape or incest.
We support the death penalty for those convicted of molestation and rape
We support a national law against the practice of homosexuality
["This is a Christian nation and the Bible condemns homosexual activity and the perversion of our society which it encourages."]
via Digby (this is just some highlights. Please read the entire article)
Perhaps it would be instructive to take another little trip down memory lane. Jonah knows very well what a real story is because he was up to his ears in one of the biggest political sex scandals in history. From Michael Isifkoff's award winning MSM articles on the Lewinsky affair:
There was another guest at Jonah Goldberg's house in the Adams Morgan section of Washington that day. For some months, Newsweek's Isikoff had been in touch with Tripp – "hounding" her, Goldberg claims. Aware that Isikoff knew of rumors that Clinton was having an affair with a former White House staffer, Goldberg suggested to Tripp that she play the tapes for Isikoff. Uncomfortable with the whole taping process, Isikoff declined to listen and left Goldberg's house. In their many phone conversations that fall, Lewinsky complained to Tripp that she was being neglected by the president... By the fall of 1997, Lewinsky was complaining that Clinton's ardor for her seemed to be cooling. He wasn't calling her much, and he rarely returned her increasingly frantic calls. Lewinsky was restless and bored at the Defense Department.
Isikoff listened later, needless to say. So did the entire country. That little meeting at Jonah's house led to the impeachment of the President of the United States. They came this close to forcing him from office. Goldberg and the entire GOP establishment knew without doubt that they had a story and they were not afraid to lead the media to it by the nose. And just look at what an oozing chunk of soap opera tabloid offal it was.
Back in the 1980's, President Ronald Reagan hailed the expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) as "the best anti-poverty, the best pro-family, the best job creation measure to come out of Congress." But as Tax Day approaches, conservatives have forsaken their patron saint, decrying the "redistribution of wealth" for working families provided by the EITC and other tax relief delivered by President Obama. If that sounds familiar, it should. Even as income inequality hit record levels, Republicans during the 2008 campaign called it "welfare."
Conveniently ignoring the fact that total federal taxes as a percentage of GDP have remained roughly 20% since the 1950's, the always execrable Jonah Goldberg on April 6 marked the approach of Tax Freedom Day by claiming "another perfectly good word for it is 'slavery' or, if you prefer, involuntary servitude." Sadly, the Associated Press the next day amplified Goldberg's charge that "We are heading toward being a country where instead of the people deciding how much money the government should have, the government decides how much money the people should have."
In an article titled, "Nearly Half of US Households Escape Fed Income Tax," the AP echoed Ari Fleischer's 2009 charge that "50% of the country gets benefits without paying for them":
Tax Day is a dreaded deadline for millions, but for nearly half of U.S. households it's simply somebody else's problem.
About 47 percent will pay no federal income taxes at all for 2009. Either their incomes were too low, or they qualified for enough credits, deductions and exemptions to eliminate their liability. That's according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a Washington research organization.
But in Republican shorthand dating back to the McCain campaign, that statement morphed into an accusation and a fraud: 40% of Americans pay no taxes.
This canard has been in circulation since the summer of 2008. Parroting right-wing papers including the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Times and Richard Mellon Scaife's Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the McCain campaign argued:
Leading papers call Obama's taxes "welfare"..."government handouts".
Obama raises taxes on seniors, hard working families to give "welfare" to those who pay none. Just as you suspected, Obama's not truthful on taxes.
While Sean Hannity and Rudy Giuliani regurgitated the "welfare" charge last January, former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer kept up the drum beat for Tax Day 2009, deeming Obama's middle class tax cuts a "moral problem" when "50% of the country gets benefits without paying for them."
Of course, they do pay for them. And as the data show, Republican assertions to the contrary represent willful ignorance at best and sheer duplicity at worst.
