Reason Magazine: Nick Gillespie Interviews Jonah Goldberg: ‘The Tyranny of Cliches and Political Discourse’

Source:Reason Magazine- National Review columnist and author Jonah Goldberg.

Source:Real Life Journal 

“Liberals are sure they’re in the reality-based community and anyone who disagrees with them either has a bad brain, or in some other way rejects empiricism and science, and they are the only ones working with the building blocks of facts and reason,” says National Review’s Jonah Goldberg, author of the new book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas.

“And I call bullshit on that.”

Goldberg, who became the editor of National Review Online in 1999, is responsible for creating the tone and format of the highly trafficked website, which built on the magazine’s venerable reputation while signaling, as he puts it, “that this is not your father’s National Review.” Goldberg’s new book, which follows his best-selling 2008 Liberal Fascism, argues that liberals should stop claiming their ideas derive solely from science and fact but never ideology–a way of arguing that stifles honest debate. Liberal arguments sometimes take the form of hackneyed cliches meant to sound self-evident but that in reality disguise a political bent, such as “violence never solves anything” or “I may disagree with you but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it.”

Goldberg sat down with ReasonTV’s Nick Gillespie for a wide-ranging discussion about liberal and conservative discourse, his early vision for National Review Online, and the firing of long-time National Review contributor John Derbyshire for writing a racist article in Taki’s Magazine. Goldberg also explains why he plans to vote for Mitt Romney despite his lack of enthusiasm for the presumptive GOP nominee.”

From Reason Magazine 

This is what I like about Jonah Goldberg and I’ll admit as a Liberal I have a short list of what I like about him. And could lay that out in under a paragraph, but he seems to understand the differences between Liberals and Socialists, at least to this extent. That he describes people who have been called “Modern Liberals”, as Progressives, (people who I could call Socialists) not Liberal. Even though like a lot of right-wingers, still throws out those old stereotypes that make Liberals look more like Socialists.

Jonah even has described his own politics as classical liberal, at least to a certain extent and sounds like a real Conservative in the classical sense. Not someone in today’s Christian-Theocratic-Populist Republican Party, but more with the Barry Goldwater line of thinking ideology, not Rick Santorum. (To use as an example) That’s what I like about Jonah Goldberg, in under a paragraph. But then says things that Liberals don’t believe in ideology, even though we wrote the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, along with Conservatives.

But Jonah says we don’t believe in ideology and that we get on and put people who do believe in ideology and we look down at people, who don’t look at the world exactly the way we do. And to use Jonah Goldberg’s line, “I call bullshit on that”. If Jonah used these stereotypes just to describe people who he sees as “Modern Liberals”, people who are Democratic Socialists, in the so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus mode, then I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Because of the way he describes the politics of a lot of these people.

I agree with Jonah to a certain extent, but when he calls them Liberals and says that “Liberals believe in bloated big government” and our ideology is built around the welfare state. How we can empower the Federal Government to take care of people, again to use Jonah’s line, I call bullshit on him. Because he’s describing the politics of today’s so-called Progressives (who are really Democratic Socialists) and not my politics. And when he focus’s on big government, he only does it from one side of the aisle and doesn’t go after big government supporters from his own side of the aisle. He doesn’t go after the Christian-Right in his own party. Unlike myself who has long enough arms to pat myself on the back.

If Jonah Goldberg wrote a book about the big government leanings about the so-called Congressional Progressive Caucus and other so-called modern Progressive Democrats and then also wrote a book about the big Government leanings about the Religious-Right, then I would take him more seriously. But the current track right now seems to try to make so-called Liberals look like people they aren’t. And only goes after the big government fascist views of one side of the aisle and sound more like a partisan hack to me more than anyone else.