Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg's mother Lucianne Goldberg was involved in the Clinton–Lewinsky scandal as detailed in The New Yorker.[22][23] Goldberg has spoken of his mother and the Lewinsky scandal:

My mother was the one who advised Linda Tripp to record her conversations with Monica Lewinsky and to save the dress. I was privy to some of that stuff, and when the administration set about to destroy Lewinsky, Tripp, and my mom, I defended my mom and by extension Tripp ... I have zero desire to have those arguments again. I did my bit in the trenches of Clinton's trousers.[24]

These tapes became the focal point of the Lewinsky scandal.

Beginning in 1998, Goldberg was an editor and wrote a twice-weekly column at National Review, which is syndicated to numerous papers across the United States, and at Townhall.com. National Review consists of fellow contributors such as Ramesh Ponnuru, Richard Brookhiser, and Dinesh D'Souza.[25]

Goldberg also wrote the "Goldberg File"[26] at National Review, a column that was generally lighter and more focused on humor and cultural commentary. Goldberg's column often made pop-culture references to works including Star Trek and Battlestar Galactica, of which he has said he is a fan.[27][28] Goldberg was also a frequent contributor at the National Review blog The Corner, often authoring posts with light-hearted, comedic and pop-culture references.

Goldberg left National Review in May 2019.

Aside from being a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, he has written for The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, The Public Interest, The Wilson Quarterly, The Weekly Standard, The New York Post, and Slate. The Los Angeles Times added Goldberg to its editorial lineup in 2005.

Goldberg is the host of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg,[9] an interview podcast that covers a variety of topics in the spheres of politics, conservative theory, and current events. Goldberg is a frequent participant in programs produced by Ricochet,[29] including the podcast GLoP Culture which features Goldberg, John Podhoretz, and Ricochet co-founder Rob Long.[30] From 2006 to 2010, he was a frequent participant on Bloggingheads.tv.[31]

Goldberg's first book, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (ISBN 0-385-51184-1), was published in January 2008. It reached No. 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list of hardcover nonfiction in its seventh week on the list.[32] While in preparation, the book had a number of different subtitles, including "The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods" and "The Totalitarian Temptation From Mussolini to Hillary Clinton". After being published in paperback, the subtitle was changed to The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change. Some historians have denounced the book as being "poor scholarship",[33] "propaganda",[34] and not scholarly.[35] Other reviewers described the book as "provocative"[36] and "a wealth of challenging insights, backed up by thorough research".[37] The audiobook version of Liberal Fascism was narrated by Johnny Heller. Goldberg followed the book with The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas in 2012. The paperback edition of Tyranny of Cliches came out on April 30, 2013. Goldberg himself narrated the audiobook version. His most recent work, Suicide of the West, was released in 2018.

In May 2012, Goldberg was touted as a "two-time Pulitzer prize nominee" in the book jacket of his second book, The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas. NBC News reporter Bill Dedman pointed this out as misleading because Goldberg had in fact only been an entrant in the Pulitzer contest and had never been nominated as a finalist, as the moniker "Pulitzer nominee" would seem to suggest. Becoming an entrant in the Pulitzer contest requires only that either the author of a written work submit an entry form along with a small fee or that someone else does so on their behalf. Following Dedman's reporting, Goldberg and his publishing company acknowledged the mistake and subsequently removed the line from the book jacket.[38]

Some frequent topics of his articles include censorship, meritocracy, liberty, federalism and interpretation of the Constitution, his attacks on the ethics and morals of liberals and Democrats, and his disagreements with libertarians also appear often in his writings. He was a supporter of the Iraq War and has advocated American military intervention elsewhere in the world. He has defended historical colonialism in places such as Africa as more beneficial than it is generally given credit for; in one column, he suggested that U.S. imperialism on the continent could help solve its persistent problems.[39] When he wrote in October 2006 that invading Iraq was a mistake, he called it a "noble" mistake and still maintained that liberal opponents of the war policy wanted America to fail: "In other words, their objection isn't to war per se; it's to wars that advance U.S. interests. ... I must confess, one of the things that made me reluctant to conclude that the Iraq war was a mistake was my distaste for the shabbiness of the arguments on the antiwar side."[40]

He popularized and expanded on a commentary by the late Time writer William Henry III. Henry had written on the subject of multiculturalism and cultural equality, stating that "it is scarcely the same thing to put a man on the moon as to put a bone in your nose". Goldberg stated that "[m]ulticulturalism—which is simply egalitarianism wrapped in rainbow-colored paper—has elevated the notion that all ideas are equal, all systems equivalent, all cultures of comparable worth."[39]

He has criticized the idea of "social justice" as meaning "anything its champions want it to mean" or "'good things' no one needs to argue for and no one dare be against".[41]

Goldberg has publicly feuded with people on the political left, like Juan Cole, over U.S. Iraq policy, and Air America Radio commentators such as Janeane Garofalo, who has accused him of being a chickenhawk on the Iraq War. On February 8, 2005, Goldberg offered Cole a wager of $1,000 "that Iraq won't have a civil war, that it will have a viable constitution, and that a majority of Iraqis and Americans will, in two years' time, agree that the war was worth it".[42] Cole refused to accept and the wager was never made.[43] Goldberg later conceded that if Cole had accepted the bet, Cole would have won.[44]

Peter Beinart and Goldberg engaged in a discussion on Bloggingheads.tv

Goldberg and Peter Beinart of The New Republic hosted a conservative vs. liberal webtv show, What's your Problem?, from 2007 to 2010. It originally could be found on National Review Online[45] and later moved to Bloggingheads.tv.[31]

Regarding Fox News, Goldberg said, "Look, I think liberals have reasonable gripes with Fox News. It does lean to the right, primarily in its opinion programming but also in its story selection (which is fine by me) and elsewhere. But it's worth remembering that Fox is less a bastion of ideological conservatism and more a populist, tabloidy network."[46]

Goldberg has criticized liberals for disliking Fox News, claiming they have no "problem with the editorializing of MSNBC's Keith Olbermann or Chris Matthews, they think it's just plain wrong for conservatives to play that game".[46] Goldberg has referred to Olbermann as "MSNBC's answer to a question no one asked".[47]