Keep in mind that Eric Alterman is media critic for The Nation-a hysterically left-wing magazine dedicated to the proposition that corporate America, U.S. foreign policy and the Republican Party are criminal, racist or both. The simple reality is that, for him, the Democratic Party is far too conservative.
Jonah GoldbergIn the weeks prior to the war to liberate Afghanistan, a good friend of mine would ask me almost every day, โWhy aren't we killing people yet?โ And I never had a good answer for him. Because one of the most important and vital things the United States could do after 9/11 was to kill people. Call it a โforceful response,โ โdecisive actionโ ' whatever. Those are all nice euphemisms for killing people. And the world is a better place because America saw the necessity of putting steel beneath the velvet of those euphemisms.
Jonah GoldbergBut you're never taught in schools - we don't teach anyone in public schools that government is the problem. We don't teach anyone in college that government is the problem - except maybe a handful of sort of unique, conservative schools. But mainstream media never talks as if government is the problem.
Jonah GoldbergKeep Hope alive, particularly if Hope is the name of a very cute puppy and not some ill-defined abstraction that is in fact code for big government.
Jonah GoldbergThose who say they dislike dogma, or 'certainty', tend to be liars, hypocrites, or simply wrong. What they really dislike is the dogma of those they disagree with. A society that was certain, certain beyond all certainty, that putting its citizens in death camps was wrong, would never put people in death camps. Such things are only possible when you're open to new ideas.
Jonah Goldberg