Liberals are uncomfortable with the topic of patriotism because their core philosophical impulses are to make America a different country than it is. This is not an evil impulse, and it can certainly manifest itself in patriotic ways. ... But at the most basic level love is about acceptance. If you are constantly trying to change the person you claim to love into someone he or she is not, there comes a point when it's reasonable to ask whether you really, truly, deeply love the person for who he or she is. Barack Obama campaigned promising to "fundamentally transform" America. We would not think a husband who promises to "fundamentally transform" his wife has a healthy love for her. Jonah Goldberg Book: The Tyranny of Cliche`s: How liberals cheat in the war of ideas. Sentinel; p 127-8
Experts tend to suffer from groupthink. ... Moreover, because experts tend to believe more than most in the absolute authority of experts, the average expert in the room will defer to the judgment of the superexpert. ... Some recent examples include Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs, the failure to find WMDs in Iraq, and, of course, the release of New Coke. ... One of the more fascinating counterintuitive facts of life is that the introduction of dumb people can make a group of smart people collectively smarter. Bluntly stated, some stupid people are too stupid to automatically defer to smart people. Remember the story about the truck that got jammed in the tunnel because it was too small? All the experts were stumped. But some kid yelled, "Let the air out of the tires," saving the day. Jonah Goldberg Book: The Tyranny of Cliche`s: How liberals cheat in the war of ideas. 2012. Sentinel; p 93-4
Indeed, some of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated. Jonah Goldberg Palinophobes Hate First, Ask Questions Later
(I)f libertarianism could account for children and foreign policy, it would be the ideal political philosophy. Jonah Goldberg Liberal Fascism
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