| Editor's Note: Jonah will be back to filing your favorite "news"letter next week. In the meanwhile, we editorial lackeys thoroughly enjoyed reading this blast-from-the-past G-File originally sent on March 22, 2013, and we trust you will too.
Dear Reader (No really, I hold you dear. See below), Well, my friends, this is it. I'm told that starting next week the distribution list for this "news"letter will grow exponentially — if by exponentially, you mean what most Americans mean by exponentially, i.e. "a lot more."
I don't know the particulars, but apparently Fowler got his hands on something called the NOC list and . . . oh crap, I'm thinking of the plot to the first Mission Impossible movie. Anyway, the Goldberg File will soon go out to more people than in a crowd scene in Ben Hur. The reason this worries me is I feel like I've gotten to know you people and a bunch of strangers — many of whom didn't sign up for this "news"letter — may not get it. They may, like the guy who stepped in some glowing, spikey orange goo with what looks like hundreds of eyeballs in it say, "What the Hell is this?"
I know what you're thinking: "It was Jonah Goldberg's birthday yesterday and I forgot to send him large quantities of cash, high-end cigars, or brown liquor. I wonder if it's too late." Calm yourselves. Of course it's not too late. Really, it's never too late for such things. Anyway back to the conversation at hand. I know most of you haven't met each other — or me — but I think of you as a collective you, which conjures so many fewer horrible mental images than a collective ewe (though in Peter Singer's ideal society . . .). I'm hoping that the influx of newbies into the collective you won't have the same effect on the G-File that sudden regular arrival of tour buses at a local diner has.
That said, I think next week I may need to be a little more organized and explain what this thing is. You know, if for no other reason than to avoid that spikey-orange-goo feeling in the rookies.
Besides, I'm in California with the wife and kid. They're upstairs asleep in our hotel room. I'm in the lobby drinking the 4:00 a.m. coffee writing the G-File with sweaty feet. I don't mean I'm typing it with sweaty feet. My prehensile toes are fine for strangling a man, but the detail work is still hard. What I do mean is that I couldn't find my socks in the dark without waking up the ladies. So I'm wearing sneakers without socks, which has the unpleasant consequence of making my feet smell like Harry Reid, albeit with less of that "urine and failure" bouquet. Fusion All the Way Down
The other day I wrote a column about how all the talk about a libertarian-conservative rift on the right is somewhat overdone. If Rand Paul is such a libertarian firebrand, why is he such an abortion hardliner? If Jim DeMint was such a hardcore Christian conservative, why did he get such great reviews from libertarians? You can read the column here.
Since this is one of my favorite hunting grounds, intellectually speaking, I'd like to throw in a couple more points. Obviously, I think the libertarian-conservative divide is real. But it's worth remembering that the people who call themselves strict libertarians are a very small sub-group in the larger population of freedom-lovers. They are refugees both from liberalism and conservatism. Some desperately want to return to their historic homeland of liberalism, but it remains occupied by progressives. So they have to use the term "libertarian" which no one really likes because it sounds both dorky and cultish. The important point here is that our self-avowed libertarian friends have gotten into the bad habit of speaking as if they are the sole representatives of true libertarianism. It's sort of like how Greeks want a complete monopoly on the term "Macedonian," even though denizens of other lands have historic claims on it too. There's a tendency, very similar to the way liberals fall into delusional self-congratulation for being the only people in the world who really hate racism, for libertarians to act like they're the only ones who really believe in freedom. It's not a big deal, but the impulse to protect that branding and self-understanding often leads libertarians to be a bit condescending and dismissive of conservatives. A second point: I think Irving Kristol offered some helpful advice when he argued that we should put aside the libertarian-vs.-conservative prism and instead look at the right through the lens of anti-state vs. anti-Left. What he meant by this is that some conservatives are comfortable using government for conservative purposes, they just hate the way the Left uses the government for leftist purposes. Other conservatives and nearly all libertarians, don't care about using government for conservative ends. They are anti-state and want to limit the government's role to its true core Constitutional functions and nothing more. These are helpful generalizations about competing worldviews on the right, but it's worth bearing in mind that there is enormous overlap between these worldviews, and often they are not even worldviews at all so much as attitudes that rise and fall for a specific issue. For starters, pretty much everyone who is anti-state is going to be in large measure anti-Left because the Left is statist. Take a more basic example: public schools. An anti-statist may hate the public schools because he thinks the government has no role in such things. But he will also be anti-Left because the Left is using the public schools to teach kids that capitalism killed their puppies, Che Guevara is a Jedi Knight, and that God is less real than the Easter Bunny. Even an anti-statist recognizes that teaching kids reading, writing, and 'rithmatic is better than using tax dollars to indoctrinate moonbat leftism. And an anti-leftist will undoubtedly invoke anti-statist or libertarian arguments in his indictment of the public schools. Because while an anti-leftist may think it's a good thing to have public schools, he will also think the state has no role in left-wing indoctrination. Looked at this way, what becomes clear here is that fusionism – the merging of libertarian and conservative views – isn't some fanciful "project," or effort at alliance-building. It's simply another word for basic conservatism. And so long as the Left thinks the state is the instrument of their will in every nook and cranny of our lives, libertarians and conservatives will be inevitable and natural allies. The Goldbergian Remnant
I suppose I should write about some newsy stuff, but the truth is I haven't read the papers in a couple days and I feel like I'm behind the curve. I gather events in Formosa have calmed down a bit but there's still a spot of bother in the Belgian Congo. We'll just have to keep an eye on that and wait to hear what Doris Kearns Goodwin has to say on Meet the Press before we'll know what to do.
But since I have you, for some reason, that remarkably mediocre joke about Fowler and the "NOC list" made me think of a "Nock list" -- score one for that unsung muse, homonyms! For those of you who don't know, Albert J. Nock was a badass public intellectual and author who was a big influence on William F. Buckley. If you were the Abbott to my Costello, we could have about six seconds of fun going back and forth on what the "J" stood for in Albert J. Nock. "It's Jay." "I know, what's it stand for?" "Jay." "Yes, J., what's it stand for?" "Jay!" "Right! J!!!!" And then Costello buries a ballpoint pen in Abbott's forehead.
Oh damn, that's from the forthcoming Quentin Tarantino remake of Abbott and Costello, Meet the Viet Cong. Still, another homonymic score! Anyway, Nock was one of those conservatives that a certain breed of liberal intellectual loves. And by that I mean he wore a cape. Another reason they loved him: He thought it was pointless to try to persuade voters of anything. (Or, as Kahless says, "The wind does not respect a fool.") The masses move and do like masses move and do and trying to change their mind is like trying to argue with the tide. I'm very skeptical that he really believed that. I'm inclined to think this was his way of peeing in the cornflakes of the secular prophets of his age.
In his most famous essay on the subject, "Isaiah's Job" (a must read, btw), Nock writes of the story of Isaiah: It occurred to me then that this story is much worth recalling just now when so many wise men and soothsayers appear to be burdened with a message to the masses. Dr. Townsend has a message, Father Coughlin has one, Mr. Upton Sinclair, Mr. Lippmann, Mr. Chase and the planned-economy brethren, Mr. Tugwell and the New Dealers, Mr. Smith and Liberty Leaguers -- the list is endless. I cannot remember a time when so many energumens were so variously proclaiming the Word to the multitude and telling them what they must do to be saved. This being so, it occurred to me, as I say, that the story of Isaiah might have something in it to steady and compose the human spirit until this tyranny of windiness is overpast. (Anyone who's read Liberal Fascism should turn in their decoder ring if they don't recognize at least 80 percent of these names.)
Nock then goes on to explain how Isaiah's job wasn't to preach to the pretty-much-worthless masses, but to a small sliver of people. Here's his paraphrasing of Isaiah's conversation with God: Isaiah had been very willing to take on the job — in fact, he had asked for it — but the prospect put a new face on the situation. It raised the obvious question: Why, if all that were so — if the enterprise were to be a failure from the start — was there any sense in starting it? "Ah," the Lord said, "you do not get the point. There is a Remnant there that you know nothing about. They are obscure, unorganized, inarticulate, each one rubbing along as best he can. They need to be encouraged and braced up because when everything has gone completely to the dogs, they are the ones who will come back and build up a new society; and meanwhile, your preaching will reassure them and keep them hanging on. Your job is to take care of the Remnant, so be off now and set about it." Now, I wrote a long piece on Nock and my problems with the idea of the Remnant for National Review. My short take is that I think he's wrong, at least at the margins. If the masses — a terrible word for "the people" or "voters" — can never be persuaded we might as well hand the car keys to the one-day super-intelligent bees or maybe the border collies who, we all know, have simply opted not to conquer earth because they don't need the hassle.
But as I sit here, contemplating the deluge of new subscribers who may or may not be "dear readers," I want to take this moment to thank you for being there.
Oh, All Right, Some News
Obamacare still stinks on ice, and now the HHS is shooting for the gold standard . "Let's just make sure it's not a third-world experience." Various & Sundry
A very limited V&S section today, as I've just learned my daughter forgot to pack a swimsuit. So we're heading to The Grove for shopping and Farmer's Market for lunch. Suggestions?
While you're noodling that, here's the world's largest bug. Oh, sorry, wrong link. Try this.
We all know that in the old days, everything was in black and white. What I had forgotten is that animals acted like people.
Here's how I feel when I fly.
Fantastic signs from The Simpsons.
This is why you have to keep dogs off the Internet. They buy things like this.
I think everyone knows I think ninjas are to blame for a whole lot of things. But you shouldn't blame them when you shoot yourself in the crotch.
Because I just turned 44, my second wife should be born this year. I kid! I kid! No, but seriously, because I just turned 44, I'm feeling wistful about my youth. This list of 40 films turning 20 didn't help.
This is why ice-cream-stealing ninjas wear masks. |
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