The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg

Latest Episodes:

The Whittington Standard Jan 13, 2021

Show notes

What is to be made of the concerns – practical or philosophical – about a second impeachment of Donald Trump? Keith Whittington of Princeton returns to The Remnant to encourage us not to take such concerns too rigidly. Since, as we got used to hearing, impeachment is a political process and not a legal remedy, the ability to get through an impeachment quickly – say, before January 20 – is “purely a matter of political will.” In addition to digging into some founding-period legal nerdiness (the original Constitution of Virginia says what?), Jonah also asks Whittington about the standards of impeachment, what the process might look like given the specifics of what happened at the Capitol on the January 6, and also asks him to address concerns, such as the idea that an impeachment would be an infringement on Trump’s free speech rights: “There’s a difference between what a private citizen can say and what someone like the president of the United States should say.”

Show Notes:

- Take our podcast survey

- Keith’s most recent book

- Jonah’s Los Angeles Times column

- “Look at him, he’s wearing a belt!”

- Listen to Advisory Opinions, home of latches

- David French: The conservative legal movement is actually looking pretty good

- Byron York interviews Michael Luttig

- The original Virginia Constitution said, “The Governor, when he is out of office, … shall be impeachable by the House of Delegates.”

- Einstein’s friend finding a dictatorship loophole

- John Turturro as Bernie Bernbaum

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Ten-Foot Snowflakes Jan 09, 2021

Show notes

On today’s Ruminant, Jonah takes care to push through the natural inclination to simply, well, be appalled at this past Wednesday’s “events” on Capitol Hill, and manages to talk about both the lead-up to them and their ramifications. He talks about how the rioters display all of the soul-sickness that conservatives normally only talk about in regard to far-left activists, and that while conservatives are quick to point out the failures to establish genuine communities with positive outcomes in peoples’ lives within progressive politics, “we very rarely say that these are problems for conservatives too.” This week, Jonah also closes with a personal rumination on the most important little platoon of all: the family.

Show Notes:

-This week’s G-File

- Jonah and Brit’s disagreement

-Josh Blackman: Can Trump be impeached for incitement?

-Ramen Noodle Guy

-The Ol’ Number Six

-Tucker provides a useless panacea to listeners

-Tim Carney: “Trump was something to believe in”

-“When God is invisible behind the world, the contents of the world will become new gods”

-Alienated America

-Bubba McDonald

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Murray, Madison, and the Moderate Middle Jan 05, 2021

Show notes

As The Remnant kicks back into gear, we figured it would be best to let Jonah make his trek back to D.C. and instead treat you to a secret artifact from a few days after the election. This is a conversation between Jonah and AEI emeritus scholar Charles Murray on the state of libertarianism and liberalism (both of the “small-l” variants) in the aftermath of November 2020. Murray explains why he’s pessimistic, while he and Jonah also extol the virtues of a Madisonian system, and upon reflection, they both relish in being on the right side of the debate that character is indeed destiny in the political realm: “The idea that the United States can continue to be … exceptional without character being a leading principle is ridiculous—it can’t happen.”

Show Notes:

-Fusionism

-John Adams: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

-Eric Voegelin on how lapses into fanaticism occur

-Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

-Misreading Adam Smith

-Miracle At Philadelphia: The Story of the Constitutional Convention

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Runza Of Unusual Size Dec 22, 2020

Show notes

What does Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse think about the results of the 2020 election? The answer might come as a surprise: Even though the Democrats took the White House, on balance, Ben thinks the election proves that “We are a center-right nation, and even if people don’t have a philosophical embrace of limited government, [that idea] has a broad, functional embrace.” During this talk—originally part of The Dispatch’s post-election program What’s Next: Election 2020 and Beyond – Jonah asks Ben about how responsible Americans might stop our national politics from being run by political addicts, as well as asking him what he thinks about the assertion that he went through a “quiet period” in his Trump criticism, and addressing his controversial connections to Big Runza (Nebraska’s finest delicacy™).

Show Notes:

-“Straight-shooter” Ben Sasse wins re-election

-The Hidden Tribes of America

-Many Republicans are sure that the election was stolen

-Kate McKinnon’s bizarrely accurate Rudy Giuliani

-Jonah’s column on Trump loyalism

-There’s a horse in the hospital

-I Love Lucy’s ratings domination

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Ruminating by Remote Dec 19, 2020

Show notes

As we close in on the end of the year, Jonah’s rumination proves to be a pretty sizable roundup of all the news that has been fit to print throughout the week. In addition to discussing attempts to relitigate the series of unfortunate events surrounding Jeffrey Toobin, the inaccuracy of our current Cold War metaphors in regards to China, and the ongoing conflict over wealth inequality, Jonah also finds the time to dip into several classically nerdy topics. Such subjects include the accidental genius of bad Kung Fu movies, how They Live isn’t nearly as Marxist as the academy would have you believe (and the fact that they try to prove that it is “just helps to prove how dumb Marxism is”), and how David French’s taste in films has made Jonah a nihilist.

Show Notes:

-This week’s G-File

-Fatman

-Caddyshack … II?

-The fight scene in They Live

-Kurt Thomas in Gymkata

-Jonah: Farce as Tragedy

-Adorno: “Thus one no longer learns to close a door softly, discreetly and yet firmly. Those of autos and frigidaires have to be slammed.”

-The origin of the “alien visitor” thought experiment

-A chin-stroking (so to speak) piece on Jeffrey Toobin

-Pleasantville

-This week’s Remnant with Matt Continetti

-Jonah’s “New Cold War” column

-This week’s Remnant with Scott Winship

-The success sequence

-Remnant Episode 100 with Thomas Sowell

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Steady Continetti Dec 18, 2020

Show notes

AEI Fellow, author, and Washington Free Beacon founder Matt Continetti comes back to the program, and Jonah gets to pick his brain about… well, a ton of different things. From his expectations for the Biden presidency, to the shockingly progressive staff of the incoming administration, to the Georgia runoffs and a critical reappraisal of the neoconservatives’ role in deradicalizing the left, Matt provides deep and nuanced answers to the biggest stories of the day as well as the issues of bigger philosophical significance to conservatives. He and Jonah also dial in on some of the upcoming decisions that those on the right will have to make in the near future – decisions that may define basic points of conservative doctrine for a long time to come: What should be counted as a conservative “win,” either in politics or culture? Is conservatism going to be big-tent or selective in its coalition-building? And what should the conservative position on China be, as it becomes clearer that the nation may have grown into a superpower that shares very few of our values?

Show Notes:

-Matt’s page at AEI

-Obama’s third term

- Biden’s campaign manager being… unkind to Republicans

-The Remnant with Andy Smarick

-“Bobos”

-The Polish Beer-Lovers’ Party

-The Remnant with Tim Alberta

-The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium by Martin Gurri

-The Roots of Modern Conservatism by Michael Bowen

-The Remnant with Carlos Lozada

-What Biden can learn from Nat Glazer

-Governing Priorities by AEI

-Conservatism has conserved a lot, actually

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Poverty, Relative and Absolute Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

Jonah is joined by Scott Winship – the director of Poverty Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, and fresh off the heels of his position within Senator Mike Lee’s Social Capital Project. Jonah asks Scott about the persistence of poverty in American society, and what progress has been made both recently and over the long term. Then, they get into why some of the obstacles that have to be removed in order to lift poor people up are more intractable than others. In part, Scott thinks that these difficulties “show how we’re hardwired to think about these problems in economic terms rather than in terms of social bonds,” and that certain data may blind us when searching for the real issues.

Show Notes:

-Scott’s research at AEI

-Richard Burkhauser on poverty in the 60s versus now

-The Social Capital Project

-Raj Chetty on people doing better than their parents

-Mr. Piketty’s big book of Marxiness

-Jonah and Peter Beinart

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10 Martini Lunch Dec 12, 2020

Show notes

After describing the inner workings of a longstanding lunch among his friends that has become an institution unto itself and envisioning what his ideal “no rules” podcast might be like, Jonah asks the fundamental political question of our moment: What’s the matter with Texas? Jonah talks about how the state’s election lawsuit has released another swathe of intellectual dishonesty among right-wing tastemakers, as well as the “Kraken Caucus'' (or is it the Kraken Kaukus?) more generally, and how the Constitution endorses trial by combat for picking elector slates (well, kind of). This is followed by a rumination on “corruption” in both its classical and modern sense, the updated Hunter Biden story (and the reaction to it), and how imprecise language mars our debates about censorship: “We use ‘censorship’ to mean both a government action as well as the exercise of editorial judgment that we don’t like.”

Show Notes:

-GLoP: Origin Stories

-This week’s Remnant with Reihan Salam

-Martin Shkreli, DBOY

-This week’s G-File

-The Duke brothers

-“One in quadrillion”

-Burke’s “Speech to the Electors of Bristol”

-The Five Thousand Year Leap

-Happy Safe Harbor Day

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Big City, Turn Me Loose Dec 11, 2020

Show notes

Conservative commentary has managed to find at least one point of withering criticism when it comes to America’s cities. This critique points out that, while cities are the places where unique innovation and exciting things are happening all the time, the local Democratic political machines (and, strangely, their voter base within the city) are constantly trying to zone, regulate, and tax that innovation and excitement out of existence. But here he comes—a knight in shining armor, making a glorious return to The Remnant: Reihan Salam, president of the Manhattan Institute. Reihan talks to Jonah about how conservatives might be able to envision a way out of obstinacy in America’s metropolitan centers, as well as addressing concerns about the GOP’s electoral future in cities, and explaining why politics often take a more radical left-wing form in cities compared to everywhere else in the country. (“Democrats are living in places that are immensely unequal, so arguments around redistribution carry a lot more purchase.”)

Show Notes:

-Reihan at the Manhattan Institute

-Grand New Party: How Republicans Can Win the Working Class and Save the American Dream

-Most—not some—people are low information voters

-Jonah: It’s a mistake for the GOP to shun big cities

-Fusion voting

-The role of think tanks

-College-educated Democrats are often more wrong than their co-partisans

-Jill Biden wants community college to be free

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57 Commas Dec 08, 2020

Show notes

On this edition of The Remnant, Jonah went around the (metaphorical) corner of the (also metaphorical) office and got colleague Sarah Isgur to come on the program for all sorts of legal-beagle nerdery. Sarah explains the constitutional provisions kicking into effect that are helping to slow down the chaos surrounding the November election results, what on earth is going on in Texas, and much more. Classic Remnant wonkery is then balanced out in the latter half of the show, as Jonah and Sarah both share their spiciest takes on The Queen’s Gambit and why it may not live up to the hype.

Show Notes:

-Sarah’s podcast with David French, Advisory Opinions

-Sarah’s newsletter, The Sweep

-Texas’ original jurisdiction suits against other states

-“The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes”

-Centennial Crisis: The Disputed Election of 1876 by William Rehnquist

-AEI’s After the People Vote

-The “witchcraft” of signature matching

-The Bailey Cranberry Separator

-Colorable argument

-Jonah and Queen’s Gambit

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