[VIDEO] 2012 Post-Election Time Capsule: Jonah Goldberg and John O’Sullivan at the End of the World, on Uncommon Knowledge

From Uncommon Knowledge, days after the 2012 election, discussing the GOP’s future, interviewer Peter Robinson begins with the question: Are we, or are we not, doomed?

I meant to only watch a few minutes of this, but got sucked in and watched the whole thing.

It’s as relevant now as the day it was recorded. Goldberg and O’Sullivan are relaxed, reflective, unusually lucid (while Peter Robinson makes a valiant effort to keep up) insightful, and in good spirits, considering it was only days after during a disastrous national election. Perhaps it’s the location? It was conducted on National Review‘s Post-Election Cruise, aboard The New Amsterdam, in the Caribbean, December 4th 2012. So, that helps.

A Jonah money quote:

“…it’s been a 100 year project of American progressives, to diminish and delegitimize the authority and the sovereignty of the family, to clear away the mediating institutions in society [until] all is left is the individual and the Sate…as Woodrow Wilson put it, ‘the point of progressivism is to have the individual marry his interests to the State…’”

45 minutes long, it’s engaging stuff. It’s especially relevant, on the eve of the upcoming mid-term elections.

Many of you know Jonah from NRO’s The Corner, and appearances as a guest political analyst on Fox News. He’s an AEI scholar and NRO’s founding editor. Jonah Goldberg‘s book “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas” is available at Amazon.

National Review‘s editor-at-large John O’Sullivan served in the 1980s as special advisor and speechwriter to Margaret Thatcher, looks like he should be wearing a tie, and not enjoying himself so much. He is the author of “The President, the Pope, And the Prime Minister: Three Who Changed the World“, also available at Amazon.

Read the rest of this entry »