The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas

by Jonah Goldberg

[W]e have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. —GEORGE ORWELL, THE COLLECTED ESSAYS, JOURNALISM AND LETTERS OF GEORGE ORWELL

If one man pushes an old lady in front of an oncoming bus and another man pushes an old lady out of the way of an oncoming bus, to borrow Bill Buckley’s famous puncturing of moral equivalence arguments, it will not suffice to say that they are both the sorts of men who push old ladies around.

“History does not have sides, although historians do.”8

A government-run soup kitchen might do wonderful and vital work, but only an ideologue would declare one a contender for the best restaurant in the world simply because they give away free food to the poor that is paid for by the wealthy.

As John O’Sullivan once noted, tongue firmly in cheek, “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. Treason is the highest form of dissent. Therefore treason is the highest form of patriotism.” QED.