This is the second part of a three-part review:

Part I: Jonah Goldberg, Darwin and Unnatural Capitalism.
Part III Jonah Goldberg on Ingratitude: What Goes Around, Comes Around.

The Corruption of Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg constantly smuggles in ideas he claims he has abandoned.

In 1938, rhetorical critic Kenneth Burke published a review of Thurman W. Arnold’s book, The Folklore of Capitalism. Entitled “The Virtues and Limitations of Debunking,” Burke held that the debunker “covertly restores important ingredients of thought that he has overtly annihilated” which describes Jonah Goldberg’s new book, The Suicide of the West, perfectly. Goldberg attempts to put forth a number of big ideas which recast the history of capitalism in a new light, by drawing on evolutionary psychology among other things, but he cannot build his argument without re-enrolling ideas which he has told us he has abandoned. The result is a book that is completely incoherent. The most serious consequence of Goldberg’s covertly smuggling ideas back into his argument is when he addresses the tangled history of capitalism, racism, and slavery.

In my previous post, I outlined the main argument of Goldberg’s book: that we are hardwired to live a violent, tribal life; that capitalism and individualism oppose that hardwiring but are both under attack from our tribal nature that is being aided and abetted by ungrateful intellectuals. This post is…