A guide to conservative clichés.

In his new book, The Tyranny of Clichés: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, Jonah Goldberg argues that liberals “advance ideological agendas that would expand and enhance the State’s mastery over our lives” by parroting hoary maxims and phrases. That bit alleging subjugation by the capital-S State is right-wing cant, but Goldberg’s accusation that liberals often spout clichés is so unchallengeable that I marvel he got a whole book out of it. Yet Goldberg won’t admit that conservatives often do the same. “I do not claim that the conservative mind isn’t bound by clichés from time to time,” Goldberg concedes in his introductory chapter (italics mine). But they don’t do it as much as liberals, because conservatives “make our arguments more openly.” In effect, Goldberg is arguing that liberals are more smug, and, since clichés are the lingua franca of smug people, liberals spout them more. You don’t have to be liberal to find such reasoning a bit ... smug.

In fact, conservatives are no less inclined to peddle clichés than liberals are. In 24 chapters, Goldberg cites about as many liberal clichés, from “slippery slope” to “living constitution” to “violence never solves anything.” With the help of assorted colleagues, friends, social-media followers, and Google, I’ve compiled my own list of conservative clichés. It’s shorter (I have only one page to Goldberg’s 280) but a much better value. Where Goldberg’s compilation will set you back $27.95, I offer mine at the low, low NEW REPUBLIC cover price of $4.95 (gratis, if you happen to read this online or if you bought the paper edition to read something else).

Let us proceed.

The bigger the government, the smaller the citizen. This begs the question: Bigger how? The U.S. government spends more money today than it did a half-century ago, but it employs fewer people.

Broaden the tax base. Code for “increase the available income subject to taxation to offset lowering top marginal rates (already quite low by historic standards) even further on the rich.” The preferred method is to raise taxes on the working poor. Another method (more readily embraced by office-holding conservatives) is to close loopholes, though if you choose this approach you must never specify which loopholes to close because the biggest ones (the tax exclusion for employer-provided health insurance, the tax break for pension contributions, the mortgage interest deduction) are extremely popular.