Jonah Goldberg
Boards and investment committees need a clear read on US politics that does not collapse into partisan noise or cable news shorthand. The conservative movement has fractured, institutional trust is thin, and policy direction now turns on factional fights inside one party rather than the old left-right contest. Leaders need someone who can explain what is actually happening on the American right, why it matters for risk, and which signals to take seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is a political commentator, three-time New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of The Dispatch who helps senior audiences make sense of US political risk and the realignment of American conservatism.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Jonah Goldberg
- A primary-source read on the modern American right from the journalist who spent two decades inside National Review and now runs his own conservative newsroom.
- Author of Liberal Fascism, a No. 1 New York Times bestseller, and Suicide of the West, which argues that liberal democracy is sustained only by deliberate effort and is the through-line of his policy work.
- Holds the Asness Chair in Applied Liberty at the American Enterprise Institute, giving briefings rooted in scholarship rather than punditry.
- Built and runs The Dispatch as a subscription business, so he speaks about the media economy and political information markets from inside the operating chair, not as an observer.
- A reliable read for audiences that want intellectual honesty over partisan reassurance, including rooms that disagree with him.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Dispatch, the center-right subscription publication launched in October 2019 with Stephen F. Hayes and Toby Stock.
- Asness Chair in Applied Liberty and Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
- Author of Liberal Fascism (No. 1 New York Times bestseller), The Tyranny of Cliches, and Suicide of the West (New York Times bestseller).
- Weekly opinion columnist for the Los Angeles Times and nationally syndicated columnist.
- Host of The Remnant with Jonah Goldberg, one of the most listened-to conservative-leaning interview podcasts.
- Twenty-one years at National Review, where he was a senior editor and founding editor of National Review Online; political commentator for CNN.
Biography
The American right has fractured into camps that no longer share a definition of conservatism, and most analysis of it gets the factions wrong. Goldberg has spent thirty years inside the argument, first at National Review and now at The Dispatch, and writes about it with the access of an insider and the distance of someone who has lost friends in the fight.
Suicide of the West sets out the through-line of his work. Liberal democracy and free markets are recent and unnatural achievements, sustained only by institutions and habits that are easy to lose and hard to rebuild. Liberal Fascism, his No. 1 New York Times bestseller, traced how progressive politics borrowed from European movements that were anything but liberal in the classical sense. The Tyranny of Cliches went after the lazy phrases that pass for political thought.
The Asness Chair at the American Enterprise Institute gives that work an institutional base. The Dispatch gives it a newsroom. Co-founded with Stephen F. Hayes after the closure of The Weekly Standard, it now runs on subscriptions, which means Goldberg is also the operator of a media business and can speak credibly about how information markets shape American politics.
For corporate audiences his usefulness is specific: a candid, non-partisan read on Washington from a conservative who broke with his own side over Trump, resigned from Fox News on principle in 2021, and still speaks fluently to readers across the spectrum.
Key speaking topics
- US political risk and the 2025 to 2028 cycle
- The realignment of American conservatism
- Liberal democracy and the defence of liberal institutions
- Populism, nationalism and identity politics
- The future of the American media economy
- Free markets and applied liberty
- Constitutional government and the administrative state
Ideal for
- Boards, investment committees and CIO offices stress-testing US political assumptions.
- Public affairs, policy and government relations leaders briefing executives on Washington.
- Financial services and asset management forums sizing political and regulatory risk.
- Conferences focused on media, democracy and the health of civic institutions.
Audience outcomes
- A clearer map of the factions inside the American right and what each one wants.
- A sharper sense of which Washington signals matter for business and which are noise.
- A working argument for why liberal democratic institutions are worth defending in commercial terms, not only moral ones.
- An understanding of how the subscription media economy is reshaping political information.
- The intellectual ammunition to push back on lazy framings from the left and the right inside their own organisations.
Talks
A working account of how the conservative movement got here and where it goes next.
Key takeaways:
- The factions inside the American right and what separates them
- Why the post-2016 realignment is structural, not a Trump-era anomaly
- What this means for policy, regulation and political risk through the next cycle
The argument that progressive politics increasingly functions as a substitute religion, with consequences for civic life.
Key takeaways:
- How political identity has filled the space left by declining institutional religion
- Why this raises the temperature of every cultural and corporate dispute
- What organisations can do when staff and customers expect moral certainty from them
A close reading of the lazy phrases that substitute for political thinking, and the cost of mistaking them for arguments.
Key takeaways:
- The most common cliches dressed up as principle
- How these phrases shape boardroom and policy conversations
- A sharper standard for political reasoning inside organisations