Does Jonah Goldberg Think Reagan Cut Government Spending?

If you were wise enough to skip Jonah Goldberg’s attack on Obama’s patriotism – save your time and just check out the takedown from Jed Report:

In his trademarked pseudo-intellectual style, Jonah launches a full-on smear against Barack Obama, claiming that Barack has a “patriotism problem.” To make his case, Jonah digs up a quote of Barack saying “I’m going to try to tell the American people what I believe will make this country great and, hopefully, that will be a testimony to my patriotism.” … So Barack Obama has a patriotism problem because…he wants to to make the country great. Obviously, it’s a stupid argument — only someone who hates America would not want to make it great, and only the world’s biggest idiot (which Jonah may well be) would suggest that America is right now as great as it has been in the past.

The world biggest idiot just had to respond with even more stupidity, which not only included how adding “again” makes all the difference but also this gem:

But the key difference is that invoking scripture, or similar language, in order to justify shrinking government at home and liberating mankind from collectivism abroad is quite different than invoking government to justify an enormous expansion of the state into people’s lives. Reagan did not believe that government was the instrument of salvation, he believed it was the obstacle to what is best in ourselves and in our nation.

Credit to Andrew Sullivan for this:

“An enormous expansion of the state into people’s lives”. What does Jonah think Bush has been doing these past eight years?

But maybe Jonah is referring to Kudlow’s claim that Reagan cut government spending. Of course, other conservatives blame the Reagan deficits on an explosion of government spending. Funny thing – Federal spending as a share of GDP neither rose nor fell during the Reagan years. So when Jonah says “shrinking government at home” – he displays his world class stupidity once again.