Faith & Spirit Quote by Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg’s line is a neat little trap for a common modern reflex: treating power itself as moral contamination. By yoking “power” to the ultimate power-holder, he forces a reader who’s comfortable saying “power corrupts” to either (a) soften that claim or (b) accept a deliberately absurd theological conclusion. The move isn’t subtle; it’s built for the quick, shareable dunk. That’s the point. He’s not trying to map ethics in a seminar. He’s trying to win an argument in the culture war about institutions, authority, and who gets to be presumed guilty.

The subtext is an insistence on moral agency over structural suspicion. If power doesn’t automatically make you evil, then the moral spotlight shifts back to choices, character, restraint, and accountability. It’s a defense of the idea that strong institutions, executives, police, “the state,” even markets can be legitimate - not saints, but not inherently satanic either. In a media ecosystem trained to read hierarchies as predation, Goldberg offers a contrarian comfort: stop moralizing the mere fact of having leverage.

The context matters because the analogy is intentionally maximalist. God-versus-Devil language borrows the emotional authority of religion to chastise secular paranoia about concentrated power. It’s persuasive rhetorically because it’s binary and memorable; it’s also vulnerable because it oversimplifies what critics usually mean. Most people aren’t arguing power is metaphysical evil. They’re arguing power reliably creates incentives to abuse, and systems should be designed accordingly. Goldberg’s punchline works by converting a probabilistic warning into a categorical accusation - then demolishing the accusation he invented.