Politics & Power Quote by Jonah Goldberg

Goldberg’s line is built like a trapdoor: it flatters the listener’s democratic instincts, then drops them into the uncomfortable reality of international politics. The opening clause borrows the familiar Churchillian concession - democracy is the “best available” option at home - to establish common ground. Then comes the pivot: scale that same idea up to the United Nations and it can become a “moral disaster.” The phrase is doing heavy lifting. It suggests that procedure (votes, representation, majorities) can launder legitimacy for outcomes that are ethically grotesque.

The subtext is a critique of the UN’s one-country-one-vote ethos and the moral theater that follows. If authoritarian governments sit alongside liberal democracies as equals, the argument goes, “democracy among nations” stops being a mechanism for self-rule and becomes a mechanism for moral dilution. Oppressive states gain the aura of popular mandate without the inconvenience of actual popular consent, and coalitions form less around human rights than around mutual protection, grievance politics, or transactional bargaining.

Context matters: Goldberg is a conservative commentator whose work often targets elite institutions that claim neutrality while advancing what he sees as soft relativism. The quote is less about constitutional theory than about optics and accountability. Within a nation, democracy presumes a demos - a governed public that can punish leaders. Among nations, there’s no shared electorate, no unified civic obligation, and little consequence for hypocrisy. The punchline is cynical but pointed: a voting system can look moral while enabling the immoral, especially when some “voters” are regimes that don’t let their own people vote at all.