The Patriot Post® · Friday Opinion

Best of Right Opinion

• Jonah Goldberg: Helping America Isn’t Part of Putin’s Plan
• Gary Bauer: A Big Win
• David Harsanyi: Liberals’ Sudden Concern About Bill Clinton’s Behavior Is Cynical
• Erick Erickson: Quid est Veritas?
• David Limbaugh: Being Shoved Into Meaninglessness

For more of today’s columns, visit Right Opinion.

Opinion in Brief

Jonah Goldberg: “Forget about America for two seconds. [Vladimir] Putin’s social-media army has been mucking around in Western Europe for years. He supports fringe radical groups — or creates fake representatives of them — on both the Left and the Right. They use WikiLeaks, and the useful idiots who love it, to undermine Western governments in the name of democracy and transparency. The goal isn’t primarily to get a particular politician in power but to sow chaos and doubt, to heighten the contradictions, and to weaken the strong countries and alliances that Putin thinks are holding down Russia. The Russians helped push for Brexit, not because Brexit was good for Britain (which I think it might be) but because it was bad for the European Union. Some want to believe that Putin saw in Trump a useful ally, and that Trump volunteered for service. Again, that’s possible. But I think the answer is more straightforward and obvious. The Russians just wanted to cause trouble and wound the presumptive winner, Hillary Clinton. That’s why WikiLeaks encouraged Donald Trump Jr. to claim the election was stolen. But then the elder Trump won. Trump believes that every country should follow its own narrow self-interest. That’s a defensible position. The only problem is that Russia’s — or at least Putin’s — definition of self-interest is at war with ours.”