Jonah Goldberg [Email him] writes, in response to Eric Holder's claim that we should all be talking about race more, and that it's cowardly not to, that

"[T]o the extent we don't talk about race in this country the primary reason is that liberals and racial activists have an annoying habit of attacking anyone who doesn't read from a liberal script 'racists' or, if they're lucky, 'insensitive.'

 

Thus 'cowardice' is defined as refusal to do as you're told when that would in fact be the cowardly thing to do."

And he has a whole column on the same theme, here. But in 2002 he was bashing Pat Buchanan for saying that "If we had to take a million immigrants in, say Zulus, next year, or Englishmen, and put them up in Virginia, what group would be easier to assimilate and would cause less problems for the people of Virginia?" [This Week With David Brinkley, January 8, 1991] , on the grounds that

"He offers red meat to the extremists while at the same giving himself the wiggle room to deny he said anything controversial in the first place. This is no mean feat. To be able to say something that wins applause from racists and bigots without technically saying anything racist or bigoted is a great gift, for want of a better word. "[Killing Whitey What’s white, right, and wrong about Pat. By Jonah Goldberg, February 25, 2002]

In 2007, when Goldberg was trying to explain the immigration bill to Peter Beinart of The New Republic, he did the same thing again, [Video link] actually using the left-liberal term "dog whistle" to describe Pat Buchanan's writings.

Starting at about 14:20 he admits that Pat was eminently right to say that you could assimilate a million Britons, (he means actual Britons) than you could a million people from...he then admits he doesn't know where Zulus come from. (South Africa.)

Of course the point is that it's not "liberals and racial activists" who attack "anyone who doesn't read from a liberal script." it's "liberals , racial activists and neoconservatives."Or even "liberals , racial activists and Jonah Goldberg." As for cowardice, it was Jonah Goldberg who said during the last election that the GOP wasn't racist in its attacks on Obama because they would be "hitting a white candidate twice as hard."