Well, maybe wasn't such a great liberal, but he was more liberal than any of those presidents who followed.

If people can dare to call Clinton a liberal, then Nixon surely is the most progressive, liberal, wild-eyed radical president one could imagine.

He was a Quaker too!

Probably the last President who had any religion at all.

The Nazis really weren't very socialist, in the sense that most people now understand the term. "Socialism" was a trendy word in the 1920s and 1930s. So the German right essentially redefined "socialism" for their own purposes. Eric Weitz's excellent new book Weimar Germany: Promise and Tragedy explores this:

[Oswald] Spengler adopted and further developed another powerful linguistic innovation -- the melding of nationalism and socialism. ... Socialism for Spengler signified national unity and the national struggle imbued with the Prussian qualities of discipline, self-sacrifice for the greater good, productivity, and creativity. ... Stripped of its Marxist and internationalist meanings, the word socialism developed a broad-based appeal because it connoted unity, collective destiny, and creative labor; when joined to the "nation," it made the boundaries of the community clear and fostered the belief, already quite strong, in German superiority over its neighbors to the west and the east. (p. 336-337)

Jonah Goldberg never, ever engages the likes of Glenn Greenwald, Spencer Ackerman and John Holbo. He dispenses of their thorough debunkings with arrogant and irrelevant one-liners.

That is because Jonah Goldberg knows he incapable of defending his cute inventions against intellectually honest people.

Goldberg is store-bought-college smart; he's educated beyond his innate intelligence. Therefore he's the perfect "intellectual" for the credulous, who are the lifeblood of today's inarguably fascistic GOP.

Goldberg's first answer basically reveals his entire worldview, and it is "fascist", to use his own lexicon. He basically strips the term of any meaning other than its normative implications.

He might as well have just called the book "Liberal Dickheads". He could have avoided the mocking laughter that is coming at him from all corners of the world (can Goldberg ever speak in a public forum again without being laughed off the stage?), and, given the current anti-intellectual bent of the American conservative movement, he probably would sell more books to boot. Especially if he added funny pictures.

An author whose main point is based on the blatant lie that Mussolini was a socialist deserves far more disdain than you give him. One problem of the intellectual left is the everpresent need to appear to be even-handed. Intellectually, Jonah Goldberg deserves no respect whatsoever. Some argue that it suffices to take a passive-aggressive approach and let him hang himself with his own rope. I disagree. I think the only fitting response to Goldberg's sheer mendacity is open disgust.

Calling Mussolini a socialist is the intellectual equivalent of equating "up" and "down". It is sheer brazen Orwellian distortion. There is no need for Salon to give any kind of forum to this kind of anti-intellectualism.

Goldberg retreats full speed from every citation or comparison in political philosophy, including Mussolini himself. The only points he scores are with Brave New World and 1984--both of which were novels.

Fancy that.

Ice

Don't forget that the song you mention was a reworking of an older song by the Dead Kennedy's called "We've Got a Bigger Problem Now" all about Ronnie Reagan.

... is how Goldberg's entire thesis boils down to.

Thanks for this interview allowing me to continue ignoring him.

“…can't entirely object to what Goldberg is talking about, although I think he's writing this as a bludgeon to attack liberalism in general (even as he, paradoxically, touts liberal free-market-driven societies).”

Goldberg is attacking big ‘el’ Liberalism. Presumably he considers himself a little ‘el’ liberal. Like the difference between democrat and Democrat, there’s no paradox between attacking Liberalism and touting liberalism.

What has the genre of those works to do with their usefulness in supporting or rejecting arguments?

if we define what was considered right in Europe in the '30s as being the same as today's left, we can then call Liberals fascists.

A lot of what he says does make some sense. Especially looked at the way I learned about political 'spectrums.' I was taught the the spectrum is more of a circle, and if you go too far in either direction, you end up in the same place - that would be Fascism, which kind of blends into Stalinism. Moderation in all things.

to call FDR a fascist. Also, this killed me:

"That said, I don't think that the equation between liberalism and conservatism goes as far as you would like to take it...You don't have conservative groups talking about what kind of condoms you should use or what positions you can be in. That kind of thing doesn't really go on."

Ok, that's partially true. Conservatives don't tell you what kind of condoms to use...they tell you not to use them. And as for that whole "not telling people what sexual positions to use" thing, well, I think we all know what a crock that is.

Finally, Mr. Goldberg must have a very complicated relationship with his mother, given his assertion that feminine=smothering. And that masculine=violent, for that matter, seems to allude to some daddy problems, too.

It's hard to believe so many are taking this nut seriously. His "methodology" is double speak. Even "debigenanson" and "slacky" are falling for it.

The problem is that the publishing industry now has a "genre" called "revisionist history." That's how he got in the door. That and momma, the agent. Where once a jerk like this would be consigned to garage presses in the boondocks or vanity presses--now the big houses are cashing in on the reactionary movement--pumped up by the dollars. They're too myopic to see the disaster they're courting. A "new guard" has taken over that is berift of conscience. It used to actually matter when you were published by a New York house, but not any more.

Salon deserves credit for bringing the phenomenon to our attention. The interview was excellent. I'm not sure it even takes a college degree to see all this guy is doing is throwing people off track and making a fool out of anyone who wastes time on trying to analyse him.

The irony of course is that he has a Jewish name, so might be Jewish, and yet demonstrates total ignorance of the forces that led to the near destruction of his own race. It doesn't pay to refute him--just forget him. Momma: you're gonna regret it some day!

I'm not going to sign with my name because I don't want to clutter my file.