Letters to the Editor
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Pseudointellectualism
This reminds me very much of Dinesh D'Souza's nonsense - write some confusing nonsense in a thinly veiled attempt to badmouth your political opponent, and try to disguise it as intellectual discourse by using reasonable language and lots of footnotes (Ann Coulter, for a change, does only the latter). It is quite easy to see through this - salon's intelligent questions are on the mark, and Goldberg's obvious and intentional confusion of facism and totalitarism make this painfully clear ... I was mildly amused by Goldberg's anecdote of enviromentalists propagating "environmentally conscious sex"; I am surprised about his confidence not being called on this obvious canard. But isn't this drivel upgraded by being discussed in Salon?
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Crapola
Every American generation of Zitlers grow into Sh*tlers, that's the American way.
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Mislead and with an agenda. But he has a point
Of course, in order to equate Liberalism with Fascism, the author twists incredibly the logics in order to fit his theory. But not everything he says is wrong.
I think one of his problems is using the word "Fascism". When it is used in a wide sense, it is only a derogatory epitet. When it is used in a proper sense, it defines a very specific Italian (or more broadly, European) movement with few points of contact with modern Liberalism.
Of course, he has to stick to the proper definition when he is trying to make his argument. But I guess he knows that the wide derogatory meaning of the word will be used when his book is mentioned in Fox News (and this is the meaning that is conveyed by the cover). Something like (read with the voice of a news anchor) "In other news, Hillary Clinton is trying to fuel the liberal agenda. As professor Goldberg proved in his book, liberalism is fascism so Hillary is trying to make America a fascist country but the American people who resisted fascism in World War II is not going to accept that and yadda, yadda, yadda".
But if we are talking about Statism, about the intervention of State in the economy and in people's lives he is not so wrong. In fact, Statism can have a lot of grades. In order of growing intervention of State in life we can mention: Liberalism, Radical Liberalism, Fascism, Stalinism and Orthodox Islam - as it is practiced in countries like Saudi Arabia. The three last ones can be labelled as "totalitarism", because they aim to control all the aspects of life (politics, economy, public life, private life, and even the people's thoughts).
Of course, all these movements differ greatly. But now I am only examining only under the amount of State intervention they advocate (a narrow view, of course).
Liberalism is a very mild exponent of Statism. But it shares things with these other movements.
I used to define myself as a liberal, but now I am not that sure. Having spent decades of my life in liberal organizations and NGOs I was aware that most of his members stick to their principles like if it was the only truth and it had to be imposed upon others. I guess this is a remainder of a religious point of view (Mind you, I am talking about the organizations I was member of, not all the liberal organizations).
Living in an European country under a Socialist government (which I voted), I have to admit that some of the actions of my government tend to totalitarism (in a mild way, of course). Not only my government has a good intervention in the economy (this is good from my point of view). Not only it wants to dictate us the way we live (of course, with the best intentions). But now it is trying to change the way new generations think by introducing a compulsory subject in all schools. This subject teaches the liberal point of view as the only truth. I have liberal points of view (and I can't object to the contents of this subject because resembles closely what I think) but I hate indoctrination. In fascist regimes (my country had one for forty years), there was also an "indoctrination" subject. Now the ideology has changed but the indoctrination returns.
I think this aim of thinking you are the only depositary of the truth and the willingness of using the State to impose the truth and to take part in people's lives is the point of contact of Liberalism and Fascism (political movements which are so different regarding other aspects). So this is the only point in which Goldberg is right.
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AH, now I understand -
- why Texaco so assiduously backed Francos Catholic fascism in Spain.
- why grandfather Bush was so fond of dealing with the democratic fascism in Germany.
- why those American nazi websites speak so glowingly of universal welfare and other socialist programs.
Well ok, I guess I dont really understand ;-))
Thing is, the word facism is a very short word with a very long and diffuse definition. You can look at almost any government before or after WW2 and find elements in it that correspond to someones definition of fascism.
The facist countries (Spain, Italy and Germany) were very different from each other and so definitions of fascism also differ considerably. The one think you can depend on in any current definition of fascism is that "fascism is bad", and that then becomes the basis for those who think "liberals are bad" to equate fascism with liberals, and for those who think "conservatives are bad" to equate fascism with conservatives.
null program, please reboot.
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Words are interesting
"classical fascism was masculine and violently oppressive and today's liberalism is feminine and not oppressive but smothering with kindness."
I can see the similarities between the words oppression and smothering (even if idiot boy can't), but the adjectives of violence and kindness don't jive. Can't help but wonder if he felt his Mom was smothering and he feels guilty for the extreme kindness required from her in order to promote his career knowing his obvious intellectual failings. So he ties the two together. Volia, Jonah explained. So poor smothered Jonah, break away, break away, simply break away from your kind smothering facist mother and be free. Become a liberal.
Now if anyone thinks this is an ad-hominem attack. It probably is. However it begs the question, is attacking one who uses adhominem attacks as defined below in definition #1 (just look at the book cover) justified in using definition #2?
ad ho·mi·nem
1. appealing to one's prejudices, emotions, or special interests rather than to one's intellect or reason.
2. attacking an opponent's character rather than answering his argument.