Besides, I thought that Oshinsky was being ironic. His whole tone seemed to me slightly bemused and if you were being more cynical, academically contemptuous of Goldberg’s book. I’m sure if we could have seen him winking and nodding in print, well, Goldberg wouldn’t be so happy with himself.

As it is, Goldberg seems to be grasping at straws in clinging to this review. I wonder if the New York Review of Books will run a review of the book or if, correctly, they assume the book is below their threshold, and not worth responding to.

That’s it.

As to your original point: no, Goldberg does not say that fascism is liberalism taken to the extreme. He says that liberalism, or at least “progressivism” is inherently fascist.

Sk

Holbo is still a Nazi, though.

John H- Do you consider this acceptable dialogue on your website?

Sk

Woo! I am the winner!

No, seriously, what mq said. And did you check the link? Citing unreliable bigot lunatics in the service of a Very Serious Argument for a thesis that’s ridiculous on its face—that’s really a very reliable sign that a book is worthless.

(And yes, that means I did read a little bit of the book, the bits posted at Sadly, No! Still, I maintain that you can have extremely good evidence that a book sucks without having read any of it. For instance, I haven’t read any of The Pink Swastika or the work of David Irving, but the descriptions I’ve read of them are enough to discredit them. I wrote a dissertation about how you can gain evidence from what other people say about things you haven’t directly experienced, so this isn’t just an anti-intellectual position.)

To take you seriously for a moment, there is more than enough free material available on the net to allow a judgement on how very bad this book is. Do you have to buy and read every single book you see in the bookstore before deciding that it’s a waste of your time?

Even on his own terms, however, Goldberg’s argument fails spectacularly. To take an example, his bizarre argument about the Nazis and homosexuals applies far more to the conservative movement than it does to liberals. To throw his own words back at him, while it is true that conservatives oppose equal rights for homosexuals, it is also the case that the Republican Party and the constellation of conservative organizations in its orbit are rife with homosexuals.

I’m a lawyer, and I see this sort of exercise regularly done in arguments about the Constitution.