While we’re waiting for Jonah to pronounce, Sheri Berman, whose arguments about 1930s social democrats and fascists is the issue of debate, has a “piece”:http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/?article=1332 in _Dissent_ that I’d like to respond to. Sheri argues that the current crisis is a major opportunity for the left, but that it is hampered in its ability to respond because of internecine arguments over whether we should try to reform capitalism, or get rid of it altogether. She singles out Michael Harrington as her main exemplar of a leftist whose failure to appreciate the benefits of capitalism led him to irrelevance and political near-incoherence.
[click to continue…]
A correspondent tells me that Jonah Goldberg is preparing a very serious, thoughtful, rebuttal that has never been made in such detail or with such care to some of the impolite things that I have said about his magnum opus, _Liberal Fascism._ I just want to make a public note of this, as a class of a general spur and reminder to reinforce Jonah’s good intentions. I would be _very disappointed indeed_ if his refutation were to be postponed until the never-never …