And the Saviour of Conservative Intellectualism is …

I’ve given up on finding intelligent conservative commentary. Instead, I live with the sad knowledge that constant exposure to leftist propaganda will turn me into a liberal socialist communist.

… I’m already doomed, but what’s the alternative? Limbaugh? Beck? Palin?

I will “buy” in to the first reasonable credible example of a modern conservative ideology, but they’re all hiding.

Stop forcing me to read your website with entertaining, lucid commentary on modern issues, you bastards.

Considering that Hayward’s paragons of “intellectual works” by conservatives include such dreck as Gilder’s Wealth & Poverty and Murray’s Losing Ground, I suppose it is true enough that Doughboy’s Liberal Fascism “harkens back to the older intellectual style”.

Hayward is conducting a Post chat on Tuesday. You can submit questions here.

It hardly needs to be said that his essay is as dumb and dishonest as you would expect from an AEI “fellow”.

(I should add that as a Hayward I feel it is incumbent on me to apologize for this schmournalist)

Democratic strategy is to be Republican lite: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091019/jones/single

I think you’ll all be happier today with a live conservative who responds to (some of) your taunts and imprecations. You’re going to love me for this…

Conservatism is inherently anti-intellectual. There, I said it.

Now, there will be confusion (some of it self-willed) as to what exactly I mean by this. And I’m a little confused myself, because I mean many things by it, and I’m not sure which to start with.

Here’s one: grant that most people are not intellectuals. In fact, hardly anyone is. Now, consider this (paraphrased from memory): “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That’s the core of true conservatism. (Like all conservatives, I get to say what true conservatism is, so you can’t tar me with Pat Buchanan or whatever. And I include Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter in “whatever”, so don’t bother.)

Now, suppose you kind and gentle people want to organize society according to the moral philosophy of Rawls. Hardly anyone has heard of Rawls. No, really, it’s true! Those who have heard of Rawls, and who find his ideas compelling, argue over the details of his philosophy. I saw it happen right on this website. The resulting conversation is strictly for specialists; in fact I seem to recall the restriction was explicit (to persons who had read a particular book). You need to be at least a highly dedicated amateur to even join that conversation, and it’s just as likely you’re a post-grad in some related field of study.

Which is to say, the people you propose to govern cannot understand you. They may be smart enough to invent cell phones and predator drones, but once you go all Rawlsian on them, their eyes glaze over. They’re too busy to try to figure out what you’re talking about, even if they cared, which they don’t.

Now I happen to think the project would be doomed on practical grounds, even in a 100% Rawlsian-specialist society, but that’s beside the point. Practicalities aside, people cannot consent to what they do not understand, and therefore any system of government founded on principles which are accessible only to specialists cannot derive its just powers from the consent of the governed. Yes, I’m so crazy I actually think that’s important*.

In view of this and similar considerations, I do not find it bothersome that a middlebrow like Glenn Beck should be in the vanguard of “Conservative Intellectualism”. Nor am I troubled by the supposed “lack of ideas” in conservatism. Conservatism has all the ideas it needs. They aren’t novel or fashionable, but they suffice. This hints at another sense in which conservatism is anti-intellectual: academics need a constant stream of novel and fashionable ideas to keep them in business. Conservatives can get by indefinitely with minor tweaks to old ideas which happen to be substantially correct.

* I’ll dispense right away with one red herring: I do not suggest that in order for a government to be legitimate, its every law and process be known and agreed on by everyone. Only that the scope and power of government should be defined by principles that most any interested person can easily grasp. It is simple, sensible, and universally agreeable that e.g. murder should not be tolerated. A few disagree, but screw ’em. A representative system can work out the details. Democracy can ensure that those who think murder ought to be tolerated do not gain power.

(And m.m. — meant to say this at the outset — thank you for sharing. I am indeed a happier person for having read what you said and thought about it.)

“Here’s one: grant that most people are not intellectuals. In fact, hardly anyone is. Now, consider this (paraphrased from memory): “that all men are created equal; that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights…that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” That’s the core of true conservatism. (Like all conservatives, I get to say what true conservatism is, so you can’t tar me with Pat Buchanan or whatever. And I include Glenn Beck and Ann Coulter in “whatever”, so don’t bother.)”

I must say as a Brit that it is news to me that those words contain the ‘core’ of true Conservatism.

Everybody in this country—heck, everybody in the world—has a right to a life free of suffering that would be due to not having essential stuff.

I think there’s a great deal that our Rawlsians would regard as essential, that’s not captured in your statement. Still, it’s a good effort, even in the polysyllabic form you gave first. It clearly states a principle that anyone can at least debate.

I think, though, that conservative ideas are easier to encapsulate in slogan form. For instance, “the government that feeds everybody can starve anybody”. I made that one up myself!

This suggests a tangential point, not directly tied to my thesis that conservatism is anti-intellectual, but relating to the idea of consent of the governed. Suppose government provides to many, such material goods as are needful to avoid their suffering (and shuts down any competitors who might otherwise provide, which governments like that tend to do). Isn’t that arrangement coercive? Consent implies you have the meaningful option of not consenting. So there’s no meaningful way you can consent to having, say, food and shelter.

I’d also like to thank m.m. for sharing their thoughts. We need more exchanges of this sort.

That said, objection one: is Rawlsianism very hard to grasp? “We should organize society such that the least well-off member is as well-off as she could be” is pretty simple. When you get down to the specifics, of course, the matter is extraordinarily complex. But I think this applies for any public ethos, perhaps especially for very parsimonious ones like Rawlsianism or libertarianism. Joe Sixpack, that abstraction, doesn’t need an advanced philosophy degree to make appeals to the tenants of a Rawlsian system – he says, look at those people (or look at me!,) they’re getting shafted.

This is probably true generally. Look at Marxism or Christianity or whatever – these are rich philosophies that intellectuals have investigated and quibbled over and still find deep nuance in, engaging in debates that nonspecialists find incomprehensible. And yet Joe Sixpacks throughout history haven’t had any difficulty calling themselves adherents of these or advancing political claims in their language, often against the very institutions that employed the intellectuals in question.

Objection two: it’s probably more realistic to speak of political ideologies motivating actors than the entire society abstractly. Rawlsians can’t (alas) wave a magic wand and make everyone conform to Rawlsian reasoning, much less society work according to Rawlsian principles; they can just vote for the sort of candidates, engage in the sort of activism, volunteer in the sort of soup kitchens &c. that they think will make the greatest marginal contribution to the least member of society. They can do things to make other people Rawlsians, but only to the extent that Rawlsianism (or whatever) actually is a comprehensible system to nonspecialists.

Since Liberal Fascism has been held up for ridicule in this post, I’ll say a thing or two about it. I’m an unlikely defendant of Jonah Goldberg or the book, because I had wanted to write that book myself, and I thought I would do a better job of it, and I’m jealous that Goldberg gets all the credit (to say nothing of the money), so I didn’t bother to get a copy and read it. I have read one snippet which was published in National Review.

Consider Christians. They believe that Jesus of Nazareth died all the way dead, lay dead for three days, and then came back to life with a happy result. That is the belief which defines Christianity. It is an extraordinary belief, because to anyone who doesn’t believe it, it’s obviously nuts. So it is a defining, extraordinary belief.

Catholics and Protestants are Christians. They have managed to work up various wars between them, over differences of belief which are quite trivial relative to the defining, extraordinary belief I mentioned above. If someone says, “Catholic is the opposite of Protestant”, you know they’re a Christian. Because to any non-Christian, the main thing about Christians is this belief in the Resurrection, and any other little quibbles seem unimportant. From my point of view, the Pope is in the same boat as any strychnine-swilling snake handler. The differences are not inconsequential, but if I had to state my main disagreement with either of them, it would be the same. They are not opposites from the point of view of anyone who doesn’t share their defining, extraordinary belief.

The same applies to fascists, communists, social democrats, etc. There are not-inconsequential differences, but they all share the same defining, extraordinary belief. If you say that fascism is the opposite of communism, you’re a socialist. The differences between various socialisms are terribly important to you, but to anyone who doesn’t share your fundamental beliefs, the similarities are far more important. I’m not sure how well Jonah Goldberg makes this point; the part of his book that I read was a kind of guilt-by-association enumeration of historical links between various socialist thinkers and ideas, including the not-so-nice ones. Is Goldberg an intellectual? Apparently not, to judge by the opinion of him in these quarters. But if he’s saying what I think he’s saying, then he’s right, and his rightness will stand the test of time. The fact that he’s not a Major League Brainsball player doesn’t enter into it. You don’t have to be a genius to observe the similarities in principle between “soft socialism” and other isms that are, shall we say, more robust.

This is why Tea Partiers sometimes call President Obama a Nazi. They may be trivializing the Holocaust or somesuch, but they’re not being frivolous or wholly delusional. They know that social democracies, such as Obama is seeking to establish, can mutate into fascist states like that (snaps fingers), typically under a leader with a cult of personality like, well, Obama. I personally don’t trust Obama any farther than I could throw Mount Rushmore, but I don’t fear him much, especially now that he’s skidding out on his face politically.

I’m sure this is annoying for some people here, so I’ll conciliate a bit. If it’s fair to call Obama a Nazi, then it’s also fair to call McCain or Bush a Nazi. Neither of those Republicans had much in the way of principles, and both did great harm.

…stupid people are generally Conservative…

That is a great quote, NomadUK, and I don’t doubt it made a lot of sense when Mill said it. But times have changed. Nowadays there’s just no knowing what a stupid person is likely to believe.

Really. Where would the Democrat party (or Labour, for UK readers) be without stupid people? Think about it.

Conservatism may not be intellectual, but that doesn’t mean it has to be stupid. Intellectuality isn’t the same thing as intelligence, and it’s not necessarily better. But stupidity has a quality all to itself.

the government that feeds everybody, can starve anybody

I don’t understand this. But maybe it’s because I am translating it into

the government which ensures that all of its citizens have the resources they need to acquire food, could start preventing some of its citizens from expending their resources in order to acquire food

Well yes, but couldn’t any government could start preventing some of its citizens from expending their resources in order to acquire food?

“I think, though, that conservative ideas are easier to encapsulate in slogan form. For instance, ‘the government that feeds everybody can starve anybody’. I made that one up myself!”

And yet Olof Palme’s Sweden and Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe are as far apart as Venus and Mars. Parochialism accounts for much of the conservative opposition to, say, meaningful health care reform: the teabaggers are simply ignorant of the actual experiences of European social (or, better yet, Christian) democracies, which have falsified this folk understanding of Hayek. Or perhaps I underestimate our populist friends, and they hew to another proposition: That Washington, enmeshed with defense contractors and financial oligarchs, guilty of crimes in the developing world, is uniquely untrustworthy among governments of industrialized nations. Should I call into Rush and suggest this?

#26 dsquared: “I think most of us on this blog have read Michael Oakeshott – conservatism is necessarily antirational, not antiintellectual.”

I have not read him, so let me guess what it means to say that conservatism is necessarily antirational. Errr, forget that. What, pray tell, does it mean? Many thanks.

Where would the Democrat party (or Labour, for UK readers) be without stupid people?

Assuming you’re not trolling, please tell me what this “Democrat” party is and describe to me its membership.

And just because it’s fun:

the government that feeds everybody, can starve anybody

No it can’t.. At that point it is no longer “the government that feeds everybody”. Or is your point just that American “conservative” ideas don’t make any sense, with this as an example? If so, it hardly seems fair of you to make up a new slogan just for that purpose.

Musical mountaineer,

You stated: ‘The same applies to fascists, communists, social democrats, etc. There are not-inconsequential differences, but they all share the same defining, extraordinary belief.’

So what do you consider this extraordinary belief to be? Because it’s not clear to me what it is. The idea that governments are able to do some things better than individuals may possibly be defining, but it’s not extraordinary, because it’s demonstrably true (who in the US is agitating for private fire brigades?). Nor do social democrats share the belief that governments are always better at doing everything, as you can see from the fact that not everything is nationalised in such countries. Conservatives, according to your definition believe in the equality of all, so that’s not the distinctive definition. I suppose the nearest you could get is a belief in the perfectability of society, but that’s not a key thought in modern social democracy, even if they do want a better society.

Just so Z, just so. It’s courageous to put the process first instead of disappearing in the sentiments on the issues. And, as you say, the prerequisites of the process are quite on the left which is why conservative Americans hate their country, I suppose.

Ease of encapsulation doesn’t imply moral worth or value.

Agreed. As for the rest of your post, you make some good points, and I kind of knew you would. I wasn’t quite satisfied with my own arguments.

I don’t really want to talk about Rawls, as such. I put that out there as an example, to try to illustrate one sense in which conservatism, as I say, is anti-intellectual. There are other examples. Here’s the generalization: conservatives want principled government; progressives want big, brainy government. Street progressives (who really are stupid people) do things like march in the streets demanding “leadership on climate change”. They want smart people to assume great power and fix big complicated problems. Street conservatives (who may also be stupid people) distrust power; they know its corrupting effects. They’d rather limit the government to dealing with obvious, simple necessities like enforcing contracts, repelling invaders, and putting burglars in jail. And there just isn’t much need for intellectuals in that scheme.

Some will say, “yes, but global warming threatens our very existence. We must e.g. make Al Gore the President Of The World immediately!” And who knows, maybe they’re right about the first part. But even if they are, the second part doesn’t necessarily follow. Look at our political classes and you see nothing but massive corruption and incompetence. These are the people we’re supposed to rely on, to save the planet? Given the choice:

A. We all burn up.
B. We create a global totalitarian hyperstate to control every aspect of our lives, and then we all burn up. And the whole time, our leaders tell us it would have been much worse otherwise.
C. (the progressive best-case scenario) We create a global totalitarian hyperstate to control every aspect of our lives, and we save the planet, and then, uh, well, I guess we all live happily ever after with a global totalitarian hyperstate controlling every aspect of our lives!

We conservatives would rather just burn up. And we’re not convinced, anyway, that that’s what’s going to happen. The people who are most strenuously trying to convince us have obvious conflicts of interest: they make big money and seek vast power with their doom-mongering. Most tellingly, they don’t advocate nuclear power, and they don’t take anything like the radical line that would be needed to get China to cooperate. If the future of humanity is at stake, they ought to be pushing extreme measures, not just massive pyramids of bureaucracy.

Again, I don’t want to argue about global warming, as such. It’s just another angle on this “conservatism is anti-intellectual” thing. If you’re really worried about global warming, and frustrated by conservative intransigence on this issue, the thing to do is propose solutions that don’t present obvious conflicts of interest. Attack the problem through the markets, or through technology.

“Street conservatives (who may also be stupid people) distrust power; they know its corrupting effects. They’d rather limit the government to dealing with obvious, simple necessities like enforcing contracts, repelling invaders, and putting burglars in jail. And there just isn’t much need for intellectuals in that scheme.”

Oh bullf*cking sh*t. There weren’t any right-wing marches during the Bush administration, opposing that administration’s massive power grabs, secrecy and corruption.

Crap! You can’t have multiple lines in a blockquote? For clarity, it was xaaronx who posted the line starting with “No it can’t..”

22: It’s actually quite annoying of MM to lay out the concept of a defining, extraordinary belief, to illustrate it with the excellent example of the Christian churches, and then to say

“The same applies to fascists, communists, social democrats, etc. There are not-inconsequential differences, but they all share the same defining, extraordinary belief”

and then not to say what that belief is.

As for the core beliefs: I would have thought that conservatism required you to believe that “power and wealth should remain more or less where they are now” and for liberals to belief that “power and wealth should be spread around as equally as practically possible”.

The government that protects everybody from murder can murder anybody. And sometimes does. Does this mean that we shouldn’t attempt to have a government that protects people from murder?

Pointing to the existence of governmental abuses of power is an argument for scrutinizing the government’s use of its powers, not for or against any particular limit on those powers. Government is both useful and dangerous, like a chainsaw. The chainsaw that cuts up a fallen tree can also cut off your arm, but that isn’t a good reason to get rid of it, only to be careful with it.

P.S. Progressive proposed solutions to global climate change don’t actually involve totalitarian hyperstates. You are either ignorant of the views you are arguing against, or dishonestly misrepresenting them. In either case, please correct the problem.

“The people who are most strenuously trying to convince us have obvious conflicts of interest: they make big money and seek vast power with their doom-mongering.”

And this is why, as a scientist-in-training at a Big Name Institute, I can’t name a single person I know here who identifies as a Republican.

Well said, Chris@47. I hope musical mountaineer comes back and reads it. No doubt the scales will fall from his eyes.

Ajay @50, that’s just the reflexive US conservative habit of projection. Whatever malfeasance they may be involved in, they will infallibly accuse their opponents of the same thing. (In fact, that’s the best available indicator of what they’re actually up to.) And being know-nothings, of course they don’t need no steenkin’ evidence for their accuations.

In a different discussion a week or so ago, I asked a friend where the right wing/conservative technocrats (RW versions of Ezra Klein) were. Most of the discussions I read on rightist blogs focus on horse race issues – will X be good for Democrats, or good for Republicans. Then there’s “policy Z is bad because it’s against freedom, or proChoice, etc…” But, to paraphrase John DiIulio, I hardly ever come across an argument grounded in policy analysis.

Three people who seem ready to engage others in thoughtful discussions are Daniel Larison, Greg Mankiw, and David Frum. They also seem ready to test their own biases.

re 47. i agree. i like this:

“Pointing to the existence of governmental abuses of power is an argument for scrutinizing the government’s use of its powers, not for or against any particular limit on those powers.”

my problem these days is that both “sides” appear intent on only scrutinizing what they’re already convinced is the central problem. this is rough, but it gets the point across: the right scrutinizes regulation and social policy and the left scrutinizes corporate welfare and imperial pursuits.* since both teams always have one eye closed, they’re unable to see the big picture, one that reveals mutual reinforcements secured across the battlefield; corporate welfare that reinforces regulation, regulation that reinforces corporate welfare, imperial pursuits that encourage social policy, social policy that encourages imperial pursuits, and so on…

this is a left-anarchist/right-libertarian analysis, and like you imply, even if one accepts the above as generally the case, that doesn’t mean one need be an anarchist/libertarian. granted, i myself AM some kind of anarchist, so maybe i’m just wishing everyone be just like me, but seriously, i think i’d be really happy (and maybe even a little convinced) if a serious journal were to come along that DOES, for the most part, accept this grand analysis while not arriving at the same anarchist/libertarian policy prescriptions** as myself.

*i’m pretending the culture war doesn’t exist for the moment
**paradox noted. for the record, my prescriptions are actually more communitarian than anything else. i think social intellectuals of all stripes should start thinking hard and fast about issues of scale, particularly the scale of our federal government, and whether investing in smaller communal units (i would call them “communities,” but i don’t genuinely believe those exist anymore) might be more helpful. i understand the pitfalls here, yes.

Keith @ 54

the Goldburgian thesis of Liberal Fascism

Just what do you understand Jonah Goldberg’s thesis to be? Near as I can tell, it’s that fascism has its roots in the politics of the left: specifically, the Pragmatist/Progressive era. He argues that it essentially began as a reaction to socialism’s internationalist program, recasting economic planning as a national endeavor to benefit not the “workers” but the middle class; and to galvanize the people of a nation to work for the collective benefit, rather than for their own selfish interests. He characterizes fascism as a political program that seeks “action” above all lead by a charismatic, confident leader who should be free of the constraints imposed by “outworn” ideas. Finally, he argues that these are the tenets that the political Left in America operate by.

What of the above is outlandish?

Salient, that would require MM to actually have some vestige of a clue about what Obama actually “stands for”. Good luck with that.

I was especially interested because the statement seemed to be tossed off so nonchalantly. I heard the same thing from the most moderate individuals I talked with at the most recent tea party riot thing around here (Sept 12; it was more of a parade, lots of people on lawn chairs watching cars with signs go by). Insofar as this meaningfully expresses a sentiment, which I presume it does, what does it mean?

It means The Saviour of Conservative Intellectualism is likely to go unnoticed.

Question is, is that a good thing?

(And I don’t mean this just as a sassy/playful quip from a lefty to a fellow lefty, it’s meant to acknowledge m.m.’s sentiment as well.)

They know that social democracies, such as Obama is seeking to establish, can mutate into fascist states like that (snaps fingers), typically under a leader with a cult of personality like, well, Obama.

This is one of those myths that has virtually no basis in history. Spain wasn’t really a social democracy – neither were the various Latin American military dictatorships, if you count them as fascist. Italy and Germany were, I suppose (they had pension schemes and so forth) but not much more or less than any other industrial European nation. There’s no coherent theory that would link the establishment of a social safety net to vulnerability to fascism.

The other one is “democracies survive until a majority of the population realise they can vote themselves largesse from the public purse” – ignoring the fact that no democracy in history has ever collapsed for this reason. Historically, democracies survive until they are invaded by the Spartans, the Macedonians, the Wehrmacht or the Red Army, or until the CIA decides to set up a military coup.

Salient @ 60: I’m afraid it’s worse than that. Obviously MM has no clue what Obama is actually about. But what I’m saying is that he, and people like him, don’t even have any clear idea of what they think he’s about. It’s all foaming at the mouth with no semantic content at all.

Right right right, but isn’t the point of the SoCI to confer legitimacy to those claims with disingenuous arguments?

Not according to Hayward, though he also seems to be bananas. He wants a very serious thoughtful argument made in detail and with care, but he’ll never recognize it if it shows up.

Even Friedrich Hayek didn’t think that a national health service was necessarily a step on the road to serfdom.

Actually, he did – centralised government-run hospitals with incompetent doctors and bossy nurses were one step away from internment camps, a view he outlined in his 1955 article, “Carry On Up The Road To Serfdom”.

Wow. That came out wrong

‘Near as I can tell, it’s that fascism has its roots in the politics of the left: specifically, the Pragmatist/Progressive era. ‘

Aside from ignoring the influence of the ANI or the Voceists on the Italian genus or the Vaterland Partei and Volkisch traditions on the NSDAP, it has the same logic as calling Burkean Toryism Jacobin because it came out of the revolutionary period.

‘it essentially began as a reaction to socialism’s internationalist program, recasting economic planning as a national endeavor to benefit not the “workers” but the middle class’

Which is a many headed statement of foolishness. Fascism is primarily about and for the nation. Goldberg de-nationalises it to such an extent that he can apply it anywhere he chooses. Planning before 1914 was a minority activity of the left, not much beyond Fabian efficiency. The real pioneers of Statism were conservatives and Old style Liberals seeking to buy off revolutionary movements and re-equip their societies to the storm of modernisation. Fascism’s rhetoric and its core perception of its self and its mission were far closer to organic nationalist models of estates and class peace than welfare to the shopkeepers.

‘He characterizes fascism as a political program that seeks “action” above all lead by a charismatic, confident leader who should be free of the constraints imposed by “outworn” ideas.’

An idea of action and morality shared by Boulanger, Maurras, Barres, Cuza, Junger and those ‘Trotskyites of the National Revolution’, Alan Clark and now John Perry

Hardy a gallery of raging lefties.

…a political program that seeks “action” above all lead by a charismatic, confident leader who should be free of the constraints imposed by “outworn” ideas.

Umm. If that doesn’t describe your average outspoken Republican’s support for Reagan and Bush II, I don’t know what does.

As opposed to, for example, liberal support for Lyndon Johnson tanking as he escalated Vietnam, or the string of uncharismatic presidential nominees (I get that Obama is a convenient charismatic punching bag, but who else? Dukakis? Clinton wasn’t exactly liberal.)

I mean, everybody likes people who exude charisma and confidence. These are not bad characteristics for leaders to have, generally speaking. (I guess acknowledging this establishes my Goldbergian fascistic street cred.) But “should be free of the constraints imposed by [allegedly outworn] ideas” (such as the UN and the rule of law) was the core pro-Bush argument in 2002-2003, and the nomination of Kerry very much represented a desire to return to those allegedly outworn ideas.

Wow, this thread really burgeoned in my absence. I’ve only just scanned it a little, but I suppose there have been several responses to my several wall-of-text comments above. Apologies in advance if I don’t do yours justice. Anyway, this caught my eye…

I would be very interested…in hearing from you, m.m., what it means to you, to say “I loathe Barack Obama and all he stands for.”

Well, first of all, it doesn’t mean I lie awake at night grinding my teeth about him. My loathing is more abstract than literal. But it’s very very real.

Religion-wise, I’m a deist at most, and not really even that. To the extent that I experience feelings of profound reverence and spiritual awe, it is for the ideal expressed in the Declaration, that human beings, in order to be human, must be free. Only in freedom can humanity’s positive tendencies – creativity, generosity, love, etc. – find full expression. Conversely, in the absence of freedom, even if all material needs are satisfied, humanity is miserable.

I think I made it clear earlier that freedom is somewhat complex to define in an advanced society, that there’s no such thing as pure freedom, and that the preconditions to freedom are likewise complex and in some cases a bit paradoxical. So, to avoid writing another wall of text, I’ll just say that I know what freedom is, I’ve been the beneficiary of it, and I love and revere it. It’s the only abstract thing I can think of that might be worth dying for, as life without it is not life at all.

Barack Obama is the enemy of freedom. I could write fifty walls of text explaining how and why (and in the present company, it’s pretty clear I’d have to). I could argue about it; I have boatloads of ammunition for that argument. I see Obama’s opposition to freedom in almost everything he says and does (and, to show that it’s not mere partisan paranoia, I saw a lot of the same things with Bush and McCain). Indeed, it goes beyond mere opposition; it’s almost existential or definitional. Obama lives in a conceptual world where freedom does not exist, and proceeds accordingly.

He’s also just a nasty person. Closed-minded, thin-skinned, contemptuous of differing points of view, disingenuous, callous to human suffering, lawless, ruthless, uncivil, irresponsible, a whiner…Jesus, somebody stop me. He has a beautiful smile. He has, from time to time, said or done something bold and right (that would be a good theme for a very lazy conservative blogger: Obama Gets It Right). But overall, he’s a nightmare.

I have a pet theory as to why Obama fares so poorly at speaking off-the-cuff, and uses a teleprompter even for press conferences (!). He’s not stupid. But he doesn’t think straight. Privately, he has plans and ideas that make sense and string together logically. But those plans aren’t palatable to most of the public. So he obfuscates. It’s easy to say what you believe. It’s not so easy to say what you think someone else needs to hear in order to accept a proposition which, if they understood its implications the way you do, they’d run screaming from.

Please don’t drive us to the point of having to quote chapter and verse on the funding of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Tech Central Station.

Acknowledged.

Mario Diana @60:

Just what do you understand Jonah Goldberg’s thesis to be? Near as I can tell, it’s that fascism has its roots in the politics of the left: specifically, the Pragmatist/Progressive era….What of the above is outlandish?

Golburg’s liberal fascism is based on the idea that he doesn’t like liberals or anything progressive and that the word fascist has a nice negative ring to it. So he smashes them together and hopes no one notices that he’s claiming Hitler’s greatest evil was that he wanted to provide universal healthcare.

Or, failing that, you could answer the question I asked earlier: when you say ““The same applies to fascists, communists, social democrats, etc. There are not-inconsequential differences, but they all share the same defining, extraordinary belief” – what is that belief ?

I have a pet theory as to why Obama fares so poorly at speaking off-the-cuff, and uses a teleprompter even for press conferences (!).

MM, I think you’ve mistaken Obama for someone else, namely his predecessor. We had an election last November and the dork who can’t string to words together retired, replaced with, as you put it, a deeply charismatic smooth talking leader. (who scares you).

So, is Obama a dunderhead or a silk tongued devil? Or does he change, like Jekyll into Hyde, depending on which argument you’re using against him?

Jesus, somebody stop me.

Not on your life.

On your hatred of Obama: it all seems to be based on your perception of his character (which must be tricky to assess in someone whom you’ve never met) rather than in his actual actions.

Déjà vu all over again. Bill Clinton governed like a moderate-to-liberal Republican, and it drove his opponents far battier than if he really had been the flaming lefty they claimed he was. Obama shows every sign of being another wonky, incrementalist, centrist technocrat, which is why we now find ourselves debating whether he is or isn’t an asshole, rather than talking about what he’s doing.

Ajay @46 and other comments: see mm @45.

I must say as a Brit that it is news to me that those words contain the ‘core’ of true Conservatism’

What, didn’t you get our letter?

That’s because we have jobs.

Sorry, that quip doesn’t impress me. We both know it’s not a fair and reasonable response. Lots of conservatives turned out for 9/12 rallies around here, for example. The same folks could’ve turned out for the weekend rallies against war in Iraq, if they so desired. (And some of them did. Good on them, I say.) But the folks that are turning out nowadays didn’t all go and quit their jobs last January (or last July, etc) so that they could start participating in rallies and marches. Their jobs didn’t suddenly proffer extra vacation time as of last November. (And most of the folks I spoke with at the 9/12 rally were gainfully employed, or at least said they were, so it’s not a “suddenly unemployed” issue.)

‘I must say as a Brit that it is news to me that those words contain the ‘core’ of true Conservatism’
What, didn’t you get our letter?’

Yes very droll. However, the key influence on that document was John Locke, and we have no less than authority than that Great Mind of Our Time, Steven Pinker, that Locke, in propagating (allegedly) a theory of the ‘Blank Slate’, was in fact the most Evil Human Being Who Ever Lived (it being a proven scientific fact that all Evil Communists believe in the Blank Slate) whereas (I thought) Conservatives believe a static human nature….or something.

In any case, whatever you think, I’m pretty sure that it would have come as a surprise to Locke (not to mention the anti-colonial revolutionaries of the War of Independence) to find out that that he/they were actually ‘Conservatives’.

What you’ve said is a gross distortion of Goldberg’s work.

His work is the work of a crank and nothing more.

Did you use the dreaded word “socia1ism”?

Mario Diana @97:

I didn’t think I needed to explain that “anti-semite Catholics” = Nazis. Hitler was a devout Catholic and, as you may have heard, an anti-semite, traits shared by most of his inner circle. But then, I am discussing matters of history and politics with someone who takes Jonah Goldburg seriously, so perhaps I should use small words.

You’re right, I haven’t read all of liberal Fascism. I’ve read extensive excerpts and several substantive reviews, however, which is more than enough to know that Goldburg’s book is 20 pounds of shit in a 10 pound bag.

Anyone who thinks nationalistic yahoos like the Nazis, striving to build a militant, monoculture based on religious and mythic qualities of empire, hierarchy and heroic individualism is the same thing as an ad hoc association of anti-war, multicultural, secular and collectivist groups needs to have their head examined.

I’ve taken care of some major health issues out-of-pocket with no regrets (no, I’m not rich).

Yes you are. Otherwise “major health issues out-of-pocket” would render you bankrupt.

Obama has ignored these ideas. He has not called for tort reform or interstate competition, or lent support to any plan that includes them.

This is an awfully shaky base from which to launch a foray into what Obama might be thinking.

This is an awfully shaky base from which to launch a foray into what Obama might be thinking.

I’d say the fact that he hasn’t promoted such bullshit wingnut nostrums says positive things about his thinking.

I don’t know how it works

You could have saved us all a lot of time and just posted that.

Help me out? Like, with specific examples, please. I am listening and trying to comprehend, trying to envision how you see the world.

I’m trying to understand you, too. I find it interesting that anyone could have trouble with “the government that feeds everybody can starve anybody”. Your response:

I don’t understand this. But maybe it’s because I am translating it into “the government which ensures that all of its citizens have the resources they need to acquire food, could start preventing some of its citizens from expending their resources in order to acquire food”

Here’s my psychoanalysis from afar, of both you and that other guy who took exception: I say “the government feeds everybody” and somehow that concept becomes a logical proposition instead of a plain-old hypothetical. This renders the rest of the statement absurd, as though I had said “A and Not A”.

Maybe this reveals something about the progressive psyche. Progressives, far more than conservatives, believe in the promise of government. Suppose unicorns exist and every little girl wants one. If we create a Department of Unicorns for the purpose of getting every little girl a unicorn, progressives just expect it to work. They see some kind of mysterious (to conservatives) logical relationship between the stated intention of providing unicorns, and the outcome of unicorns being provided.

Conservatives, on the other hand, expect things like massive distortion of the unicorn market; perverse incentives leading to hoarding of unicorns; corruption and graft in the unicorn procurement process; bureaucratic snafus leading to inefficient and inequitable unicorn distribution; failure of the unicorn supply; budgets blowing out by an order of magnitude; etc. We’re basically always right about this. There is no logical connection between intention and outcome.

Sometimes, too, the outcome is so predictable, so obvious, and so bad, that no conservative can believe the intention is stated in good faith. This is how I feel about just about every intention Obama states. And then the progressives say “you just don’t want little girls to have unicorns!” Sigh.

Anyway, here’s how I clarify “the government that feeds everybody can starve anybody”. If the government feeds everybody (and I mean literally and directly, not by way of providing fungible “resources”), then the government has the option, at any time, of ceasing to feed anybody. Anybody who disagrees with the government, for instance. All the major historical examples I can think of happened in non-democratic societies, but I don’t think democracy is a categorical safeguard, for reasons I enumerated earlier. You may take this as a metaphor for any material necessity, not just food.

Actually, England’s NHS is arguably an example. Most of what I know about the NHS I learned from nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com. The proprietor is a working English physician, and by no means a conservative. He believed in the promise of the NHS, and has suffered an idealist’s distress at the actual outcomes. One of those outcomes, even as budgets have exploded, has been continuous reduction in the standard of care, and in choices available to doctors and patients. It’s a far cry from politically-targeted starvation, but it shows how even in a democracy government can renege on its obligations, to the benefit of no-one but government, and get away with it.

_Most of what I know about the NHS I learned from nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com._

Now why doesn’t that surprise me.

If the government feeds everybody (and I mean literally and directly, not by way of providing fungible “resources”),

But see, that’s a problem. This is exactly what everyone is taking a strong exception to. With that parenthetical, you are caricaturing my beliefs and ideals (and not just mine!) I am, at heart, a redistributionist: I believe in taxing the wealthy enough to fund the basic needs of every citizen. It would be weird to me to set up the US Grocery Service. What are you envisioning, like soup kitchens on every corner? Progressives, broadly speaking, wouldn’t want that and wouldn’t support that. You’re offending us by accusing us of wanting something rather silly that we don’t want, and all agree is rather silly.

Your statement, of what you perceive to be the progressive stance, is especially off the mark when it comes to health care! It’s not like the U.S. government will own the hospitals, or prevent its citizens from buying service from the hospitals with their own money. I’d just like to see the U.S. government financially provide for the health care of its citizens through a progressive tax. I am pragmatically OK with some reasonable restrictions on what the provisions will pay for, and OK with establishing the assurance that anyone is free to purchase any additional insurance they want.

Most of what I know about the NHS I learned from nhsblogdoc.blogspot.com. The proprietor is a working English physician, and by no means an advisor to the cConservative Party.

Fixed. HTH.

There is no logical connection between intention and outcome.

Well, they did send a man to the moon, you know. Or was it merely a hoax perpetrated by scheming bureaucrats?

Who believed in the power of the Department of Unicorns to make Iraq a success? The Right, or the Left?

No True Scotsman will be arriving momentarily at Gate 7.

Article on fascism in America that attempts to apply Robert O. Paxton’s analysis…

Where’s Brownie? I wanna say “Heckuva job.”

The proprietor [of nhsblogdoc] is…an advisor to the Conservative Party.

Well, then, my information is out of date. I haven’t read the fellow in years. He got internet-famous quite quickly when he started, and that was when I tuned in.

But I stand by my characterization. There was, in his early writing, a definite sense of feeling betrayed. He believed the NHS could and should work as advertised, and he deplored the Orwellian clusterfuck it had become. As a conservative, I often thought, “you poor, naive fellow”. I really did think of him as a good little socialist.

Whatever his subsequent political story, I see no reason to doubt the sincerity or accuracy of those writings. Having worked in healthcare myself, I could empathize with his frustration at not being able to take proper care (as he saw it) of his patients. He had (presumably still has) the compassion and integrity which are professional requirements in medicine. And I should think he knows better than any of us how the system works. But around here, it appears, he is regarded as a crackpot or worse. Well, I’ll take care not to refer to him in the future.

Unless with prior permission, the stories about “patients” are fictionalised. The underlying points made about medicine are true, but they are clothed in fictional events.

Didn’t used to say that. Used to say it was HIPAA-compliant, which means you can’t say anything publicly which would make the case identifiable. So of course some stuff had to be falsified. But, you know, “the underlying points made about medicine are true”. Crippen didn’t invent Choose and Book, or the Spine, or nurse practitioners, or “the dumbing down of medicine”, as he called it. He didn’t make up the institutional changes which had throttled medical education in the UK.

I can see, though, that I’m going to have to find another inside source on the NHS, assuming one exists. Anybody got any suggestions?

I read through the site’s archives. Lots of parodies.

Parodies? This is not the Dr. Crippen I knew.

All right, one more:

Progressives expect government to work, not in some hazy metaphysical way, but with proper regulation and oversight to ensure that it does in fact feed everyone rather than starve everyone. Conservatives are the ones who put the CEO of glue factories in charge of the Department of Unicorns, and then use the failure of that department as an example of corrupt bureaucracy. Progressives would do the unthinkable: hire someone qualified and enthusiastic about the stated mission of their charge.

They would? You make it sound as though they never had the chance, yet. We’ll get to that.

Proper regulation and oversight, and qualified people and all that, only go so far. Institutions change. Or they don’t change, and the world does. Or they fulfill their mission, and then need some new rationale for existing. There are a lot of ways for institutions to lose their integrity, competence, and relevance. And it’s kind of like what the IRA said to Thatcher: you have to get lucky every time, we only have to get lucky once. Once an institution misses the curve, it doesn’t get back on track except by a miracle. When businesses fail to “get lucky”, they go out of business (or, in the new model, they become departments of the government). Government programs, however corrupt, can live on as zombies indefinitely. They aren’t directly accountable to their “customers”, and they can influence the political process to insulate themselves from accountability.

The Department of Education was established under Carter, who was and remains about as progressive as a national office-holder can be. By your reasoning, he must have hired enthusiastic, capable people and placed them under proper oversight and regulation. The department’s a shambles now, and the poster child for perverse incentives. They literally get paid more to fail than to succeed.

Primary education is not rocket science. It’s been done well (and is still done well around the world) with minimal resources. We now have schools that cost millions of dollars, with all computerized whiteboards and sports facilities and resource rooms and 47 layers of administration providing proper oversight and regulation. We have teacher colleges churning out highly credentialed professionals well-versed in the latest educational theories. With all that, they underperform amateurs who educate their own kids in their spare time, using materials bought with their own money. That’s because the primary mission of Education is not education, and hasn’t been for decades.

There’s a bumper sticker you see sometimes: if you think education is expensive, try ignorance. No joke. A cursory google check suggests we bought about 98 billion dollars’ worth of ignorance in 2006.

“Once an institution misses the curve, it doesn’t get back on track except by a miracle.”

This is nonsense. All sorts and levels of institutions are changed all the time. If government institutional design involves tight focus, responsibility and transparency — just like some business institutions — it will do okay. Markets can’t fix everything because they are opaque with regard to the distribution of income, and because modern society requires monopolized competition due to the costs of innovating in high technology — and that thwarts the efficient allocation of resources under any distribution of income. In reality what we have is a polycentric structure with three major institutions: price markets, government, and freedom of speech.

The Department of Education was established under Carter, who was and remains about as progressive as a national office-holder can be. By your reasoning, he must have hired enthusiastic, capable people and placed them under proper oversight and regulation. The department’s a shambles now, and the poster child for perverse incentives. They literally get paid more to fail than to succeed.

Carter did hire enthusiastic, capable people and place them under proper oversight and regulation. Then Reagan came along and replaced them all with hacks. Because the GOP thinks kids should be stupid unless their parents are wealthy enough to pay for a decent education. Every time a Democrat gets into office, test scores go up and education turns around, at least incrementally. Then another Republican wander sin and shuts it all down out of some misguided desire to run critical infrastructure like a business. Some things (education, health care, electricity and housing) aren’t going to make money. And that’s fine. Every other country in the world thinks so at least, and so spends money to create cultural capital. But here in the US, we only like economic capital. The result is our education system is full of corrupt hacks, and we pay twice as much for half the health care of our nearest neighbor. But hay, the Health Insurance companies are posting profits so why change anything, right?

Mountaineer, 124 I’m not saying there’s no connection at all between intention and outcome. Just that the connection isn’t logical in nature.

They created a Department and eradicated polio and smallpox for all the little girls. They built electric grids and brought electricity to their homes. The created national air traffic control system. Sewage system so that the girls don’t have to run to the outhouse in the middle of the night. They brought potable water into their houses, day and night. They paved roads and sidewalks, and put up light poles along them. They painted yellow and white lines on the roads, they installed traffic lights that switch from green to yellow to red and back to green all day long. They put up signs “no parking on this side on Tuesday”, because they remove snow from the streets for all the little girls. They built schools for them and hired teachers. They collect the garbage. They created the internet. They’ve done a lot of very good things, exactly as they set out to do. Some of them very ambitious.

Now, they’ve done some very bad things as well, but still, it seems obvious that their actions need to be discussed on the merits, not flat-out rejected the way you do.

‘Generally speaking, conservatives believe the Army to be an extraordinarily efficient, effective and ethical force
Excuse me? They are.’

Wow.

“He believed the NHS could and should work as advertised, and he deplored the Orwellian clusterfuck it had become.”

The NHS may be an Orwellian clusterfuck, but it’s an Orwellian clusterfuck that provides generally better outcomes than the US system for half the price, even after all that money had been pumped into it.

Keith @ 103

I have no inclination to defend the Catholic Church, but as to Hitler being a “devout Catholic,” this is news to me. I was actually a history major, and though I didn’t concentrate in modern Europe, I think it’s far safer to say that, at the most, Hitler had a Machiavellian view of religion — it’s useful to keep the dupes feeling good about themselves and their government.

I do know enough to know that Hitler wished to make a “religion” of the state. I’ve come across this in many places; and though I’m sure you’ll pooh-pooh the Wikipedia article, I’ve gone to the trouble of linking to it for you.

Furthermore, a big part of Mr. Goldberg’s book is to point out that “Fascism = Nazi” is a big oversimplification, something which seems to escape you.

As I’ve said, I’m only halfway through the book, so I can’t say whether I take Mr. Goldberg fully seriously, yet. However, I have made up my mind, based on your frothing rant above, as to how seriously I take you. Have the last word, if you wish — I’m done.

This is nonsense. All sorts and levels of institutions are changed all the time.

Yes, well, in my analogy, a successful change would be making the curve and staying on the road. And yes, that happens. The point is, the road curves again and again. Sooner or later any institution, whether it be the Dept of Ed or Microsoft, will miss the curve. Microsoft had a near miss in about 1997, when they came late to the browser wars. It’s kind of hard to imagine that Microsoft could end up being irrelevant, dysfunctional and broke, but it will happen eventually. It would have been hard to imagine it happening to GM, forty years ago.

As for Education, it missed the curve sometime in the mid-80’s, and has been growing like a cancer ever since. According to Keith, it was Reagan who pushed them off. There may be some basis to this; he doesn’t give a cite. I doubt conservatism was responsible, because the institutional problems with Education that I know about are typical lefty stuff: politicized teachers’ unions, postmodern education theories (New Math, anyone?), political correctness run amok (though conservatives have played a role in making educational material content-free).

…postmodern education theories (New Math, anyone?)….

Gauss on a bicycle. Is New Math now classified as postmodern?

For those who have responded to my comments about the military and Iraq, I acknowledge your comments.

Bullshit statistic, completely invalidated by different screening / diagnosis practices in different countries. In the measure that’s actually valid for international comparisons, death rates, the US performs indifferently (and worse than the UK).

Um, that chart shows considerably lower numbers for the US than the UK. Am I misinterpreting it, or is “death” supposed to be a good thing?

Um, that chart shows considerably lower numbers for the US than the UK. Am I misinterpreting it, or is “death” supposed to be a good thing?

Sorry, I read it backwards. But the US is middle of the pack at best and not really that much better than the UK, with the difference being slightly more marked in females due to one of the few almost universally acknowledged strengths of the US- breast cancer treatment. Overall, quite an unimpressive return on extravagant use of resources, massively more resources than the UK.

I have a suggestion that we can probably all agree on: this thread has jumped the shark. When you’re delving into statistical minutiae, you’re not really talking principles anymore. I’ve enjoyed this, and I’m grateful for the chance to talk with you all. Salient gets top marks.

See you again some other month.

Yah… Of course the interesting point about the near-exponential rise in costs of care towards the end of life is that they are all, pretty much, futile. The clue being in the phrase ‘towards the end of life’. Get me to 80 – heck 75 – in reasonable health, at reasonable cost, and I’ll spare you the bother of heroic measures with a ‘DNR’ from there.

Perhaps Americans tend more to smoke cigarettes or get murdered by their fellow students in Chicago high schools (67 of those since fall of 2007, I read in the NYT this morning).

And it’s all Barack Obama’s fault! Damn him to hell!

One night I helped pull a couple of half-dead Mexicans out of a car wreck. They spoke no English, had no American papers or ID, and obviously had no insurance. So we dropped them off at the nearest pay phone life-flighted them. That cost about seven thousand dollars apiece, just to get to the hospital. Who pays? I don’t know, but lack of insurance doesn’t mean you can’t get healthcare in this country. I’ve met many dialysis patients who have no insurance and never pay. I don’t know how it works. Maybe it could be made better.

Who needs ‘statistical minuiae’ when you have hard-headed policy analysis like the above?

I’ll say a thing or two about it. I’m an unlikely defendant of Jonah Goldberg or the book, because I had wanted to write that book myself, and I thought I would do a better job of it….

I have done some research on the pre-WWII period, and I am prepared to say that during that era everyone called everyone else a fascist. To specific, Roosevelt called Lindbergh a Nazi and Lindbergh called FDR a fascist. Senator Lundeen of MN was called a Communist in 1934 (by someone later convicted of collaboration with Nazis, a charge repeated by Arthur Schlesinger) and was called a Fascist in 1940 (because of his cooperation with the Nazi tool Viereck.) And of course, the Trotskyists called everyone fascists, but especially the Communists.

Freshly Squeezed Cynic @ 167

If you have the page number of that quote, I’d like to have it. Dead trees aren’t search-friendly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m willing to believe that the quote comes out of the book. I’d just like to see the context for myself.

What I’m getting from the book, so far, is as follows. Fascism didn’t begin with Hitler. Moreover, the many of the key ideas that Mussolini espoused and implemented didn’t begin with him, but instead trace back to the Progressive Era in the United States and some elements within Pragmatism. Mussolini, and by extension, Fascism, were in fact greatly admired during the 20’s and 30’s by many intellectuals in the U.S., most notably those who identified themselves as Progressives, and later, Liberals.

But “Fascism” as a brand was eclipsed by the enormity of Hitler’s regime, and alienated from the Left by the far Left (aka, socialists) who even before Hitler worked his insanity on all of us began to identify Fascism as on the political Right, which it was, compared to Stalin, et al. Fascism, of course, was not anywhere near those actually on the political Right: namely, the “conservatives” (aka, classical liberals) who were for capitalism and small government. As an ideology, and especially in the promises it made and in the bogeymen it attacked (leave Hitler’s Jewish innovation aside for a moment), Fascism competed directly with socialism.

Now, I’ve said this before: I’m halfway through the book, and I, myself, have criticized the incidental trolling — the “partisan pot shots” — that I’m coming across as I read. I’m guessing that where he’s going with the book is to say that the central ideas of Fascism — which don’t include “final solutions” — trace their pedigree to the Progressives and can be found still as key ideas in the American political Left, today.

It should be noted, too, that Goldberg, later in his book, has a chapter entitled, “We’re all Fascists, now,” implying that these ideas can be found on both sides of the political spectrum. His main point though is that Fascism is not a phenomenon of the political Right, but instead of the political Left. That’s “wacky,” huh?

I’m going to sum up what I’ve read of his book in plain language, with an everyday image. Mussolini and Hitler are the “crazy uncles” of the political Left. I can understand the embarrassment and horror. One was a buffoon, and in no way a nice person; the other a monster. But, they never sat around the holiday table of the political Right; and it’s dishonest to try to say they’re from some other family.

Again, if you would find me that quote, I’d be obliged.

Substance McGravitas @ 169

I’m not sure how the line you’ve quoted from me is related either to your “HOLY COW” or to the quote from Goldberg. I can appreciate your “whole point of the book” critique, but I’m not buying it.

It’s a shame. I read a lot of debate on the Internet. I find people on both sides of the political spectrum (the oversimplification: liberal/conservative) who are thoughtful, committed, and articulate. I also find people, again, on both sides of the spectrum, who are lowbrow and truculent, in a “gotcha” sort of way. (I’m not talking about you with that last sentence, or about anyone on this list, just to be clear.) A good part of what bothers me about Goldberg’s book is the pandering to lowbrow, “angry, white, males.” (I’ll concede that.) Is that sentence part of the pandering? I’m sure it’s calculated to be so.

I also find it ironic that Goldberg criticizes the knee-jerk cry of “Fascism” as a way to slander whatever it is someone doesn’t like (Hillary, Obama, Bush, Pat Buchanan), and yet Mr. Goldberg, himself, goes from zero to a violation of Godwin’s Law in 2.7 seconds.

Nevertheless, I don’t find that the above, alone, is sufficient to dismiss what he writes in his book. As to his blog — I don’t read it.

Now, as to the quote above. I don’t know that “Liberal Fascism” means everyone who votes Democrat. Is that what Goldberg is saying? I don’t think so, but if he is, he’s nuts. Is it an inflammatory exaggeration in poor taste to say that the white male is the “Jew” of Liberal Fascism? Yes, I believe so.

But, if that sentence were on an essay exam followed by the injunction, “Discuss,” could I take the affirmative and make some sense of it? I’m sure I could. Have you read the most radical pronouncements of feminists, environmentalists, and your assorted “oppressed peoples”? The most radical pronouncements? It may be just me, but it seems like there are still some “crazy uncles” who publish. (To be frank, the political Right has them, too.) I see plenty of criticism about white males being the root of all that plagues the “enlightened.”

With that said, I started only by criticizing what I thought was an unfounded, dismissive mention of this particular book in the original post and asking for something more substantive. (Whatever you may think, I assure you that I would not like to discuss it with Glenn Beck. I wouldn’t so much as let him shine my shoes, and I’m sure he’s enjoying it more for the lowbrow trolling than anything else.) In any case, I now have to wonder if I haven’t sent this thread completely off on a tangent. (Not without help, of course.) I am therefore content that I’ve said my piece, and that the polite thing to do would be to stop. Anyone who wants to comment on what I’ve said in this matter has my assurance of having the last word, with respect to me.

while we’re on the subject, and if you haven’t done so already, check out crooked timber’s very own seminar on sheri berman’s “the primacy of politics:” https://crookedtimber.org/category/sheri-berman-seminar/

i recommend reading the book, too. it’s one of the best things i’ve read on fascism, and a “political thought” classic in its own right. it actually covers much of the same turf as goldberg’s book, while avoiding the partisan gotchyas and embarrassing tendentiousness. it also avoids much of the naive presumptions of the liberal establishment, while still making an eloquent case for social democracy as success story. i happen to disagree with the woman on the final point, but what a great book!

Jeremy @ 172

Thank you, as well.

Is that what Goldberg is saying?

What Goldberg is saying is LIBERAL FASCISM. The rest is filler.

My mum once saw Shaw up a ladder cutting his garden hedge. He must have been very ancient and she must have been quite tiny. I can I fear easily imagine him brilliantly defending homeopathy at the very next dinner party he attended, to wind up some nearby dullard.

Not so much Goldberg, who is a monumental halfwit even by his own sect’s standards.