What’s Wrong with the World

It's a total mystery to me why you hate Jonah Goldberg so much.

Personally, I find him sometimes right, sometimes wrong, but always smart, and often amusing.

I made it about half way through Austin Bramwell's supposedly "decimating" review before concluding that I was wasting my time. So far as I can tell, JG knows way more than AB does about the history of fascism, and is also a way better writer.

Seems to me that this is all about bad blood left over from the silly "crunchy con" dispute.

I've certainly known JG to say some exceedingly silly things. (My absolute fave was when he implied that it's just great that people have more freedom nowadays because they can change their gender by an operation.) That was when I stopped being interested in reading him. But I haven't checked out his take on liberal fascism, and given the way in which he's being criticized, I don't know but what I might feel more kindly to him there.

Lydia, it just constantly amazes me that I, of all people, seem to be the closest thing on this site to a mainstream conservative Republican.

I read through "The Corner" at National Review Online every day - and, more often than not, I find myself nodding in agreement.

I mean, heck! Most of the time, I even find myself enjoying the stuff at The Weekly Standard!

But here, on what I now like to think of as my home on the WWW, I'm pretty regularly freaked out by the sheer *radicalism* of some of my colleagues!

Go figure.

Actually, I don't hate Jonah Goldberg. In point of fact - though my word is all readers will have to go on - I have often defended Goldberg before paleoconservative friends. My stock opinion of him is that he is a witty and skillful writer - only Derbyshire excels him over at NR - and also quite knowledgeable; he simply has a few philosophical tics. Don't we all?

So, it's not that I harbour some sort of resentment of the man, on account of his treatment of Dreher; it's that the crunchy con episode, along with some of the themes of Liberal Fascism, evince a certain tendentiousness and unseriousness. Whatever one might say of it, Dreher's exercise in journalism did not possess the crypto-authoritarian undertones that Goldberg perceived in it. For that matter, neither does the Sam's Club Republicanism of Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, though Goldberg insinuated that there was something similarly suspicious about it. Goldberg is, if anything at all within the conservative movement, a classical fusionist with some neoconservative sympathies. Which is fine, I suppose, though obviously that is not where my sympathies lie. I simply wish that he'd be more reluctant to intimate that those who dissent from that fusionism are enemies of freedom, etc. Everything is more complicated than that.

That some progressive policies evidence an authoritarian tendency is one thing; fascism is another. In other words, 'fascism' and 'statism' are not coextensive; fascism may be considered a type of statism, but not all forms of statism are fascist. And the incidents of fascism ought not be confused with its essence. It appears to me that Goldberg wants statism - and some other things, besides - to mean quasi-fascism, at a minimum, and I don't believe that this flies.

Do I get to be a mainstream conservative, too? :-) :-)

I'm certainly not at all sure that I have a problem with "fusionism," at least not when one defines it nice and loosely.

Take big-time (perhaps even somewhat radical) social conservatism and combine it with a real love of the free market, and you get something that's been fairly mainstream for a while, anyway.

I don't know where the immigration issue falls in there, though, as far as "radicalness" and "mainstreamness."

Stated differently, that some progressives admired actual fascists, and cited their writings, and appealed to their novel experiments, is all quite interesting, and merits wider awareness. But it does not follow that progressivism and fascism are related in the manner Goldberg sometimes appears to suggest, any more than it would follow that Chesterton, Belloc, and Cobbett were communists, merely because, like Marx in volume 1 of Das Kapital, they wrote of primitive accumulation.

Steve, it is hard to hold off the perception that a little radicalism may be necessary to shake men loose of the tyranny of Liberalism. Another uncomfortable perception is how deeply committed mainstream conservative Republicanism is to, well, conserving Liberalism.

I don't know that it was always so, though--that "mainstream conservatism" was committed to "conserving liberalism." For example, Phyllis Schlafly was an advisor to Reagan. I would say that the Clinton presidency was a big watershed, here. I'm not claiming Bush, Sr., was some great conservative. But it's under Bush, Jr., that we got federal regulation of education coming in on a tank from the outset, capitulation to the feminist agenda by a supposedly conservative president, Condi Rice referring to the mother of the homosexual partner of some guy as "your mother-in-law," Bush's appointees for major positions referring to Roe v. Wade as "the law of the land" within months of his election, and the like.

Now, why was this? I think it was because the Clinton presidency was so traumatic for conservatives that they just weren't going to rock the boat about stuff like that, and the leadership of the GOP felt they needed to appeal to liberals. Paul Weyrich said _explicitly_ that he wasn't going to come down hard on Bush, Jr., during his first term, because he did that with Bush, Sr., and look what it got us--eight years of Bill Clinton.

In other words, what people told me about the effect of a Clinton presidency turned out to be exactly wrong: They said, "Let them have four years of Clinton, and they'll find out they have to appeal more effectively to their conservative base." Nope. It was, "Let them have four or eight years of Clinton, and they'll swing even farther to the left in desperation."

Doc Beckwith,

I do not mean to hijack this comment section, but I thought you would enjoy the exchange between myself and two Mormon Missionaries on Saturday. Especially pay attention to the few paragraphs where I compare atheists to Heavenly Father. I will split the link in half just in case your comments parameters cut off a portion of it:

http://religiopoliticaltalk.blogspot.com/
2008/01/is-that-door-bell.html

God Bless Brother.

Oh, P.S. I work at Whole Foods and meet many "liberal fascists" daily. I started to read Jonah's book but I got my classes for seminary, and I have 11-books to read for three classes! Most of them are in my Philosophy & Christianity class:

The Journey, by Kreeft (read it a couple years back);

Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult, by DeWeese & J.P.;

A Brief Guide to Ideas, by Ganssle;

Life's Ultimate Questions, by Nash;

The Journey So Far, by Hicks.

Good stuff. So I have set Jonah's book aside for a while... to say the least.

Again, God Bless Brother!

Looks like it links automatically:

http://religiopoliticaltalk.blogspot.com/2008/01/is-that-door-bell.html

" If you search Lexis-Nexis for articles in just the last two years in which "Bush" and "fascist" are used in the same sentence, the results exceed 2,000. Search for the years encompassing his entire term and smoke will start to come out of your computer".

So begins National Review's excerpt from the Goldberg book. And so I scratch my head in puzzlement. As a pejorative it has been used for years, and if not exclusively than primarily directed at the Conservative or Republican public figures.

I would have expected people to take notice of the title of a recent book "American Fascists", authored by Chris Hedges, a former NY Times reporter. Dare I say, what would you expect?

The problem with that type of usage is not just it's utter lack of accuracy, but it's incendiary application to people who for the very most part are placed in opposite poles from fascism or statism. Which makes it not just a smear, but a grotesque twisting of words.

The overall reaction to Goldberg's book from the left is both instructive yet typical. What else can I say except, how the hounds bay when the boomerang come back at them.

johnt,

I think the reaction, or firestorm, from the left is because we had grown accustomed to the usual map of polemic in political discourse. Which is to say the left are crypto-Commies, the right are crypto-Nazis, while libertarians view everyone else as overt statist overlords.

An acknowledged expert on the subject, Michael Ledeen's review of his boss's work was as critical as he could be without actually saying it was hopelessly incoherent.
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/michaelledeen/2008/01/14/fascism_liberal_and_otherwise.php

While I am certainly not an expert, another point that seems to be missing from the book is that although Mussolini started out within socialist circles, he repudiated the majority of those ideas when he formed the Fascist party.
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/mussolini.htm

"Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business."
Jonah Goldberg
April 23, 2002

Can anyone imagine Kirk, Burnham or Meyer abusing their space at the old National Review by issuing such a callously flippant justification for war?

When read for entertainment, Goldberg is funny, engaging and provocative, just like his soul-mates on talk radio. However, like Rush Limbaugh and sons, he can be a disaster when relied upon for genuine insight. Sardonic, partisan boilerplate rhetoric has it's tactical place. Just not as a substitute for deep thought, nor should it be the center-piece for a serious political movement. Yet, to millions of Americans, conservatism is now little more than a frustrated wise-guy's caustic response to the idiocies of liberalism.

This sad development is unfairly and often uncharitably blamed on Goldberg because of his high profile at NR, and the understandable consternation over the magazine's neo-conservative reincarnation. In truth though, his preminence is symptomatic of and not the cause for the decline of conservatism's intellectual estate.

How we came to such a condition is for finer minds to explain, but one thing is certain: the solution does not exist with the author of any book entitled Liberal Fascism. Like JohnT notes above; the boomerang effect is unpleasant, especially as it morphs into a feedback loop that leaves the Right indistinquishable from the other ideologies that haunt this age.

Step2, The Ledeen piece is of extreme interest, though I must say I disagree with your evaluation of it. That Ledeen feels Goldberg mistakenly places Mussolini on the left, a mistake of it's own by Ledeen & among others I might add, he does cite several things agreeable to him.

One such is the common origin of, as he puts it " all three of the twentieth century's terrible totalitarian movements"
Stop. If there they are connected then are we still to split hairs on socialist/non-socialist fascism? For now at least I pass.

Does it not stand to some degree of reason that the crucible, the foundry, of these three regimes, namely the French Revolution, passed it's nourishing roots, albeit with a detour or two, in a formative manner that found similar fertile ground in all three countries ?
And that where there are differences the essential thrust of each went back to that Mother of Revolution which by no mean coincidence was driven to it's end and destruction by what? By a military dictator by way of Corsica.

Socialism, fascism, Nazism, less difference than usually meets the eye.

Ledeen does point out, and in agreement with Goldberg, that many progressive figures identified with Fascism. Others, both in America and Great Britain chose different but similar brands of poison. This connects with Goldberg's point that fascism is not the conservative or rightist fault that promiscuous name calling has made it.
And perhaps some turnabout is due and justified.

Sorry, but I must sign off. I will read more of Ledeen and your other link tomorrow and may get back to you.

Some questions regarding this issue;

1)If we are truly serious about exploring the lineage fascism and liberalism share with each other, is a book that has a Hitlerized smiley face on the cover and whose author rationalizes torture, renditions and illegal wiretaps, a good place to start?

2)The Liberal Tradition has seen a host of bloody ideologies rise within it for the past 400 years. Does this fact not suggest a potential indictment of the Enlightenment?

3)Can it simply be that libido dominandi, which bedevils man's fallen state is the root from which so many "isms" grow together and that this is just pinning the tail of the donkey of our political opponents? A fun, but ultimately empty exercise in rhetorical gamesmanship.

In the review that was posted above, Michael Ledeen said "And there is no American nationalism of the sort that exists in Europe, either. They’re nationalists, we’re patriots, and the two are quite different."

Is there some substantial difference or is this Michael Ledeen's way of saying "we conservatives are really not fascist and racists because we are patriots not nationalists"

Kevin, Maybe there never was a good place to start, the point being not that fascism existed and a group of variously ideological activists chose a name from the symbol of past glories. Instead it's the misuse and abuse of that name since then, so what is a good place?

Your second point; an indictment of the Enlightenment to some degree is inevitable. It's excesses were exacerbated by it's malcontented heirs, the strains of a faith in both emotion and reason, the belief in the malleability of society, government, and finally man,[ read De Mettrie ] were the seeds of violence unimaginable and government uncontrolled and unstable. Napoleon picked up the pieces while Burke retired to his pension.

Your third point; Power, domination, is the curse of history, the temptation always present and located within those souls who need or crave the manipulation and control of events, things, and people.
The gateway to the realization of their primal urges is government.
Any number of restraints are necessary to minimize at least, stifle at best, the excessive and externalized ambitions of those always blessed with the answers, the problem being, again, that the answer is always the same, government, a bad place for these ambitions to come to rest.

As names are meant to be identifiers, reasonably accurate locators and empowered by usage with some descriptive value, it is incumbent upon us all to use caution and care with the gift of language.
It is Goldberg's point that the word "fascist" has been bastardized and applied to people if anything far removed from the lure of statism, in whatever hydra headed form it takes.

So rather than an exercise in rhetorical gamesmanship, it is a corrective or clarification. It may be imperfect to some, slanderous to others, but given it's overuse and what seems like a deliberate imprecision for far too many years it is due time to put the word "fascism" and it's abusers in the dock.

With a little luck we may see a diminution of a word that with a little help has gone out of control and lost much of it's original meaning.

JohnT,
"Instead it's the misuse and abuse of that name since then, so what is a good place?"

Goldberg could read the canon of conservative works that he often cites and start with Voegelin's "Science Politics and Gnosticism", or Molnar's, "Utopia The Perennial Heresy", but exposure to such works might lead him to question the editorial direction of his employer.

"It is Goldberg's point that the word "fascist" has been bastardized..."

Goldberg's book can't serve as a correction as he is simply abusing the "f word" too and thereby furthering the "diminution of a word that with a little help has gone out of control and lost much of it's original meaning."

Seeking and speaking the truth is vastly different than playing turnabout on political foes. If conservatives don't see that difference, then things are really worse than I thought.

johnt,

I would have been disappointed if you agreed with me :=) that's a Hitler mustache on my emoticon, btw.

I happen to agree with you that the word has been overused and misused, but that is what polemics are, their function in language is to overstate and vilify.

One point you (and apparently Jonah) are making I will disagree with is that its definition should only be applied to those under the lure of statist utopias. Fascism is more than foreign military expansion and domestic market efficiency. It is also the militant form of a cultural revitalization movement.

It is also the militant form of a cultural revitalization movement.

I occasionally wonder about this particular aspect: does fascism really try to revitalize culture, or would it be more accurate to say that it views culture as an unavoidable aspect of humanity as presently constituted and thus a necessary tool to be bent to the service of the will-to-power?

In any case, I take it as obvious that on the one hand liberalism and fascism have their differences, but on the other hand they are definitely fairly closely related siblings in the lineage of modernity and the enlightenment. Rightish forms of modernism (like Goldberg's) and leftish forms tend to feed off each other, moving acceptable disputation out of the realm of religion and metaphysics and into the realm of how the triumph of the will of the free and equal superman, self-created through reason and will, is to be achieved; and what all that implies.

Kevin, thanks for referrals for a good place to start. As I've read Voegelin and own four volumes of Molnar, including your well intentioned citation, for me if not for Goldberg it's safe to say I started a while ago. However even if Goldberg did read and use them their effect would be lost on those he criticizes. The good place may have been in a proper application of the word, that is, to real, live fascists and Voegelin and Molnar wouldn't have helped there.

As for Goldberg's employer, considering Molnar wrote often for them hopefully Goldberg would be lenient.

I feel obligated to point out that turnabout and truth are not mutually exclusive, modest reflection on this should bring realization. And if truth had been important for all the years the word was used wantonly by the left then I hazard it would not have been used at all.

Let me suggest that considering the above you may concede that conservatives are at least as capable as liberals in making distinctions. Considering the history of the word maybe even moreso. It is a little late in the game to complain now of it's use by a conservative, who at least as traced it's genealogy in the precincts of the open minded. It's not mere use, it's how it's used and how it's justified, as in truth.

I do have the uncomfortable feeling that we have reached the point where we are repeating ourselves. So, my time to bow out.

Zippy,
I occasionally wonder about this particular aspect: does fascism really try to revitalize culture, or would it be more accurate to say that it views culture as an unavoidable aspect of humanity as presently constituted and thus a necessary tool to be bent to the service of the will-to-power?

The key point is that it is militant, so only the cultural aspects which don't impede that requirement are revitalized.

This whole will-to-power meme you've got against modernism is really strange. The nobility of medieval times were hardly immune from internecine wars and manipulative power schemes. It may have been a simpler cosmology for the peasants, but the aristocracy were often worse than modern man. There were a whole host of reasons of why the Enlightenment happened: political, economic, religious, and scientific. To treat the Enlightenment as something of an aberration is to ignore all those reasons it happened to begin with.

The key point is that it is militant, so only the cultural aspects which don't impede that requirement are revitalized.

That seems true enough, though it may underdetermine ideology-choice. IOW, probably the same thing can be said of communism. Just about every world view gets militant when it comes under sufficient pressure. From a certain perspective we might say that fascism is right-liberalism under conditions of high pressure, while communism is left-liberalism under conditions of high pressure. Of course nobody particularly appreciates that understanding because most of us have significant loyalties to liberalism/modernism, whether rightish or leftish, so we'd rather view communism/fascism as something utterly other. The reality is doubtless somewhere in between: it is probably not logically necessary for (e.g.) high pressure applied to left-liberalism to lead to militant communism, but it is hardly unnatural.

To treat the Enlightenment as something of an aberration is to ignore all those reasons it happened to begin with.

The free and equal new man, disconnected from history and traditions of heirarchy and authority, subject politically only to whatever he has chosen for himself and not to anything which transcends him, and self-created through reason and will, seems to me to be a peculiarly modern phenomenon.

"This whole will-to-power meme you've got against modernism is really strange."

I think Zippy's "meme" isn't discussed enough.

Has man ever been so defenseless in the face of shadowy technological, economic, political and military forces as he is now? And have those forces ever seemed so immune from accountability? Modernity has unleashed a will to power so unrestrained that we merely sigh when presented with news that scientists are close to creating "hybrid humans".

Conservatives, being clear-eyed about human nature, used to rightly warn against the concentration of too much power in the hands of too few men, and urge humility in place of grand designs. Now a good portion of the Right spends it's time supporting the endless growth of a massive military-industrial complex, hailing the virtues of a "benevolent empire" and assuring us that when Middle Eastern oilarchy's and the Chinese government buy up our banking and corporate assets that "the market is working".

Reigning in modern man's unGodly ambitions and appetites is vital if we are to remain truly human. Conservatives have the religious and philosophical foundations to draw on when taking up this epic challenge, but it will require a rethinking of priorities, forging new alliances and a level of seriousness that transcends silly diversions such as Goldberg's book.

"... not to mention the essential leftism of fascist ideology, a theme dear to the heart of every conservative who has ever assimilated Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn's Leftism Revisited,"

I confess to some intellectual defect. I read Leftism Revisited many years ago and got a lot out of it. But the notion that fascism is essentially leftist has never made much of an impression on me. An ideology that glorifies the supremacy of the nation over other nations, or the race over other races, or the supreme authority of the Leader over all other values, does not strike me as leftist, and I unhappily find myself out of step with conservatives for whom the idea that fascism is leftism seems to be extremely important.

The free and equal new man, disconnected from history and traditions of hierarchy and authority, subject politically only to whatever he has chosen for himself and not to anything which transcends him, and self-created through reason and will, seems to me to be a peculiarly modern phenomenon.

Perhaps I'm accepting popular historical fiction too literally, but if we leave out the word "equal," could we perhaps plug in Frederick II (Holy Roman Emperor, sort of, except when he was deposed or excommunicated, early 13th century) as an example?

Okay, mid-13th century. Still, a long time ago.

...and I unhappily find myself out of step with conservatives for whom the idea that fascism is leftism seems to be extremely important.

I don't regard this conviction as being of great importance, either. It is principally a matter of definition and historical perspective, and from one standpoint the application of the left-right dichotomy to fascism is misleading.

Keuhnelt-Leddihn was an aristocratic individualist, a philosophical, political, and cultural perspective which was facilitated by the urbane civilization of Habsburg Austria. But in that case, the pertinent distinction would lie between essentially premodern (or at least early-modern ones still heavily influenced by those of Christendom) and modern political doctrines and forms; K-L's typology identifies political modernization with tendencies toward mass, collective-identitarian politics and cultures, and a contempt for the substance and structures of the Christian-aristocratic heritage of Christendom. The judgment that the former are essentially leftist, whether they assume the specific forms of communism, fascism, nationalism, or liberalism, is defensible if the basis of the judgment correctly identifies the common elements of political modernism; but the employment of the left-right schematic is somewhat obfuscatory - a second-order consideration where the primary distinction to be drawn is that between political modernism (in all its expressions) and anti-modernism.

By contrast, contemporary conservatives for whom the correct philosophical stance entails some form or other of political modernism - such as Goldberg, for example - will feel impelled to distinguish sharply between their own rightist political modernism (a form of right-liberalism) and the rightist (right-socialist) political modernism of fascism, so as to disavow the taint of the latter. Were it not for the affinities of right-liberalism and socialism as political modernisms, the entire discourse of fascism-is-really-leftist wouldn't be necessary to some contemporary conservatives.

In other words, for a staunch traditionalist or reactionary, the entire question is a bit of red herring.

We could definitely plug in Frederick II as an example of the would-be superman. In fact, Voegelin's History of Political Ideas contains a fascinating analysis of the political and philosophical novelty of the claims Frederick made for himself and his reign; the discussion does not turn on Zippy's (frankly, more illuminating) terminology, but the implications overlap substantially.

For me the problem is that Goldberg has essentially rewritten Mein Kampf. After all, Hitler promised to save the country from effeminate teachers, values free education, liberals, trade unionists, homosexuals, sexy movies, contraception, and people who don't support the troops. Mein Kampf is one long tirade against "liberals" and "leftists," all while Hitler claims to be the nice guy who will save the country by pre-emptive war while battling the enemies within. Goldberg mixed up a pile of conservative bromides, put them in his Easy Bake oven, and out popped Mein Kampf.

"Goldberg mixed up a pile of conservative bromides, put them in his Easy Bake oven, and out popped Mein Kampf."

This entry wins the reductio ad absurdum award for the new year and should be tough one to top.

"Were it not for the affinities of right-liberalism and socialism as political modernisms, the entire discourse of fascism-is-really-leftist wouldn't be necessary to some contemporary conservatives."

Amen. The unhealthy will to power that infects all ideologies compels their spokesman to
mask this disorder through sophisticated dodges and tortured argumentation.

Were it not for the affinities of right-liberalism and socialism as political modernisms, the entire discourse of fascism-is-really-leftist wouldn't be necessary to some contemporary conservatives.

There you go. The terminology is, frankly, of little importance: ontic proximity can neither be conjured into existence nor conjured away simply by shifting terminology.

And I certainly accept the point about Frederick, as proto-superman sans equality. If the superman is constituted by the proposition "we are all equally God and our will, unconstrained by nature, is everything" that is naturally prefigured in history by claims of "I am God and my will is everything".

"...is naturally prefigured in history by claims of "I am God and my will is everything".

The distinquishing feature of modernity is it's civilizational narrative that encourages it's members to be like gods. An earlier commenter
called it a "totalitarion temptation", apparently unaware that many on the Right have given in to it's lure.

Personally, I think that you people are all self-deluded. It would seem that you believe that men first aspired to be like gods in modernity, through a mechanism known as "liberalism." It would also appear that you believe that somehow that creation has arranged for this to be true now, when you are here to witness and condemn it; a mission assigned to you by God. Well, that's humble.
It is apparent that you've never read, or seen, for instance, a Greek tragedy. If you had, you would know that modernity has nothing to do with hubris.
Moving it to the Hebrew realm, was Lucifer a modernist, a socialist, or a liberal? I can never remember. And what was it that convinced Eve to eat that fruit? Shifting back to the Greeks, how about that dude who flew too close to the sun, so that his wax wings melted? And what of poor Prometheus?
To bring it back specifically to Christendom, what is the whole concept of a Holy Roman Emperor but an attempt to mirror, or play-act, heaven on earth? What is any terrestrial hierarchy but a dim, hubristic, shadow of the celestial hierarchy?
If you want to reject the sin of pride and the evils of materialism, you won't do it by prospering in the world and fighting tooth and nail to keep the use of each and every pfennig you make to yourself.
Do any of you seriously believe that you're not "of the world?"

It would seem that you believe that men first aspired to be like gods in modernity, ...

Not at all.

What is any terrestrial hierarchy but a dim, hubristic, shadow of the celestial hierarchy?

To a manichean like you, Rodak, everything in this world other than death is hubris.

To a manichean like you, Rodak, everything in this world other than death is hubris.

Zippy--

That's a silly statement.

At least it's silly the way you mean it.

"It would seem that you believe that men first aspired to be like gods in modernity, through a mechanism known as "liberalism."

You shouldn't hop in without carefully reading the thread. I assume you understand the profound differeces that exist between antiquity, the Middle Ages and modernity. The latter has dismissed belief in God as a vestigial superstition and relegates transcendent claims to the private sphere, banned from the public world. Liberalism elevates the will to power as the necessary means to bettering man's existence in the only realm that matters; the here and now. Progress can only be achieved when we are freed from Christian, or religious restraint and judgement. That's vastly different from what was taught in earlier mythology and cosmology. Icarus and Lucifer were held-up as cautionary tales, not as models for guides for self-realization.

Icarus and Lucifer were held-up as cautionary tales, not as models for guides for self-realization.

Sure. And isn't that why you are holding up "liberals?" You all may be exceptions to the general rule, but in my experience, which is longer than I care to say, there are very few persons walking around in this civilization whose way of life differs substantially (other than in their own minds) from the norm. I see people applying labels to themselves and then I see them going about their lives both "in" and "of" the world exactly as do their neighbors. I'm not impressed by persons who receive communion twelve times a week and spend every second that they aren't in church in the pursuit of wealth and pleasure. Jesus came eating and drinking, but He was by and large an ascetic, for all that.
As for antiquity, the Middle Ages, and Modernity--there are saints in each of those periods, and then there's everybody else.

To a manichean like you, Rodak, everything in this world other than death is hubris.

John 12:24 Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit.

You know, I haven't read Jonah's book yet, so I can't defend it, but I did read Austin Bramwell's ranting "review", and I can positively say that it was unadulterated crap.

Maybe the dumbest part was where he claims that Progressivism and liberalism are not related. Seriously, where do you even start with an assertion like that? He might as well have said that water isn't wet. The only real valid argument against liberalism arising out of Progressivism, in my opinion, is that liberalism wasn't spawned by Progressivism so much as it is Progressivism under a different name.

And the sole piece of information he cites in favor of this is that Walter Lippmann criticized Mussolini in the 1920s!? Is that even an argument?

Other dumb parts are where he tries to invalidate ideological taxonomy altogether, as if ideas aren't passed on and don't lead to other ideas, and where he seems to just flat-out dismiss the notion that certain ideas tend to cluster together because of their logical compatibility.

Another golden part is where he says it's "no wonder" that Goldberg's book is so "silly and extravagant" because he cites such mental lightweights as Richard Weaver, Eric Voegelin, Robert Nisbett, and Allan Bloom. If only he had cited a really deep, knowledgeable thinker like Austin Bramwell!

Really, Maximos, a crappy argument in favor of a position you happen to support is still a crappy argument. That's why I don't usually cite Ann Coulter rants to people when I want to persuade them.

By the way, I've seen a lot of negative reaction to this particular thing that Maximos cites:

illustrative of the dynamic might be the association of organic foods and vegetarianism with fascism, merely on the grounds that actual fascists occasionally manifested an interest in such things.

The recurring charge is that Goldberg is just putting together a list of things he doesn't like, then cherry-picking instances where fascists believed or did similar things and using it to label them fascist, and then calling liberalism itself fascist based on a few coincidental overlaps. Basically, that he's just slinging around "fascist" willy-nilly to besmirch things he doesn't like, much like liberals do. The organic foods thing keeps getting trotted out as a supposedly self-evident example of how stupid and ridiculous Goldberg's project is.

Well, again, I haven't read the book, but I can still tell that this is pretty uncharitable.

First of all, he's said that his purpose is not to argue that liberalism is a species of fascism simply because of a series of coincidental overlaps that he happens to dislike. Rather, he's saying that there are a series of overlaps (some of which he thinks are good things) that are *not* coincidental, but are shared because liberalism and fascism both inherited various philosophical underpinnings from the same basic intellectual precursors.

Put succinctly, contrary to his opponents, he's not saying "liberalism and fascism happen to have X, Y, and Z in common, therefore liberalism is fascism". Rather, he's saying "liberalism and fascism have X, Y, and Z in common, because they inherited them from the same place".

With that in mind, I fail to see what's so dumb about the organic farming and vegetarianism thing. It's not that Jonah is saying a preference for organic is fascist, as Maximos is implying (and as I've seen Mark Shea flipping out over on his blog recently). Indeed, I saw Jonah mention that he himself likes to buy organic at Whole Foods (as do I).

However, let me ask you this. Regardless of the merits of organic food on it's own terms, was the organic craze started by the Jonah Goldbergs of the world, or was it more a creation of the left?

And while it's possible to be a conservative who likes organic food, but doesn't believe in animal rights (like me, for instance), wouldn't you agree that being a gung-ho organic enthusiast tends to correlate with animal rights, and that both tend to correlate with liberalism?

Why do you think this is? Is it just a coincidence that organicism and animal rights tend to correlate with each other and with liberalism in general? Or is it more likely that this is because there are philosophical premises within liberalism that are conducive to both?

If the latter, where did liberalism get these philosophical premises from? Did they just pop out of thin air, or were they inherited from some other body of thought? What do these philosophical premises imply about one's view of the status of man and animal in the world?

Why were the fascists into organic farming and animal rights as well? Was this just a coincidence unrelated to other habits of fascists, or was it driven by philosophical premises that fit into the overall philosophical framework with which they viewed the world? If the latter, where did they get these premises from? Is it possible that they got them from the same philosophical undercurrents that liberalism did?

=================================

By the way, this brings me to something else that was dumb in Bramwell’s review:

Goldberg nonetheless sees ideologies as discrete wholes. He makes much of his discovery, for example, that the Nazis supported organic farming and animal rights.... That Nazism and contemporary liberalism both promote healthy living is as meaningless a finding as that bloody marys and martinis may both be made with gin.

Note the little obfuscatory tactic here. To make the find seem more obviously meaningless and coincidental, he reduces the similarity to liberalism and Nazism merely "promoting healthy living" so as to obscure any hint of similar underlying philosophy, and then dismisses it out of hand. But what, praytell, does animal rights have to do with "healthy living"? He ought to have left out mention of animal rights altogether, or perhaps used "vegetarianism" instead, if he wanted to pull this particular fast one.

Deuce;
"Rather, he's saying that there are a series of overlaps (some of which he thinks are good things) that are *not* coincidental, but are shared because liberalism and fascism both inherited various philosophical underpinnings from the same basic intellectual precursors."

Thinkers like Voegelin and Weaver ably demonstrated the common and ultimately heretical roots and natural overlap that exist within all modern ideologies. Other thinkers, some of whom Goldberg actually cites, helped forged conservatism's healthy skepticism towards the "isms" of our age. That would include Goldberg's own pop version of right-wing liberalism, as much as Obama's messianic leftism.

Bramwell's piece is not why I won't be reading Goldberg's book. The positive reviews make it clear; it's just as another salvo in a partisan food-fight. In the case of Liberal Fascism, you can judge a book by it's cover.

Why do you think this is? Is it just a coincidence that organicism and animal rights tend to correlate with each other and with liberalism in general? Or is it more likely that this is because there are philosophical premises within liberalism that are conducive to both?

Localism, sustainability, conservation, and distrust of bigness in general (and modern agricultural methods specifically) are per se' conservative impulses. Insofar as they correlate with "liberalism", it is much more in spite of liberalism than because of it. It is more of an historical accident that economic liberalism came somehow to be called "conservative" (which of course it isn't). Liberalism, qua liberalism, is neither conducive to conservation, nor can it be. That many liberals happen to be (and rightly are) concerned about conservation is not so much proof of some link between conservation and liberalism as it is an outstanding example of liberal cognitive dissonance.