http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/ en-us 2008-07-20T23:35:27-05:00 hourly 1 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTIwNmY1ZmZjODAxNzRkNWMxN2IxMWYyOTdmZDk4MDc=A longtime reader sent me this fascinating email: Yowza. Over the past few years, the North American Vexillological Association has had a few articles in their newsletter dealing with the flags awarded for war bond drives during both World Wars. The latest issue reports on how, at Bethlehem Steel, indivduals who didn't buy bonds were tarred, ducked, and, eventually, hung in effigy. ('Number six shop, not to be outdone, also had a hanging and the two figures swung by their artificial necks for several days.') There's even a photo of an effigy hanging from a flagpole. Both William McAdoo and his father-in-law, Woodrow Wilson, are cited in the article. Surprise, surprise. I asked him if all this was online and he replied: The NAVA article itself isn't online, but the industry magazine cited within it, which has all the good stuff, is online [Here]. The picture of the dangling effigy is on the back cover, and the article is on page 2, but the whole issue is an orgy of Wilson-era LF. Also cited in the NAVA article is a speech by Wilson [here] , which has the lines 'They will look with reprobation and contempt upon those who can and will not, upon those who demand a higher rate of interest, upon those who think of it as a mere commercial transaction.' I'm in Sioux Falls, and need to work before bed, but I thought readers would  dig this.   2008-07-20T23:35:27-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Y2Y1ZmIyMGFiNTQzMmY5YWM0NDUxMWQ4YTQ0NmE4YWM=Amazing.  The march of the Big Brother state under Labour was highlighted last night as it was revealed that there are now 1,043 laws that give the authorities the power to enter a home or business. Nearly half have been introduced since Labour came to power 11 years ago. They include the right to: • Invade your home to see if your pot plants have pests or do not have a 'plant passport' (Plant Health England Order 2005). • Survey your home and garden to see if your hedge is too high (Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003). • Check that accommodation given to asylum seekers is not being lived in by non-asylum seekers (Immigration and Asylum Act 1999). • Raid a house to check if unlicensed gambling is taking place (Gambling Act 2005 Inspection Regulations 2007). • Seize fridges without the correct energy rating (Energy Information Household Refrigerators and Freezers Regulations 2004). 2008-07-20T17:39:10-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjNhMWI0ODRjMzBjYTBiODBiZDExZTU0YTdmYmY1Yjk=Several readers have written in to chastise me or take exception to the excerpt from the Roberts essay re Pope Pius XII. For the record, what I found interesting was the bit about Hitler (hence the title of the post, borrowed from the chapter title of the same name). As for Pius himself, I really haven't come to any final conclusions, but I should say from what I've read I think that the anti-Pius case is often  overblown and fraught with anti-Catholic bias or propaganda. I started reading into the very contentious history of the subject when I was still planning on doing a whole chapter on Italian Fascism and the Holocaust. But stopped long before I was fully up-to-speed in large part because I decided against such a chapter.  2008-07-19T10:46:00-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTQ4Y2Y5NDA4ZmEzNWM2MzQ5NTIyNGU5MjE2Y2NkNzg=From a reader: As the resident Calvinist guy reading LF and the Corner, may I offer an objection to what I perceive as emailers throwing out flippant characterizations of this mainstream form of Christianity. Take this quote: "deterministic Calvinism, materialism, Marxism" from your reader in Prague. Now, our heritage is littered by Calvinists, such as the founders of Princeton and Yale, Jonathan Edwards, Roger Williams, etc. But also, Europe as well---Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon, Cromwell (do I want to claim him?). And this business about Calvinism being "deterministic." Well, the idea that God determines things, and but for God decreeing or permitting something it can't happen is not a mere pillar of Calvinism but is common to all monotheism. And even if it wasn't, people shouldn't toss Calvinism in with materialism and Marxism. Sheesh. 2008-07-19T10:35:48-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=Mjc2NDgwNzY5MGU1OWYxN2Q2ZGFmOTZjMWVmMzVlNGI=Well, well, well. This is interesting. From Andrew Roberts writing in the Spectator (UK), reviewing two new books on Pius XII: Hurley was -- possibly rightly -- thought of as President Roosevelt's placeman in the Vatican, which is one of the reasons that his views were not adopted, and this book relates the discussion that took place between Roosevelt and Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli at FDR's upstate New York home, Hyde Park, in 1936. According to the President's recollection in 1943, the future Pope -- then Vatican secretary of state -- had said that the United States was ripe for a Communist take-over. FDR disagreed, saying that in fact the genuine peril was of America going Fascist. 'No,' said Pacelli. 'Yes,' said Roosevelt. 'Mr President, you simply do not understand the terrible importance of the Communist movement,' said Pacelli. 'You just don't understand the American people,' FDR claimed to have replied. This book also makes the plausible case that in the Twenties, Pacelli originally 'saw Hitler's Nazism as merely a political ruse. Aware that Hitler's earliest ostensible political alliance was with the German Workers' Party in 1919, Pacelli remained suspicious of Hitler as a politician of the left.' He certainly told the US consul in Cologne, as late as 1939, that Hitler was not a true Nazi and that he 'in spite of appearances would end up in the camp of the left-wing Nazi extremists where he began his career'. With such thinking, it is hardly surprising that Pope Pius XII failed to appreciate the true threat that Hitler posed to Christendom, and to respond to it effectively. These two books -- both written by devout, lifelong Catholics -- will not aid the Pope's adherents' hopes for his canonisation. 2008-07-18T18:45:07-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MDQ4NTk1Y2RhZWFiZjliNDA3ODhjZWE4OWUzMGQ1NDE=That stands for 'Moral Equivalent of War,' a topic much discussed around here. A great example: Patriot Posters. Thanks to Babble Juice for the tip -- and the kind words.   2008-07-18T12:58:48-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTliZGM2OTRiOWU5N2Q5NTZjNjFiYjM2MmIwZDBjY2I=Steve Horwitz drops a note:  Howdy. I'm reading a pretty good essay on Hayek and Oakeshott and the authors mention Oakeshott's term 'teleocracy.'  He uses that to describe governments that imposed specific plans or goals on the societies they governed and consciously marshaled social resources toward their achievement.  This contrasts with the 'ends-independent' rules of a spontaneous order, to use Hayek's term, in which individuals and households and firms are free to pursue their own purposes and plans subject to those rules. I wonder whether 'teleocracy' isn't a pretty good catch-all for the varieties of fascism?  Historical fascism had a set of purposes and plans that were often particularly nasty and liberal fascism's goals seem more noble, yet both share the notion that the social order should be structured toward particular ends and that citizens are but resources in their achievement.  'Barack will make you work' after all. I'm on the road and don't have LF with me, so perhaps you mentioned Oakeshott and that term, but if not, I thought it was an interesting parallel. 2008-07-17T16:09:58-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWY1YjY5ZWJiM2I3ZjM0YmY1OGZkODRhYjVlZmRiNmI=The esteemed Ed Feser chimes in: Hi Jonah,   Having recently published a book on Locke (with the creative title Locke) I can't help but briefly chime in.  Three points:   1. Re: classical liberalism vis-a-vis conservatism, it seems to me your claim about their relationship is too strong.  Michael Novak has usefully distinguished liberalism from liberal institutions.  A conservative can value many of the institutions associated with classical liberalism -- the rule of law, constitutional limited government, the market economy, etc. -- while rejecting the philosophical foundations classical liberalism would give them.   2. Since those foundations are deeply problematic, my own view is that conservatives should reject them.  I summarize some of the relevant points in this TCS Daily article adapted from my book on Locke.  (In general, liberalism -- again, as a philosophy, as distinct from some of the political institutions associated with it -- tends to rest on metaphysical assumptions that are modern (Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, et al.) as opposed to classical (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas et al.).  I provide a thorough demolition of those modern metaphysical assumptions in my forthcoming book The Last Superstition: A Refutation of the New Atheism.)   3. I don't think it's helpful to frame the discussion in terms of individualism vs. collectivism.  That's a false alternative.  To my mind conservatism understands human beings to be neither atomistic individuals related only by contractual bonds, nor mere elements of some amorphous blob called 'society' or 'the community.'  Man is a social animal by nature, and has obligations to others that exist prior to any social contract.  But the immediately relevant unit of society here is the family, not 'the community' as a whole.  Since the family is closer to the level of the individual than to the level of society at large, this puts conservatism closer to classical liberalism than it is to either socialism or modern liberalism, but it is still misleading to think of conservatism as either 'liberal' or 'individualistic' in the relevant senses. My very quick responses below, in order: 1. I don't dispute for a moment that a conservative can reject the classical liberal argument for those things while still agreeing with those positions. However, I'm not so sure that gets us very far in the American context, as we are nonetheless conserving classical liberal positions. Motives are fascinating things in arguments such as this, but I don't know that as a matter of practical politics we can easily distinguish between a conservative who adheres to (classical) liberal positions for classically liberal reasons or for 'conservative' (i.e. non-classically liberal) ones. I'm not trying to change the rules mid-game here by bringing up practical politics, but I think the point has relevance. Most American conservatives do not split these hairs. They simply know as a matter of conviction, culture and conscience that liberal institutions are right, good and American. The intellectual pedigree or rationale for these institutions may or may not interest them, but whether they do or not, he is still a conservative.  2. I've got to read more of Ed's stuff before I comment. Sounds great (I'm a big fan of Feser's for the record). 3. As odd as it may seem to some, I basically agree here. I've been noodling a long essay on this subject (dunno who to write it for, hence can't figure out how long to make it) but here's a brief take out on how I come down.  As I often say when I do this Locke v. Rousseau or Individualism v. Collectivism thing, I think we're all a little Lockean and we're all a little Rousseauian. We all believe in both the sovereignty of the individual and the importance of the collective. What distinguishes left from right in this regard isn't the natural human desire for individual respect (thymos?) nor the natural human yearning for community. Again, these yearnings are written into the human heart. Where the left and the right come in is how you (mis)apply these yearnings. The Party of Rousseau -- we'll call it that for fun -- seeks to use the State to maximize and totalize its conception of community. Everyone wants to live in a family. Everyone wants to belong to a community. The Party of Rousseau commits the category error of believing you can make the State into the your family or use it to make your nation your village. This is what Mussolini's famous definition of Fascism amounted to. 'Everything in the state, nothing outside the state.' The conservative and the classical liberal (or libertarian) alike understand that that is an impossibility -- an undesirable impossibility. So when I'm talking about individualism versus collectivism, please know that I'm referring to statist collectivism.  Anyway, I go on about this point in this post from a while back.   Oh, and for those interested, Ed's essay on Hayek and Tradition (it's a PDF) was immensely influential on my thinking, particularly as I was writing the chapter on the tempting of conservatism.   And I do love all the email from folks who know more about this stuff than I do.  2008-07-17T15:27:22-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDM3ZTkxMzhmNjExMGZkYzk4YTE0OWQyYjY3OTg5ZDQ=Yuval Levin, to whom I defer on all things Burkean offers some very interesting observations: Just catching up on my liberal fascism blog reading. Very interesting stuff on Locke and Rousseau (and the blog is great fun in general, by the way, I wondered if you could sustain it after the initial rush of book publicity, and you really have, it's wonderful). I definitely agree with the point you're making in shorthand there, and it seems like most of the criticism you posted just has to do with people not seeing it's shorthand. But the equation of Locke and Burke in your 7/14 post strikes me as very problematic. Burke certainly was anti-Rousseauian. He read Rousseau, they had some mutual acquaintances, and Burke believed Rousseau was the worst and most dangerous of the French (or Swiss, I suppose) troublemakers. He also writes several times in his personal letters that he thinks Rousseau doesn't really believe what he writes, and is some of kind of borderline psychotic. But on the question you defined as key--the question of individualism vs. collectivism--Burke is not a Lockean. In fact, Burke's opponents (most notably Thomas Paine) were much closer to Locke on this point, and Burke specifically rejects Locke's political teaching almost in its entirety. Burke clearly thought well of Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding," which he cites approvingly in his book on esthetics, but he just as clearly thought Locke's politics (including especially his radical individualism) were off the mark.   James Boswell (Samuel Johnson's chronicler, and a close friend of Burke's) reports in one of his essays the following: "a great politician, and at the same time a very good philosopher [Boswell's frequent description of Burke, whom he never names because Burke was an active politician at the time -YL], observed to me that Locke, who displayed such extraordinary powers in analyzing human understanding, shewed he had very little use of it himself, when he attempted to apply it practically to the subject of government." It is true that American conservatism today seeks in large part to conserve Lockean (or classical) liberalism, and in that sense, as you well put it, Locke has become a conservative in our hands. He was also certainly not a ruinous radical in his own inclinations and aims. But on the particular question of individualism, when you write: "If you want to replace the name Locke with Edmund Burke's or Adam Smith's and Rousseau's with -- I dunno -- Dewey's or Sorel's, I think you can make pretty much the same point I make in my Locke v. Rousseau spiel" I think Burke doesn't quite belong. He certainly rejected the "general will" and predicted it would lead to blood, but he didn't really believe "the individual is sovereign."   This is probably a tiny and pedantic point in the context of the case you're making--forgive me, I'm deep in my project on Burke and Paine this month, and so surely see things out of proportion--but what's the internet for if not for pressing tiny and pedantic points?   Warm regards, Yuval 2008-07-17T11:33:08-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OWZjMjg2NGE2ZWZmM2VjZDk4NDY2MTljOTM2YTlmZDk=From the Old Whig: Why, in these munificent days of the Internet one never knows what distinguished authority may pop out of Google--even the estimable Harry Jaffa on the Founders and the Straussian interpretation of Locke!   In one form or another, the metamorphosis of Lockean 'rights' into Aristotelian 'ends' (or vice versa) recurs in many of the documents of the founding. Washington in his first inaugural address as president, says that 'there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.' The pursuit of happiness is thus understood as the pursuit of virtue. It is difficult to imagine a more forthright Aristotelianism in Hooker or Aquinas. Nor do Washington and the founders generally suppose that either virtue or happiness is something private or idiosyncratic. In Federalist 43, Madison speaks of the 'transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.' The pursuit of happiness, while that of individuals in the state of nature, is a social or political happiness, within civil society. [Harry V.  Jaffa, 'Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding," Claremont Review of Books, Winter 2001; http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1130/article_detail.asp]   Strauss was clear, in Natural Right and History, that his was an account of Locke's esoteric teaching, but that Locke's exoteric doctrine was far more conventional, and far more consistent with both traditional morality and traditional (albeit more tolerant) Christianity. Strauss also taught us that the authors of the past--and this certainly included political men no less than philosophers--were to be understood as they understood themselves, before the attempt was made to understand them differently or better. It was, and is, an anachronism to assume that the founders read Locke through the eyes of Strauss! One is reminded of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Hector, himself a young man, denounces the elders of Troy, who are so bewitched by Helen's beauty that they are unwilling to return her to her husband, and thus save their city from destruction. 'You gloz'd [commented],' he said, '[like] young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.' It seemed to me that imputing to the Founding Fathers Leo Strauss's esoteric interpretation of Locke would be not unlike finding the Nicomachean Ethics in Hector's library. [Ibid]   Best wishes, An Old Whig #### The Claremont Institute Aristotle and Locke in the American Founding By Harry V. Jaffa Posted February 10, 2001 This article appeared in the Winter 2001 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. In his review of A New Birth of Freedom: Abraham Lincoln and the Coming of the Civil War, in the inaugural issue of the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes, 'Jaffa doesn't draw attention to his revised view of Lincoln or of the American Founding. In fact, he is strangely silent about the whole subject, leaving it to the readers to figure out the relation between the two remarkably different accounts in Crisis and A New Birth. I do not think that I have been as silent, or strangely so, as Professor Kesler seems to think. That the Founding, which Lincoln inherited, was dominated by an Aristotelian Locke--or a Lockean Aristotle--has been a conspicuous theme of my writing since 1987. It has gone largely unnoticed because it contradicts the conventional wisdom of certain academic establishments. Like the 'Purloined Letter,' however, it has been in plain view all along. After speaking of our unalienable rights, to secure which governments are instituted, the Declaration of Independence goes on to say that 'whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundations on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.' Notice that in the second institution, or reinstitution of government, 'rights' become 'ends.' And these ends are now said to be 'Safety' and 'Happiness,' the alpha and omega of political life in Aristotle's Politics. In one form or another, the metamorphosis of Lockean 'rights' into Aristotelian 'ends' (or vice versa) recurs in many of the documents of the founding. Washington in his first inaugural address as president, says that 'there is no truth more thoroughly established than that there exists in the economy and course of nature an indissoluble union between virtue and happiness.' The pursuit of happiness is thus understood as the pursuit of virtue. It is difficult to imagine a more forthright Aristotelianism in Hooker or Aquinas. Nor do Washington and the founders generally suppose that either virtue or happiness is something private or idiosyncratic. In Federalist 43, Madison speaks of the 'transcendent law of nature and of nature's God, which declares that the safety and happiness of society are the objects at which all political institutions aim, and to which all such institutions must be sacrificed.' The pursuit of happiness, while that of individuals in the state of nature, is a social or political happiness, within civil society. Neither Washington nor Madison imagined for a moment that, in speaking of the happiness of society, he was contradicting the idea of all human individuals being equally endowed by their Creator with unalienable rights. In his letter transmitting the Constitution to the Congress of the Confederation, Washington speaks of 'Individuals entering into society [having to] give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest.' But where--except in the state of nature--can individuals be, before 'entering society'? How can they enter society, except by a social contract--or compact--in which each recognizes the equal natural rights of all, in a society dedicated to preserving the equal natural rights of each? It is this mutual recognition which is the foundation, at once, of majority rule and minority rights, of the rule of law. * * * One might object that the idea of rule of law arising from a social contract is purely Lockean, and has no tincture of Aristotelianism. To think this, however, is to ignore what Aristotle says about all of natural right being changeable. Consider that, according to Aristotle, whatever the law does not command, it forbids. This is perfectly consistent with the idea of law in the Mosaic polity, which is another example of the ancient city. Remember that, according to Aristotle, a city with more than 10,000 citizens would be too large. Law for an ancient city and for a modern state--whether the 4 million inhabitants of the 13 original American states, or the 280 million of the 21st-century America--must of necessity be very different. It must be very different as to the ways and means by which it is formed, yet altogether the same for the human ends that it must serve. The ancient conception of law would, in the modern world, serve only tyranny, while the very purpose of law, according to Aristotle, is to prevent tyranny. The common ground of the ancient and the modern conception of law is shown by Aristotle's dictum that law is reason unaffected by desire. Locke's state of nature is not a merely hypothetical construct. It is rather a dictate of that very prudence which is, according to Aristotle, the hallmark of all political wisdom. It arises from that fundamental transformation in the human condition from the world described in Fustel de Coulanges' Ancient City--from a world in which each city had its own god--to one in which there was but one God for the human race. This God however was not the God of any one city, or the author of its laws. The obligation of a citizen of an ancient city to obey its laws followed from the obligation to the god of that city. Under Christian monotheism each individual has a relationship with God that is prior, both logically and ontologically, to his membership in his political community. Each individual is a citizen, actual or potential, of the City of God, before being a citizen of his own particular country. The meaning of this distinction I have discussed at some length in chapter 2 of A New Birth in the context of Shakespeare's discussion between Bates, Williams, and King Henry V (in disguise) around the campfire, before the battle of Agincourt. Their conclusion is that each man has an unconditional duty to the King who is alone responsible for the justice of his cause. But the king is not responsible for the fate of each man's soul. Every man is responsible to God, but not the king, for this. Shakespeare, while displaying unflinchingly the defects of kingly rule, does not in the English histories have on his horizon any alternative to divine right monarchy. The American Founding's Lockean republican political theory provides an answer to the defects of Christian divine right monarchy, the answer that Lincoln inherited. This supplied as well the theoretical foundation for Lincoln's assault on slavery. According to St. Peter and St. Paul, all power was held to come from God. Submission to the power of the Emperor was submission to God. This theory underlay the authority of the king, as Bates and Williams saw it in Henry V. In the Declaration of Independence, the origin of political authority is held to reside, not in emperor, king, or church, but in those unalienable rights with which every human individual is equally endowed by his creator. From the fact of this equal endowment, no one has by nature more authority over another than the other has over him. Hence the state of nature, and hence the social contract that takes men from the state of nature into civil society, a contract which initially is unanimous, and based upon mutual recognition of that equality of right. It is this unanimity which authorizes majority rule, rule which is understood in principle to be in the interests of the indefeasible rights of the minority no less than of the majority. The 'just powers of the government' are moreover understood to be only those to which there has been unanimous consent a priori. Excluded thereby from all political control are the rights of conscience which make man a citizen of the City of God. From this follows the separation of state and church, from which is derived the distinction between state and society, from which, in turn, are derived those civil rights which are the outstanding feature of all decent modern constitutions. These limitations upon political power have no standing whatever in the constitutions of the ancient city. From all of the foregoing, I concluded long ago that, had Aristotle been called upon, in the latter half of the 17th century, to write a guide book for constitution makers, he would have written something very closely approximating Locke's Second Treatise. For he would have recognized instantly those differences from his Politics that prudential wisdom required, in the world of Christian monotheism, with all its peculiar dangers of tyranny, especially from the union of divine right monarchy and established church. * * * My critics, friendly and unfriendly, may ask why it took me so long to see the purloined letter on the mantelpiece. The reason is that I took for granted that the account of the Hobbesian Locke in Leo Strauss's Natural Right and History represented the Locke that informed the American Founding. That rights were prior to duties, that duties were derived from rights, that civil society arose from a contract solely for mutual self-preservation, and that the goods of the soul were subordinated in all decisive respects to the goods of the body, were conclusions of Strauss's interpretation. Strauss himself never said this Locke was the founder's Locke, but the spell cast by his book led many of us to apply it to the founders. Many former students of Strauss, to this day, regard it as heresy to think that Strauss's chapters on Hobbes and Locke do not constitute the authoritative account of the philosophic foundations of American constitutionalism. When presented with the evidence of Aristotelianism in the founding, they react like the scholastics who refused to look into Galileo's telescope: 'If it confirms Aristotle it is redundant; if it contradicts him it is false.' Strauss himself said that Aristotle would have been the first to look through the telescope. Strauss was clear, in Natural Right and History, that his was an account of Locke's esoteric teaching, but that Locke's exoteric doctrine was far more conventional, and far more consistent with both traditional morality and traditional (albeit more tolerant) Christianity. Strauss also taught us that the authors of the past--and this certainly included political men no less than philosophers--were to be understood as they understood themselves, before the attempt was made to understand them differently or better. It was, and is, an anachronism to assume that the founders read Locke through the eyes of Strauss! One is reminded of Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida. Hector, himself a young man, denounces the elders of Troy, who are so bewitched by Helen's beauty that they are unwilling to return her to her husband, and thus save their city from destruction. 'You gloz'd [commented],' he said, '[like] young men whom Aristotle thought unfit to hear moral philosophy.' It seemed to me that imputing to the Founding Fathers Leo Strauss's esoteric interpretation of Locke would be not unlike finding the Nicomachean Ethics in Hector's library. Harry V. Jaffa, a Distinguished Fellow of the Claremont Institute, is the author of numerous articles and books, including his widely acclaimed study of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Crisis of the House Divided: An Interpretation of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates (University of Chicago Press, 1959). 2008-07-16T16:06:32-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWY0NDE4ZjY4ZTNlZWQ5Y2FlNDY5MDgyZDNhMDI3NWM=I've been crazy busy, but a bunch of interesting Locke email has piled up. So here's a few in no particular order: I thought this was especially interesting: If you haven't done so in a while, re-read Russell Kirk's two chapters on Burke and Locke in The Conservative Constitution.  Put simply, Kirk asserts that our fixation on Locke's influence has more to do with Charles Beard than John Adams.    As a teacher of World and US History and US Government, I can attest to the fact that most textbooks and stadardized tests are heavy on Locke, and Burke virtually ignored.  In other words, for three straight years, high school students in California get a steady dose of John Locke and nothing about Burke.    Why does this matter?  According to Kirk, our founders' vision was much more attuned to that of Burke than Locke.  While neither are mentioned in the Federalist Papers or Madison's notes on the ratification debates (Montesquieu looms large there), Burke's arguments against innovation in Parliament as well as his newspapers were, according to Kirk, far more widely read and in the minds of the Founders than Locke.  John Adams, for example, was thoroughly unimpressed with Locke as a planner of legislative government.This, from one of my pastor e-friends is a bit above my head, but interesting nonetheless:  Not to take you off into the weeds of theological discourse, chief, but Locke was vaguely Arminian (John Wesley the best known English advocate) as opposed to Calvinism, where 'man's depravity' was rooted in a theology of original sin that also picks up a concept called 'limited atonement' claiming Jesus' death was not for all, leaving us free to choose to accept that sacrifice, but only for the Elect whom God had pre-destined and pre-ordained to receive the blessing of eternal life. John Wesley and others (the Anglican church was -- and is!! -- muddled about how they actually see this, trying to leave room for both inside their communion) were adamant that Christ died for all, and we were given 'prevenient grace' by God's gracious initiative which allowed and empowered us to 'choose' salvation.  Calvinists then and now accurately see Locke as, at minimum, not Calvinist, but as a good Methodist Arminian myself, i can't claim Locke as one of our own, but he was as convinced of original sin as any Arminian -- he just didn't buy predestination and total depravity, which is where your 'crudely made points' interlocutor seems to be coming from. And then on the healthcare bit, there was this: Jonah,   In reference to health care, an earlier reader wrote: "And thus they are squarely in Rousseau's world.  And I can't think of a way out of it.  Politically, what can we offer to put both sides in Locke's world?"  The answer is simple, choice. Frame the debate as the one of choice versus government mandate.  The reason most people despise HMOs is a lack of choice.  It will be even worse if the government picks the doctors and treatments.  This reframes the debate.  Do you really want the people that designed the Department of Motor Vehicles and the TSA to pick your prescription?  If you don't like what they prescribe what alternative will you have?  If your love one gets sicker or dies because of the treatment who can you sue?  Nobody likes to be told what to do, especially when a bully is the one giving the orders.  Remind people that government is the ultimate bully and you're in Locke's world.   2008-07-16T14:29:28-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTBhZGZhNTk4MTYzODBmMzQ4ZTFmZGFiMDUxZGVmNzU=I forwarded the Reason review to a very smart friend. I think his take is generally right: Hm. This seems a little too evenhanded to me. While others have criticized your attempt to extend the critique of fascism to contemporary liberalism (post-FDR) and have felt you go too far in seeing fascist themes under every cultural leaf, I certainly wouldn't say you distort the meaning of the term as much as Wolf and Conason do. What he misses, I think, is the importance of your central notion of a 'liberal fascist' tradition. Like most critics, he fails to see that you are not 'shoehorning' contemporary liberalism into the fascist mold but tracing an independent liberal fascist tradition. His final point that most countries in Europe including harmless little Sweden would fit your definition of fascism is exactly correct: they would. But this is to be expected from an editor at Reason whose main concern, as he says at the end, is the protection of civil liberties from an aggressive national security state. He is in this respect closer to Wolf and Conason than he is to you. 2008-07-15T07:55:51-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzFlMDNlNWJiOWNmYzBmMzBkMjY1NWIyMjVkODA1NjI=From a reader: ck, and there's a slam on Woodrow Wilson on page 11; we can't give you credit for too much, but is a tide softly sifting in a new direction?  Liberal fascism may quietly enter the cognitive lexicon, and i know you're too smart to wait for credit, or even a thank you, so we'll all just enjoy the spreading mesh of oblique references. Dunno what credit I deserve, but sounds good to me.  2008-07-15T06:51:03-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZmFlYTViMDVmNzA4NTNiMWQ1ZWVmYjY1YTBkODIxNjI=I firmly believe that if classical fascism exists anywhere in the world today, it exists in Cuba. I knew that Castro was very fond of Franco. I knew that Herbert Matthews, the New York Times reporter who fawned over Castro (hence the famous cartoon of Castro saying 'I got my job through the New York Times) was also a fan of Mussolini -- for the same reasons. But I didn't know a lot of the stuff in this email. Fascinating: Just finished reading "Liberal Fascism".  Funny ( not really) that we Cubans also need some revisionist history about our recent history.  Castro was and is an admirer of Mussolini.  My grandmother was a member in the 1930's of a fascist organization; labeled by all Cuba and here, as "of the right".  The ABC was founded by Dr. Joaquin Martinez Saenz, a fascist enamored with Mussolini.  My grandmother, who was in her 30's at the time, was married to a wealthy MD and had bombs and guns hidden in her house and participated in street violence.   This is what Gott writes in his 2004 history of Cuba:   Cuba: A New History by Richard Gott Oxford University Press 2004 Chapter Four The Cuban Republic, 1902 - 1952   A third conspiratorial movement, that labeled itself ABC for security reasons, was formed in September 1931, with an emphasis on "youth" and the need for a clean break with the past. Although Machado himself had followed in the footsteps of Mussolini, the principal right-wing force that opposed him had been drinking from the same well. The ABC had some of the characteristics of the Spanish Falange, but their political lineage seemed closer to the Italian Futurists and to Mussolini. They were led by Joaquín Martínez Sáenz and Carlos Saladrigas, both middle class lawyers, and Jorge Manach, a French-educated writer.   The ABC's Manifesto-Programme, issued early in 1932, was consciously based on the Italian fascist programme of 1919. A national-socialist programme of the radical right, it was hostile to US business interests, supportive of producer cooperatives and state control of public services, and an advocate of "Cubans First". Its fascist flavor was indicated by its plan to withdraw the vote from illiterates, inevitably aimed in Cuba against blacks. No one ever revealed what ABC stood for, but the Communists with some justice suggested that it meant Asociación Blanca de Cuba, the Association of Cuban Whites.   The ABC's practice was more significant than its ideology, for all student groups in the early 1930s were subject to foreign influences of one kind or another, and few were able to adjust them to Cuban reality. Many individuals moved seamlessly from one group to the other, and the ABC would sometimes work with the Directorio Estudiantil. Ideologically at odds, the anti-Machado movements, on the left or the right, were all enamored of violence, believing that the tactic of terror against the government - against its buildings and its servants - was their only effective weapon. In their use of terror, they were at one with contemporary movements in Europe; they were also consonant with the revolutionary struggles of Cuba's past. The ABC may have hoped that this would provoke American intervention; Guiteras's Unión Revolucionaria and the Directorio Estudiantil, would have fiercely rejected such an outcome.   "Hostile to US business interests, supportive of producer cooperatives and state control of public services"  and that made the ABC a radical right revolutionary organization?   GO FIGURE.   Best wishes,[Name withheld]  2008-07-14T20:40:31-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YTEwNDM1MjYyM2U4NWQ5NDkwOTE4YTcyNDc5NDcxMjc=From a reader in Prague: Dear Mr. Goldberg,   I guess the reader damning Locke was Daniel Larison, wasn't he?   Well, let us review his points:   1. 'Rousseau admired Locke a good deal' - sure, because his whole political philosophy was a polemic with Locke! You do not write your philosophy as a polemic with a lightweight; with somedy you consider an idiot. You pick a worthy opponent...   2.'Locke, far more than Rousseau, ignores the problem of original sin... Rousseau displaced original sin...! Well, who ignored the original sin more, after all? I would bet that one who 'displaced' it. On the other hand, the whole Lockean political philosophy could be considered as a philosphy of punishment! His reasons for (a transition from a natural state to) a state-government are based on his theory of a more effective punishments! But if your political philosophy is based on (a theory of) punishment, you hardly ignore original sin!   3. 'Locke declares that men are born free as they are born rational. It is difficult to view more opposed to that of Burke and conservatism.' According to both Aristotelian and conservative Christian Catholic anthropology, a man is a free and rational being. He is free to choose between good and evil (otherwise all morality would be nonsense) and his reason is in principle capable to percieve and discover basic tenets of right and wrong, truth and error. Of course, both his free will and reason are obscured and weakened by original sin, but that does not mean that man as a man is neither free nor rational. Strange to blame that on Locke, when it is, in fact, the whole Western tradition (with the exceptions of deterministic Calvinism, materialism, marxism, etc.) ...   4. 'Locke is extremely anti-historical.  His system is an attempt to escape historically evolved societies.' Both revealed relegion and philosophy are a-historical. They reveal and/or seek for what is absolutely and universaly right and true, regardless of (incumbent) traditions or conventions. Christianity Anno Domini 100 had been pretty anti-historical.   5. I am not sure Strauss was completely right on Locke, but neither I am sure he was not. The trouble with Locke is that his metaphysical political philosphy (natural rights, objective human nature, etc.) has been incompatible with his empiricist, skeptical philosophy of knowlidge (epistemology). In fact, Locke's epistemology is contradictory to and subversive of his political philosphy. Strauss thought Locke had been aware of that, some others could think he hadn't been (he had just been a poor philosopher). Locke's political philosphy is not philosphy per se, but a dogmatic fideism. He, as a political philospher failed, which does not mean his political philosphy has been wrong  - it just means he has not been able to vindicate it.    Very well, there are several good reasons to criticize Locke, but not a single one by your reader.    I would like to conclude by agreeing very much with your conclusion: 'Conservatism is certainly  about more than classical liberalism, but a conservatism that does not seek to conserve classical liberalism simply isn't worth conserving.' Compare that with NR's late Frank S. Meyer: 'Liberty is the political end of man's existence because liberty is the condition of his being. It is for this reason that conservatism, which in preserving the tradition preserves this truth, is only consistent to itself when it is libertarian.' ('In Defense of John Stuart Mill', NR, March 28, 1956). But perhaps to our dear reader damning Locke, that Frank Meyer was - like yourself - another 'essential progressive'... And the only true conservative is... your reader! Ah, well... 2008-07-14T17:50:52-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzU5N2RhOWUwYmRjZDczMDQ5MTc3ZDQ1ZjA3ODE4MWE=Michael Moynihan, an impressive writer over at Reason has reviewed LF -- albeit 7 months after publication. There's fair criticism in their, but I think there are some unfair bits as well. I'm crashing on deadlines but I'll give one example now, and then we can come back to this later. He writes: At times, the contortions required to tie fascism with 21st century partisanship can bring Goldberg close to sounding like Wolf: "Fascists famously rules by terror. Political correctness isn't literally terroristic, but it does govern through fear." Well, yes, but being accused of racial insensitivity is rather different than seeing your family arrested on Kristallnacht. Please. As his own review concedes I make it clear that I am not equating even Progressivism's worst bullying to Hitlerism, but he nonetheless goes on to score a cheap debater's point by pointing out something he knows I already concede. Besides, does political correctness have to be as bad as Kristallnacht for me to make the point that it's bad,  uses fear and has substantive analogues to fascist practices? If I was making a point about the Marxist roots of PC -- a Communist phrase originally -- would Moynihan rhetorically spike the ball by saying 'Well, yes, but being accused of racial insensitivity is rather different than seeing  your village liquidated'?  Moynihan well knows that National Socialist political correctness wasn't all about cracking skulls and ransacking stores. And he also is aware that fascist and Nazi aren't interchangeable.  There are a few other spots where Michael seems to want be so even-handed he offers strawmanish criticisms of my book. There's also some fair stuff and some praise. Anyway, judge for yourself.   2008-07-14T17:49:10-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjI4MGM0Yjc5YTI1OWQ2N2EwOWZhNDg2ZGVlYjgxMTU=From a reader:  Dear Mr. Goldberg, I find it dismaying that a writer of your prominence on the Right would reduce political philosophy to a matter of Locke vs. Rousseau, as neither can be considered a conservative.  At the least, I wish you would have made a point of more overtly declaring your rejection of your previous Burkean tendencies.  I shan't attempt much of an exploration for your philosophical shift, except to say that I suspect it is due to you having, as your colleague Mr. Derbyshire observed, not a religious bone in your body (I recall you contesting that characterization, but at most it could be conceded that you have two or three such bones--certainly there aren't enough to make any difference in your philosophy). As it is not to be expected that a full case against Locke can be made in this short missive, I'll confine myself to a few points that I hope will induce you to reconsider the matter. 1.  Rousseau admired Locke a good deal.  Emile, for instance, contains more than a few eulogistic remarks about him. 2.  Locke, far more than Rousseau, ignores the problem of original sin.  The perverted Protestantism of Hobbes very much took account of original sin, but provided a purely materialist response: the sovereign, who is a mortal god frightening men into being tolerable to each other.  Rousseau displaced original sin, moving it to the conflict between man and society.  Locke simply pretends that original sin does not exist. 3.  Locke declares that men are born free as they are born rational. It is difficult to view more opposed to that of Burke and conservatism. 4.  Locke is extremely anti-historical.  His system is an attempt to escape historically evolved societies. 5.  Despite my general antipathy toward Leo Strauss, I admit that he was dead-on in his characterization of Locke as a mere continuation of Hobbes' rejection of classical and Christian thought (see Natural Right and History).  As for Eric Voegelin, who you have at times quoted with approval, he considered Locke to be 'one of the most repugnant, dirty, morally corrupt appearances in the history of humanity...Locke was one of the first very great cases of spiritual pathology.'  (Faith and Political Philosophy: The Correspondence between Leo Strauss and Eric Voegelin, 1934-1964.  96-97).  I'm sure you would benefit from an examination of Voegelin's more technical works, especially Order and History.  At the least, such a study might prevent you from trotting him out whenever you want to take a jab at political religions, only to quickly drop him lest his views interfere with your own essential progressivism (e.g. no need to worry about environmental concerns, we'll just wait on science our savior). As noted, these are very brief and crudely presented points, but I hope you'll give some consideration to them. Me: I agree entirely about the crudity of the points presented!  But, hey,  it's interesting stuff nonetheless. I am familiar with the objections here. I respect most of them, even where I disagree (though the speculation of my motives doesn't impress). I think the biggest point of misunderstanding is that I am unapologetically  speaking in terms of vision more than philosophical specifics. If you want to replace the name Locke with Edmund Burke's or Adam Smith's and Rousseau's with -- I dunno -- Dewey's or Sorel's, I think you can make pretty much the same point I make in my Locke v. Rousseau spiel. If that's too fast and loose for close students of these folks, I understand. But, that won't stop me! For the record, I don't think everything in Locke is right nor do I think everything in Rousseau is wrong. As I've argued at length elsewhere, I think these two visions run through the human heart. There are places where the Rousseauian vision should take precedence over the Lockean, and vice versa. And, rarely should one vision totally dominate. The time, place and manner of how these visions should interplay depends almost entirely on the institution or enterprise in question.  The federal government should be almost entirely Lockean. Local governments or organizations can and should be more Rousseauian so long as the right of exit is preserved. But that's a subject for a longer essay I'm noodling.  As for Locke not being a conservative. Eh. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't. It all depends how you want  to define conservatism in his day and age -- and ours. But conservatives in the United States of America are certainly trying to conserve much of Locke's project (unless you honestly think Locke's spirit was entirely absent at the American founding). Again, I'm repeating myself, but: Conservatism is certainly  about more than classical liberalism, but a conservatism that does not seek to conserve classical liberalism simply isn't worth conserving.  2008-07-14T13:24:50-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MzJjY2EwMTI0YTMzZTI1M2QyOTQ1MzRkYzI0MTVkYjE=I don't know why I haven't spent more time on Obama's promised 'civilian national security force.' If the APL doesn't work, 'Posse Comitatus'  would annoy many of the right people. 2008-07-14T11:32:23-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTdjZDJmNjlmOGMyM2M3ZjE5MWRkMmU0OGZiZDE1MTk=From a reader: Jonah, Fascinating post this morning and it brought to mind two other writers I've been wrestling with recently.  Philip Rieff, who I think wrote the first Closing of the American Mind in his book Triumph of the Therapeutic, identifies three historic cultures of the world: 1st world, which was pagan, 2nd world, which was sacred order Jewish, Christian, and Muslim, and 3rd world, which is post modern and the negation of all sacred orders.  Here's a quote that sums it up fairly well: 'There are now armies of third world teachers, artists, therapists, etc. teaching the higher illiteracy.  This teaching of the higher illiteracy amounts to a deathwork against second culture literacy.' Rousseau's philosophy is a third world deathwork bent on the destruction of 2nd world sacred orders.  What's interesting is that Bill Clinton, Hillary, and much of the Democratic party always go to healthcare as their weapon of choice in this battle.  Why healthcare?  There's are endless avenues to fight for this global village, but it always comes down to healthcare, nationalized healthcare, joining the world trend toward a more socialized system.  On the surface, it is a fairly obvious weapon because it looms so large over all of us.   But healthcare is also the perfect weapon with which to attack the second world  sacred orders, and it brings to mind my second author, Edward Norman.  Norman is Chancellor of York Minister and his book Secularisation is about the decline of Christianity in England.  Here's Norman: 'Once humanity and its needs have been elevated to sovereign determination of public an private action, anything that can be represented as an affront or an impediment to this painless existence of men and women is made to seem morally unacceptable--an outrage.  Morality then appears self-evident: it is the palliation of whatever humans themselves regard as the cause of their suffering and deprivation.  A set of material assumptions about human nature...is plainly persuasive.  Among those persuaded, as it seems, are many leaders of Christian opinion.  This is additionally puzzling since for centuries the Christian Church, which was founded in an act of expiatory pain, has regarded human suffering as not only inseparable from the nature of life on earth, but also as a necessary condition in spiritual formation...The reality is human pursuit of security, and an escalating set of entitlements quite at variance with the Christian insistence that life was not ordained for pleasure or repose.' And thus heathcare is the ultimate weapon in the fight for a Rousseauean world.  Politically Republicans are absolutely powerless to stand in its way.  They can reasonably argue that a more nationalized healthcare system is bad for healthcare, but in doing so they've already accepted the moral argument that puts our personal suffering above all else.  And thus they are squarely in Rousseau's world.  And I can't think of a way out of it.  Politically, what can we offer to put both sides in Locke's world?  2008-07-14T10:44:59-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjU3ZTdjYTlhMTQwYzgzMWUyMzczZTQ5ODk1YzI3M2Q=Michael Knox Beran has what may be the best piece on the subject to date (certainly better than my several stabs at it). An excerpt:In his unfinished treatise Economy and Society, Max Weber defined charisma as "a certain quality in an individual personality by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men and treated as endowed with supernatural, superhuman, or at least specifically exceptional powers or qualities." Weber was able to do little more, before he died in 1920, than give a pseudoscientific élan to an idea that had been kicking around for centuries. Most of what he said about charismatic authority was stated more cogently in Book III of Aristotle's Politics, which described the great-souled man who "may truly be deemed a God among men" and who, by virtue of his greatness, is exempt from ordinary laws. What both Aristotle and Weber made too little of is the mentality of the charismatic leader's followers, the disciples who discover in him, or delusively endow him with, superhuman qualities. "Charisma" was originally a religious term signifying a gift of God: it often denotes (according to the seventeenth-century scholar-physician John Bulwer) a "miraculous gift of healing." James G. Frazer, in The Golden Bough, demonstrated that the connection between charismatic leadership and the melioration of suffering was historically a close one: many primitive peoples believed that the magical virtues of a priest-king could guarantee the soil's fertility and that such a leader could therefore alleviate one of the most elementary forms of suffering, hunger. The identification of leadership with the mitigation of pain persists in folklore and myth. In the Arthurian legends, Percival possesses an extraordinary magic that enables him to heal the fisher king and redeem the waste land; in England, the touch of the monarch's hand was believed to cure scrofula.... [snip] Barack Obama, in taking up the part of regenerative healer, is the latest panacea. As a society, Obama says, we are hurting. Our schools are "crumbling." There are "lines in the emergency rooms" of the hospitals, and our corporate culture is "rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed." He points to the millions of Americans who, in struggling with life's difficulties ("high gas bills, insufficient health insurance, and a pension that some bankruptcy court somewhere has rendered unenforceable"), have become bitter and unhappy. Obama finds a scapegoat for the present discontents in politics--a politics, he argues, that breeds "division, and conflict, and cynicism" and that has become a "dead zone" in which "narrow interests vie for advantage and ideological minorities seek to impose their own versions of absolute truth." The solution, he says, lies in a political reformation. Unless we "begin the process of changing politics and our civic life," we will bequeath to our children "a weaker and more fractured America" than the one we inherited. Hence his mantra, "Change we can believe in." Like the Nicene Creed, Obama's doctrine begins in belief. Credo. Once we believe in the possibility of a transformative politics, "the perfection begins." The selfish politics of the present yields to the selfless politics of the future. We discover that "this nation is more than the sum of its parts--that out of many, we are truly one." So believing, we can replace a politics that breeds division, conflict, and cynicism with a politics that fosters unity and peace. In Obama's "project of national renewal," government can become an expression of "our communal values, our sense of mutual responsibility and social solidarity." Me: Really, read the whole thing. Update: Woops, it would be much easier if I gave you a link to the City Journal article I just excerpted. I added a link above and here it is again. My apologies.  2008-07-14T08:42:07-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NWM0NjgzODBhMDcxMGIzNTY1OTJjYjI1NjFhN2ZhMTA=Readers of this blog, the book or, in particular people who've heard me speak about the book at length, know that I think political philosophy, or more accurately, political visions can be boiled down to Locke versus Rousseau. The Lockean vision holds that man is the captain of his soul, that his rights come from God, the individual is sovereign, that the government exists because men of free will cede certain authorities to it in order to best protect  their lives and property. The Rousseauian vision holds that the collective comes before the individual, our rights come from the group not from God, that the tribe is the source of all morality, and the general will is the ultimate religious construct and so therefore the needs -- and aims -- of the group come before those of the individual.  Fascism, like Communism, Socialism, Progressivism and all the other collectivist isms are all based on the Rousseauian vision of the group, the tribe, the class taking precedence over the individual.  I've also been writing for years that 'transnational progressives' are trying to take the Progressive project to the world stage. This was the dream of HG Wells --originator of the phrase Liberal Fascism -- who often proclaimed that FDR was the living embodiment of the 'world brain.' It's the aspiration of Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village, in which the logic of everything inside the village, nothing outside the village is eventually extended, in Clinton's telling,  to the global village.  Bill Clinton's modestly named 'Global Clinton Initiative' is sold with the following sentiment from Bill Clinton, which appeared on the GCI's website for years. "In my life now," Clinton declares, "I am obsessed with only two things:  I don't want anybody to die before their time, and I don't want to see good people spend their energies without making a difference."  (Historians may add that there was a third obsession -- with his wife's campaign for president). Forget the gnostic hubris in the idea that Clinton could be part of anything that could determine when the right time to die for each of billions of humans might be, the idea that everyone -- and I mean everyone -- should be 'making a difference' as defined by a handful of global priests is really a stunning, and to my mind frightening, ambition. Leave no child behind has escaped the paddock and is now galloping across the globe.  I bring all of this up because I found a wonderful quote from John Fonte's essay in the new Claremont Review of Books. Fonte, the author of the phrase 'transnational progressives,' reviews books by Strobe Talbott and Marc Plattner. In the Talbott book, it's recounted how the top brass of the early Clinton administration proposed dealing with the end of the Cold War. Bill was pondering the 'direction of history' (in what appears to be a basically Hegelian  way) when Al Gore chimed in. Gore explained:   Rousseau said the body politic is a moral being possessed of a will. He was thinking at the national level. We need to take it to the international one. We need to make the leap from nationhood to a sense of identity that is truly global, but that embodies Rousseau's point.  Apparently Bill agreed, he just didn't think he could sell that to the masses. So, in the meantime he was, in Talbott's words, 'careful not to broadcast' these beliefs.  Anyway, when the full review is up I'll link to it. But I think this is a wonderful vignette of so many of the themes I've been writing about, I'll have to hold on to it for quite a while. Heck, I guess I might even buy Strobe Talbott's book.  2008-07-14T08:33:18-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NjJhMjViYzAxNmEzYmEzNzZjMzllYzhjZWU0MWY0YWM=My Old Whig reader sends some interesting links, I missed during the book tour:Interesting, you may have seen it already: A defense of the New Deal but not of Progressivism per se. See the May 2008 discussion logs for H-US1918-45. Starting with this post forward.Me: I have a crazy week ahead as I am about to leave DC for the rest of the summer. But I will try to get to some of this stuff. This email, however, gives me the idea that maybe I should let a few folks have posting privileges to the blog. That would keep the discussion going over the Summer and take some of the load off me. I'll think about it. Update: From a reader: Hamby's piece contains a couple of bits of intellectual sleight-of- hand that are designed to obfuscate.  First, 'racialistic imperatives'  aren't innate to fascism.  Second, he omits that contempt for  conservative values in general and capitalism in particular is just as  innate to fascism as contempt for 'liberal values.'  I suspect he's  trying to gerrymander fascism out of the leftist orbit, to create  artificial and fictitious distance between leftist outrages (including  thuggery) and fascism. Keep up the good work. 2008-07-13T19:06:01-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmQ4NTNhNTExNTFiNzIzNDUwY2ZlODNmMmVmMThhNTI=Adam Bellow -- my editor on Liberal Fascism -- with some insights from within the belly of  the business. Meanwhile, it seems Andrew Sullivan, not unknown to preen over his own intellectual chops, says he couldn't make it through my book, despite giving a 'good faith' effort.  Uh huh.  Sure Andrew.  2008-07-13T17:45:01-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzRhZmRjNThhZDA0MWE5ZGFlY2I2OTA5MGNhNDEyNjg=From a reader: Dear Mr. Goldberg: I just re-read the chapter on Nazism in _Liberal Fascism_ and this time, I noted that in your discussion of identity politics, there is no discussion of their use of playing the victim card.  The demands that led up to, and the invasions that began, World War II were often justified on the grounds that Germans were being persecuted in those regions. I noticed because I am also reading Erwin Leiser's _Nazi Cinema_ and noting how often Nazi propoganda flicks played that card. _Refugees_, the first film to win the state prize, revolves around Volga Germans in Manchuria being persecuted by Bolsheviks (and rescued, naturally enough, by a Fuhrer-like leader).  _Frisians in Peril_ also revolves about Volga Germans suffering under Communist rule.  Though open fighting is brought about when the Russian commander has a romantic relationship with a half-German, half-Russian girl, and the other Germans murder her for it.  Then, intermarriage is often viewed unfavorably by identity politics -- if seldom brought to such a pitch. _Enemies_ has a prologue declaring that the post-war period was one of unrelenting persecution for Germans in Poland, and the British guarantee to Poland in 1939 triggered the deportation of tens of thousands of Germans, and the massacre of sixty thousand. _Homecoming_ depicts unrelenting persecution on the German minority in Poland, including attacks that blind one character and leave another dead when the hospital refuses treatment.  Finally, the Germans are caught listening to Adolf Hitler on the radio and imprisoned, to be shot at dawn.  Fortunately, the German invasion arrives just in time to free them.  But in the climatic scene, the main characters, father and daughter, hold forth on the evils on sitting about comfortably while people are waiting in cellars to be machine-gunned, or are starving to death, and how in Germany, people are starting to act against these things -- with guns, to be sure, but that, however tragic, is necessary to prevent people from ignoring human suffering. And this just from the sample in the book. Me: Golly, I'll have to go back and read the Hitler chapter myself, because I could have sworn I raised this point more than once. Whether I did -- or did insufficiently -- it's absolutely true that the Nazis exploited a widespread sense of unfairness stemming from the terms of the peace after World War One. The Italian Fascists did this too, claiming that they'd been ripped-off as one of the victors. Historically, fascism -- or just plain hyper nationalism -- needs to be understood as part of larger craving for international respect. Mussolini and Hitler alike often painted themselves as both anti-imperialists  and champions of their nations' rightful imperialism. The established powers were keeping the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese down, and now it was their turn for a moment in the sun. This is a major reason why so many Third World 'national liberation' movements are quintessentially fascistic. Catro, Chavez, Mugabe, Pol Pot,  Mao and many others cast  themselves as both anti-imperialists (or, these days, anti-Americans) while at the same time claiming that their nation needs to flex its muscles. One of the amazing ironies is that pacifists and other anti-war types so often believe these Hitler and Mussolini knock-offs are really champions of peace and justice.  2008-07-13T10:54:38-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YmIyMWI1OTUyYzc2ZmI3ZjljYmE0MmM1MTJkNDk5ZmY=From a reader: Jonah, I'm enjoying the recent thread about thuggery in fascism. You need boil the argument down to one word: coercion. Coercion can be thuggish, or it can be subtle. But this is a distinction without a difference. Coercion is wrong, or at least anti-liberal, in all forms. You have discussed Gleichschaltung, which is best defined as coordination, and others have chimed in with thoughts of totalitarianism, but I think coercion is the word that hits the target most effectively. So the rejoinder to any argument about fascism and thuggery is simply to state that fascism is coercive, whether thuggish or otherwise. Today's left-leaning intellectual, if intellectually honest -- or if they at least understand the way they throw the term fascist around themself -- should consider coercion, in even its most subtle forms, to be enough of an evil to leave the argument there. If not, then you are free to throw an appeal to slippery slopes into the discussion (i.e., subtle coercion must inevitably turn to thuggery when society does not respond obediently to it). Hopefully it won't come to that. All the best, 2008-07-13T10:45:13-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjIwZjcxM2JlMGI4ZTZkNGE0NjE2ZDM1NGUwNzRlMTk=For readers who don't know, Lawrence Dennis was an odd cat and one of the country's foremost advocates for American fascism. I didn't spend a lot of time on him in the book, though I spent too long reading his stuff. Still I think I could have profitably included him in a whole chapter on American advocates of fascism. Most advocates of American fascism had a heavy dose of crankery to them. But it's still interesting stuff. If you google around you can find quite a bit of his writing. Anyway, this reader has been probing his book fruitfully, this time in response to this post. From my Old Whig reader: Lawrence Dennis, a leader of Progressive opposition to the New Deal and himself a proponent of fascism in America, apparently deemed differences in the use of force and coercion between our traditional American constitutional liberalism and fascism to be de minimis, that is, akin perhaps to rush hour overcrowding in a subway or elevator with the benefits far surpassing the inconveniences, once the people habituated themselves to the new régime:   "The right formula, or the ideal balance between repression and tolerance, can best be sought if the mind is freed of liberal norms, or impossible and nearly meaningless verbalisms, such as free speech, free press, freedom of conscience, and so forth, and if an attempt is made quite simply to determine the minimum of governmental repression compatible with safety for a given plan in a given situation. This formula will have to rely mainly on executive judgment and responsibility rather than on juridical norms and judicial interpretation and enforcement. "For public safety has highly elastic requirements varying enormously according to the place, moment, total situation, and scheme of values, to be realized. Any charter of liberties becomes necessarily an absurdity after a few years, for no plan of public order and means to its realization can long, be appropriate to changing conditions. If the theory of verbal norms and judicial interpretation and application be followed, the fundamental law, or the highest social ideals or objectives, will soon be lost sight of in the development of a juridical science or static scheme of ideas and practices which will quickly try to free itself of the nuisances of reality and try to operate entirely within a closed realm of logic--a logic that assumes the realities it requires for its purposes and disregards any refractory realities of experience. "Only an executive can insure the widest measure of tolerance, and he can do this only if he has the widest power to adjust formulas to changing conditions. And, after all, what is safe for the maintenance of public order can only be determined from day to day by a central authority charged with the responsibility of maintaining order. If the lovers of tolerance would only see that tolerance is not an absolute which the state can give or withhold in any quantity it sees fit, quite independently of imperatives of the ruling scheme of values, but that tolerance has always to be fitted into a workable and unique plan of social order, they would concern themselves more with the problems of choosing the plan and making it effective, and less with categorical demands for more tolerance. "The explicitness of government uses of force, and the noticeability of sudden change in the application of force for the achievement of new or different objectives, make state exercises of power, call them what you will, the subject of considerable misrepresentation and misconception where a new social system like communism or fascism is involved. The more governed by political government a community is, the more recognizable will be the force factors, but not necessarily the more coercive. The reason, let it be emphasized, is not that human conduct is more subject to coercion or less free, in the aggregate or on the average, where there is more government or a new social scheme. The reason is that, to whatever extent government purposively coerces to realize given social objectives, the coercion has to be explicit and vested with the personality which attaches to government (e.g. The State versus John Doe). Such coercion is more explicit than that of the pressures of impersonal and anonymous forces over which the individual can have little or no control, and of the operation of which he ordinarily has little understanding. "It may be said that the coercion most keenly felt is the most important or oppressive. To this it need only be answered that where the coercions of government, social custom, or economic necessity, are of long standing and efficient application, the people subject to them are no more conscious of them than habitual motorists are conscious of frustration by traffic lights, or than habitual travelers in the subways and elevators are conscious of frustration in these unnatural and, often, extremely uncomfortable modes of transportation. Those who accept without conscious resentment the discomfort of crowded subways or elevators feel amply compensated by the superior speed and facility of transportation thus afforded them. They do not discuss subways or elevators in terms of claustrophobia, as many liberals discuss government in terms of liberty and constraint, or in terms wholly irrelevant to the points of paramount public interest in the thing discussed." [Lawrence Dennis, The Coming American Fascism (Harper & Bros., 1936), Ch. X, Planning: The Force Factor]   "Fascist planning does not involve the introduction of force as a new principle, and quantitative measurements of coercion and freedom are impossible. Any new scheme of planning has to be pursued with the power of the state. It is essential to have these general principles clearly understood, both by way of answering the liberal or conservative attack on fascism as a phenomenon of coercion, in contradistinction from liberal capitalism, a system of freedom, and by way of meeting the counter proposals of innumerable schools of socialists and liberal reformers who would solve our social problems without involving themselves with the problems of government and coercion. "When planning enters the realm of reality, it enters the realm of force and coercion. And this is seen in the cases of millions who are forced to suffer privation and humiliation under liberal capitalism, as well as in the cases of millions under the authoritarian systems who are forced to accept various impositions of the state plan. The idea that one social plan gives freedom while another imposes coercion is like the idea that the difference between a horse and a cow is that the one has a head while the other has a tail." [Ibid.]   Dennis made fascism sound like both Progressivism and libertarian paternalism, didn't he? J Best wishes, An Old Whig 2008-07-13T09:18:57-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODI3NDUyZTBmYzY0ZTAxN2Q2NWQwYzRkOWM4NDQ1Yjk=From a reader in response to my 'Dionne Pines' Corner post:For what does Dionne pine--Liberal Fascism? Of course, the Constitution might have to go away! "It is not in human nature to bear indefinitely the charges of an unproductive debt, and Hitler was the only political leader in Germany whose stand on German reparations payments showed clear recognition of this human attitude towards debt. [Lawrence Dennis, The Coming American Fascism (Harper & Brothers, 1936), Ch. VI: Debt Reduction a Necessary Preliminary to New Financing] "If private ownership and management of producers' goods is to be preserved, even in a modified form, it will be necessary to adopt a formula which can quickly straighten out the worst of the existing maladjustments due to the use of fixed money obligations; prevent, as far as possible, the recurrence of these and other types of maladjustment; and correct promptly in the future any maladjustments which occur in spite of preventive measures. So far as debts are concerned, this would seem to demand, first, equitable and efficient means of reducing debt burdens with a minimum disturbance and a maximum of conformity to economic possibilities; second, a new scheme of legal arrangements to provide for private ownership and management with a minimum of inflexibilities, and maladjustments--this new scheme amounting, as soon as possible, to a debtless economy; and third, a nationalized system of banking which would make bank credit or deposit money, as well as paper and metallic money, a state monopoly. "A debtless economy, free of fixed interest charges and without legal enforcement of contracts which stipulate fixed money payments regardless of economic results, is the only formula of private ownership and management which can be made to work in anything but a frontier era, when lucky strikes and the steady rise in land values can be counted on to make the number of the victims of usury too small to have cognizance taken of them by ethics, law, or political economy. This ideal, debtless economy cannot be equitably or conveniently initiated by one wholesale extinction of all creditor rights unless the succeeding formula is to be communism. But any sound reorganization must, in the debt field, proceed on the principle that we have to scrap as fast as possible the theory and practice of interest. With the new principle established, or rather the ancient principle reestablished, the present debt burdens must be drastically reduced in all spheres according to a national formula of equity and redistribution of the debt burden. "More explicitly, an ideal scheme of immediate procedure in debt reorganization might work somewhat as follows. First, state debts would be paid off in full, not with additional issues of paper money of considerably less value than the amount nominally owed, but with good money taken by a capital levy made on the progressive tax formula of the income and inheritance taxes now in force. There would be no liquidation of privately-owned property to provide money to pay this levy. There would merely be an attachment by the State of a certain percentage of privately-owned property, the income from which would go to the State to serve to retire any money issued to purchase the public debt. In this way, many large holders of government bonds would really pay themselves fifty cents of every dollar they were reimbursed on their government bonds. Savings bank and insurance funds, however, would thus be protected one hundred per cent against confiscation. There would be no expropriation, either by honest socialism or dishonest devaluation, except, of course, in so far as taxation may be thought to constitute expropriation. "Second, all private and corporate debts would, so to speak, be laid on one table of a National Tribunal of Debt Conversion, which would carry out a number of different plans of conversion for different types of debts. In the case of the railroads and public utilities, there could be a simple pooling of all indebtednesses, and their assumption by state-administered holding companies for all the railroads and public utilities jointly. Then, whatever was deemed a fair and workable total payment of annual income would be distributed among the bondholders and claimants according to their, holdings and claims. This total amount for the railroads and utilities would vary from year to year according to economic conditions and social policy. In the cases of private debts, a great variety of formulas or settlements would have to be worked out, to fit different cases, but always on the principle that the creditor, mortgagee, or bondholder received an interest in obtainable future income in exchange for his old constitutional right of legal action, which gave him power to throw all sorts of monkey wrenches in the economic machinery, from mortgage foreclosure of a poor man's home to plain blackmail suits in all kinds of reorganization or settlement procedures. Another ruling principle would have to be ample provision for new financing to secure needed working capital for operation and replacements. The proposed formula, possible under fascism but not the present system, would really amount to nothing more than giving the average capitalist money-lender or creditor, in a simple, orderly fashion, all that the situation, efficiently and humanely handled, would allow him. "Under the present system that is all he gets, anyway, on the average; and often he does not get that, because of the legal and procedural fees and costs. But, in order to uphold the Constitution and support the largest army of lawyers per capita of any nation in the world, it cannot be done in a simple, orderly fashion. Under liberal capitalism according to the American constitutional formula, government has to guess at the Constitution, and have its guesses argued over by lawyers for years and finally validated or invalidated after years of confusion. There can, therefore, now be no executive readjustment--the only feasible form of readjustment of debt maladjustments. "The foregoing outline of general principles for a program of reorganizing the debt-credit structure is obviously impossible of realization under the present system. But it, or a much better scheme, is workable, under other conditions. Our present theory and practice in regard to property rights, made explicit by the Courts in the interpretation and application of the Constitution and laws pursuant thereto (always in specific litigations), explain why any debt reorganization formula is impossible under the present system. Legal inventiveness, of course, can get around many constitutional difficulties but, as a general rule, only through recourse to devious expedients which can never be resolved into any scheme of national reorganization. Getting around the Constitution usually means or forces the giving of relief in an expensive and impractical manner. [Ibid, Ch. VII: A Debtless Economy the Ideal Formula]   Meanwhile, Roger Kimball has more on Dionne's yearnings for socialism. 2008-07-11T12:22:07-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MmYxZDkyMWYzMzg5NGYzNzVjNzkwZGE0MTA2ZTNhZmQ=From a reader: Dear Mr. Goldberg, I thoroughly enjoyed Liberal Fascism.  I feel it filled a gaping hole in my history education - a hole of which I had only the vaguest sense before reading the book.  Like many of your other readers, I have been hyper-conscious to examples of liberal fascism since I first flipped the mustachioed smiling face.  In a related way, I have noticed other arguments which are consistent with your thesis.  Recently, while reading "The Screwtape Letters" by C. S. Lewis, I came across one such example.  In "The Screwtape Letters", in case you are not familiar, Lewis creates a fictional correspondence between two demons, Screwtape (the mentor) and Wormwood (his protégé), to provide insight into the various traps which can cause one to fall.  In an addendum to the letters, Lewis relates a toast given by Screwtape which he says the following when describing how demons had met the challenges of causing men to fall in the post-enlightenment world of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. In his perfect democracy, only the state religion is permitted, slavery is restored, and the individual is told that he has really willed (though he didn't know it) whatever the Government tells him to do. From that starting point, via Hegel (another indispensable propagandist on our side), we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. Even in England we were pretty successful. I heard the other day that in that country a man could not, without a permit, cut down his own tree with his own axe, make it into planks with his own saw, and use the planks to build a toolshed in his own garden. Thinking this was a good one-paragraph summary of the interconnectedness of Rousseauean ideology, the horrors of the twentieth century, and the modern nanny state, I thought I'd share it with you.   Thanks for your good work on the book, and I look forward to more in the future. Man, I love that quote.   2008-07-11T12:05:54-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODdlN2VlNmI0MmUxNTJiNGU0MTc4MGY5NWJmM2JlZWQ=Golly. 2008-07-11T08:25:10-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTAzYmViZDRjNjA2ODYxMjFkZmVjNjgwMjVmZmVjMjA=A very nice review over at EuropeNews (Translated into German here). Two kind excerpts: Comparing this book to Robert Paxton: 'The Anatomy of Fascism' is obvious to do. Paxton has written a standard on the subject, wide in range and deep in detail. Yet, Paxton makes a basic dubious assumption, that Soviet Communism is not fascism. Paxton struggles hard to maintain this, and does it by focusing on the expression and actions of self-declared fascist regimes, ignoring those who named themselves otherwise. Yet, when one considers the nature of Soviet communism and the devastating analysis it has recieved over the last two decades, the conclusion is obvious: Goldberg is right. 'Liberal Fascism' many not be as meticously accurate as 'The Anatomy of Fascism', but in the eye of this reviewer, Goldberg hits bulls eye while Paxton 'merely' does a good job. And:  Conclusion Then, is this book for you? Well, it depends on what kind of understanding of fascism you want. If you desire to understand it as a militaristic top-down dictatorship, skip this book. It would destroy your illusions and leave you in trouble. If, on the other hand, you would rather understand the seductive nature of fascism, understand what made so many people make so great sacrifices for an ideology this broken, get this book. It's not perfect, but it doesn't need to be. It has a more important quality: It's sound. And earns a heartfelt recommendation from this reviewer. The criticisms all seem fair enough to me, though at some point I guess we'll have to discuss Islamofascism a bit more around here.  2008-07-10T17:13:07-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGRiNGU1ZGVjMzg0MDgwNDhmOWU3NzYxNzYwOTIzNGM=Jim Ryan chimes back in:Hi, Jonah, Boy, I've never quite so enjoyed being corrected! You and your readers' criticisms are welcome. My own refutation of the argument on my blog last winter went simply like this. The best analysis of fascism is that it is totalitarianism with a cult of personality (a cult of the 'general will'). This analysis doesn't entail brutality or violence. Therefore the criticism is refuted. You and your readers bring up so many interesting points. This is surprising, given that we had merely been disagreeing over the prima facie plausibility of an argument we all took to be unsound! I believe your blog is refusing to be retired at the moment because LF is such fertile ground. Update: A reader responds: 'Fascism is totalitarianism (a religion of the state) with a cult of personality.' Sounds like a certain presidential candidate that I know... I agree with Jim. Don't retire the blog. I check it often. I like the mix of intellectual history and pop culture analysis. Perhaps you could even take a page out of Geraghty's playbook and rename it the LF-Spot. LF-Spotting is one of my favorite aspects of the blog and the ones that I like to send around to friends and family. As Glenn Reynolds would say, 'More please.' 2008-07-10T13:55:29-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTE3ZmYxZmE0Mjg1YTA4OGUwNGQyNWI5MjAzOTdkMWQ=From a reader: Dear Mr. Goldberg, I read with great interest the letter from Jim Ryan where he argues that your book has a weakness in that it doesn't adequately address the popular conception of fascism as simply meaning brutal oppression.  I have to say that in my experience, Mr. Ryan's view of the popular mind just isn't true.  I live in Vermont, so perhaps my experience with the word fascist being hurled about is somewhat greater than your average conservative, but it seems to me that a better definition of the popular conception of the meaning of fascism is this: any idea not in accord with modern progressivism.  Let me relate a personal experience to illustrate:  I was at a party a couple years ago, and the conversation turned to the idea that the State of Vermont should buy a series of hydroelectric dams on the Connecticut River that were owned by a company that was entering bankruptcy.  I said that I didn't think it was a good idea for the government to get into the business of owning businesses, leads to mismanagement, inefficiency, featherbedding, corruption, etc. etc.  For offering this (I thought rather mild) objection, somebody there turned to me and called me a fascist.  He was quite serious and I think a little peeved that a laissez-faire skunk had wandered into the progressive garden party.  Now, setting aside for a moment the obvious point that the fascists of history would have been entirely supportive of the idea that the government should own power plants, where is the brutal oppression in my opinion that earned me the dreaded F label?  Thank you for writing this book.  It is very eye-opening and I am learning even more from it on my second reading.  I think that in the years to come, it will be considered one of the most influential political books of our generation, perhaps of the century.  Me: No surprise, I'm with this reader. I think the idea of the Gleichschaltung is far more central to fascism than brutality, and when you look at the effort of liberals to coordinate everything in one progressive government-led, if not necessarily controlled,  fashion the similarities to fascist thought are profound and significant. But people understand goon squads, they don't understand the Gleichschaltung, so they focus on appearances rather than substance.  2008-07-10T12:07:34-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGYyMDZhNjUxODdjYmQxNTg2OTBhZmRmZmFlOTg4NTg=From a reader: Jonah,   I think it is important to look at police action as thuggery.  When police tell you that you can't smoke outside your own building, and you smoke, you will find that police action against you is unpleasant. (even if they don't bind your hands and beat you with sticks)    When the laws are un-invasive, the police presence is minimal and it is easy to be a "good citizen."  But as the laws become more liberal, it is harder to avoid police action.  Assuredly, even in a fascist dictatorship of the worst sort, most of the people have minimal contact with the police.  The neighbor may be an informant, but they aren't doing anything wrong and live their lives without interference.  When the police stop you for speeding... good law ....  When they stop you from smoking ... good law ? ... when they stop you from eating pork, being Jewish, running for president.... clearly bad laws.      The problem is that from the outside, it is obvious to some that the fascists are evil, but from the inside they are reforming society.  The thuggery we find in history is (mostly) a collection of small, personal stories.  The big "kills" are just a bit of utopian madness thrown into the fascist stew.    The liberals can't call Cuba fascist, is it because it doesn't have thugs?  2008-07-10T10:17:53-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZjBkMjE0M2RjMWM4MDc3ODE1NWRmMzVmYTk1MDhlZjU=A reader responds: Jonah,     The subtext behind the argument that liberals can't be fascistic or communistic because those things are evil or brutal, is the argument that good equals liberalism, therefore liberals can't be evil.  This is nothing but slick propoganda.  Kinda' like when communists declared their similar fascist competitors as evil to make them seem like opposites, then proceeded to tar any real opposites as fascists.  Even today, many who lean left often mindlessly equate opponents as fascists because daring to oppose their goodness means you must be evil.      I thankfully have never met a mass murderer.  Still, I have yet to meet anyone who doesn't do wrong, or bad, or even evil things without justifying themselves in doing the wrong, bad, or evil thing.  And I sincerely doubt that even the mass murderers want to think of themselves as evil.     Note that this type of propoganda is different than saying liberalism is good.  Still false, but it at least allows for many more types of good.  You can have a different opinion and still be included in side of good.  No this is a much uglier falsehood.  It is very seductive, yet very evil.     As was said long ago, everybody sins. But, it can also be said that everybody wants to feel good about themselves.  We can let ourselves feel bad, which may lead to change, or we can rationalize the behaviour as good so that we can keep doing it without feeling bad.  A political or social argument that says come join this crowd and behave this way, because that makes you good, is designed to both attract people and to shut down rational thought and opposition.  It is also designed to enable wrong, bad, and even evil behaviour.     There is a very good reason why the left attacks religion.  They see the social constraints as evil tools used against them, and insist on taking over that power, so that they can constrain the rest of us to have the society they dream of.  And this propoganda is how they build their army of mind-numbed robots to enforce their dream upon us.     But there are natural human behaviours and natural consequences to these behaviours.  Society has had to build up mechanisms to protect ourselves from the bad consequences and to encourage the behaviours with good consequences.  These utopian dreams the left foists upon us fly in the face of human nature.  Invariably, they end up having to use force, fighting harder and harder in a vain attempt to stop the bad consequences from happening.  Things spiral out of control, and they end up doing evil in the name of good.     You try to think independantly.  That allows you to see that those who have swallowed this propoganda have distorted the past, whitewashing their behaviour and blackwashing those they oppose.  So like most conservative thinkers, you respond with reasoned thought and data proving your points.     On the other hand, the KoolAid drinkers can't admit to themselves that you are right.  Thus they fall back on their basic tenet that they are good therefore you can't be right.     The only way to overcome this is to keep showing them their bad behaviours and its consequences.  You can't beat emotions and rationalilzations with reasoned thought based on data.      But you can, and have, better equipped the rest of us to counter and cope with their delusions.     The world would be a much nicer place if everyone realized that others can want to do good even if we think they will do bad instead, and that even our best intentions can go awry.  Unfortunately, I have started to wonder just how long one can do bad thinking it is good.  Especially when ones fellows join ones opponents to point out the bad and try to fix it.  Or worse, when one gains by doing bad and lying about it.     How many don't think good about Moynihan because he led the call to reform welfare?  Look what happened to Lieberman.  And when the left gets power by 'enabling' victims, but creates policies that create more victims, that keep people victimized instead of helping them overcome, demonizing anyone who tries to really help, and scapegoating innocent victims to avoid blame, how can that be thought of as anything but intentionally crafted evil?     Just because it is not Aushwitz or the Gulag, does not mean it is not evil.     But when they drink the KoolAid, the ends always justify the means.  (And there are always people willing to force the rest of us to drink it too.)     They might as well have argued that slavery isn't evil because it is not murder, or feudal serfdom isn't evil because it is not slavery.  Just think about what you can get away with when you depict only the worst actions as evil, and you define whatever you want as good. 2008-07-10T08:17:27-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZTNlYTk5OGU3NmQ1ZGExN2M0ZmJhN2UxZWFkYmJjZmY=Alas, I don't have a subscription to the World so I don't what Marvin Olasky has to say beyond the tease. Nonetheless, he reviews LF here. 2008-07-09T20:45:56-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YWRjNTkxMGE5OTc3OGVjYmY1MWEyZTk2NzJmZjYwMzk=Jim Ryan of Philosoblog writes in:As time goes by I think in the end the main objection to your book which you should ruminate on for the paperback is this: You can't take the brutal oppression out of fascism and have it still be 'fascism'; it just twists the colloquial sense of the term. Therefore, the book's thesis that there is something called 'liberal fascism' is impossible to maintain. I don't buy this argument (I made it and replied to it over at Philosoblog last winter.) But I feel its force far more than any other, now that it has been many months since I've read the book. I think the brutality of Hitler and Stalin was accidental, not essential, to their status as fascists (for reasons which make Stalin count as a fascist, btw.) But there is some force to the objection that the man on the street just means something brutal or violent when he uses the term 'fascism.' I don't think I buy it, but it's no slouch of an argument. I agree entirely with Jim that this is a problem. I disagree entirely that it's much of an argument. I've encountered this objection all over the place. People say fascism means brutality, therefore liberalism isn't remotely fascist. It works as a debater's trick, and it's certainly a source of real opposition to some of my arguments, but it doesn't work as an actual argument in the true sense of the word. One can use the same 'argument' about Communism. 'Communism is about brutality. Liberals aren't brutal. Therefore liberalism has nothing to do with Communism.' The only difference here is that for reasons discussed at length in this space and in my book, the man in the street doesn't equate Communism with brutality to the same extent he equates fascism with brutality, even though Communism is just as brutal as Fascism. I think that's a problem that needs to be combated rather than surrendered to. I simply don't think the woeful state of popular ignorance should be considered a powerful argument against the accuracy of historical truth. For instance, the popular conception is that the Tuskegee experiments were some sort of rightwing racist effort to infect black men with syphilis. That's not the case. But according to this thinking, I should cave to the popular misconception simply because it's popular. In other words, simply defining away your ignorance so that it's no longer ignorant shouldn't be considered 'no slouch of an argument.' That said, this really is a problem, one that I didn't fully anticipate, even though I knew better than most folks how entrenched the misunderstanding of fascism has become. One, very partial, answer to some criticisms along these lines (how's that for hedging?) would be this: Simply forget liberalism and focus on fascism -- i.e. put aside the question of what fascism's true nature says about liberalism and instead ask what contemporary liberalism's true nature says about fascism. Liberal critics can't get passed the idea that I think the fascist fetishization of the organic might say something important about contemporary liberalism. Fine. Well, maybe they can take baby steps by grappling with what it says about fascism that fascists sound so liberal? If they could deal with that with an open mind, ignoring the political reverberations, we could at least move the debate beyond this 'fascism means thuggery and nothing more' nonsense. Much of the difficulty Jim points to stems from the fact that the book makes -- at least -- two distinct but related arguments. Argument One is an effort to clarify the nature of fascism as a form of Leftism (or Rousseauianism). The other is to illuminate the hidden assumptions within liberalism (and contemporary society generally) that draw directly from this Leftist tradition, even though they are sold as something completely different. For instance, we're told that nationalized medicine is the opposite of fascism -- because fascism was capitalistic -- when in fact nationalized medicine is fully in the wheelhouse of fascism. The net effect is that the liberal argument for ever-expanding statism is that it will move us away from fascism when in fact it will do the opposite. That's why I see the two arguments as dependent on each other. Yet, it's fascinating (to me!) that most liberal critics had very little to offer by way of rebuttal to Argument 1. The New York Times, for example, skipped the introduction without substantive objection, as well as the chapters on Mussolini, Hitler and for the most part Wilson. But when the book turned to contemporary liberalism, these critics go splenetic, dismissive or ad hominem refusing to believe that Argument 1 could in any way be enlisted to support Argument 2. No doubt some of the blame lies with the author. But I'm fairly comfortable saying most of it doesn't. Friendly critics (like RJ Pestritto and Fred Smith) who complain that I should have referred to 'liberal statism' instead of liberal fascism generally agree with or concede Argument 1. But they are primarily concerned with Argument 2 and think, understandably, that the use of the F-word gets in the way. I think they underestimate the importance and necessity of Argument 1. Why? Because as I tried to illustrate with my example of nationalize medicine, contemporary liberalism benefits enormously from the popular misconception of fascism as the natural culmination of rightwing will-to-power. Discussing statism instead of fascism might have made Argument 2 more persuasive to some, but it would have defenestrated much of Argument 1. Maybe that would have been worthwhile, but not only is that not the book I wanted to write, but there are plenty of excellent books that merely expose the statist assumptions of contemporary liberalism. Anyway, I'm rambling now. So let me offer a brief rejoinder instead: If popular misconceptions of fascism have made my job harder, so be it: My job is harder. 2008-07-09T17:12:33-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODA0MTQ1ZTNmMjc0YjZmMjU0MzlmNWI4NGRhMTQxOGM=Today marks the 7th month since pub date. I thought readers might want an update of the book's sales etc. On Amazon it remains the #1 book in Conservatism, Systems of Government, and Fascism (the last isn't that surprising). It remains in the top 10 political science books, though it bounces around constantly (as of this writing it's #7). The bookscan number (which captures roughly 70% of sales) is 99,236. Tomorrow, when the new numbers come out, it will almost certainly top 100K (it hasn't sold less than 1,000 per week since pub date). Which means actual sales should be around 140K. So far, the book's been sold to several overseas markets, most excitingly to the UK -- where I will be this Winter to promote it. And, hopefully, my press in Italy will lead to a visit there. The paperback has been delayed because we all felt it was important for it to come out after the election so it can take account of events. There's been some very preliminary talk about a documentary, based on the book. I've hardly had Closing of the American Mind scale success, but it's still too early to tell where this will all end (and one can come far, far short of that and still be well-pleased). The feedback from readers -- as well as from peers and my betters -- has been thrilling (though much of the leftwing criticism has been disappointingly lame). Indeed, the single biggest source of its success has been the generous support and word-of-mouth of those who've actually read it. Though the evidence is as much anecdotal as anything else, I think the book has made a lasting mark on the culture, despite the best efforts of the lefty blogs and the liberal establishment to close ranks in a concerted effort to discredit it and/or me. Some rave reviews early on, as well as the support of the magazine, helped keep it from getting swamped. Glenn Beck's support helped push it to #1 on the NYT's list. I meet a lot of people who've bought copies for their kids, spouses, colleagues and the local library. In fact, the waiting lists at libraries have been amazingly long (I know because people send me the responses to their loan requests). College conservative groups have bought and promoted the book with great enthusiasm. About a dozen or so professors have told me that they've incorporated (or will next semester) the book into their classes. Yes, of course, I have my gripes about how specific personalities have behaved, on the right and the left, friends and strangers, but on the whole, I couldn't be more pleased or grateful. My thanks to all of you for the support and encouragement. 2008-07-08T06:53:22-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YzE2YjJiNWQ5MjBjYWU4MTFhYjc2YTk4YjFmMjMyNDc=This is an old email I never got to -- I've been combing through the backlog. I thought it was worth posting even though it's more than a month old. Jonah,   It's slightly obscure, but one of the more interesting Christian theology blogs out there (to those of us who have an interest in academic theology, at least) has stumbled into your territory.  I won't burden you with a summary of John Milbank's work, but a blog post that goes like this might have some interest:   One of the fascinating features of the contemporary intellectual landscape is the appearance of surprising convergences between the political left and right. You can see it, for instance, in the retrieval of Carl Schmitt by contemporary leftist theorists; or you can see it in a conference like this one, where theologians and radical Marxist philosophers rally together around the Pope's infamous Regensburg address. In his delightful book on Paul, Jacob Taubes offers a humorous comment on this tendency in political theory. Referring to the fascist theorist Armin Mohler, he remarks (p. 99): "He was, so to speak, the right-wing extremist and I was the left extremist. Les extrèmes se touchent - in any event, we shared the same views about the middle." In the latest instance of "sharing the same views about the middle," Dave Belcher refers us to John Milbank's short piece in The Guardian. Milbank gets straight to the point, and calls for a "red Toryism": "In the face of the secret alliance of cultural with economic liberalism, we need now to invent a new sort of politics which links egalitarianism to the pursuit of objective values and virtues: a 'traditionalist socialism' or a 'red Toryism'. After all, what counts as radical is not the new, but the good."     Not the first time I've seen Carl Schmitt mentioned on Myers' blog.  Personally, what I find so creepy about this rehabilitation of fascism is that the folks doing the intellectual heavy lifting for it seem so completely unaware of potential pitfalls.  Leads to very lazy argumentation:  there's usually some kind of flaccid 'critique of capitalism' offered, followed by invocation of anyone who's ever made a similar-sounding comment.  Almost magically, the ideas of those invoked (whatever horrors they might have been apologists for) are now considered appropriate conversation partners for Christian political theology.   Obviously, love the book.  Thanks, 2008-07-08T06:45:42-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MjBjMzQwMjBkMjEzZWY1ZjhkMGQzNWUwNzFmY2E0YjI=From a reader: Good evening Mr. Goldberg, If you're interested in another movie that embodies the progressive spirit of the day and further illustrates the ideological overlap between international socialism and socialism of the nationalist sort, I suggest Thea von Harbou and Fritz Lang's 'Frau im Mond' (Woman in the Moon - 1929). It could have been produced in the Soviet Union but for Lang's penchant for detail and Harbou's dramatic touch. Interestingly (well maybe only to me), Hermann Oberth and his assistant Werner von Braun, both of whom were later tapped to work on the V-2 rocket program, provided technical assistance for the film, and it shows. The effects are every bit as stunning as those in Metropolis and the quaint but often prescient accuracy with which the movie depicts a voyage to the Moon is something to behold. So much so that the German military police later confiscated nearly all rocket-related materials from the film's production; treating them as state secrets for the duration of the war. Overall the movie really brought home for me the point you made in your book about the progressive nature of fascism being so seductive because it is appealing to many people on many levels. Personally it's kind of creepy to so enjoy an artistic work that you know is part of such a dystopian intellectual continuum. Harbou's gravitation toward the National Socialists seems almost inevitable in retrospect. Her lending her name in service of 'the movement' must have had quite an impact within the context of its day. Anyway, thanks for linking my YouTube vid. Damning with faint praise (with a link) still beats the heck out of plain  old damning.;^) 2008-07-07T20:48:18-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjJhZjZhNWRlNTI0N2EwODM2MjZmMjcxM2U4MDliODY=From a reader: I think the real reason why communism gets a free pass due to that old adage, "winners write the history." Hitler lost big time.  Stalin and Mao won, in the sense that they did not pay for their crimes on earth, and their empire did not collapse after their death.  (Yes, I know communism has fallen in Russia, but it took thirty years and a lot of lives and money for it to fall).  After WWII, we had tons of records, photos and movies of the concentration camps.   Compare that to the forced famine of the Ukraine.  How many movies do we have of staving Ukrainians?   How many photos?   How many heart-wrench interviews of survivors of gulags vs. concentration camps?  After the war, the allies release for the public the horrors of the Final Solution.   We haven't seen anything of that scale released by Russia, if it still exists. I could go on and on, but you get the idea. 2008-07-07T14:48:09-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=OTVhMzg0YWNhZjI1OGFiYzhmZDA4NTEwOWI1ZWY2NGI=She sometimes finds salsa too spicy. From the Telegraph: Toddlers who dislike spicy food 'racist'  The National Children's Bureau, which receives £12 million a year, mainly from Government funded organisations, has issued guidance to play leaders and nursery teachers advising them to be alert for racist incidents among youngsters in their care. This could include a child of as young as three who says 'yuk' in response to being served unfamiliar foreign food. The guidance by the NCB is designed to draw attention to potentially-racist attitudes in youngsters from a young age. [Also posted at the Corner]  2008-07-07T10:30:56-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NGI5NzIyMDJkNWNmMzNlNDdiMDNlYmNiYzg3ZDU2YTE=Via Instapundit: 'Britain declares war on food waste.' 2008-07-07T08:46:53-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MWZiYWZmZTcyYWI0MDVlMmRiN2JkNjlmODViYTdmNTc=Film scholars are celebrating the discovery of lost reels of the 1925 German SF classic 'Metropolis' which had strong fascist overtones, which few today publicly recognize. How fascist? Well, look at the co-screenwriter. First, is the link on the discovery of the lost footage [And here Harbou's bio]: Thea Gabriele von Harbou (December 27, 1888 - July 1, 1954) was a German actress and author of Prussian aristocratic origin. She wrote her first film script together with Fritz Lang. Fritz Lang became her second husband in 1922, and they collaborated in the following years, writing the screenplays for Metropolis and M together. They separated in October 1931 and divorced in 1933. In 1932, a year before Adolf Hitler came to power, she joined the National Socialist German Workers Party, which presumably led to the divorce from Lang, who left Germany in 1934 for Paris after his film The Testament of Dr. Mabuse had been banned by the Nazi government. Harbou wrote the script for Der Herrscher (1937), directed by Veit Harlan and starring Emil Jannings. The movie celebrates unconditional submission under absolute authority, eventually finding reward in total victory. After the war she was detained by the British. 2008-07-07T08:42:27-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ODM1NjYxYTRmZDBlMDBlNzEzOTdhNzE0MDJhZTE5NzM=Matt Feeney spies an Oakland homeless dude reading my book. The hitch: I'm not sure  you can always tell who is and who isn't  homeless out there. For we know he could be a San Francisco food inspector. 2008-07-07T08:38:54-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTVlMDg3NmU3NjRjYTM3YmRjZDRjYzEyNTk0ZDUyYTM=Hey, this is nifty. Though I would like to be clear that I have nothing but abiding admiration for Roger so if he took umbrage at my posting of that email, my apologies. As for the substance of the matter, Roger speaks well for himself here: Dear Jonah, One of your readers refers to my essay 'The Death of Socialism' (The New Criterion, April 2002),which was occasioned by Joshua Muravchik's Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism. In the course of his remarks, your interlocutor accuse me of 'legitimizing socialism' (tut-tutting that I 'should know better') because I allow that many socialists are "decent and humane people" (your reader misquoted me as saying "decent and honorable," but let that pass). I hesitate to respond to this if only because the accusation that I am somehow soft on socialism is such a delicious novelty--who knows when the experience will come again? Still, I should hate to have some innocent reader of NRO labor under that misapprehension, so I wonder if I might set the record straight by putting that comment about 'decent and humane' socialists in context? Here's what I wrote:   Muravchik provides a devastating anatomy of the socialist dream--a dream that with clocklike regularity becomes a nightmare. If, as Muravchik suggests, "socialism was . . . the most popular political idea ever invented," it is also undoubtedly the bloodiest. Of course, many who profess socialism are decent and humane people. And it is worth noting that socialism comes in mild as well as tyrannical versions. Muravchik, who was once a socialist himself, pays frequent homage to the generous impulses that lie behind some allotropes of the socialist enterprise. Nevertheless, he acknowledges that "regimes calling themselves socialist have murdered more than one hundred million people since 1917." Why? . . . A large part of the answer lies in the intellectual dynamics of utopianism. "Utopia" is Greek for "nowhere": a made-up word for a make-believe place. The search for nowhere inevitably deprecates any and every "somewhere". Socialism, which is based on incorrigible optimism about human nature, is a species of utopianism. It experiences the friction of reality as an intolerable brake on its expectations. "Utopians," the philosopher Leszek Kolakowski observed in "The Death of Utopia Reconsidered," "once they attempt to convert their visions into practical proposals, come up with the most malignant project ever devised: they want to institutionalize fraternity, which is the surest way to totalitarian despotism." If that counts as 'legitimizing socialism' then I, as Dorothy Parker said in a different context, am Marie of Roumania. 2008-07-06T14:33:11-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NzNhZGQ5MTA1NWMyOTg0YzdhOTc2ZjQ5NDRiNjJlZTI=This seems too forced to me, but some may find it interesting and/or amusing -- though not Tim Robbins fans. 2008-07-06T12:39:46-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MTJmMGUyZjkxZmIyNmJhOWU3YzhjMmFlZjRiOWVlMTg=Roger Ebert compares them. Ed Driscoll has the details. 2008-07-06T12:33:14-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NmFkYWRmODM5ZTQwZWI3MzM1OGJmMWYxNjlmYWI4MDA=From a reader: Jonah,  I'm reminded of a piece by Roger Kimball in The New Criterion entitled "The Death of Socialism."   Kimball catalogs socialism's crimes and then asks why self-professed socialists are still welcome in civilized discourse.  Kimball unwittingly answers his own question when he states that he knows many "decent and honorable people" who are socialists. Isn't this the problem?  No serious person would speak of decent and honorable neo-Nazis, yet even conservatives who should know better attribute benign motives to neo-Socialists.  In so doing they are legitimizing socialism.  To be glib, I would say that  no decent person could excuse the mass murder and enslavement perpetrated in Socialism's name, nor could any honorable person claim to be ignorant of those crimes. I suspect that what Kimball really meant - and this is another conservative failing - is that he doesn't think those decent and honorable really mean what they say.  But that strikes me as pure condescension.   Anyway, as  long as no stigma is attached to professing socialism, it will endure. 2008-07-06T12:30:26-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NTk0M2Y0NDk3NDA0OTMzNzVlZGFjY2U1NjNmZjJjMzQ=From a reader serving at sea: Good Evening Jonah,         We have only been able to get CNN out here for awhile, and I am getting really sick of this 24/7 infomercial that passes for the news.  I got to thinking about your book, and could not help but wonder if the tables were turned.         Could you imagine the horror if it was the Republican party swooning over an oratory candidate in massive rallies with messianic overtones?  The comparison to Hitler would be immediate and relentless.  MSNBC would have a constant split screen showing how it was the 1930s all over again.  Funny how the lefties decry blind faith and 'lockstep' following unless it is there guy at the front.  I don't remember;  how much dissent from a Democrat president was considered 'the highest form of patriotism?'         A Republican could never enjoy this kind of popularity without the fascist comparison, and it makes me want to barf seeing this guy get a free ride. 2008-07-05T10:34:52-05:00 http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=M2VlNzhjZDA2ZjMyZTIwNTU0MGE3ODRhZjc3YmM0ZmY=Prestopundit on Obama's service speech: THIS IS SERFDOM. National service mandated by the state is what Europe had for centuries. It was called serfdom. For example, in France, citizens were required to perform public service building and repairing roads and other public projects for hundreds and thousands o