Comments on: Groundbreaking Goldberg? Probably Not

by: Bubba

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 13:12:16 +0000

re: Goldberg’s reply

How embarrassing. That’s like being praised for your insight by a kindergartner. (Not to disparage Daniel’s column.)

by: Rafe

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:17:44 +0000

As someone pointed out, when people start exchanging insults like “fascist” the noise to signal ratio is too big for the dialogue to go anywhere useful. There is a huge range of leftwing opinion, from the adversary culture to mild social democracy.

Perhaps the one thing they share is the inability to get hold of the positive features of the minimum state, with a wide range of freedoms under the rule of law, secure property rights and a robust moral framework including honesty, civility, compassion and self-reliance.

Taking up the point that the classical or right liberalism of the Austrians was really no better than their totalitarian opponents, I need to know who these folk were. When you track forward to Mises and his statement of liberalism a few decades later, you find a set of principles that could surely never degenerate into a totalitarian form.

by: James Kabala

Sat, 24 Mar 2007 01:05:53 +0000

For what it is worth, Goldberg has posted a reply.

http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=ZGNiZGE3YWI4MTRhOTg0ZDNhYzUwYjY4NjU4ZGNmOTU=

by: wooga

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:51:08 +0000

It’s probably “ground breaking” in the sense that it (I assume, since it’s what he should do) actually exposes the fraudulent Mussolini quote that “corporatism = fascism.” Stretch this out into a hundred pages on how fascism is not about American style corporations control the government, but something in the reverse, and the left doesn’t really understand what the term ‘fascism’ means anyway. Then add fifty pages of how American corporations are the armies of free market capitalism (mixed in with some union bashing for flavor), and followed by a hundred pages on how the American left’s instinctual hatred for corporations is really a desire to cripple capitalism. Conclude with fifty pages on how this all means that the left is actually stumbling towards fascism without realizing it (and the ‘without realizing’ differentiates this from Coulter, who would say the left is evil).

by: Christopher Hayes

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:26:22 +0000

“It is a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.” ~Jonah Goldberg

sounds like
“Come on down to Joe Smith Chevrolet - we’re the Honest Dealership!”

by: Bubba

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:16:16 +0000

“It is a very serious, thoughtful, argument that has never been made in such detail or with such care.” ~Jonah Goldberg

I’ll bet it killed Jonah when they told him he’d have to have to change the word “brilliance” to “care.”

by: Bubba

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 20:13:39 +0000

DL wrote: “As a matter of historical interest and understanding, such observations might be useful. As political commentary, I have to admit they usually wind up sounding pretty tendentious. They do not come across as thoughtful, even if the author does make such observations thoughtfully.”

While it kills me to have to defend Goldberg, I think you’re assuming more than is warranted at this point, Daniel. The paragraph you quoted has Jonah specifically denying that he’s doing a polemical book (”It isn’t like any Ann Coulter book,” etc.), yet your criticism seems to be based upon the supposition that he is. Fascism is/was a real political ideology, and it shares certain principles with other political ideologies. For that reason it’s impossible not to “link” fascism to some degree with other, sufficiently similar ideologies. That doesn’t necessarily amount to accusing an adherent of the other ideology of being a latent fascist. It’s simply pointing out the overlap.

by: bart

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 18:30:57 +0000

Something Fascism, Nazism, and Communism have in common is atheism. It is not an accident that the 20th century was the bloodiest in history and that the deaths were primarily perpetrated by atheists. Hostility to religion and worship of reason go back to the French Revolution.

by: Michael Cullina

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 14:32:16 +0000

Thanks for this great post: for calling my attention to Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and, for your comments on the post-1867 National Liberals.

by: cyrus

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 20:20:01 +0000

Knowing Goldberg, the more likely reason he thinks his argument is groundbreaking is that he has got something about the subject dreadfully, awfully, bass-ackwards wrong. Or am I uncharitable?