Clark Stooksbury correctly objects to Jonah Goldberg’s recent (mis)characterisation of Crunchy Cons and Rod Dreher. Goldberg had lumped Rod in together with Michael Gerson and saying that “both of these derive from the kind of thinking that led George W. Bush to insist in 2000 that he was a “different kind of Republican” because he was a “compassionate conservative” — a political program that apparently measures compassion by how much money the government spends on education, marriage counseling and the like.” This is just badly wrong. There’s no other way to say it.
Rod responds here. I had noticed the same thing, but at first it was such a minor part of Goldberg’s column that I didn’t want to rehash the same old arguments over what was almost a throwaway line. I really didn’t feel compelled at the time to point out (yet again) that Goldberg misunderstands what Rod has been talking about, but it occurs to me that this excerpt illustrates what seems to be a recurring pattern in Goldberg’s writing. On more than one occasion, he has conflated very different ideas on the right and claimed that they are very closely related, when their only point of contact is that they both represent something other than current establishment conservatism. Thus the proponents of Sam’s Club Republicanism can be bizarrely identified with the politics of Sam Francis, and now the ideas of Gerson and Dreher can be traced back to the same source. This might not be terribly interesting to most people, except that this also appears to be what Goldberg has done in his book Liberal Fascism with the two non-conservative ideologies mentioned in the title. There may be substantive similarities between liberalism and fascism in certain respects, and it is correct to identify fascism as a leftist ideology, but at a certain point specific differences matter and fine distinctions become important for understanding how two sets of ideas that may share a few assumptions lead people to significantly different conclusions and actions. Those distinctions become important for understanding why Dollfuss and Schuschnigg or Metaxas, for example, may have been conservative authoritarians, but they were definitely not fascists despite some superficial similarities or a shared interest in corporatist economics, and they remain just as important for understanding what FDR and Wilson were and were not. Conflating or identifying two significantly different things, as it seems Goldberg tends to do, ultimately makes for very unedifying intellectual analysis. These conflations suggest either some misunderstanding of the matters at hand or a polemical goal of lumping together various political adversaries in order to associate all opponents with the errors of those assumed to be the worst.
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January 14th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
M.Z. Forrest
At this point, I’m probably convincing no one. Compassionate conservatism was largely abandoned by Bush. The only meat was NCLB. Some would include the Medicare drug benefit. While I won’t extend the charge to you, there are many people who use “compassionate conservatism” as a synonym for spending they don’t like. In most cases, they’re impotent at defining that spending. You, OTOH, I know have no difficulty articulating what spending you would rid. As a personal preference, I almost wish people would claim Huckabee was advocating social democracy. I’m afraid that charge wouldn’t hold however. It makes me think that compassionate conservatism is supposed to be that middle ground between “limited government” and social democracy. The former concept has absolutely no meaning at this point, hence the quote marks.
January 14th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
bsebse
Goldberg is watering down fascim so much that his is going to make it respectable once again. In other words, rather than turn people against liberalism by equating it with fascism he is going to make fascim acceptable by equating it with liberalism, which many people support.
What is also amazing about Goldberg is that he has come out against any sort of government action or spending domestically, but wants huge action and spending for “foreign policy” including, yes you guessed it, international aid.
So, not spending in fly-over country, but spend away to fight foreign bad-guys (”Hitler’s”) and support our “allies”.
Says it all, doesn’t it.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
kranza
In Liberal Fascism, Goldberg identifies Buchanan’s divergences from movement conservatism–protectionism, “isolationism,” and restrictionism–as fascist or tending towards fascist, yet he blithely identifies “spreading democracy” as conservative. He finds fascism in everything from Whole Foods to JFK-worship, nativism to tarrifs–basically anything that remotely harkens towards some sense of community or being part of something larger than the individual–yet he never once even hints at seeing fascism in the neocon crusade.
January 14th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Daniel Larison
Does he really? Wow. It’s much worse than I thought. I’m still waiting on my copy.
January 14th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
Mild Colonial Boy
Mr Larison - Jon Swift’s helpful edition may tide you over until your copy arrives.
January 14th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
TGGP
Communists always prided themselves on being the opposite of fascism, with the internationalist Trotskyites to an even greater degree, so it isn’t surprising that their descendants would find it unthinkable that there is anything fascist about their ideology.
I’m no scholar of fascism, but I wonder why the Austrian and Greek “fascists” don’t deserve the label. They seem more typical of European fascism than the Nazis.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:51 am
mkdelucas
“it is correct to identify fascism as a leftist ideology”
Because it’s a kind of “mass politics”? And mass politics is by defintion Left, regardless of the socio-political end result?
In a “democratic” age what’s Right?