This is actually the third part of a running commentary I've been doing on
this book. And really I only put down about half of what I was thinking, due to time restrictions. For me this was a very thought-provoking impulse pick from the library. I just picked it up because I spotted the name of the author, Jonah Goldberg, and it sounded familiar. Liberal Fascism is a look at what liberalism is, in its manifestation in America. Goldberg, who is a conservative, got tired of always being called a fascist Nazi. It especially irked him because those calling him that name don't even understand the history of how fascism is the step-child of socialism. So he sets out to prove the contrary to what is typically thought. Conservatism is about preserving freedoms and limiting government. Liberalism is about expanding the state and creating more and more regulations that control our every move. And the latter definition is much more in line with the legacy of fascism than conservatism.
I am mad at myself for reading this book right before Christmas. I got a little obsessed about it and it distracted and disturbed me enough to cast a pall over my Christmas mood. But I am glad I read it. It really made me think and argue a lot in my head (and with other family members). I think in the end Goldberg makes a pretty good argument though I also thought he went overboard at times or treads on shaky ground. Finally, his afterward really saves the book because he is nothing if not very honest. I think if you are emotional about your liberalism, you won't take kindly to this book, but if you are more objective, you'll probably find it eye-opening, even if you disagree with the author's interpretation of history and developments.
My thoughts are incomplete and way too long to for anyone to really want to read, LOL. But here's a link to the first piece,
Thoughts on Liberals and Conservatives and the second post,
More Thoughts and below is my final installment which I never really finished. I have more I could say, but I don't have the energy or time. I didn't even really check for typos. But I am just emotionally done with this topic right now!
Continuing thoughts on the last third of the book:
Well the eugenics chapter was really interesting and I found myself agreeing with a lot of what Goldberg said. I discovered I'd been misusing the words eugenics and social Darwinism as interchangeable but they are not, according to Goldberg. Eugenics is when the state has policies that try to control or diminish an unwelcome population that is seen as a drag on society. These were state commissions on the feebleminded and such, the ones pushing institutionalization and sterilization, made me think of that horrible home in the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks- where her sister was starved to death from negligence. These places were part and parcel of the original progressive movement. These progressives labeled conservatives 'social Darwinists' because they (conservatives) didn't want to interfere in people's lives via government policies, so they got branded Darwinists, meaning they supposedly embraced the idea that survival of the fittest should just be left to take its course among the poor and disabled.
Goldberg brings up the idea in the best seller, Freakonomics, that abortion reduces crime levels. Rick read that book and was really disgusted by the author, but I know many people hailed it as this insightful new look at economics. Goldberg quotes some pretty damning writings from high up liberals who openly embraced abortion as a way of weeding out undesirables. And then he talks about how when William Bennet, a pro-lifer, said the same thing was true; he got maligned as a racist. People said that he was advocating infanticide. Goldberg poses the question: if theoretical use of abortion to lower crime (remember Bennet is prolife so he's only pointing this out on a theoretical level and he thinks this approach is immoral) is mass infanticide according to his liberal critics, why is abortion on an individual level not infanticide? Doesn't make any sense. But then pro-abortions have never made any sense; a real failure of science and critical thinking occurs whenever it comes up. Isn't there a book called Religion Poisons Everything? I have often thought abortion poisons everything.
When Goldberg started talking about big business and fascism, I got a little confused. He's coming from a totally different perspective than I have been taught, so I am going to have to learn more about this subject. It is interesting to read a completely different interpretation of history, but I don't know if I am buying what he's selling (to use a business metaphor!) yet. I get very confused though when he starts talking about the Third Way of fascism. I don't quite know what he means. At times he seems to be talking about something specific to fascism and other times it seems to be anything that is a compromise between the two competing ideologies of collectivism vs. individual rights. I am excited to start reading Samuel Gompers Seventy Years of Life and Labor, because he is right at the heart of this interaction between big business and reform. I wonder is his account will jive with Goldberg's.
I've been thinking more about how conservatism is a reaction that tries to protect individual liberty and traditional values. Goldberg quotes Chesterton a few times in the book and this made me think of distributism, which was the economic system that Chesterton and Belloc tried to put forth, based a lot on medieval guilds and agrarian economies. This alternative to free market vs. socialism is popular among certain Catholic intellectuals. Rick read a book about it written by one of the main people who are trying to revive this idea and he said that is was just too pie in the sky. It really gives the state a lot of power and just assumes the state will always follow the guiding principles of distributism. One of the principles of distributism is advocating for small businesses and putting up restrictions on big businesses, but Rick said that seemed really arbitrary and not tenable. For instance, Steve Jobs Apple is a post card company for the distributism as long as it wasn't far from its origins in his parents garage, but when it became successful, it became a big business that distributists wouldn't like. But putting the kibosh on the big business would necessarily affect (effect?) the desire to even start a business at all.
So while I don't know about distributism as an official policy, I do think it occurs, much like conservatism, as a natural reaction. The whole movement towards organic is a prime example of a grass roots distributist idea, or buying local, or having a small business Saturday after Black Friday, or the revival of farmer's markets, or people trying to buy Free Trade products; the whole back to the land movement is all very distributivistic.
Further along in the book Goldberg makes the point that big government and big business naturally go together. Now I always thought that the same liberals who want to government to solve all social problems were also though who are against big business, on the other hand I always wondered why so many rich business people are very pro-Deomocrat. Goldberg says that whenever you regulate business, you necessarily favor big businesses over small, because the big business have the capital to swallow the new costs whereas the smaller ones usually do not. So big businesses actually advocate for regulation because first they get to look good by seemingly embraces positive social programs and secondly, because it pushes their competitors out of the way. That's why we see this revolving door of say Monsanto and the FDA and that sort of thing. So big business really does become an arm of the government and they use government as a tool to advance their own interests.
I have often felt this creeping power of big business. For instance the big fight right now is against GMOs, something Monsanto is pushing. It really is a battle to keep food from being completely dominated by just a few corporations. That's scary! Or the idea that the government is raiding dairies that are trying to sell directly to the consumer. Or even that you can't buy clothing, virtually any clothing, that is guaranteed fair trade. All companies are making stuff in countries where there is much child/slave/unsafe working conditions. It's terrible. If I go into a Starbucks I know I am contributing to some causes I believe in but I am also contributing to a corporation that pushes abortion and gay marriage, things I don't believe in. So as a consumer I feel trapped. This another reason why even if distributism isn't a viable fully blown economic reality, aspects of it contribute to a more wholesome conversation on the subject of justice and economics. This is another reason why I have a great fondness for advocacy groups. We needs all types of people engaged in a great conversation. Lots of different perspectives make for a broader understanding of the issues.
Goldberg really takes apart Hillary Clinton's It Takes a Village book. A lot of it is scary too, because she seems so convinced that the state should raise our children. I enjoyed his brief section on movies and how we are all fascists now in terms of what ideas get represented on the movie screen. The Nazi glorification of pagan masculinity complete with homoerotic elements that results in a gay right movement is really interesting too (though so twisted) but he never explains why the Nazis put homosexuals in concentration camps which made whatever Goldberg asserts weak and incomplete. He also talks about how Nazis embraced the back to nature and organic movements. Hitler was a vegetarian and Nazis supported animal rights, which is so bizarre given the Holocaust. I really do think Goldberg goes overboard in assuming that every single thing the Nazis embraced somehow demonstrates fascism. I think they can, for instance environmentalists who are really into draconian population control, but you can also be an environmentalist who loves both people and the earth. Goldberg sees just a divide between the individual and the 'common good.' But individuals do live in community so they do effect things over all. You can't put an artifcial divide between one person and the other people he lives with. Recognizing this reality doesn't make one a fascist. Just because Himmler wanted to the SS to eat only organic food, doesn't mean eating organic food makes you a member of the SS! To be fair Goldberg isn't really stating that, he's just pointing out the interesting fact that fascism embraced the same things as liberals do and that they are rooted essentially in the idea of returning to nature, that is, pre-Christian ideas, that are somehow more authentic.
In the Afterward, Goldberg writes: In this book I have argued that modern liberalism is the offspring of twentieth-century progressiveism, which in turn shares roots with European fascism. He maintains that progressivism was a softer form of fascism. He says that he has been called a Nazi fascist all his life just because he is conservative. He's tired of it, especially when those hurling the insults are so ignorant of their own history. He acknowledges that Wholes Foods is not the same thing as a Nazi brownshirt but again, he cautions that the real threat is that "the promise of American life will be frittered away for a bag of magic beans called security." Goldberg wrote this book just as the Obama administration was taking charge. So much of what he is pointing out becomes even more obvious in things like the NSA scandal, the way Obamacare got pushed through, the HHS mandate, the aggressive campaign to silence more traditional and orthodox religions through gay marriage law suits and campaigns. The fact that George Bush also made inroads into privacy rights, ethically indefensible things like unjust invasions and torture, shows that the two parties really are more alike in many ways than may first be observe.
Goldberg does a pretty good job at justifying his reasoning and approach throughout the book. I can't say that I agree with him on everything. But the books certainly provoked a lot of thought and provided me with a fresh and more informed perspective on many political issues of the day. Goldberg who spends most of the book frustratingly criticizing anything that smacks of addressing any political problem via government as related to fascism and never mentioning what an alternative approach might be, finally defines what conservatism is: It is opposition to all forms of political religion. It is a rejection of the idea that politics is redemptive. It is the conviction that a properly ordered republic has a government of limited ambition . . . . In America. . . a conservative is one who protects and defends what are considered liberal institutions in Europe but are largely conservative ones in America: private property, free markets, individual liberty, freedom of conscience, and the rights of communities to determine for themselves how they will live within these guidelines."
