Liberal Fascism 5: Chapter 3

It's certainly brave of Jonah Goldberg to begin a chapter called "Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism" with the section in Sinclair Lewis' novel It Can't Happen Here that speaks of "our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut 'Liberty Cabbage' and somebody actually proposed calling German measles 'Liberty measles'?" as an example of Liberal Fascism. And we remember how three conservative congressmen declared that the cafeteria in congress would serve Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast in lieu of their French counterparts, thanks to France's reluctance to get involved in the war in Iraq. Of course, one distinction between the two expressions of jingoism was that one was an act of populist sentiment, and the other was an act of Congress.

Still, here is the chapter where the most negative aspects of the Democratic Party are most vividly illuminated. But Goldberg does himself no favors by stating, baldly, that "Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator." One wonders why Wilson stepped down and let Warren G. Harding (a Republican, no less) become President.

Woodrow Wilson was certainly a problematic figure, and no modern liberal would support his jingoism, racism, war mongering, or unconstitutional behavior. His invasions in Latin America and the Phillipines would have few defenders among the antiwar left. He was an ardent segregationist, to the point of jettisoning many African Americans from federal jobs. He condoned censorship, and prosecuted antiwar sentiment. All of these, most modern liberals would concede, were bad things.

But to hear Goldberg say it, these were the ideas that became modern liberalism. One wonders then, how liberals metamorphosed from war-mongering jingoists to peacenik America-hating soy-latte-sippers. The contradictions between modern liberalism and early 20th Century Progressivism are not explored. Nor, for that matter, are the similarities that Progressives shared with modern Conservatives. Such nuances would not merely add shades and complexities to Goldberg's theories, they would expose cracks in the foundations of his (admittedly) vague thesis.

Goldberg focuses on ideas that have been repudiated by most modern liberals (eugenics, the worship of the state, and the embrace of communism, etc.) and ignores the aspects of Progressivism that might still have merit, and that are broadly popular. Goldberg's fundamental argument gives the impression that he believes state intervention in most any aspect of society is fundamentally suspect. Which becomes a major problem in the following section, when he jumps past the presidencies of Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge (thus ignoring such things as the Teapot Dome scandal, and the laissez faire government of Calvin Coolidge, which is often blamed for precipitating the Great Depression. But talking about such things would entail talking about the scandals of Republican governance, but again, such rebuttals to his argument must be ignored if the Liberal Fascist meme is to flourish.

Why I Have Neglected to Recommend Donald Barthelme

Donald Barthelme is the most important least read author of our time. He reinvented the short story as a medium, and wrote prose that was precise, elegant, wild, and absurd. He was a great satirist, of a rare, compassionate strain. His works were an integral part of the New Yorker during its heyday under William Shawn (but thoroughly unlike the suburban stories of Updike and Cheever that one thinks of as the typical New Yorker story.) Barthelme influenced contemporaries like Dave Eggers and George Saunders, among many others. But until recently, much of his work was out of print. He never sold as many books as his fellow "black humorists" Thomas Pynchon and Kurt Vonnegut. And though I find him to be one of the great writers of the last 50 years, and one of the great reading pleasures of my life, I have a difficult time recommending him to others. I really shouldn't.

One reason for that is the medium. Though he wrote four novels (Snow White, The Dead Father, Paradise, and The King) which are all quite wonderful in their own way, none of them is quite as compelling as his greatest short stories (though The Dead Father deserves a place on any bookshelf). Sadly, the short story has gone the way of the poem in the average literate person's diet. But if I am to recommend Barthelme, and that is what I want to do, this is where I must start.

The main places to begin are the anthologies 60 Stories and 40 Stories. The numbers sound more daunting than they are: 60 Stories clocks in at just over 450 pages, and 40 Stories is a mere 246 pages. Despite their brevity, these are multifaceted and sometimes complex stories. There is Me and Mrs. Mandible, about a thirty-five year old man's return to elementary school. "[W]e were studying common fractions. I could, of course, answer all the questions, or at least most of them (there are things I don't remember). But I prefer to sit in this too-small seat with the desktop cramping my thighs and examine the life around me." It's a silly conceit that Barthelme is able to use to create a story of real pathos and genuine resonance.

There are more formalist exercises like The Sentence, which is what it says, though it may be unfinished, as it lacks a period at the end. It is an extended sentence about the nature of sentence making, about the attempt at clarity and perfection that is, inevitably, doomed to fail.

the sentence falls out of the mind that holds it (temporarily) in some kind of embrace, not necessarily an ardent one, but more perhaps the kind of embrace enjoyed (or endured), by a wife who has just waked up and is on her way to the bathroom in the morning to wash her hair, and is bumped into by her husband, who has been lounging at the breakfast table reading the newspaper, and doesn't see her coming out of the bedroom, but, when he bumps into her, or is bumped into by her, raises his hands to embrace her lightly, transiently, because he knows that if he gives her a real embrace so early in the morning, before she has properly shaken the dreams out of her head, and got her duds on, she won't respond, and may even become slightly angry, and say something wounding, and so the husband invests in this embrace not so much physical or emotional pressure as he might, because he doesn't want to waste anything-with this sort of feeling, then, the sentence passes through the mind more or less

In a way, the humanity that lies at the heart of such abstractions is Barthelme's trademark. He was often an experimental writer, but even when he was stretching the nature of the short story in such works as Paraguay, Bone Bubbles, or The Glass Mountain, his works were often suffused with a deep compassion. His satires were often biting, but rarely cruel. Though (and this may say more about me than Don B.) one of my favorites, Some of Us Have Been Threatening Our Friend Colby, which begins with the following casually tossed off lines:

Some of us had been threatening our friend Colby for a long time, because of the way he had been behaving. And now he'd gone too far, so we decided to hang him.

And so it goes, a quotidian discussion about the arrangements for hanging their friend, who is part of the conversation:

We asked him what he would like played at the hanging... Colby said he'd always been fond of Ives' Fourth Symphony. Howard said this was a "delaying tactic" and that everybody knew that the Ives was almost impossible to perform and would involve weeks of rehearsal, and that the size of the orchestra would put us way over the music budget. "Be reasonable," he said to Colby. Colby said he'd try to think of something a little less exacting.

Barthelme often used other works of literature, art, or history as a springboard, as in Snow White, Eugene Grandiet, Bluebeard, and Engineer Paul Klee Misplaces an Aircraft between Milbertshofen and Cambrai, March 1916. Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning, is an abstract, fragmentary tale that captures the contradictions and significance of a historical figure and also manages to be tragically prescient about his death and his brother's tragic actions at Chappaquiddick.

So there's lots of reasons that I should be recommending Donald Barthelme to you. If there is much in his work that will baffle you or drive you crazy, there is enough serious delight to keep you interested, and a deep humanism that is rare in fiction. With that, one of my absolute favorite Barthelme stories, which is short enough to read on a bus ride, The King of Jazz.

Note: All of the links to stories in this post were taken from this page, which has permission to reprint these stories and is a treasure trove of Barthelmismo for Barthelmaniacs like myself.

Liberal Fascism 4: Interlude

I began this series of essays a few months ago, inspired by Fred Clark's ongoing series of essays about Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins' Left Behind novels. If you aren't aware, the Left Behind series tells LaHaye and Jenkins' version of the Rapture and its aftermath. What Clark, an evangelical Christian who fails to live up to whatever stereotype that might entail, brought to these essays was a knowledge of LaHaye and Jenkins' particular brand of Premillenial Dispensationalism, and enough knowledge of writing to be aware of the plodding awkwardness of the narrative. He provides a close reading of the book that exposes the essentially unchristian nature of their take, as well as the essential impossibility of the circumstances that the novel claims are ripped from the front pages.

What I want to do in these essays about Goldberg's book is similar. I've read and agreed with many criticisms of the book, but I had hoped to be able to discuss and dispute this book without getting too heated by his admittedly provocative rhetoric. It seems like it's been progressively more difficult to do in light of recent events.

The right has taken Goldberg's theses to heart, and have invoked fascism, Naziism, and their tactics and ideologies in the debates over healthcare (see Sarah Palin's egregious lie about "death panels"). Meanwhile, there have been many incidents of people at these town hall protests carrying firearms. Such acts, of course, are acts of intimidation, and are certainly analagous to the actions of Mussolini's fascisti, though to be fair, there have, as of this writing, been no major acts of violence.

What is more alarming is the response the right, and Goldberg specifically has for the release (of parts, at least) of the CIA Inspector General's report on acts of torture committed by the agency and others. The report reveals information about acts of violence beyond the parameters set by the Bush administrations DOJ decrees, including threats of rape and death.

Goldberg replies to this with the most ridiculous argument imaginable:

I've long been fascinated with the disconnect between what pundits, politicians and various activist groups complain about and the status of interrogation techniques in the popular culture (here's a column I did on the subject in 2005). In countless films and TV shows the good guys — not the bad guys — do things to get important information that makes all some [see update] of the harsh methods and allegedly criminal techniques in the IG report seem like an extra scoop of ice cream and a Swedish massage. In NYPD Blue, The Wire, The Unit, 24 and on and on, suspects are beaten, threatened, terrified. In some instances they are simply straight-up tortured. In movies, too, this stuff is commonplace. In Patriot Games, Harrison Ford shot a man in the kneecap to get the information he needed in a timely manner. In Rules of Engagement, Samuel L. Jackson shot a POW in the head to get another man to talk. In Guarding Tess, Nick Cage blows off a wimpy little man's toes until he talks. In The Untouchables Sean Connery conducts a mock execution.

Now, I know I will get a lot of "it's just a movie" or "TV shows aren't real" email from people. At least I have every other time I've made this point. So let me concede a point I've never disputed while making one these folks don't seem to grasp. If such practices, in the contexts depicted, were as obviously and clearly evil as many on the left claim, Hollywood could never get away with having the good guys employ them. Harrison Ford in the Tom Clancy movies would never torture wholly innocent and underserving victims for the same reasons he wouldn't beat his kids or hurl racial epithets at black people. But given sufficient time to lay out the context and inform the viewers of the stakes, as well as Ford's motives, the audience not only understands but applauds his actions. Of course it's just a movie. But the movie is tapping into and reflecting the popular moral sentiments. Think of these scenes as elaborate hypothetical situations in the debate about torture and interrogation that are acted out and played before focus groups of normal Americans.

It comes as a bit of a surprise that a member of the editorial staff of the National Review would let Hollywood define the ideal of moral behavior, but there you have it. The idea that we are willing to watch people (or as Goldberg calls them, 'the good guys') torture people in movies and TV shows because we believe it morally right is absurd. Such practices in the contexts depicted are sometimes revenge fantasies, sometimes queasy making, sometimes exciting, sometimes shocking, and yes, these feelings are attempts to tap into common sentiments (just as Hollywood taps into lust, greed, envy, and the remaining deadly sins). But what conservative is willing to believe that movies tap into common morality? Should we really emulate Harrison Ford in Patriot Games and shoot someone in the kneecap to get information? Unlike the movies, we have no real guarantee that our victim will then tell the truth. And unlike in the movies, there are legal consequences for such drastic action. This is what's happening now. Evidence is coming out that interrogators used techniques that were illegal, even if you buy that all of the Bush DOE's writings about 'enhanced interrogation' are correct and binding. Goldberg's argument against this is essentially, "Jack Ryan (or Jack Bauer) did it, too, and most people think Jack Ryan (or Bauer) kicks ass."

Really, what's the point of arguing rationally against something like this?

SF: One Way to Separate the Wheat from the Chaff

Isaac Asimov on the Golden Age of SF

Since the Golden Age of SF, science fiction has been a genre deeply rooted in its own history. John Campbell, the editor of Astounding Science Fiction, essentially created the genre, at least as a marketing concept, when he published the work of writers such as Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and others. As Asimov says in the above video, Campbell cultivated writers who were scientifically literate, which is true but is only part of the story.

When the general public thinks of science fiction, they tend to think of the tropes created by these authors, such as sentient robots, interplanetary travel and alien civilizations, lasers and other large scale weapons, among many other things. And writers are often lauded for their prescience and inspirations regarding new technologies. But the fundamental optimism regarding Golden Age SF, that core idea that humanity would conquer and colonize space, was slowly shown to be more fantastic than real, built on the fallacious idea that matter can travel faster than the speed of light. This was often elided by pseudoscience (tachyons, warp drives, radical acts of quantum tunnelling, etc.), or merely ignored, but it was never more than hope-against-hope fantasy.

Another set of tropes were created by the cyberpunks, whose narratives largely remained earthbound, opting instead for fantasies focused on the emerging world of information technology, and the vanishing ideal of virtual reality. We contemporaries live in a world saturated by information technology, so the concept is more than cogent to our own lives, though VR is stuck at the level of videogames, MMORPG like World of Warcraft and 3D movies.

A common trope in a good deal of contemporary SF is the Singularity. The singularity is an idea posited by Mathematician and SF author Vernor Vinge. Singularity is a loaded term in mathematics, but it can be loosely described as the point where predictions break down. What Vinge means when he evokes the singularity is that individual computer capacity will soon surpass that of us humans, and then, ?

This is generally manifest in stories by large, artificial intelligences that will be more powerful than humans, and at that point, all bets are off. The problem with the singularity is addressed well by Neal Stephenson:

I have a personal mental block as far as the Singularity prediction is concerned. My thoughts are more in line with those of Jaron Lanier, who points out that while hardware might be getting faster all the time, software is shit (I am paraphrasing his argument). And without software to do something useful with all that hardware, the hardware’s nothing more than a really complicated space heater.

Throughout its history, SF has been plagued with this idea that its authors' imaginings of near and far futures were somehow prescient. Just as historical novelists are supposed to create accurate versions of the past, science fiction novelists have been tasked with accurately recreating out future. Of course some surprise and are able to follow through on that difficult task.

But I'd argue that this is a small part of what makes science fiction interesting. As SF novelist/critic Samuel R. Delany claims:

There are few 'ideas' in science fiction.

The resonance between an idea and a landscape is what it's all about.

Like any fiction, storytelling is more imperative than scientific concept. I'd argue that setting is less of an issue than the confrontation with something that is fundamentally unknown (much SF takes place in a world as mimetic as the ones written by so-called realists, but invaded by something other, be it aliens, human created tech that somehow is able to surprise its creators, etc.)

Setting is a significant part of SF inasmuch as it involves suspension of disbelief. Suspension of disbelief is a fundamental part of how narrative works, but a tricky beast to pin down. Some readers (or consumers of story via books, TV, movies, etc.) become so engrossed in a story that they literally believe it to be true. Though it might be blasphemous to say this, most children do not believe that Harry Potter actually exists outside of novels, movies, and assorted tie-ins. But for the reader who is truly engaged by Ms. Rowling's creations, the novels have satisfied a criteria described by Delany (quoting his teacher Charles Olson) as "keep[ing] their fictions up to the real."

Small wonder then, that the most intruiging work in SF has come from writers from or inspired by the "New Wave" school. The New Wave (not to be confused with the synthesizer-infused hair-sculpted school of pop music that was popular when I was a teenager) was a group of writers who grew up reading Golden Age SF, but who were as focused on literature, character, and language.

There are a lot of remarkable writers who came from this school of novelists, who, despite the fact that they are less well known than Golden Age novelists like Asimov and Clarke, have had as large an influence on literature and culture as those two iconic figures. But, in order to keep this post from becoming unreadably long, that will have to wait for another missive.

Something Else!

I recently spent way too much money on myself, and purchased the Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton, an 8-CD (no really!) box set of recordings the composer recorded in the latter half of the 70s. It's amazing to think that this stuff came out on a major label at any time, but particularly in the late 70s, when the audience for jazz had all but dried up. One is used to the Ken Burns version of the story, where jazz went off the rails in the late 60s, and wasn't seen again until Wynton started recording on Columbia. But the reality is that much great jazz was recorded in the 70s, and this is a prime example.

After a short retirement from music, when he made a living playing chess, Braxton came back to music with the quartet Circle, which featured Miles Davis alums Dave Holland and Chick Corea, along with drummer Barry Altschul. Circle split up, in part because of Corea's involvement in Scientology, which Braxton describes in typically wry fashion:

I found Scientology very interesting, especially some of the techniques the developed for having people brainwash themselves, but this was not what I wanted to be a part of.

Corea broke the group up in Los Angeles, and Braxton was stranded there, looking for a gig or a way out. He got both when Michael Cuscuna approached him about working with Arista.

Braxton came to these sessions knowing that this was his opportunity both to speak to a larger audience and to fund his most ambitious experiments. The result was the greatest output of his career, a collection of idiosyncratic music that touched on the entire of jazz history, and was a harbinger of things to come, music that's simultaneously heady and swinging.

Of course some would say that what Braxton is doing in these recordings is not jazz, and that's a discussion that I believe will go exactly nowhere (except to say that there are covers of Scott Joplin, John Coltrane, Lionel Hampton, Eric Dolphy and Benny Golson on these recordings), so I'll move on. As for the music, this is some of the most astonishing work being done by any composer of the period. The recordings range from works for solo saxophone to a three-LP (or two-CD) composition for 4 orchestras of 39 musicians each.

A lot of credit can be given to his collaborators. Many of his colleagues in the AACM are represented, including pianist Muhal Richard Abrams, violinist Leroy Jenkins, trombone player George Lewis, fellow woodwind junkie Henry Threadgill, and many others. The music ranges from manic avant-bop workouts to 12-tone ballads to music that could as easily be found on recordings by Stockhausen or Xenakis.

It's a lot to chew on, and there is no doubt that the music he makes is complex and unusual. Even the titles of his works are difficult to explain. For example, the full title of Opus 82 looks like this:



There are explanations for both the numbering and the graphic representations of his composition titles (the curious can turn to his discography here, the obsessed can turn to his philosophical and musical writings, the massive Tri-Axium Writings and Composition Notes).

For someone who is often accused of being cold and abstract, these recordings stand out for their passion and emotionality. Sadly, the most accessible work of Anthony Braxton's career can only be found on an expensive limited-edition box set. It's a shame that neophytes will have a hard time hearing the pinnacle of this recording session, a large ensemble session recorded under the title Creative Orchestra Music. These recordings are a perfect blend of esoteric avant-garde music and straight ahead jazz.

Finally, here's a rendering of Composition no 58, done by a student and longtime collaborator of Braxton's, Taylor Ho Bynum.




Composition No. 58 - Taylor Ho Bynum Chicago Big Band

And here's Braxton playing clarinet with his great quartet featuring pianist Marilyn Crispell, bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Gerry Hemingway.




Anthony Braxton Quartet 1983

Liberal Fascism 3: Chapters 1 & 2

Mussolini and Hitler. OK, OK, calm down. Nothing can drive a conversation into a tree like the introduction of fascism, Nazis, Hitler, the Holocaust, et al. Goldberg has said that part of the reason he wrote this polemic is because he wanted to refute the accusation by liberals that conservatives are fascist, racist, etc. And really, that can be a fair cop, occasionally. But it's also a fair cop about conservatives. The recent changeover in the White House has brought out many conservatives who have called Obama and his policies fascist. That is the real point of Goldberg's polemic (after all, it isn't called Conservatives Aren't Fascists), and so here comes the big hurdle, how are liberals like Mussolini and Hitler?

As I said, Goldberg imagines fascism in every form of the state intervening in any activity of government other than the military. At one point he claims that libertarianism would be the perfect system if not for the military (and presumably, he thinks things like roads and general infrastructure are OK, or does he think that privatising the highways might be a good idea. Jonah?) So the fact that Hitler believed in state policies for health and for some form of social welfare becomes evidence of how he was, in fact, a liberal. But the reality is that very few politicians on either side of the aisle would achieve Goldberg's ideal of conservatism. Which is borne out by the ideological circular firing squad that contemporary conservatism has become of late.

Huge swaths of Mussolini's life must be elided to make his point. Most notably, the violence that Mussolini and the Fascists wrought upon the socialists and communists that he once supported must be ignored, which Goldberg is mostly able to do. One keeps coming back to the core reason that Goldberg was interested in doing this book in the first place. At the end of the book, he recounts the famous incident where he called Gore Vidal a faggot after Vidal called him a fascist. "My hope is that this book has served much the same purpose as Buckley's intemperate outburst while striving for his more typical civility." In other words, I want to tell liberals to fuck off, but civilly.

The chapter about Hitler starts with typically razor-sharp logic. "Was Hitler's Germany Fascist? Many leading scholars... say more or less no." Then he turns around and says more or less yes. And the kicker, "But the fact that such an argument exists among high-level scholars should suggest how abysmally misunderstood both phenomena are in the popular mind, and why reflexive rejection of the concept of liberal fascism may be misguided." Which is to say, the Chewbacca Defense.

And so it goes. All he succeeds in arguing is that Hitler is not a contemporary conservative, and that he may have shared some ideological points with liberals. Of course, Nazis shared the deference to leadership, glorification of the family, and mythologization of the people that are hallmarks of contemporary conservatism. But that is no reason to call them Nazis, and Goldberg mentions none of this. He is right about one thing. Never has this argument been made with such care. The problem is, the argument is "I know you are but what am I?"

Liberal Fascism 2: Introduction

So let's dive in. The introduction of Liberal Fascism is "Everything You Know About Fascism Is Wrong," which strikes me as a very characteristic title that illuminates the central strategy of this book. Goldberg begins with a fact, or a piece of conventional wisdom that both liberals and conservatives can agree upon. In this case, it is the understanding that the word "Fascism" is difficult to define, and yet is often used as a rhetorical cudgel, moreso by the left than the right. That is, I believe, difficult to dispute. Then he goes beyond that point to a second, that Fascism as a political movement came out of European Socialism. Also true. He then goes on to try and create a bridge between Italian Fascism (and to a smaller and less successful extent, Nazism) and liberalism as it is understood today. He makes a lot of reasonable points about Democrats in the early part of the century who engaged in authoritarian behavior, militarism, and violence. But as he keeps reiterating, this doesn't mean that he is accusing liberals of being Fascists or Nazis. So what is he really saying?

And so it is with the title of the Introduction. I imagine if I were to tell him that the title was a huge overstatement of what he's trying to argue (as a matter of fact, I am currently 1/3rd of the way through the book, and I don't thing I've learned anything about fascism that I didn't know before, and I certainly don't believe that everything I know about it is wrong), he'd concede the point, and tell me to lighten up. This, is the rhetorical strategy of the book in a nutshell: attack liberals by making an ambiguous connection to fascism, then back away from saying that liberals are, in fact fascist. It's a good strategy for attack, but a bad strategy for understanding history.

His attempt to define fascism is a good example of this attack/retreat strategy. He begins with the understandable point regarding the difficulty of defining the term, and how it has become a catchall term for goverments' repressive, violent, or just plain unpopular acts. He offers some short definitions from academia and proceeds to ignore the one word that is in all of them, "nationalism". Fascism relies on ginning up an extreme sense of nationalist identity, and if such a thing has been part of the liberal strategy (at least since WWII, and though Goldberg may argue with liberal tactics, he isn't willing to attack the fact that we entered the First or the Second World War), it's certainly news to me.

Goldberg's definition is similar, but distinct. Goldberg calls fascism a "religion of the state" Which is not nationalism, but statism. And any act of state can thus be tarred with the fascist label. Which he almost but not quite does:

This book will present an alternative history of American liberalism that not only reveals its roots in, and commonalities with, classical fascism, but also shows how the fascist label was projected onto the right by a complex sleight of hand. In fact, conservatives are the more authentic classical liberals, while many so-called liberals are "friendly" fascists.

Now, I am not saying that liberals are fascist. Nor am I saying that to believe in socialized medicine or smoking bans is evidence that you are a crypto-Nazi. What I am mainly trying to do is to dismantle the granitelike assumption in our political culture that American conservatism is an offshoot of Fascism.

In fact, at least as far as I have read (about a third of the book), Goldberg makes few arguments about conservatism, most of which are filled with a level of nuance that is entirely lacking in his bromides against evil liberals. I guess that should be no surprise. But it makes for a reading experience chock full of cognitive dissonance.

Liberal Fascism 1: Front Matter

Let's first get this out of the way: I would consider myself a liberal, and I think most people who know me and would question me would not disagree. And on the liberal spectrum (for in this day and age, among certain members of the conservasphere, John McCain would be considered a liberal), I'd be somewhere among the left. Not quite Ward Churchill, but not Evan Bayh, either. So the fact that someone decided to write a book with the provocative title Liberal Fascism is, to my mind, somewhat of an insult.

I should also say that I am not a student of Fascism, fascist history, or fascist movements, either. But in my defense, neither is Jonah Goldberg. Goldberg is a columnist for the National Review and blogger at The Corner, a contributing editor to USA Today, and a pundit, which is is the contemporary equivalent of what used to be called a public intellectual.

So what is this book about? Well, one way to begin is to tell of the history of its subtitle, which has changed many times. Now its certainly unfair to judge a book by its subtitle, and many a non-fiction writer has balked at the very need for such a thing. But in Mr. Goldberg's case, the changes that it has gone through are somewhat illuminating. It began as The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods which probably ran afoul of his publisher's legal department. Those Hegelians can be real difficult. And so it changed to The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton, which just sounds silly. So it became, at first, The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning which is just vague enough to pass muster, and yet specific enough to aggravate. It has since changed again, in the paperback edition which sits right next to my laptop (no Jonah, thank you) in order to celebrate the presidency of liberal fascist acolyte Barack Obama, to The Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Change. Bam!

All of those give you a general idea of what might be in store when you open the book, as does the cover, the iconic smiley face with an equally iconic Hitler moustache drawn on it. Bam Bam!

And so we open the book and scan the reviews, by such eminences as Newt Gingrich, Tom Wolfe, and other conservative writers such as Daniel Pipes, Thomas Sowell, Christopher Buckley, and William Bennett. And so we see the central argument of the book as refracted through 1 paragraph blurbs. Gingrich traces the history of Liberal Fascism to "a strain of elitist moral certainty that allows one group of people to believe they have the right to determine the lives of others." Which is more ambiguous than Tom Wolfe's argument, that the Soviet Communists were kin to the Italian fascists and the Nazis. As to what this means about the left, he is unclear, but to be fair, it's only a paragraph.

Your Ideas Are Intruiging to Me and I Wish to Subscribe to Your Newsletter

We'll start this thing with a readthru of Jonah Goldberg's much celebrated opus Liberal Fascism. Then depending on my stamina, we'll move on to Orson Scott Card's li'l book of Red State/Blue State, Empire.