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.