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.