Jonah Goldberg Tells Left to Go To Hell

Jonah Goldberg has a rant out today that speaks for everyone on the right.

Read it here.

Jonah Goldberg: GOP Will Not Be "Democrat-Lite"

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online agrees with the rightward direction of the Republican Party. He says the conventional wisdom is that, for the GOP to survive, it must move left and emulate the Democrats. However, neither the public nor the Republican membership wants that. He writes:

Whatever the merits of this advice, two things are now quite clear.

First, most conservatives and Republicans have next to no desire to follow it. And, second, it looks like they're right not to.

The Virginia contest alone shows that much of this talk about "moderates" vs. "extremists" or "pragmatists" vs. "ideologues" within the GOP was nonsense.

In short, the Newt Gingrichs of the Party have been sent packing, and that's a good thing.

Read it all here.

Quote of the Day: Jonah Goldberg on Joe Biden

Jonah Goldberg wrote at the Corner:

I think it is an outright terrible decision on Obama's part to pick Biden. Yes, he helps balance Obama's inexperience on foreign policy, but he also reminds people of it. Yes, Biden could conceivably be effective as an attack dog. But Biden is such a gasbag he makes the Hindenburg look like a sack of rocks.

Well said Jonah.

Fascism: A Political Philosophy of the Left

Members of differing political parties love to refer to their opponents as "fascists." For years the popular myth has been that the further to the right one moves in the political spectrum, the closer he gets to fascism. Jonah Goldberg wrote a well argued, fact-enriched book called "Liberal Fascism." In the book Goldberg describes how fascism is not a right wing phenomenon, but another variant of socialism. Fascism, clearly, is a faith born of the left.

Whenever fascism is mentioned, one cannot help but think of Nazis and Hitlerism. The Nazis were fascists, but not all fascists were Nazis. Fascist Italy under Mussolini predated Nazism; neither it nor fascist Spain under Franco were anti-semitic, racist or genocidal. The Nazis were the worst variant of fascism.

Consequently, it would be ridiculous to compare modern Democrats to Nazis. However, this is not so when comparing them to the more benign fascists of Mussolini's pre-war Italy or Bismarck's Germany.

Fascism in its less savage forms was paternalistic, a nanny-state that wished to control every aspect of citizen's lives for their own good. Its similarities to modern liberalism are striking.

Indeed, in the prewar America of FDR, many Democrats admired fascism and thought it a grand experiment. And, the fascists of both Italy and Germany admired them back.

Okay, that's nice, but what is Fascism exactly? There is still a lot of argument about what is and isn't fascism; however, Goldberg shows that it usually has the following characteristics:

1. It is totalitarian; everything in society is viewed as political.
2. It is built on a philosophy of creating "a new man," where private interests are subordinate to the public interest, where all private citizens actively support the missions of the state.
3. It is anti-capitalism. However, it practices "corporatism," where corporations who support the government agenda are guaranteed markets, prices and an absence of competition. Corporations therefore become active partners of the government.
4. It is pro-socialism, often openly so. Mussolini claimed to be a socialist until the day he died. Fascism in Italy and Germany was pro-working class, supporting a minimum wage, generous medical insurance and state-funded pensions and other benefits.
5. Fascism sought to end class designations within society and to erase class warfare between rich and poor.
6. Fascism was opposed to religion, particularly Christianity. Both Mussolini and Hitler hated Christianity and wished to return to pre-Christian paganism. The Jacobins of France, the first fascists, hated Catholicism and wished to diminish the influence of the church on society.
7. Fascism sought to substitute the state in the place of God, to create a new "religion of the state."
8. Fascism sought to break the sanctity of the family, especially its hold over the beliefs and attitudes of children. It sought to ingrain fascistic principles from an early age, and to obtain control over children by moving them from the home into government boarding schools (e.g. the Jacobins).
10. Fascism sought to mobilize society through the generation of crises, such as war. Wars make society more malleable and willing to submit to collectivist goals for the common good. Modern day Dems seek to substitute "the moral equivalent of war," i.e. to generate other crises to encourage mobilization. The current crisis-mongering over global warming is undoubtedly a false crisis developed for this end.

Note that not all items in the fascist agenda are horrible -- some are undoubtedly worthy (e.g., the elimination of class distinctions).

Goldberg describes several phases of fascism, including:
1. The Jacobins of the French Revolution of the late 18th century
2. Bismarck's Germany of the 19th century
3. Woodrow Wilson's administration, the most fascistic period in American history
4. Benito Mussolini's Fascist Italy
5. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Germany
6. FDR's New Deal
7. The New Left's antics in the 1960's

Jonah Goldberg describes fascism this way:

Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body
politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is
totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action
of the state is justified to achieve the common good. It takes responsibility
for all aspects of life, including our health and well-being, and seeks to
impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation
and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be
aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the "problem" and
therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary American
liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.

Fascism, like Communism, is socialism. However, fascism differs from Communism in one way: fascism is nationalistic in orientation, Communism is international. Fascists were loyal to their country and their culture, whereas Communists identified only with their ideology -- they did not identify with a particular nation or culture. Fascists and Communists hated each other, not because they wanted different systems, but because they were in competition for the same constituency. They were competing versions of socialism.

Goldberg also discussed various American personalities who are often wrongly described as "right wing" or "conservative," when they were in fact, FDR socialists. Senator Huey Long and Father Coughlin, the "radio priest" are two of these.

There are some surprising aspects of Nazi Germany that are more or less analogous to liberalism today. Germany's practice of eugenics, e.g. the sterilization of undesirable elements, is reflected in liberal support for abortion, which falls most heavily on racial minorities (half of all black pregnancies end in abortion). Less troublesome similarities include vegetarianism, organic foods and animal rights.

How did the fascists get shifted from political left to right in the minds of many? It happened when Stalin began labeling all anti-communists as "fascists." Even Trotskyites were "fascists." Over time this erroneous appellation became ingrained in the public consciousness. But it isn't true. As Goldberg proves with overwhelming argument, facts and examples, fascism was and is a component of the progressive left.

Puffin' and a Grinnin'

It's cool here in Podunk where I live. It's a small town 90 miles south of San Francisco. Quite rural. There are lots of farms around, with furrowed fields and crops always growing. Lots of cows.

Today I am just puffing on a cigar underneath our new gazebo in the backyard, reading Jonah Goldberg's book, "Liberal Fascism." It's a history of fascism and Nazism and an explanation of why fascism and Nazism are ideologies of the political left, not the right. Maybe I'll blog about it later on.

I just got off of a contract project with a large construction company that is helping to rebuild the World Trade Center in New York. While I wait for a new assignment, I am just puffin' and grinnin.' That's a take off from the old Hee Haw show where Buck Owens and friends played guitars and banjos in a segment called "Pickin' and Grinnin'.

With any luck I may have time to get a nap in before bedtime.

Jonah Goldberg on Fitna

Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online comments on the film "Fitna" today. He writes:

Wilders’ film could easily get him killed. It picks up the work of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004 by a jihadi for criticizing Islam. Fitna is provocative, but it has good reason to provoke. A cancer of violence, bigotry, and cruelty is metastasizing within the Islamic world. It’s fine for Muslim moderates to say they aren’t part of the cancer; and that some have, in response to the film, is a positive sign. But more often, diagnosing or even observing this cancer — in film, book or cartoon — is dubbed “intolerant,” while calls for violence, censorship, and even murder are treated as understandable, if regrettable, expressions of anger.

Read it all here.

A man has put his life on the line to allow Muslims to tell the truth about their own religion, i.e., that it hates the West and hates Jews, and that it intends to conquer or kill us. The least you can do is to view the film.