Heil Hillary?
Jonah Goldberg, Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning (New York: Doubleday, 2007).
Reviewed by Paul Edward Gottfried
Reading Jonah Goldberg’s sprawling text is for someone of my years a rude encounter with a younger generation, one that knows very little about the history of civilization but which has gained a certain media respectability. Lately I’ve been noticing how such types make factual errors that even the young women confined to secretarial programs in my high school would have blushed had they been discovered committing. Although Jonah may know (unlike my students) in which languages the Bible was composed, his deficient humanistic learning is sometimes as woefully apparent as that of many of my students.
But perhaps I’m being overly harsh. Perhaps in this case we are dealing with a heavy-weight thinker, at least from the standpoint of Jonah’s publishers. Why else would Doubleday encourage him to write this work, a signal honor reserved for a select elite? There are also blurbs on the dustcover from such august personages as Charles Murray, Tom Wolfe, David-Pryce Jones, and Newt Gingrich. If these people consider Jonah to be a serious intellectual historian, who am I to say that he is not? It is likewise to his credit that the “liberal” publishing industry has allowed him to write this book. This must have happened, or so we are led to believe particularly by FOXNews and Heritage, because Jonah’s insights are so deep that even his opponents are forced to recognize them. Of course there are other more palpable explanations for his media success; but without trying to air them, I’ll turn at once to Jonah’s newest scholarly venture.
In Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning gets at least one point right. Although my own work After Liberalism and an early study of John P. Diggings dwells on this point at greater length, Jonah is to be commended for communicating one incontestably true fact: namely that Italian Fascism, until Mussolini unwisely threw in his lot with Hitler in 1936, enjoyed immense support among socialists in the U.S. and Western Europe. For many foreign partisans of Mussolini’s corporatist experiment, fascism looked very much like socialism. And since fascists talked about “national revolutions” and condemned market capitalism, they seemed to the editors of The New Republic, and many others, much like those standing on the left side of History. Well into FDR’s first term, he and his Brain Trusters looked to the Italian model as a usable blue print for “mobilizing” the American people in the face of the Depression. Massive subsidies to reactivate the work force and to carry out public works programs of all kinds were aspects of the New Deal that had already been tried out by the Italian Fascist state. And unlike the Nazi regime, which came to power in 1933 just before FDR’s inauguration, Mussolini did not oppress Jews or impose anything resembling Nazi race laws until after his shift into Hitler’s orbit. As late as 1935, he was the most outspoken and vigorous enemy of Hitler on the European continent.
Having noted what Jonah also notes, the onetime popularity of Fascism among progressive Western journalists and politicians, one should also stress that Fascism was never really a leftist movement. It appealed to authority figures and the Roman past and was unmistakably patriarchal in its understanding of the family and other social relations. And as Renzo DeFelice demonstrates in his multivolume study of Mussolini’s career and administration—an invaluable source that Goldberg didn’t bother to consult even in translation—Fascist government did nothing of significance to change productive forces or to redistribute wealth. It made owners, managers, and workers into contributors to an overarching Fascist order; and it required industrial leaders to consult with Fascist mediators before “releasing workers from their duties.” Workers were then given unemployment compensation or in some cases (in proper Latin style) the owners were bribed into continuing to employ unneeded workers.
Even more important, there is nothing substantive linking Fascism to the “liberal” academics Goldberg goes after in his book. Indeed I would have trouble finding any link between these subjects, save for the fact that “fascism” is now a hated abstraction among leftists and neocons; and so Goldberg can make Democrats angry by calling them “fascists” and by associating them by extension with Hitler’s Third Reich. This may impress the editors at Doubleday or the national media; but as a European intellectual historian, I find that Goldberg’s comparisons are mostly not worth making. The “liberal” faculty whom he ridicules may be uttering nonsense in order to accommodate pet victim groups; they may also be driven by sentiments that neither Jonah nor I would applaud, including a pathological hatred for the extraordinary accomplishments of Western civilization. But such gestures and attitudes have little to do with interwar fascism—and even less to do with the most diabolical and aberrant form taken by that movement in Nazi Germany.
A few examples of Jonah’s random associations Jonah should prove my point. After telling us that Jewish leftist thinker and Hillary advisor Michael Lerner believes that “his new politics of meaning must saturate every cranny and nook of our lives by smashing the compartmentalism of American life” and that “morality, politics, economics and ethics, none of these things can be separated from anything else,” we then learn that “Lerner’s preferred agenda would of course echo many of the guarantees of the Nazi platform of 1920.” Lerner’s ideas are also apparently related to the German Labor Front created by Hitler’s minister Robert Ley, and they are said to bear an ominous resemblance to the “Hegelian idea that freedom could only be realized by living in harmony with the state.” Vegetarianism and ecology are naturally placed at the door of the fascist or Hitlerian state, together with various public works programs that have been advocated by Western liberals and social democrats. Jonah also provides the following string of questionable assertions that may need unpacking: that “many on the left talk about destroying ‘whiteness’ in a way that is more than superficially reminiscent of the National socialist effort to ‘de-Judaize’ German society. Indeed it is telling that a man who oversaw the legal front of this project, Carl Schmitt, is hugely popular among leftist intellectuals.”
If Jonah had bothered to read my relevant monograph or Joseph Bendersky’s English-language biography of Schmitt, he might have learned that Schmitt was never put in charge of ridding the German legal profession of its Jewish members. He merely led a conference in 1934, which Nazi leaders had strongly urged on him, about Jewish overrepresentation among German attorneys. And most, albeit not all, of Schmitt’s exponents have been on the European Right and/or conservative Catholics. It is also doubtful that white Americans who support black temper tantrums and Black Nationalist posturing can be reasonably compared to those European fascists who asserted their claims to national identities. European fascists revered their own national antiquities, whereas liberal supporters of Black Nationalism are driven by masochism and a desire to destroy what they themselves are. As for the association of Hegel and Robert Ley with Michael Lerner, I am totally at a loss to see how any one of these three figures relates in a more than superficial way to the other two. Jonah might just as easily have picked Aristotle and Burke as figures who illustrated the belief in the unity of politics and metaphysics. That belief, by the way, was characteristic of Western thought until the Renaissance, and even afterwards it lingered on among traditionalist thinkers.
Jonah does raise, however naively and on the basis of extremely limited reading, a number of valid points, e.g., about the celebration of the administrative state that formed a conceptual bridge in the interwar period between Left and Right, the dissimilarities between Latin fascism and its gruesome Teutonic imitator, and the overlapping visions of imperialist nationalism cum centralized government shared by Wilsonians and interwar fascists. But such overlaps should not blind us to the differences between fascism and the Big Government Left and (dare I to say) the neoconservatives. Fascism was a movement of the anti-libertarian Right. What made it a force of the Right, to repeat my point one last time, was its emphatic rejection of the principle of equality and its search for social models in antiquity—as opposed to the Left’s vision of an ideal future that might be extended to the entire human race. Jonah might have been able to draw such critical distinctions if he had studied a bit harder. Instead he has aimed at the less exacting goal of becoming a “movement-conservative scholar.”
Paul Gottfried is a professor of the humanities at Elizabethtown College. He is the author of After LIberalism, The Strange Death of Marxism, and, most recently, Conservatism in America.
Comments
Dear Dr. Gottfired,
A great piece, as always. One side bar item: you mention Renzo De Felice’s multi-volume (and reportedly unfinished at De Felice’s death) “Mussolini” in translation--I cannot find it offered on Amazon except in Italian, which I should learn but do not have time right now. Is it available in English anywhere?
Many thanks and keep up the good work.
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Indeed, to hear Neoconservatives complain about “Fascism” is like to hear apples complain about fruit!
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@Woody,
I don’t think De Felice’s study has yet been translated (perhaps Paul can fill us in), but a one volume study you can get in English is Nicholas Farrell’s relatively recent bio, MUSSOLINI, which I have just finished. It’s somewhat revisionist and well-argued.
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“Fascism was a movement of the
anti-libertarian Right.”
Isn’t it interesting how political extremes
have difficulty finding left-right identity.
Perhaps the political spectrum is not a
discontinuous left-right segment but a
mobius continuum where left meets right?
(both being one dimensional.)
How else can you position Hegel’s
“freedom is slavery”
with Goldberg’s
“slavery is freedom” ...?
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An outstanding review by Prof. Gottfried.
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It doesn’t take any profound scholar to observe that when the right and the left go far out to the extremes, they ironically meet in their respective extremism in the middle as far as policies go. Both are dangerous utopians, and the rejection of utopianism is supposed to be the essence of conservative thought.
The only disagreement I have with you is your characterization of fascism as an “anti-libertarian” right. I would remind you that that modern “libertarian“ or “free market” ideology has resulted in socialism for the Managerial elite (the CEO classes), and the use of military power to preserve a capitalist financial system (the FED - IMF/World Bank - Export-Import Bank) that is built on ponzi schemes. As you observe, none of the fascist states advocated state ownership of production, or even extreme taxation on the rich.
I’d really like to hear your thoughts on the contradictions of “libertarianism”, which Kevin Phillips rightly observed as the utopianism of the right.
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Paul’s excellent review of Goldberg’s feeble attempt at scholarship vindicates Orwell’s famous statement about the malleability of the meaning of “fascism.”
I wonder if Goldberg dared mention that Churchill also admired Il Duce in the 1930s? I don’t mean this as a criticism of Churchill, who was a generally solid Burkean conservative, but as a criticism of neocons who celebrate Winnie without knowing inconvenient truths.
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Great review. I wonder if Jonah will think so--he’s becoming a bit of a Paul Gottfried groupie himself: http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/post/?q=NDFiNjM0N2FlODRjMTI5ZDQzY2VlODBmODljYzdiZTU=
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@Joe Populist
“free market” ideology has resulted in
socialism for the Managerial elite
(the CEO classes), and the use of military
power to preserve a capitalist financial system
(the FED - IMF/World Bank - Export-Import Bank)
that is built on ponzi schemes.”
What a crock of s***.
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@Evan
Ha...be careful what you wish for Jonah!
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My readers who doubted my statement that De Felice’s
massive work on Mussolini had been translated are
correct. I simply assumed that this project,
which was in the works, or so scholars of fascism
had assured me ten years ago, had been completed. Except
for a few excerpts, none of De Felice’s oeuvre,
including his published dissertation on the relations
between Mussolini and the Zionist revisionists,is
available in English translation.Nonetheless, I doubt
that Jonah would have read this work even if it had
been translated. Such research is not required to be a
“movement conservative scholar.”
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“And unlike the Nazi regime, which came to power in 1933 just before FDR’s inauguration, Mussolini did not oppress Jews or impose anything resembling Nazi race laws until after his shift into Hitler’s orbit”
strauss favored mussolini’s fascism for this reason. particularly as a counter to the nazis
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It is a distressing sign of the times we live in that Goldberg’s shallow book has received considerable attention in the media (e.g C-Span, The Daily Show, etc.) while Paul’s books are ignored. This is because Goldberg’s book is mostly a partisan rant against Hillary while Paul’s books more accurately demonstrate that the sickness that afflicts our age is not limited just to the Left. Goldberg and his neo-con friends are sicker than the people they are accusing of being sick. Physician, heal thyself.
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</i>As Dr. Gottfried correctly notes, fascism was a right-wing movement with respect to the rejection of egalitarianism and by looking to the past for social models, but it was leftist and modernistic in it’s view of the nation state.
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Wesley McDonald is right. And the title of PG’s essay is right. To find confirmation of the intention of this book, one need only flip to the excerpt of Goldberg’s book in the latest issue of National Review to find three consecutive pictures: Hilter, Il Duce, Hillary. This is the reason for the book. Well, this and an attempt to deflect attention from the bastards that Jonah finds common cause with.
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Also (and this may be a bit of a leap), but I think it’s interesting that Goldberg goes off so much on Lippmann (the equivalent of Yanni going off on Bud Powell). It was Lippmann who so clearly saw the liberalization and secularization of evangelicals as they gave up the Gospel for the sake of becoming relevant. Lippmann recognized and respected the lone orthodox voice in the wilderness of J. Gresham Machen.
Today, the Goldberg’s and Kristols can also count on the evangelicals as well, who have deified the American Republican Party/Conservative self in place of the Gospel, and thus are able to support the nuking of Iran (or anywhere else just son long as the Commander in Chief is a Christian) as being the Lord’s work.
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Someone please turn off the italics. My attempt failed.
Regarding the link to the Goldberg post, I didn’t quite know what to make of the TAC Bramwell review either. I thought Bramwell’s critique of the NR pro-Iraq War/War on Terror stance in his TAC article “Good-bye to all That” was brilliant, but beyond that I really can’t figure out where he is coming from. He is not a paleo. He has criticized paleos. Many of his observations about the Goldberg book are valid, but Bramwell seemed to me almost defensive of liberalism. Am I the only one who felt that way? Daniel Larison liked the Bramwell review. Bramwell seems to be still carrying a torch against movement conservatism, but I fail to see what alternative he is suggesting.
The problem isn’t so much that Goldberg is wrong per se or reaching, which he is, but that he is conflating things. As a type of liberal (a neocon) Goldberg can not criticize liberalism without turning the fire on himself. So he criticizes a brand of liberalism that is in opposition to his brand.
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Country club republicans use free market rhetoric to depress wages for workers. The obscene severance packages of CEO’s give the lie to the idea that the free market discipline leads efficient use of resources.
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The conventional wisdom, wrong always, blames Fascism
for “destroying liberal democracy”, when the truth is
that liberal democracy, as practiced, collapsed when the
pillars that maintained it disappered after World War I.
Faced with a political system that no longer worked, and
given the alternative of a Russian-style revolution,
there was a scramble to build up something that could
govern, deliver a reasonably sounding ideology to
believe in, and shore up the insitutions.
Such movements and ideologies were a hodge-podge, a
pot-pourri of whatever elements were at hand. Mussolini
just created a jerry-built machine that for a while it
worked. There is not much point in sking for ideological
basis, he grabbed what he could get his hands on. (Same
as some of my leftover stews. They have celery in them.
when there is celery in the refrigerator, if not, they
have something else). As for European fascism, all you
had to do to be a fascist was to put on a shirt, say a
few nice things about the Duce and you were in. Once
inside you could redefine fascism to your heart’s
content, and no one would excommunicate you for it.
So, trying to find an ideological motif to fascism is
wasted time. It was a product of desperation, a sort of
Rube Goldberg machine, that for a while worked - mainly
because people wanted it to work.
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As many Top Drawer readers will recall, Orwell wrote in his 1946 (I believe) essay “Politics and the English Language” that the term “fascist” had lost any meaning except as a term of opprobrium to be hurled at one’s enemies. Nothing has really changed apart from the fact that many who claim to be conservatives now use the word for that purpose.
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It doesn’t matter that Jonah Goldberg has the intellectual depth of a chickpea. As the spawn of the ferociously nepotistic economic/political elite, he will always get a free pass to cushy jobs and fat publishing deals… and he will always get to suck the fish eggs off the dainty crackers.
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There is more or less a left-right spectrum. It’s just that the modern American experience does not embrace the entire spectrum, since it is narrowly focused on economic models.
From the socialist perspective, “capitalism” is “on the right”. However, from the perspective of the ancien regime, capitalism is equivalent to liberalism, and is therefore a revolutionary movement of the left. Thus, Italian Fascism saw itself opposed to liberal capitalism, from the right, not from the left.
The Fascist economic model was based on Catholic social teaching, particularly as expounded in Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum. This is NOT socialism; to some careless observers, it may look like socialism, because they lack the categories to describe it. Pius XI in Quadragesimo Anno, written to commenorate Leo’s enccyclical, notes this mistake and makes an effort to correct it.
Do not forget that socialism, in its origin, was more than an economic system—it embraced atheistism and humanism, abhorrent ideas to the Right. Similarly for capitalism ... it is more than an economic system since it includes the ideology of liberalism.
As long as American conservatives are narrowly concerned with economic models and are promoters of capitalism, they will continue to reap more and more liberalism, the ideology of capitalism. If this is not obvious by now, it never will be. Thus the disarray on the right, which can no longer even define itself properly.
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Frau Chancellor, or Frauelein Roddhameier (So sorry Clara the gatekeeper refused treatment)? Both!
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I wonder how many man-hours Goldberg wasted in the library on this stupid smear?
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Sorry, but I don’t see the argument that Fascists and National Socialists aren’t left-wing. They were both big government butt-in-skis. And as someone above pointed out, they were atheistic and humanistic. Sounds left-wing to me.
BTW, is right-wing an ideology like the left wing? Right wingers, whatever their stripe--economic, social, etc.--don’t want to bring about a utopia on earth; they just want to tamp down Man’s evil nature.
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In the late 19th century, the Swiss historian, Jacob Burckhardt, steadfastly opposed the growth of state bureaucracy. He argued that, once an effective administrative system had been built, there would inevitably come a person who takes control of that bureaucracy and uses it to create a dictatorship more horrendous than has ever been seen.
Burckhardt’s foresight was quite astonishing, because he noted that the dictator-to-be would first creat a semi-militaristic party system. His opportunity would come at a serious economical crisis, when people would be desperate for a savior. Once he got power, the dictator would simply merge his party organization with the government’s bureaucracy, and this would rapidly give him full control of the country—i.e., Burckhard was one of the very few historians who accurately predicted Hitler.
From the above perspective, Goldber’s argument is very correct indeed, because anybody who strengthens government bureaucracy prepares the ground for fascism, and strengthening the government is very much what left-wingers do. There are differences in details, such as racism or nationalism, but the underlying theme is the omnipotent state, which can—and sooner or later will—be turned into a tool of dictatorship.
What surprised me is that Goldber did not notice that the Bush administration is full tilt into the same thing. The increase in the number of people in “security” and the rapid expansion in their legal powers will be particularly helpful for a future “savior.”
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I find it a hoot that that Jonah Goldberg is actually picking on Michael Lerner.
After all, Lerner’s son actually served in the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) a group that Goldberg hardily endorses from the sidelines. You would have though that Jonah would have given Lerner a little more slack knowing that the antiwar beliefs that Lerner outwardly holds do not seem to have filtered down to his very much more pro Zionist children.
A few years ago I attended a rally opposing the Iraq War at which Lerner spoke. After his speech I went up to him and asked him whether it was true about his son’s IDF involvement. He said it was true but then immediately turned and tried to get as far away from me as possible.I got the impression that he very much didn’t want for others to hear the rather embarrassing question that I had posed him.
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Red Phillips wrote: “As Dr. Gottfried correctly notes, fascism was a right-wing movement with respect to the rejection of egalitarianism and by looking to the past for social models, but it was leftist and modernistic in it’s view of the nation state. “
For the most part I agree, and this just further points up the futility of trying to conduct political science in terms of a non-existent political “spectrum.” There is no such thing. Political theories are sets of propositions which their adherents take to be true. As such, the various theories are not like points on a line, but like discrete pieces of (for example) fruit. You’ve got an orange here, an apple there, and a grape and a coconut over there. The existence of similarities between different fruits no more implies the existence of a “fruit spectrum” than the existence of similarities among political doctrines implies a political spectrum. Again, physicists have put forth various theories regarding the weird world of quantum physics. Yet no one talks about there being a left-right spectrum of quantum theories, even though in form the theories of physical science are no different than the theories of political science. Why not? The obvious answer is: because such a spectrum does not exist.
Fascism has qualities in common with several other political theories or doctrines. But to attempt to pin the sins of fascism’s adherents on the adherents of other philosophies is as misguided for us as it is for anyone else. It can make for a useful weapon in the short-term to wield against one’s political enemies, but in the long run it only A) robs us of the language and formulations proper to political science, and B) deceives us into thinking that we are actually talking intelligently about reality when we are really only floundering in a sea of misconceptions.
Nevertheless, good article, Dr. Gottfried. I learned quite a bit from it.
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I am coming in rather late on this and I haven’t read Jonah’s book, but I always understood according to Tom Rose at Grove City College, that fascism was merely a more sophisticated version of socialism than communism. Instead of the state owning the means of production, they regulated it heavily.
In other words, Dem or Repub - socialist/communist/marxist or fascist, we are still talking about statism/big government. The pot is calling the kettle black.
The reason why the neocons and the left hate each other so much is they are both fighting for the same thing, the power of coercive big government to run your life the way they want to run it. The Dems aren’t mad at Bush for violating the constitution, they just want a chance to do the same thing their own way.
Thank you.
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I can understand that someone would want to write about a liberal fascism, but why now? I mean, if this is the kind of book you come up with after seven years of the Bush caliphate, you really ought to have a reality check.
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Those with striking parallels to a particular heinous political ideology tend to label their opponents as belonging to this same ism. The goal is to obfuscate your agenda by denouncing others, such as the liberal fascists and the islamo-fascists.
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Unlib commented on the following: “free market” ideology has resulted in socialism for the Managerial elite (the CEO classes), and the use of military power to preserve a capitalist financial system
(the FED - IMF/World Bank - Export-Import Bank) that is built on ponzi schemes.”
Unlib sed: “What a crock of s***.”
Sadly, you need lesson on reality versus ideology, you are lacking the reality part of that equation.. All of the reality of the entire Reagan-Gingrich “conservative” economic legacy has been to give more to those who have the most, at the expense of the middle class. For instance, using the Social Security payroll tax surpluses to fund the Reagan and Bush tax cuts. Another example is the deregulation of the banking industry, the repeal of the New Deal laws that separated the consumer and investment banking functions.--which of course created Citibank, the most profitable corporation in the United States.--and of course, all the instability in the financial markets as a result of the real estate bubble burst.
Under German or Italian “fascism”, there is NO state ownership of the means of production, therefore it is not “left wing”...it was all about preserving the status of the wealthy and the upper classes, but providing good jobs, decent housing and health care for everyone else, mostly to keep these countries from going communist.
Which is why the left-wingers can logically conclude that fascism and imperialism are the highest stage of Capitalism. We have today’s “conservative” movement as proof.
Was “free market ideology” not such? No, you have the example of Ayn Rand cultist, Alan Greenspan, the architect of the ponzi scheme that created the Social Security “crisis” and the dot-.CON and real estate bubbles.
BTW, “Libertarianism” is a false ideology, born of the 60’s-70’s, the ideas of Ayn Rand about the “rights” of the managerial classes, and denigrating those “too stupid” or “lazy” to be rich and successful.. It was the mirror image of communism, in that it is atheist and paganist, enshrining materialism and consumerism, which we all know is a form of narcissism, and a sin. It is NOT “conservative” ---it is the opposite of conservative.
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Framing the discussion of fascism versus liberalism as “Big” Government vs “freedom” or “limited” government is just plain silly, it shows you how confused the “conservative” movement has become, polluted with the anti-government nonsense that has dominated the so-called “left-right divide” for 50 years.
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What I got from this review was condescension that an individual not as smart nor as old as Mr. Gottfried had the temerity to write a schoalrly book detailing the left-wing elements of fascism. There is hardly a substantive rebuittal contained in this review. This is rather disappointing because Mr. Gottfried has written some of the best intellectual histories of the right currently in circulation. This review is far below the standard he has set in the past.
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Dr. Gottfried -
Perhaps you have already read enough of Jonah to come to this realization, but just in case: Jonah’s modus operandi, when about to write on some Matter Of Great Import, is to put out a call to his reader(s), along the lines of “I want to write something on Subject X. Has anyone out there done any research on this topic that they share with me?”
In other words, one would be hard pressed to place Jonah on any list of great researchers. (Or great thinkers, but that’s something else altogether.) His research methodology reminds me (if my memory is still working) of the Saturday Night Live sketch “I Heard That Was Good”, wherein the evening-jacket-clad host would provide reviews of popular movies, etc., without having seen them. Hence the title. Jonah is far too lazy to do the research for a scholarly tome, and his work product shows it.
Archon -
Nice try, but parroting Jonah’s “intellectual” writing style - such as declaring false equivalencies - would have better results with NRO. Or, to provide balance, you could apply your same “logic” to the right wing. For example: >> Islamofascists and islamic terrorists believe they act according to the word of God. Sounds like right-wingers to me. <<
See how easy it is? But on a more serious note, regarding what right-wingers want: it’s been my experience that both left and right want the government to constrain certain types of behavior that they find objectionable. The difference is that the right-wingers
(A) Try to pretend that they’re not
(B) Seem to limit their objectionable-behavior list to matters primarily relating to sex. (Constraining things which might harm persons other than themselves? Not so much.)
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Jonah Goldberg is polemicist who prjects his own proclivities onto liberals. he is not a scholar. He is not even a caricature of a scholar. He’s a propagandist pure and simple.
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“After his speech I went up to him and asked him whether it was true about his son’s IDF involvement.”
-- please clarify, Mr. Winter; What, exactly, is “embarassing” about a young man serving in the armed forces of the country in which he resides?
Or is self-defense only bad when Jews do it?
“the reforms that are envisioned are those that promote the safety and comfort of Lerner’s co-religionists and co-nationalists. They do not apply to the Asian Americans, Latino Americans, European Americans, African Americans, or American Indians who are insultingly called goyim.”
-- well,that’s fairly straightforward Jew-hate.
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I second Joe Populist on his comments about the
failings of Libertarianism, which tends to use those
who oppose the Governmnt doing something (in the
expectation that local entities) with those who oppose
it being done at all.
Unfortunately, in the blog page, Scott Richert has
put the finger on the reason why central government
will grow - because our rootlessness keeps us from
creating strong local institutions that would obviate
the need for central government intrusiveness. It is
all good to talk about subsidiarity, but when those
subsidiearies have been hollowed out they cannot do
much.
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Freedom/liberty-loving people, governed by the literally interpreted U.S. Constitution, will never meet “their respective extremism in the middle;” nor are they bewitched into utopianism.
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I find it interesting that the reviewer has cause to comment on “black temper tantrums” and supposedly childish “Black Nationalism”. Yet no mention of “white temper tantrums” and the philosophy of white supremacy that has become almost a subtext of Western Civilization. One need only point to the many, many bouts of white supremacist reactionaries via lynchings, race riots, and other forms of subterfuge to see how the temper tantrum play out in far more consequential terms.
Three cheers for the Africans in America, “our” perennial scapegoats!
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If you’re an avid PS3 gamer, then you know the importance of saving your progress for future game play.
Pls, help me!
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