I know that it has been a while since I have written here and I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that people still come to visit in hope of reading my insipid rantings disguised as keen insight and thoughtful prose on the political environment. Having been consumed by the black hole that a four week trial creates I can attest that no light or blog postings can escape.
But during my hiatus from commentary, I did have time to "read" Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism. I use quotes because it was via audio book during my commute. Given the sleep deprived state I often found myself in while listening, I think it sunk deeper into my subconscious.
For some time, I have given my RedMaryland colleague Mark Newgent a hard time for his mancrush on Jonah Goldberg. We are talking about a guy who seriously considered naming his son Jonah and appeared to be "physically excited" when he heard of Mr. Goldberg's visit to a recent Maryland Young Republican event.
But arriving late to the party and having read Mr. Golberg's triumphal work on the origins of modern liberalism and its close familiarity and lineage with 20th century fascism, especially its idolizing American iterations, I am starting the see the point.
If you have not read the book. Do so now. You will never read a more erudite explanation of the sources and nature of modern liberalism than this book. Much will be familiar and understandable but, for me, I have never seen the pieces put together so well.
I found myself often "rereading" (rewinding) to listen to passages repeatedly. I expect I will buy a hardcopy just so that I can highlight, doggear and quote it. I do not foresee myself writing about the latest "crisis" in modern politics without acknowledging Goldberg's salient point that liberals have been looking for the moral equivalent to war to justify a return of the governmental equivalent of Wilson's "War Socialism" of World War I. Economic depression, the War on Poverty, Global Warming and the "Politics of Meaning" have all been noted to serve that purpose to varying degrees of success. Why not then the obesity epidemic, the latest economic slowdown, swine flu or the next crisis to serve that end as well.
Nor do I expect that I will view liberal versus conservative without being reminded of the thorough and systematic contrast Golberg draws between them. The Hegelian, statist totalitarian (as the term is defined by its creator Mussolini) liberal unalterably and diametrically opposed to the individualistic, liberty disposed conservative faithfully defending the classic liberal ideals upon which our country was founded. There is no middle ground in this battle of ying and yang. While Goldberg may attempt to avoid the moral judgment that liberals have bad intentions or that all things liberal are bad, the unmistakable essence of his factual recitation is that liberals and conservatives can never coexist but are eternally at war for the soul of this country. As Lincoln said, we cannot live half free and half slave. We cannot be determined to submit to a Godstate in the name of some false "security" and be the free, industrious people that our founders and forebears were.
So even if the fascism of liberals is as Goldberg says the gentle hug of a nanny state (as described in Brave New World) versus the boot in the face of freedom forever (of Orwell's 1984) we will still but just as unfree.
These ideas are so profound and so much deeper than our modern political discourse seems to allow. How many of our elected officials of any stripe could intelligently converse on overarching principles which guide their view of government and their historical origins and context let alone that of their opponents?
For any conservative, this is a must read.
0 comments:
Post a Comment