The Rant

Well, I must concede that J.D. is more knowledgeable about political history than I am, in the sense of being able to quote various scholars.  However, after reading his entry, I am, if anything, yet more confused as to a clear definition of Fascism.  I still seem to sense that it is totalitarianism: a faith in the state to set things right, and also a choice to use force to eliminate the opposition.   Hopefully, such ideas represent a minority in the United States in both major political parties.  The libertarian response to arguments about the left and the right is to throw out these categories as vague and unhelpful and instead look at the basic political division as between statists and individualists.   By this way of thinking, leftists and rightists (fascists) are both statists and on the opposite scale to lovers of freedom.   I also prefer arguments based upon reason, evidence and science, and so hope to find some agreement with J.D. on this subject.  In addition, I prefer poli...

Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning by Jonah Goldberg (Doubleday, 496 pages) * * * The public understanding of World War II history and its precedents has suffered in recent years from the depredations of revisionist historians -- the David Irvings and David Bowmans of the field who have attempted to recast the meaning of, respectively, the Holocaust and the Japanese American internment. Their reach, however, has been somewhat limited to fringe audiences. It might be tempting to throw Jonah Goldberg's Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning into those same cloacal backwaters, but there is an essential difference that goes well beyond the likely much broader reach of Goldberg's book, which was inexplicably published by a mainstream house (Doubleday). Most revisionists are actually historians with some credentials, and their theses often hinge on nuances and ...

I used to get enraged when lefties accused Republicans of being fascists or Nazis.  There seemed to me little in common between American conservatism:  limited government, rule of law, strong national defense, "family values" and Hitler's rascist and imperialist dream to conquer the world in the name of White German Teutonic superiority.        Jonah Goldberg has proven that both political parties can play this Fascist name calling game and written a book in which he argues that Fascism is really a phenomenon of the left, not the right . "Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning."  I have just started the book but one of his observations seems true enough to me; that lefties use "fascism" as a very vague adjective to label any phenomenon they do not like. It means nothing more specific to them than bad, which sounds about right to me.   In general, I have always felt that Communism and Fasci...

Why does the west have such a hard time understanding the doctrine of Jihad? All Moslems (except a few radicals who have hijacked the religion for political purposes)  know that it is a spiritual doctrine that has nothing to do with terrorism, don't they? It is sort of like our War on Poverty in the west.   It is the interior, spiritual struggle against evil.  But wasn't the Prophet a general?   Didn't he conquer Arabia ? Didn't his immediate followers sweep out of Arabia in a war of conquest which extended Islam from Spain to India, a domain as large as the Roman empire, conquered in a far shorter time?   By comparison, Jesus and Buddha were practically pacifists and held no political power. 

    Well the Democrat Nominating Process is anything but dull this year.  I can't even understand the rules for selecting delegates in Texas, let alone for the entire party.  It probably doesn't help that I have been enduring the slow, somewhat boring process with a couple Jack Daniels.   What happens if it is a draw?   Well, we will find out in a few months I guess, unless the lawyers get involved.  Perhaps the Supreme Court will decide the Democratic nominee this year, sometime in 2010?