A must-read.
sds:
A selection from Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning. It’s quite long, but well worth the read. I’m 160 pages into it, and it’s very informative.
[…]
_____________________________________________________This kind of skewed rationale gets to the heart of liberal fascism. Progressivism, liberalism, or whatever you want to call it has become an ideology of power. So long as liberals hold it, principles don’t matter. It also highlights the real fascist legacy of World War I and the New Deal: the notion that government action in the name of “good things” under the direction of “our people” is always and everywhere justified. Dissent by the people is troubling evidence of incipient fascism. The anti-dogmatism that progressives and fascists alike inherited from Pragmatism made the motives of the activist the only criteria for judging the legitimacy of action. “I want to assure you,” FDR’s aide Harry Hopkins told an audience of New Deal activists in New York, “that we are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have a lawyer who will declare anything you want to do legal.”
This exerpt does not even begin to capture just how deep this book is. I highly recommend it to all our lefty friends out there. If you call yourself a progressive, you should know what the word means and its historical context.
Actually I’m just thrilled to know that there are people like SDS on tumblr.
gwb & the neoconservative regime have shown us that such grasping for power is not for liberals alone, but for anyone in - and drunk on - power. even so, due to the “more government is better government” mindset, i think the liberal movement would more easily head that direction.
