So conservative wunderkind Jonah Goldberg has refused to acknowledge any more criticism of his eternally-delayed "criticism" of liberalism, Liberal Fascism, until the book actually comes out. Fair enough. And as fun as it is to launch attacks at people like Goldberg, they're not meant to be substantive attacks--they're just meant to get under the skin of their recipient. And it is also true that I can't thoroughly criticize a book I haven't read, but I certainly can criticize its premises, which are pretty transparent.

First and most obvious is the title. How is Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton (now The Totalitarian Temptation from Hegel to Whole Foods) related to making a serious argument? Accusing someone of being a fascist is a pretty serious and specific charge. I have to assume, based on the book's title, that Goldberg has identified/discovered/made up a variety of fascism that is based on liberalism. I do not know if he is referring to Liberalism in the original sense or liberalism in its current American usage, but in either case "liberalism" is not remotely fascistic. Classical liberalism relies on individual liberty, free markets, and minimal government to organize a body politic. Does anyone associate those things with fascist governments? Hardly. And as for contemporary American liberalism, I think we must assume that Goldberg is relying upon the conservative cliche of big government Democrats. This assumed reliance on statism must be the "totalitarian temptation." And this is where the confusion begins. Goldberg is talking about two things: fascism and totalitarianism. The former is a specific form of government that relies on mass society demagoguery, propaganda and jingoism to practice what today we would call identity politics. The latter is a more generalized account of a state whose interests are inseparable from that of the government's. In this way both fascist and communist states can and have been, totalitarian. But just from the title of the book it is clear that Goldberg is using the left-wing example of totalitarianism to charge the American Left with being an example of the right-wing example of totalitarianism.

The way Goldberg would argue his way out of this is that I critically misunderstand the nature (and thus the history) of fascism. This is the second premise. The argument is that fascism originates on the left, not the right, and that is how liberal fascists are born. The evidence for this is that fascist movements were often the political voice for artists, bohemians, and all those who argued against the bourgeois liberal state of the 19th century who, despite their rationality and science, still let loose World War I. And when in power, fascists tailored industry to their needs--just like American liberals want to monopolize the economy today! As you can see, this line of argument is wholly dependent on being selective with the historical record. Yes, even Hitler was a failed art student. But critical is that fascism was a reaction against modernity, against liberalism, and against rationality. For the artists and bohemians it was a political response that was Romantic in nature. Another inconvenient fact is that once in power, fascist governments always turn against the communists and liberals--in that order. The communists, after all, were the major competitor of the fascists in the interwar years as an alternative to liberalism. Both relied upon demagoguery to make their appeals which were, incidentally, directed at the working classes. Both systems require mass support, so the fascists moved quickly to marginalize the opposition. On the communist side of the totalitarian coin, Stalin ran a counter-revolution that destroyed all internal opposition to his regime. Totalitarian states immediately and quickly move to liquefy internal opposition and rewrite history. That is how they maintain power.

This leads us to Goldberg's third premise, which is simply that I have his premises all wrong. He doesn't clarify, he just insists that I'll simply need to read his book, which he never forgets to remind us is very serious, thoughtful, careful and utterly novel. But this premise is wrong too. I noted that Goldberg is casual with the heavily loaded terms "totalitarianism" and "fascism" when using them to describe liberals. If Goldberg's insight is simply that these terms are synonymous, then that begs the question of the taxonomic place in history Goldberg reserves for Stalinism. Totalitarian or not? But if fascism is really a left-wing phenomenon, then does that mean there are no right-wing totalitarian movements? Goldberg's argument falls apart precisely because he insists on redefining the terms he uses to quite deliberately demonize liberals. Isn't that the point of the book after all? Goldberg isn't trying to split hairs, rather he is masquerading as a disinterested party who wishes to clarify our understanding of what liberalism represents. And to begin this discussion he throws out the term "liberal fascism." Since we're neck-deep in analogies here, let's just say that this is tantamount to beginning a discussion about Nazis by referring to them as monsters. The difference, of course, is that the Nazis were monsters and I'd be interested to see what evidence Goldberg will be providing us to prove that liberals are monsters too. And really, how are we supposed to take seriously a book that argues, again, through its very title, that this is nothing more than a "temptation." Is Goldberg's argument that this totalitarian temptation is something that only applies to the Left? That non-liberals are somehow exempt from Lord Acton's wisdom?

All of this brings up, not surprisingly, a shared conservative characteristic. On the one hand, there is wisdom to be found in the men of past ages when it comes to politics, and that there is hardly a better example of this on the American conservative intellectual front than the American political system itself. And one of the geniuses of that system is that it fractures power and forces compromise, so that tyranny can be avoided. And this in turn is premised on conservative misanthropy: a system had to be constructed to curtail the natural inclinations of ambitious men. Conservatives rightly praise this system, and even describe it as conservative, a sentiment I do not entirely disagree with. But if conservatives are misanthropes, then liberals alone cannot be tempted by power. Conservatives, too, are ambitious and greedy and tempted by great power. But that isn't the argument Liberal Fascism is making. And if it is, then why single out liberals? What sort of insight would Goldberg be peddling: "people are tempted by power?" Wow, that's too much for me to process at once...

Which is why Goldberg is so testy. He has written/is writing a book whose premise is ridiculous in first place, made more ridiculous by its author's delays and arrogant claims that it is otherwise. He knows he has written a political attack book that advances an argument which has been made by conservative minds a thousandfold more insightful than his more than half a century ago and with more care, but an argument that has nonetheless fallen apart in the face of time's endless march. As near as I can tell, Goldberg thinks he's living in 1946 and that we must heed both the domestic evil of state welfare as well as the foreign evil of International Communism. To make such an argument today against Hillary Clinton and Whole Foods is rather, well, pathetic, and tells us more about the contemporary American conservative mind than it does about the temptations of liberalism.