Commissar Goldberg
I have published my own take on Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” here. Since GNXP is not a political site (and since many here are not in sympathy with my point of view) I will not publish the whole thing here, though I am willing to discuss it in comments.
UPDATE: Thanks, everyone. I didn’t expect agreement, and I found the discussions interesting. I’m sorry that they wandered into the abortion area, because abortion isn’t really my issue, but that was my fault.
Excellent review. You capture the point of his book succinctly:
Goldberg’s book is also intended to inoculate Republicans against the charge of fascism — “We’re no worse than the Democrats” is the standard Republican response whenever they’re caught behaving indefensibly. Goldberg doesn’t really need to make his case: he just needs to plant a few doubts and give the Republican mouthpieces some new talking points.
multiply the anti-abortion terrorists by a few hundred, and they’ll have that too.
wtf
Some early Nazi leaders were closet homosexuals, but so are many contemporary Republican leaders.
oh come on
i’ll allow this thread to stay open as long as the back & forth isn’t too personal. just an FYI ;)
also, for readers not aware, a substantial minority of regulars here are conservative, and a substantial minority are liberal (balance libertarian or don’t give a shit). just keep that in mind when you post comments, as this isn’t a place where you’ll get an “amen!” chorus.
The anti-abortion terrorists have killed about 10 people in the last ten years. Multiply that and you have a real terrorist threat. They’ve been quiet under the Bush administration because they still have hope that they’ll win legally.
Blackwater is an undisciplined private army which has been behaving lawlessly in Iraq. If they’re brought home (losing their paychecks) against their will under a Democratic administration, what will they do? A substantial section if the Right believes that Democrats are traitors.
The Nazi / Republican analogy is pretty exact. Homosexuals in either group are closeted, and both groups were actively anti-homosexual (the Nazis put thousands or tens of thousands of homosexuals in concentration camps because of their orientation — probably the “flagrant” ones.) Goldberg misrepresent the Nazi facts and ignores the Republican facts. Gay Republicans show up all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
I followed the link thinking I might learn something about the book, but no, it’s all meta commentary about conservatives and their presumed motives and methods.
The fact that Ledeen (no liberal he) effectively savaged the book when he reviewed it was enough to convince me that it’s not worth my time to read it. This commentary, on the other hand, serves mainly to remind us that the liberal method of criticism is never so reductionist as to take on the material at hand; rather, being holistic, it prefers to speculate on the motives, moral character, and agenda of the author. Far be it from you to be so blinkered as to actually attempt a summary of the contents of the work.
Next time you want to offer up a polemic on the fascist tendencies of today’s Republicans (something I would probably agree with, FWIW), perhaps you could do us a favor and not mislabel it this way.
Yes, Bbartlog, as I said in the piece I was writing more about the significance of the Goldberg phenomenon than about his book itself, which many others have adequately reviewed, including more penetrating critics than Ledeen. My very brief notice here did not “mislabel” the nature of my piece: “my take on Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism”".
I did sketch Goldberg’s most blatant representations under several major headings, but the point of my piece is that the fact that he’s slanderous, wrong, and dishonest will not reduce his influence much. The detail work on Goldberg has been very meticulously done by David Neiwert at Orcinus.
John,
As a pro-lifer, I find your sideswipe at “anti-abortion terrorists” demeaning and baseless. You say:
The Republicans (so far) don’t have a paramilitary branch using violence and illegal means to intimidate opponents. But multiply the anti-abortion terrorists by a few hundred, and they’ll have that too.
We anti-abortionists are interested in one thing: ending abortion, because we believe it is murder, and extending human rights to the unborn. I assure you, neither I nor any of my pro-life friends with whom I have marched on D.C. have any plans to form a parailitary force for the Republican Party. Rest easy.
That last line should read “paramilitary force”, obviously. Sorry.
Marc, not every one of you, but as I said, anti-abortion militants have killed about ten people and are probably our most significant domestic terrorist group. People tend to give them a pass, but I don’t know why.
John,
So I’m part of a domestic terrorist group? If not, then who is? Doesn’t the term “terrorist group” imply some sort of organization, like the Aryan Brotherhood? What is the pro-life version of the Aryan Brotherhood?
I don’t know, Marc, but when abortion providers were being killed there was a loose organization helping the killers out. I believe that they followed quasi-anarchist leaderless insurrection models, but it wasn’t lone killers. They were anti-abortionists and they were terrorists.
But no, most anti-abortionists are not and were not terrorists. Attorney General Ashcroft, a very conservative guy and a strong anti-abortionist prosecuted the murderer Eric Rudolph exactly as he should have. Ashcroft showed pretty well during his tenure with Bush.
I followed the link thinking I might learn something about the book, but no, it’s all meta commentary about conservatives and their presumed motives and methods.
Not every book deserves in-depth critical commentary. Some books are only notable for their popularity. Goldberg has produced a book-length talking point guide for neoconservatives in their rhetorical contests against their critics, not an actual work of history or political philosophy. I wouldn’t expect an in-depth review of a book called “Conservative Fascism” either.
..also
Marc, he didn’t say you were a member of a terrorist group, you’re being needlessly defensive against a straw man.
The problem I have with the piece is that you present politics as split only between Republicans and Democrats. Your writing, lacking in specifics, more or less forces the reader to assume that you believe all members within each group are followers of some kind of overall group spirit and direction and that such direction does not significantly waiver. I find no evidence to support such a position of group solidarity and continuity. Ron Paul is one example of a Republican who stands out against the loud mouths and internationalists who presently run the Republican party; I am another. That makes two people who do not act in the manner you ascribe to Republicans. Add a few more, add a great leader, toss a few financiers, and throw out some people who support (at all costs) a tiny country in the Middle East and you might just have a significantly different Republican party.
Moreover, you claim that classical liberalism is dead, but here too you present no evidence to back this fantastic claim. Afterall, it was probably classical liberalism that gave rise to the West. And now classical liberalism is dead as a doornail? Surely, you must present some evidence, even one sentence, to back this claim?
I find all of this writing to be mental masturbation. The key question to me is how anyone could support affirmative action despite the mountain of evidence that it’s a wasted battle? A relative of mine has a lucrative job implementing an EEO/AA policy for a university. She has never wondered if that money, and massive staff resource, would be better spent looking for geniuses.
If you are concerned about facism and the rise of weakly principled, facist Republicans, than maybe you should consider the role of EEO/AA. Perhaps the gradual social pressures which force social people to accept lies and forces men to accept everyone and everything as equal (no matter the evidence) promotes an environment ripe for charlatans. Given that some people may have a natural affinity for modern liberal or classical liberal thought, maybe the introduction of extreme artiface in the form of EEO/AA/Multi-Culturalism causes some people to lose all sense of balance.
Justin
Ron Paul is pretty fringe in the Republican Party as it actually exists — about 8% in the primaries so far.
I don’t know when classical liberlaism died as an actual political force, but my guess it was between 1920 and 1940. It never was strong on the continent, in England the Liberals were superceded by Labor sometime between the two world wars, and Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Carter were all very far from classical liberalism. Reagan tried to revive it, with mixed and limited results, and Bush occasionally talks the talk but his actions bely his words. Ford and Bush the First may be as close as you’re going to get — but not very close.
Justin, GNXP is probably not the place for me to say it, but you vastly overestimate the significance of Affirmative Action as a political issue. Even if I agreed with you I doubt that I’d put it in my top fifty issues. War and Peace, tax policy, managing the economy, the environment, and the various social issues all have many particular ramifications, each of them more important than affirmative action. At worst affirmative action is a minor form of graft, and there’s a lot other, more important graft.
I once opined that I’d never met a pro-liberty lefty. On reflection, I thought that perhaps I did knew one. Then I realised that he only admitted to pro-liberty sentiments when his wife wasn’t present.
BioIgnoramus, I don’t get your point exactly. Almost by definition lefties and American liberals aren’t pure freemarketers, but they’re often civil libertarians in a way that most Republicans are not.
That is one staggering piece you wrote there. It had to do a doubletake when I read it. You made me chuckle when you referred to “liberal notions of tolerance, open-mindedness, and civility” that conservatives supposedly hate. In my observations, American “liberals,” who dominate the Democratic Party (and whom you seem to support) are not exactly characterized by tolerance, open-mindedness and civility, and neither are the Neoconservatives, who have come to dominate the Republican Party (although there are minor differences in the things that cause each group to viciously lash out at others for heretical “crimethink”). (I hope you do realize that the Republicans/”conservatives” that you singled out, such as Jonah Goldberg, nearly all fall into the Neoconservative camp and are a far cry from traditional American Republicans.) These traits of tolerance and civility are far more characteristic of classical liberals and, to a lesser extent, traditionalist (paleo-) conservatives than of either “liberal” Democrats or “neoconservative” Republicans. Alas, as you note in your article, the former two are (nearly) “nostalgia items — dead as a doornail,” while the latter two are in the ascendancy in American political culture.
As you do note in your article, you do seem to recognize this difference between the newer and older ideologies listed above: at their core, both Republican neoconservatism and Democratic “liberalism” are ideologies that (in your words) “like fascists … are more populist and futurist than classical liberals and traditionalist conservatives [and] … are willing to intervene in the economy in a way that classical liberals weren’t.” So if I undersand you correctly, you are basically saying that you prefer one sort of “facist” or “facist like” ideology to another? In the end, both “neoconservatism” and new “liberalism” are both authoritarian ideologies that seek to intrude on everday people’s lives and tell them what they can or can’t do or (much worse) think. They seek to decide as to how best allocate the public’s labor and property for causes that they, the enlightened few, deem best, disregarding the preferences of the benighted public if it does not agree with them. Disurbingly, both have shown that they are not content to confine themselves to imposing their schemes within the limits of their own nation’s sovereignty, but feel compelled to impose their ideas on other nations as well (e.g. the current adminstration’s debacles in the Middle East and the previous administration’s escapades in the Balkans, Carter’s policy of linking US trade and support to American notions of humanitarian standards).
I also think that you are a little off in saying that only the Republicans, like facists, “favored big business with their interventions.” This is simply not true. Both parties have shown over and over again that they are very responsive to business interests (and many other special interest groups as well) seeking government subsidies in one form or another to enrich themselves that distort the market, leading to suboptimal allocations of resources, and end up allowing special interests to place their costs and externalities on the public.
I also fail to see the differences with repect to the degree of “facist”-like “authoritarianism (um, hate crime legislation (and other attempts to judge men’s souls and not just their actions), government sanctioned racial and gender discrimination (i.e., affirmative action),etc.), militarism (um, Clinton in the Balkans), contempt for legality (please, don’t get me started here. “Liberal” judical/Constitutional interpretation is, in my opinion, a supreme form of contempt for legality), xenophobia (What’s wrong with asking whether one thinks that allowing a huge influx of low-skilled, poorly educated third world peasants will have a net positive effect on the long term prospects of current American citizens? Thinking of immigration in this way seems far more productive than either seeking short term profit by importing and exploiting low wage “slaves” without giving heed to the effects this will have on one’s fellow citizens (i.e., the current Republican position on immigration), or seeking to alter the ethnic composition of the country so one can exploit racial identity politics and create a new class of dependents to ensure permanent electoral dominance without heeding the effects of this on one’s current fellow citizens (i.e., the current Democratic position on immigration)), and the cult of personality go (um, Obamamania?)” that you find between the Democrats and Republicans. Both parties strike me as pretty bad in these areas.
You also say, “in the contemporary U.S. the racists are Republicans (the paleoconservatives and the neo-Confederates).” First of all, the paleoconservatives no longer have control of the Republican Party. Last I checked, the Republicans were mouthing the same platitudes as the Democrats and, like the Dems, supporting discrimation based on group membership (i.e., affirmative action). Also, the term “racist” is becomming a much overused word, sort of like heretic in the Middle Ages. It’s really a semantic question as to what it means. Is racism harboring ill will towards another group or people, or is it merely believing that different groups of people may, on average, be different, that they may, on average, be better or worse at some things (e.g., running or academic skills)? To me, the former definition is what constitutes racism and the latter is simply an empirical question (as is the causation of any such differences), as I’m sure many GNXP readers would agree. Is it racist to categorize people by groups and treat them differently (e.g.., affirmative action), or is it racist not to do so? It depends on whether whether one believes in treating people as groups or individuals and whether one believes in equality of oppurtunity or equality of result. As I said, it is largely a semantic question as to whether or not paleocons are racist or whether it is “liberals” or neocons who are racist.
On the whole, I am underwhelmed by the insights in your article. Your contempt for the Republicans (and seeming support for the Democrats) strikes me as analogous to some savage and petty ideological dispute in a religion where both sides are very similar on the big issues, but hate each other and are at each other’s throat over minor doctrinal differences.
The Nazi / Republican analogy is pretty exact. Homosexuals in either group are closeted, and both groups were actively anti-homosexual (the Nazis put thousands or tens of thousands of homosexuals in concentration camps because of their orientation — probably the “flagrant” ones.) Goldberg misrepresent the Nazi facts and ignores the Republican facts. Gay Republicans show up all the time (not that there’s anything wrong with that).
i wouldnt describe the republicans as actively anti-homosexual. opposing gay marriage does not make one anti-homosexual. and that jibe about the possible development of a paramilitary group is ridiculous. whenever conservatives rabbit on about gay marriage they always bathe themselves in a sea of pc platitudes first (nothing wrong with consenting adults etc, just dont want to ‘undermine’ marriage) also, in the past it seemed to be the conservative parties who were more open to homosexuality, indeed homosexuality was considered a kind of vice of an effeminite toff elite.
one of the most popular conservative novels of the 20th century had at least an implied homosexual relationship at its centre. i was leafing through a cs lewis book the other day and he approved of relationships between boarding school boys, considering it ‘inevitable’ in the absence of females.
John,
Well, this is the first I’ve heard about a loose organization of anti-abortion terrorists, and it’s an issue I know a fair amount about.
Anyway, it’s quite a leap to go from saying “I remember there being a loose group of anti-abortion terrorists back in the 90′s” to “anti-abortion terrorists are the number one domestic terrorist threat facing our nation, and could morph into a Republican paramilitary force.”
The Aryan Brotherhood is a prison gang, not a terrorist organization.
I can’t recall the last time I heard about anyone getting killed by an anti-abortionist. I know there was a guy who drove his car into some building he thought provided abortions and then apologized for it, but that’s it.
I think Goldberg’s book should have been written, but not by Goldberg.
I write about the actual Republican Party as I see it in action, not some other Republican Party that would be nice to have. And while paleocons and neo-Confederates don’t control the Republican Party, they’re still part of it and have their degree of influence here and there.
As far as “tolerance, open-mindedness, and civility” go, I think that a lot of liberals are too tolerant and get walked on. If you want to know what I mean by Republican intolerance, just read through the collected speeches of Tom Delay and Newt Gingrich. There was no smear too extreme for those two guys.
If you don’t see the difference between Clinton’s civil liberties violations and Bush’s, or Clinton’s militarism and Bush’s, we probably don’t have much to talk about. Like most ACLU liberals and many conservatives, I opposed Clinton’s encroachments on civil liberties, but when Bush mad much more serious encroachments, the Republicans gave him a blank check.
So if I understand you correctly, you are basically saying that you prefer one sort of “fascist” or “fascist like” ideology to another? No, I think that Keynesianism isn’t Fascist even if Fascists were Keynesians. I define Fascism by the police state, concentration camps, gamgs of hooligans, aggressive militarism, and (in the Nazi case) death camps. If you want to say that Communism is as bad as Fascists I might agree, but Communism is not the same as Fascism.
As far as racism goes, I’d say that racism is holding ill will toward an ethnic or racist group. Goldberg’s argument is that Democrats have a racist past, which is true, and that that makes them fascist-like, which I deny (since Democrats have moved away from that part of their past). If you twiddle with definitions you can call affirmative action racist, but in terms of this argument that’s just a word game.
I grant you that some Democrats are too much like Republicans in granting favors to big business and in supporting aggressive wars. But most opposition to favoritism to big business and to aggressive wars comes from the Democrats. Credit to Ron Paul where due, though; I’m terribly disappointed with the major Democratic candidates on this issue. (But I’ll still say: the people pushing most aggressively for an expanded war are almost all Republicans except for Joe Lieberman, who’s technically not a Democrat any more and who doesn’t act like one.)
Anti-abortion terrorists have killed about ten people. They’ve been laying low during the Bush administration. What they will do if and when a Democrat is elected, and they start to feel again that legal politics won’t work, is an open question. A lot of the right thinks of the Democrats as traitors and so on, as I’ve said.
UPDATE: The numbers aren’t big. 7 murders, 17 attempted murders, and a number of assaults and arsons, peaking before Bush took office. So perhaps what I said should be taken with a grain of salt. But they were terrorists by any definition.
On homosexuals, the anti-gay rhetoric almost all comes from the Republicans today, and not all of them confine themselves to opposing gay marriage or gays n the military.
Again, that’s all just part of this argument because Goldberg tried to claim that Nazis, like liberals, were “gay”. (I may mention that the Nazis were right-to-lifers when healthy Aryan babies were concerned. They supported eugenic abortion, the same way they supported eugenic murder, but were not at all “pro-choice”.)
Blackwater is an undisciplined private army which has been behaving lawlessly in Iraq. If they’re brought home (losing their paychecks) against their will under a Democratic administration, what will they do? A substantial section if the Right believes that Democrats are traitors.
This is the dumbest thing you’ve said on GNXP. You obviously know nothing of the private military contractors who have done this type of work long before OIF. Blackwater is only one of several that do this type of work. Furthermore, Blackwater contracts the elite of former active duty personnel mostly from SF, Seals, Rangers, and Recon. These folks are far from “undisciplined”. This is just more of the conspiratorial BS have peddled for years now starting with “stolen” elections.
I think Goldberg’s book should have been written, but not by Goldberg.
There have been many books about racism among progressives and leftists in the first half of the Twentieth Century, the repressiveness and xenophobia of the Progressives, the relationships between welfare-statism and militarism since Bismarck, syndicalist, anarchist, and Communist influences on Fascism and Naziism, American authoritarianism and militarism in WWI and WWII and since WWII, and Keynesian influences on the Nazis and Fascists. It wouldn’t add up to “liberals are fascists”, but there’s be something there.
But what Goldberg wrote was a cheap and sloppy piece of political hackery which misrepresented and evaded many important questions.
JCR: I disagree. There are other mercenaries at work besides Blackwater, granted, but they’ve caused their share of problems too. Blackwater has been in the news several times recently, and in Iraq they seem to be above the law and very loosely controlled.
I should add: at the present time the Republican party is not Fascist, above all because it does not terrorize opponents with illegal goon squads. I was speculating on how that might change, but I was not predicting that it will and was not saying that it has already happened.
The Fascist traits of the Bush regime are the Bush cult of personality, the unitary Presidency, the many attempts to evade accountability, Congressional oversight, and the rule of law, the extreme encroachments on civil liberties (including the legitimization of torture and the effective suspension of habeas corpus), the increased surveillance, the plans (stated bt some Republicans) for a 20 or 30 year war against an undefined enemy and aimed at world domination (“preponderance in a monopolar world”), and the frequent accusations that Congressmen and others who disagree with Bush about very small questions are leaving America vulnerable to its enemies.
“Ron Paul is pretty fringe in the Republican Party as it actually exists — about 8% in the primaries so far.”
Yes, but my point was that your writing implies that all Republicans basically act and feel the same and that classical liberalism is dead. Ron Paul and I both stand in contrast to your implication, which I assume remains in place because you have yet to issue a retraction. I interpret the divergence of Ron Paul as fludity within the party and also within the mindset of party members. I cannot prove it, but I posit that many Republicans who presently support neocon methods would reconsider their opinions and mindset under a Paul Presidency. If my assumption is correct, then this would further demonstrate fluidity in people and Party, which is a concept I found lacking in your piece. I base my assumption on the notion that humans are social animals evolved to work as part of group. As the group changes direction so do they. But at any given time, not all group members will feel the same thus leaving open the door to change.
As for the other issue, I am also not sure we are talking apples to apples. I wrote that AA/EEO/Multi-Culturalism may give rise to the type of Republican that you seem to detest. The end result of the ascendency of such people would be a chance in societal course. You have evaluated my commets regarding EEO/AA/Multi-Culturalism as a “Political Issue.” I am not certain what you mean by political issue, so we may not be discussing the same dynamic.
Proceeding down my road, I am not sure how you can seperate AA/EEO/Multi-Culturalism from the other issues in your list. The issue here is pure “Broken Window” fallacy: there is that which is seen and that which is unseen. How you confidently contend that you have the ability to seperate a massive social engineering program from other important societal dynamics is a mystery to me. Morever, my experience says you cannot seperate the issues. For instance, how can you be certain that EEO/AA plays no part in the massive importation of H1-B workers? If challenged could you prove false the claim that liberals and necons are more comfortable importing technical professionals compared to developing white talent to a level equal that found in Germany, Finland, Sweden, et al? I contend that by importing technical talent, liberals and neo-cons are not just saving wages, they are able to ignore the black/white IQ gap and make easier the job of balanced AA/EEO. Politicians and other leaders may not work as part of a conspiracy to meet this end, but they don’t have to because each possess the conventional wisdom to ignore difficult issues.
Any item in your top fifty could be similarly challenged. I am not sure how you would seperate AA/EEO/Multi-Culturalism. However, I would be first to give you full credit and glory for any such proof.
Justin
“The anti-abortion terrorists have killed about 10 people in the last ten years. Multiply that and you have a real terrorist threat.”
1 person killed per year in a nation of 300 million people is not even high enough to be called statistical noise. Can you prove that these deaths (if they exist) are all related? And who will multiply these deaths exactly?
As long as we are talking about fascism, how is it that roughly 2 million abortions per year, encouraged by one particular political party with a history of support for eugenics, escapes mention but 1 death per year is evidence of a potential fascistic movement on the right?
Regardless of what individual Republican voters or minority factions of the party think, the Republican has been pretty consistent in its positions since 1994(when Gingrich became Speaker) and especially since 2000 (Bush’s election). 9/11 intensified things. When I talk about Republicans, I’m talking about Republicans in Power, but also about people who support the Republicans in power.
Good or bad, Affirmative Action has a small to moderate effect on a small to moderate number of people. A lot of other government policies have enormous effects on moderate numbers of people, or moderate effects on almost everybody. That’s how I rank issues.
Immigration is a big, messy issue. There’s a lot to talk about, but it isn’t directly relevant to what I’ve written about Goldberg.
That’s a gross misuse of statistics. Terrorists don’t always kill a lot of people. A small number of killings can leverage a lot of threat.
I don’t agree that abortion is murder, so that particular argument doesn’t persuade me. If I did agree, it might work. The “political party with a history of support for eugenics” part is total bullshit, though, as I argued above. Which contemporary Democrat is a supporter of eugenics. (A Republican who once was a supporter of eugenics was Prescott Bush, the President’s grandfather. This link is mostly bullshit, but the Bushes supported Planned Parenthood up to a certain point. Completely irrelevant to anything, IMHO, unless you’re digging up similar dirt on Democrats.
Terrorists don’t always kill a lot of people.
Yes but by definition they spread terror. The medical community is not terrorised, by any stretch of the imagination. You still haven’t answered if the killings are systematic or even given proof that they are real.
Margaret Sanger, that beloved icon of the left, believed in eugenics. If abortion is murder or not is immaterial to the fact that her organization, Planned Parenthood, sprung from her eugenic belief system and prevented many births over the years. This is clearly more fascist than a mythical proto-terror group that manages to kill 1 person a year.
I don’t agree that abortion is murder, so that particular argument doesn’t persuade me.
What about third trimester abortions? Seriously, how are they any different from infanticide?
No, the medical community was terrorized. There’s been continual pressure of many different kinds (mostly legal) on abortion providers, and many of them have been driven out of the business. Many of the remaining abortion providers receive frequent threats, and many of them have had to take elaborate protective measures. The terrorism was effective. The murders stopped, but the threats didn’t.
Fine, then. Back before I was born, Senator Prescott Bush, a republican and our President’s grandfather, was a big supporter of Margaret Sanger and Planned Parenthood. Since I don’t think abortion is murder, I see no problem there.
This is all somewhat peripheral to the main point of my piece on Goldberg, and while I defend what I said (subject to the qualification at 6:45 — these things happened quite a while ago), I probably shouldn’t have said it since it has become a distraction.
But I say that that was terrorism, and it was effective terrorism too.
As I understand, third trimester abortions can be forbidden under Roe vs. Wade.
Abortion isn’t my big issue one way or another, but it’s not one on which finding the middle ground seems worth bothering about.
he fact that her organization, Planned Parenthood, sprung from her eugenic belief system and prevented many births over the years. This is clearly more fascistNo. It is ‘fascist’ only if women were forced to have abortions by the organization. If the only pregnancies terminated were those that the women carrying them wanted to have terminated, the association you have sought to establish does not exist.
Specifically offering abortion services to eugenic targets isn’t coercive.
There’s been continual pressure of many different kinds (mostly legal) on abortion providers, and many of them have been driven out of the business. Many of the remaining abortion providers receive frequent threats, and many of them have had to take elaborate protective measures. The terrorism was effective. The murders stopped, but the threats didn’t.
Continual pressure, threats, elaborate protective measures? This is all vague stuff that doesn’t square with reality and even if it were widespread, it is not terrorism. There are LOTS of clinics all over the country that perform many abortions daily in an atmosphere more like a hair salon than a fort. You still haven’t proven that the killings you mentioned were systematic or real.
Proving that George Prescott Bush also believed in Margaret’s fascistic ideals doesn’t disprove my (or Jonah’s) point. I can just shrug my shoulders and say that yes, he too was a fascist, and it is interesting that the right learned their lesson while the left didn’t.
As to this being peripheral to your point, these statements of yours were just the most egregious; I have problems with most of your other points too. But before I get to those, can you agree that industrialized abortion for the betterment of society was a historically fascist idea and this idea has found fertile soil on the left side of the spectrum?
It is ‘fascist’ only if women were forced to have abortions by the organization. Where did you get this idea? A movement does not have to be coercive to be a movement.
John,
No. While Roe vs. Wade gave states the option of outlawing or restricting third trimester abortions, Doe vs. Balton made abortion legal on request in the United States throughout a woman’s pregnancy if it was in the interest of her health. “Health” under Doe vs. Balton is so broadly defined that abortion is effectively legal on request throughout the course of a pregnancy.
About 10% of abortions in the U.S. are second trimester, and 1% are third trimester. One percent of 2 million is 20,000. So, if you believe that 3rd trimester abortions are murder, then you must agree that pro-choicers are responsible for 20,000 deaths each year in America, whereas pro-lifers have been responsible for, what, 7 in the past 10?
And *we’re* the side that’s going to spawn the next fascist, paramilitary group?
There are statistics about the reduction of numbers of clinics providing abortions and the threats to doctors, and the facts about elaborate safety precautions are real. I’d point you to some sources, but you’re not really interested and I’d be wasting my time. Using murder and the threat of murder to intimidate people is terrorism, strictly speaking, and that’s exactly what happened.
No, I don’t agree with that at all. Support for abortion was distributed all over the spectrum, as the example of the Republican Prescott Bush shows (unless you want to argue that he was a fascist-sympathizer because of his documented financial involvents with the Nazis). Argue abortion on its merits, not on cherry-picked historical sources from 60 or more years ago.
The Nazis were strongly pro-natalist and forbade healthy German women to have abortions.
You still haven’t proven that the killings you mentioned were systematic or real.
The murders were real. They were reported in the newspapers, and Eric Rudolph, for example, was prosecuted by John Ashcroft and is now in federal prison. I don’t know what you want me to “prove” about the murders being “real”. That’s pretty poor argumentation.
I think it would be best for you and I to quit talking.
OK, the idea that abortion is fascist doesn’t go anywhere with me. I was misinformed about third-trimester abortions. If I thought that rational discussion were possible on the topic, I might talk about the third trimester, but most anti-abortion people think that the morning-after pill is murder, and to me that’s just silly. Catholic anti-abortion groups (following the Pope) disapprove of contraception.
We’re lost in the weeds, though. My mentioning the anti-abortion groups was a mistake, because it was Goldberg (and related issues) I wanted to talk about.
I did not admit that third-trimester abortions are murder, and 20,000 abortions necessary to save the life and health of the mother does not seem excessive to me.
No one has to believe me, but this is true. In the 50s and 60s my father was an MD in two Catholic hospitals in small-town Minnesota (St. Luke’s and Our Lady of Mercy, Alexandria, Minnesota). In cases when giving birth would risk the life of the mother, doctors there would “assume that the baby was already dead”. (His actual words, and he was anti-abortion). In other words, they systematically favored to mother over the baby, which seems quite reasonable to me. (I don’t know where this policy came from, or whether the Church approved, though it seems like reasonable Catholic casuistry to me). Reasonableness has become more difficult in recent decades.
reduction of numbers of clinics providing abortions and the threats to doctors
Yes, but are these two linked? Is the relationship causitive? There are fewer anesthesiologists too.
I’d point you to some sources, but you’re not really interested and I’d be wasting my time.
Wrong again; please show me.
forbade healthy German women to have abortions.
Yes healthy women but that is the point. They were quick to weed out the inferior for the “betterment” of society. Many elements of American society were sympathetic to this view; only the left is now.
They were reported in the newspapers, and Eric Rudolph, for example, was prosecuted by John Ashcroft and is now in federal prison.
Now who is cherry-picking? Show me a consistent, systematic and sustained effort by any group to murder doctors in the US for doing abortions. Then show me proof that this created terror in any sense of the word. The right has no proto-terrorist group waiting to spread a fascist agenda. This is ridiculous.
“When I talk about Republicans, I’m talking about Republicans in Power, but also about people who support the Republicans in power.”
But that is not what your wrote, so what is the point of flagrant opining?
“Good or bad, Affirmative Action has a small to moderate effect on a small to moderate number of people.”
As you cleary intended you wiped away my entire argument by saying that AA/EEO has a small to moderate effect on a small to moderate number of people. Of course, you fail to provide proof for this position because you failed to address the economic maxim I presented: how can you ever know when there is that which is Unseen?
Given that you make huge claims and brush off challenges to prove your claims, I politely ask why anyone should ever bother to read your writings? What is the point of publishing your thoughts and inviting comments if not to respond in a rational and complete manner? Is modern liberalism nothing more than the ability to ignore reality and responsibility in debate?
Justin
Keith, you are quibbling. The information is out there and easy to find, and you’re basically calling me a liar. I’ll give you a hint: surf around on Google or on pro-choice sites and find out what they say about this.
A few stranger killings, combined with frequent intensive and loud demonstrations pushing the envelope of legality, combined with the publication of personal information about the abortion provider (and their children) on the internet and elsewhere, combined with anonymous threats, combined with various sorts of stalking behavior and harassment, adds up to a powerful incentive to quit, and a lot of abortion providers have quit and have testified that that’s the reason why.
This is all factual, and if you don’t believe me, research it yourself and get back to me. If you don’t believe me, I’m a liar and you’re wasting your time talking to me. But let’s cut this short.
The anti-abortion people state their intentions of intimidating abortion providers, and they take credit whenever one quite.
And to repeat, seven murders out of the blue by strangers have a very powerful effect, especially if there are a lot of threats and stalking too, even if the number of murders is statistically insignificant.
Justin, for Christ’s sakes, that’s nuts. What is the Unseen effect of affirmative action — satanic possession or something? Affirmative Action is a known thing, not a mystery of the kaballa.
Alright, I am getting bored with the abortion theme now too so let’s work on this one:
“As far as authoritarianism, militarism, contempt for legality, xenophobia, and the cult of personality go, the Republican Party which Goldberg automatically supports is remarkably more fascistic than the Democrats or any liberal group, so Goldberg just obscures these issues.”
Fascism is not inherently any of those things. Mr. Goldberg takes great pains to explain that fascism is based on socialist and nationalistic ideals. Authoritatianism, militarism etc. are the forms they took in Europe before WWII. The fasci symbol is many sticks or rods (symbolic of industries, people, nations or societies etc) being tied together. It is a symbol that means nothing is outside the state. All elements of society work as one towards a common purpose. Think “It Takes a Village” by Hilary Clinton write large, or “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”
The right side in today’s America is much more supportive of individual rights and much more sceptical of socialist ideas. Socialized health care, social security, unions, gun control, smoking bans, state-sponsored education, wealth redistribution, big government, draconian environmental laws etc etc. are primarily causes on the left. You can argue whether these are bad or good but they are fascistic.
Leftists should love Goldberg as his book is an own goal. By defining “totalitarian” to be *fascist* rather than communist, he affords the left the moral high ground. This is the neocons’ standard MO: justify ostensibly rightist policies in leftist terms. Witness Bruce Bartlett in the WSJ bleating about how “racist” the Democrats are. This sort of rhetorical tack cedes the discourse and frame to the left, trading minor tactical victory for long term strategic loss.
The real book to write would be “conservative communism”, detailing how the blood’n'soil nationalism which is the beating heart of the right was coopted by a cabal of “former” trotskyites for their own nationalist purposes.
Goldberg has invented a weird definition of fascism that no one accepts but him. His definition is fine-tuned to make it possible to say things like:
The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn’t an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.
but that’s just loony. He’d have O’Brien at the end of 1984 say:
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a daycare worker giving a sugarless bran cookie to a toddler — forever.
I also came up with this one:
A hug is liberal fascism’s equivalent of a pistol shot to the back of the head
You can have infinite fun with Goldberg’s silliness.
Keith, state-sponsored education in the US goes back to the Civil War or a decade or two thereafter. No sane person can call it fascistic.
Defining the chauvinist, racist, militarist, authoritarian, lawless aspects out of fascism, while calling state-sponsored education fascist is strictly twilight zone looney tunes.
GC, we do love Goldberg because he’s so silly, but we’re fooling ourselves, because plenty of people will believe him, and he’ll have a long career on TV saying ridiculous, slanderous things and getting away with it.
You don’t take Goldberg seriously, and that’s to your credit, but you’re not most conservatives. There are a lot of sillies out there, as I’ve found out on other comment threads (no, not this one).
I agree that the obsession of many conservative spokesmen with turning liberals point against them — “No, liberals are the intolerant ones” — shows bankruptcy. (Note that in my own piece I hinted that I think that liberals are often TOO tolerant, and that conservatives who are angered by the inanity of that have a point. Though I didn’t spell it out.)
“Justin, for Christ’s sakes, that’s nuts. What is the Unseen effect of affirmative action — satanic possession or something? Affirmative Action is a known thing, not a mystery of the kaballa.”
Well, you have demonstrated an ability to ignore any issue by saying something complicated is as clear as day. Every economic action likely has Unseen effects, and that should be considered fact, until someone can prove otherwise. To that end, you, nor anyone else, is able to predict the full effects of a massive social engineering program such as AA/EEO. The program is too massive and society too big for you to consider the infinite number of possible outcomes.
One example: Ford fails to hire a super smart manager of incredible mental and character comportment. This one person would be the savior of the company and perhaps invigorate new technology and the save hundreds of thousands of American jobs. Instead Ford hires an AA candidate who while smart is not in the league of the first gentleman. Quite simply neither you nor anyone else cannot prove the above scenario has not already happened. Until you can prove otherwise, how can you be sure there are no unseen effects of AA/EEO/Multi-Cultaralism on any level? Imagine the scenario above? Ford is a real company with real problems and a huge supplier base. Taking any chance with staff quality is a recipe for economic pain and suffering.
Classical Liberalism will not die so long as there are men that recognize the greatness of the individual. I suppose we differ in that regard and that is why you believe you can social engineer a society and be confident in the outcome, while I believe such a position is complete folly. I am sure our differences are as hardwired as religion. But I notice you present no evidence, hard or soft, so I am confident in my beliefs (religion). I remain open to proof counter to my opinion.
Justin
Justin, I don’t do fairies and leprechauns. If you want to convince me that AA is harmful, you’ll have to conbfine yourself to the See.
I did not admit that third-trimester abortions are murder, and 20,000 abortions necessary to save the life and health of the mother does not seem excessive to me.
Are third trimester abortions murder, yes or no? If no, then what is the difference between abortion in this instance and infanticide?
As for third trimester abortions being “necessary to save the life and health of the mother,” go back and look at the legislation under Doe vs. Balton. Health is defined so broady that a woman can literaly say, “I’m not prepared to have this baby,” and bam, her mental health is at risk and she can have the abortion.
Accordng to a 1987 Guttmacher Institute survey, the most common reason given why women had later, as opposed to earlier abortions, was “Woman didn’t recognize she was pregnant or misjudged gestation.” Only 2% of women receiving late-term abortions reported doing so because of fetal problems arising late in pregnancy.
And for what it’s worth, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a pro-lifer who didn’t believe that a woman had the right to an abortion if the pregnancy were threatening her life.
Sorry if this conversation is getting tiresome, but I’m sick of people deliberately interpreting any statistic related to abortion to cast the pro-choice argument in the most positive possible light.
No, it’s not murder. I already said so.
I don’t play slippery-slope. I’m happy to put the dividing line at birth.
As I said, abortion isn’t my issue. Under other circumstances I might be willing to talk about the third trimester, but the current debate is so insane that I’ll just stick with my generic liberal “life begins at birth” position.
john — exactly, ideological bankruptcy.
I agree with you that jonah’s definition of fascism is cringeworthy. For one thing, it makes fascism out to be totalitarian when it has always been understood as authoritarian. Fascism is a modern version of tribe against tribe. Tribes dont kill their own people. Communism is quite different in that it is the national body against itself, at least superficially. Slezkine would argue that the same tribe vs tribe was going on in Russia, with Russians the losing ones. I wouldn’t be surprised if detailed ethnographic analyses of china and other countries also found ethnic fissures to be the driving orce behind a nominally universalist ideology… Certainly over time racial and economic marxism have become fused, as manifested in Jeremiah wright and AMLO amng others…
all that digression notwithstanding Jonah (like brooks, kristol , etc.) has an obvious factor that keeps him from thinking of communism rather than Nazism as the greatest calamity of the twentieth century. That drives everyhting else; from the extent go which the neocons distance themselves from true nationalism to their tendency to do as leftist do and label evrythin they diagree with as fascism (islamofascis, liberal fascism, feminazi).
Apologies for typos sent from a portable
“If you want to convince me that AA is harmful, you’ll have to confine yourself to the Seen.”
Sorry.
“Justin, I don’t do fairies and leprechauns. If you want to convince me that AA is harmful, you’ll have to conbfine yourself to the See.”
You miss the entire benefit of economic theory: betterment of the world through good decisions. I have already provided you an example. You cannot refute my examples because your position is untenable.
A very weak debate. I remember back in 2001/2002 with Godless. He could put up a fight.
Of course, I don’t recall him every saying anything equivocal to providing preferences to millions of under-qualified men and women who also likely suffer from poor time preference would not cause economic misery.
Times, they are changing.
Justin
Justin, when someone starts talking about The Invisible, no one has to argue.
The number of individuals affected by AA is small, and the amount of help any of them get is small to moderate. They still have to qualify and perform.
I wasn’t talking about hiring a hundred thousand surgeons to work as surgeons, or millions of whatever you were fantasizing about. That’s not in the cards.
“I wasn’t talking about hiring a hundred thousand homeless to work as surgeons”….
Getting sleepy.
“Justin, when someone starts talking about The Invisible, no one has to argue.”
None of this is invisible, it is Unseen because people fail to look. You say the people hired are qualified, but you present no proof. You say they must perform, but present no proof. In the absence of proof, why would you assume your position true?
Then you say only a small to moderate number of people are affected, but don’t give specific numbers. Then you say you don’t support fantasy, but how could you know when you don’t even know the numbers you are arguing?
AA is a massive program and puts the objectively less qualified into positions that would otherwise be taken by someone with greater ability. That seems beyond the debate, because if the converse were true, then AA would not be needed. If you are interested in justice, then why sacrifice anyone: be it the soldier in war or the hard working guy applying to Harvard.
Justin
Justin, AA is less important than fiscal policy, military policy, foreign policy, tax policy, environmental policy, and so on. It’s less important than the War in Iraq. It’s less important than civil liberties and the related Constitional issues. That’s what I said. As I understand, you’re demanding that I quantify and prove everything. Can’t be done, not gonna happen. You’re free to disagree, but to mst people what I said makes sense.
You’re raving and I can’t talk to you. You go your way, I’ll go mine.
John,
It is truly astounded how you just brush aside or dismiss anything you disagree with without any attempt at reasoned refutation. It is truly staggering. Both neoconservatism (which Mr. Goldberg expounds) and “liberalism” (which you seem to be so fond of) are, at their core, aggresive ideologies where an “enlightened” few, believing that they know best, seek to impose their will over their fellow men, trampling over their liberties and disposessing them of their property and the fruits of their efforts and directing them in how to behave, act, and live their lives. This is a suppremely arrogant worldview and shows no respect for one’s fellow man. You get worked up about neocons employing US blood and treasure to rampage through the Middle East and killing many innocent people in the hope of helping their beloved Israel, but you feel perfectly justified in using the same type of state actions to support things you like, even when other people, with a different moral framework, might view such action as equally reprehensible and murderous. The problem with both neocons and “liberals” is that they think they can socially engineer the world according to their own tastes and preferences, the consequences to others be damned.
This is getting loopier and loopier. PhillyGuy, what specifically are you talking about? I’m not a neocon, and neocons aren’t liberals — they’re Republicans. The stuff you’re saying is all empty generalities. Please say something intelligible.