Tag: jonah goldberg

Matthew Yglesias endorses key point of Liberal Fascism.

A little surprising, that. 

Background: in the course of trying to boost what has been generally conceded to be a not-particularly-good Second Inaugural speech made by Barack Obama yesterday, Yglesias wrote:

Summing up the ideological brief, Obama even indulged in American liberalism’s favorite ideological tic—the insistence that it’s not an ideology at all, but simply a pragmatic response to changing circumstances.

 Which, if you’ve read Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, actually sounds very familiar.  It is, in fact, at the core of the parallel he draws between how modern American liberalism sells itself and how fascist movements have sold themselves:

The unique threat of today’s left-wing political religions is precisely that they claim to be free from dogma. Instead, they profess to be champions of liberty and pragmatism, which in their view are self-evident goods. They eschew “ideological” concerns. Therefore they make it impossible to argue with their most basic ideas and exceedingly difficult to expose the totalitarian temptations residing in their hearts. They have a dogma, but they put it out of bounds.

Continue reading Matthew Yglesias endorses key point of Liberal Fascism.

RedState Review: The Tyranny of Cliches.

Jonah Goldberg has a new book out coming out tomorrow – the full title is The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas – which will be seen by many to be a sort of sequel to his previous (and very useful work Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.  I say ‘sort of sequel’ because The Tyranny of Cliches is not exactly an expansion of Liberal Fascism as it is a book that references a lot of the same events and themes as its ‘predecessor,’ only from the angle of ‘how progressives manipulate language’ as opposed to ‘how progressives manipulate history.’  Capsule review: The Tyranny of Cliches does an excellent job in puncturing several progressive delusions about their ideology, including the one about how progressives don’t really have an ideology in the first place; you want to read it.

The central message of The Tyranny of Cliches is Progressives have a consistent ideology, which they then proceed to pretend is not an ideology at all, but instead mere ‘Pragmatism.’  The reason why this is important is because ideologies can be and are rigorously questioned and challenged as a matter of course; but if one can instead get people to treat an ideological position as merely being something that ‘everybody knows,’ then it theoretically becomes easier to get people to unquestionably endorse said position.  Hence, ‘tyranny of cliche:’ cliches are of course self-contained and internally consistent thoughts* that most people in a culture understand and accept.  Having progressive ideas and concepts slip into that shared consensus would go a long way towards having those ideas and concepts adopted and used. Continue reading RedState Review: The Tyranny of Cliches.

#rsrh The Tyranny Blog.

Not quite what you think: it’s a blog by Jonah Goldberg in support for his new book The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas, which will be coming out this Tuesday.  I’ll be reviewing this book in more detail tomorrow on RedState (as well as something that I’ll save as a minor not-really-a-surprise for Tuesday), but here’s the gist: it’s good on its merits, and like Jonah’s previous book Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning it will likely integrate a whole lot of data that you already knew into a new way of looking at those most unpragmatic ‘pragmatists’ that make up so much of the modern progressive Left.  Check it out.

#rsrh QotD, Well, It’s Mean: *BUT*… edition.

Jonah Goldberg, on Mitt Romney’s major obstacle to winning the GOP nomination:

I have shaken Romney’s hand a few times, and I can say he feels surprisingly lifelike.

Don’t get me wrong: if Mitt Romney gets the nomination, then I’ll vote for him. Cheerfully. The alternative is Barack Obama, and I’m kind of done with Barack Obama. But Romney’s… fragile. Fragile like Obama, and the current debate system is not actually helping him. One reason why I want the debates whittled down to five people (or less, at this point) is because Romney needs more on-the-griddle time. A lot more.

Moe Lane

Jonah Goldberg is tired of the vicious hypocrisy of these people…

…for that matter, so am I.

‘These people’ being the media, and their contemptible willingness to accept a double standard when it comes to violent rhetoric.  After screaming for so long about every possible hint of a suggestion of a possibility of violent speech from the Right, it’s amazing what will be forgiven when it comes from the Left:

Tom Friedman — who knows a bit about Hezbollah — calls the tea partiers the “Hezbollah faction” of the GOP bent on taking the country on a “suicide mission.” All over the place, conservative Republicans are “hostage takers” and “terrorists,” “terrorists” and “traitors.” They want to “end life as we know it on this planet,” says Nancy Pelosi. They are betraying the founders, too. Chris Matthews all but signs up for the “Make an Ass of Yourself” contest at the State Fair.  Joe Nocera writes today that “the Tea Party Republicans can put aside their suicide vests.” Lord knows what Krugman and Olbermann have said.

Then last night. on the very day Gabby Giffords heroically returns to cast her first vote since that tragic attack six months ago, the Vice President of the United States calls the Republican Party a bunch of terrorists.

Regardless, No one cares.

Continue reading Jonah Goldberg is tired of the vicious hypocrisy of these people…

I don’t know why Jonah Goldberg bothered…

…to write about the fairly predictable way that his comments about liberalism and the paranoid style were brushed off. Actually, I do know why. He wanted to write this last paragraph:

The point is that when liberals and leftists spout conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions — as they have for generations now — it’s written off by the liberal establishment as either an isolated incident, or an understandable exaggeration or, simply, the truth and therefore not a conspiracy theory. And: It Is Annoying.

Which It Is: and I recognize full well that it’s necessary and proper to keep pointing out that the major difference between their nuts and our nuts is that our nuts spout off their conspiracy theories on the Internet and local media outlets, not Congressional committees*.  None the less, it’s a particularly thankless task, even if it is necessary.  It’s not even the hostile responses that grate (those are, in fact, kind of fun to witness)…

Moe Lane

PS: At some point, I guess I should read Liberal Fascism: I hate depleting the personal budget for a partisan political book, but enough people pro-and-con have read and referenced it that at some point I’ll have to take the hit. I’d get it from the library, except that the local one lacks a copy…

*Yeah.  Waters was probably talking about the Jews, there.  Hey, don’t look at me:  it’s not my fault.  When my party chose its legislative leaders unwisely we just picked people who bellied up to the trough right next to the Democrats.  Besides, at least we kept gas prices down and the Dow up.

Crossposted to RedState.

They’re remaking the Taking of Pelham 123?

Count me in with Ross Douthat and Jonah Goldberg: this is just plain dumb. If the horrible remakes of Rollerball and Death Race 2000 taught us anything, it should have taught us this: don’t remake Seventies dystopia movies – which The Taking of Pelham One Two Three most emphatically is.

I’d say “What next? Are they going to remake “The Warriors?” – except that I’ve yet to catch that one, actually. But if they do, it’ll still probably suck.