Video: Liberal Fascism

Chris at Apologies Demanded posted an excellent video of Jonah Goldberg on Hannity and Colmes, discussing his important book, Liberal Fascism. Colmes's argument against Goldberg basically consists of this: "Your book has a Hitler with a smiley face on the cover! You're trying to make it look like the Left is all Nazis!" And his debate strategy is basically to shout Goldberg down whenever he tries to say something. I think that this, and Goldberg's "choppy as hell" interview on The Daily Show, shows how important the facts in this book are and how damaging to the Left. For years, the idea was that if you wanted to deride a leftist you called him a socialist, and if you wanted to deride a right-winger, you called him a fascist. Well, the truth is that Fascism and Socialism have the very same philosophical underpinnings, which underpinnings they share with modern liberals. Think here of Karl Marx and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and their principles of rationalism and class struggle. The Right of today is very much descended from a slightly older and more traditionally American philosophy, the classical liberalism of Smith, Locke, Montesquieu, and others.

Here is the video: