Goldberg Ad Astra (Pt. II)
Posted on December 19th, 2007 by Gavin M.
Above: Fried-dough stand at the Carnival of Buncombe
Believe it or not, we’re about to reach the part where he identifies Progressivism itself as fascist. As in, the end of child labor, the forty-hour work-week, the founding of America’s national parks — in short, all that totalitarian goose-stepping stuff that interferes with the natural order of human society, i.e. feudalism under the ministry of robber barons.
No, I’m not kidding. Yes, it’s really that bad.
He stole the entire book from conservapedia.
Gary should demand royalties.
I’ve been following these posts all day, and it just gets better and better. Forget traditional contrarianism that can be summed up as “black is white and up is down.” In Jonah’s world, horse is butter and car is maypole. In other words, he’s gone to plaid.
Jeebus Christmas.
Did he write this whole book while recovering from a closed head wound?
liberal fascist speak of a “Third Way”
Tony Blair, fascist.
Words *mean* things. If “liberal fascism” is different from traditional fascism, then it’s *not* bloody *fascism,* IS IT? (to paraphrase Monty Python)
I dunno… seems to me the political climate has really changed for these kind of books. Ann Coulter doesn’t get the kind of buzz she used to. I think it’s gonna be a flop.
Just put the book down and walk away slowly. There are people here to help you. Please, there is another way.
Hey, Jonah.
You got a source for that ‘what liberals believe” stuff?
Do you know what a source is?
So the New Deal – Relief, Recovery, and Reform – was actually the Neu Deal!?
Regurgitate, Reword, and Revise is more like it.
I don’t need to source every little thing that I pull out of my ass.
Sources are for fascists.
Perhaps what we mean by “totalitarian” is not what normal people mean with its sinister connotations but maybe we mean “liberal” beliefs that there are no hard choices although all choices are political.
Of course, these are often referred to by people not making my central point as “classical fascists” since they are not Brown-educated female grade school teachers, but this is not my point, since this is central to my point.
Wait, “no child left behind” is a Republican thing. Did he just call Bush a totalitarian? Or a communist? I’m so confused.
Goddamn that Hannah Arendt for ruining and debasing that word that had such a nice meaning and sound, and making it forever associated with the Nazis. I mean, who would do such a thing as that?
I love how he switches between “we” and “I” throughout these clips.
It’s as if his book is really, really badly written, or something.
You know what Jonah’s book reminds me of?
The Smurfs.
You know how so many of the nouns and verbs, and most of the adjectives, were just some form of smurf, like smurfy, smurfing, smurfed and smurfily? Until you couldn’t even really tell what they were talking about?
Just replace “smurf” with “fascist” and you got Jonah’s book.
Isn’t it smurfy?
“no child left behind” is a Republican thing.
remember, “We are all fascists now” (see table of contents). You’re just proving Jonah’s point!
That was me, making the smurfs comparison. Forgot to change my usename, consarnit. Darn meddling liberal fascists.
I, for one, am just really glad that conservatives don’t make sex political. that would be terrible.
you’re such a name fascist, “Smurfy X”.
“just as with classical fascism, liberal fascists speak of a ‘third way’….”
seriously, seriously, seriously. you straw man building (and i mean epic, tower of babel sized straw man) motherfucker. WHO. SAYS. THAT?
i want names, man! i want citations. i want proof that this is some “liberal” tendency!!!!!!!!!!!!
no, you have nothing? and yet you predicate a cold war level domino falling of logical fallacy based on this notion? you fucking loser. seriously, jonah goldberg is just an asshole. a stupid asshole, but mostly an asshole. but fuck him, i’m more interested in the horse he rode in on. to whit, i say: fuck you LA Times for paying/publishing this fucktard, fuck you Doubleday (DOUBLEDAY???????!!!!!!!!) for paying/publishing this idiocracy, fuck you editor and doubleday for allowing yourself to be a badly paid crack-ho to this shit, fuck all of you. whoever in another thread gave tom wolfe an “F” for his thoughts…i mean, jesus fucking christ on a crutch, this is the most embarrassing public self-immolation since…since ever. EVER.
gah. goodnight.
Stop smurfing me, Fascistleen.
Ha! Liberals think that food is political! Food, political, ho, hah, wheeze. *Wipes tears from eyes.*
Because we all know that food appears magically for free whenever you want it and there’s no producing or exchanging that goes on in regards to food, no siree, and that farmers (if food didn’t magically appear for free, and they actually existed, that is) have nothing to do with politics.
What, you think he recovered?
Stap hatin’ on Jonah. If it wasn’t for him, half of us would be out of work. He calls us fascists because we’re organized, but he (his mother, actually) pays the bills.
Believe it or not, we’re about to reach the part where he identifies Progressivism itself as fascist.
I’m also noting that this is happening on just page 14. You’ve still got over 400 pages of this to go. At current rate, that translates to about 200 more posts. I hope you have decent health insurance and someone in the house with you at all times. Godspeed on your mission.
I have to quibble about your screenshot. Surely there must have been an accompanying page where he accidentally photo-copied his half-eaten donut? I think we all need to see the full picture to grasp the enormity of Goldberg’s ideas.
You either support blowing people up, or you don’t.
There is no Third Way. I don’t care what David Carradine says.
At current rate, that translates to about 200 more posts.
Whoops. I spaced out the tag-team action. It’s only 100 more posts each.
Gavin, I hope you and Brad are using protection.
Seriously, I got to the part where Mussolini is all about “no child left behind” and then everything went black.
“place their faith in priestly experts who know better, who plan, exhort, badger, and scold.”
PLANNING
“A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape.”
EXHORTING
“Auslaender Raus!”
BADGERING
“Jewish dwellings were smashed into and contents demolished or looted. In one of the Jewish sections, an eighteen-year-old boy was hurled from a three-story window to land with both legs broken…”
SCOLDING
“The men, women, and children were led to a place of execution which in most cases located next to a more deeply excavated anti-tank ditch. Then they were shot, kneeling or standing, and the corpses were thrown into the ditch.”
I cannot believe it. He accuses liberals of being totalitarian because they view everything in life as political. This coming from a writer for National Review, where every rock song, every movie, every ice cream flavor is analyzed for its potential conservativeness. Where writers insist that sales clerks saying “Happy Holidays!” are an urgent political problem.
Combining this thread with the immediate predecessor, I come to the only possible conclusion. Jonah did not write this, he shat it out his ass with the help of some fascist herbal remedies from his local Wholly Fascist Foods.
Totalitarianism is all about power. Liberals want the power to make things legal.
It’s so obvious!
Actual quotes from this careful, thorough argument!
Top of page: “…liberalism today sees no realm of human life that is beyond political significance…”
Bottom of page: “what unites them [liberals and fascists] are … the urge to ‘get beyond’ politics ….”
Good Lord. Was this book edited? Or read by anyone at all, ever?!!!
Um, excuse me, who impersonated me up there at 6:56?
Cuz that wasn’t me. I don’t even mind what you said, but it wasn’t me.
He accuses liberals of being totalitarian because they view everything in life as political.
Umm, but [I’m too lazy to go back and find the quote] about 5 posts back, there’s a screenshot of Jonah saying one of the central points of fascism (shared by all the supposed differing types of fascism) was that they believed in “getting beyond the political”.
WTF???????
oops. sophronia – you beat me.
I’m about to go grade Freshman English EFL essays right now. For most of my students, my class was the first time they were called on to write essays in any language, let alone a foreign one, so it is no wonder they write poorly. However, no matter what my students have written, it can’t be as stupid as that. My students, sadly, will never know the debt of gratitude they owe to Mr. Pantload.
Pilgrim–how can you not care what David Carradine says? WTF? You’re teh fashionist!
Has anyone else noticed the predictable use of the word “Orwellian”? I was kind of wondering where it would show up in the Opus-Berg. OMG, he did actually say, “Liberal fascism differs from classical fascism in many ways.” He actually started a paragraph with that sentence.
OK, where are we going to gather to sit and read this in bookstores? I want a list of cities/which bookstore. Let’s organize a laugh-in here people. I can’t be the only giggle-prone person here who wants to actually peruse this thing along with cohorts. Anyone?
The capitalist– communist– fascist– liberal– Aw, fuck it. The (undescribable) bookstore owners will just throw y’all out.
seriously, seriously, seriously. you straw man building (and i mean epic, tower of babel sized straw man) motherfucker. WHO. SAYS. THAT?
The DLC. I’m not calling them out as fascists but that’s factually correct. I think if you throw third way into google you will find a contrarian democratic institution that mostly makes it’s bone by capitulating with republicans on trade and defense issues. Third wayism has a long and disreputable reputation but if they are fascists Jonah’s fellow travellers make them look like pikers.
This really is following the “Hitler was a vegetarian, therefore vegetarians are Nazis” line of thought, isn’t it.
Whoops! Mussolini was (loadfully*) all about “it takes a village.” We regret the error.
Hmmm…. How does Monsieur Merde-en-culottes explain how “no child left behind” is less fascistic than “it takes a village”?
*The usuals (allegedly, supposedly, apparently) don’t apply, because they posit some logical if-then connection to the real world. When the only connection is the one produced by including the terms in the same sentence… that requires a distinct and descriptive adverb.
“The conservative vision holds that…the only perfect society waits for us in the next life….”
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union….”
Founding Fathers were fascists, obviously.
Show, don’t tell. Jonah, writers show and don’t tell….SHOW DON’T TELL, Jonah, godammit! The awfulness of his style alone makes me wish my eyes were bleeding.
Bridges! Gekkos! Schwarznegger! Bukkake! Glizzleglorp! What do these exclamations have in common? Taken together they are more coherent than Jonah’s weighty tome.
Lex-
I think the best approach would be to gather a large number of like-minded liberals, historians, or just people who know how logic works or what words mean, book Jonah for a public reading, and see how long he’d go on in the face of howling laughter before he stalked off and whined about how he was viciously attacked by the fascists.
“We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”
This fits Goldberg’s definition of fascism perfectly. Except that there is no mention of vegetarianism.
His definition of fascism is so expansive that the only governments in the world today that aren’t fascist are the flagrant despotisms.
North Korea, where government exists to glorify Dear Leader and the citizenry is expected to sacrifice to promote his well-being, is less fascist than Canada.
See, what we need is an historian accrediting agency. People who want to claim to have knowledge of history (and this will be required to publish any sort of historical book) will need a license from said organization. People who attempt to publish without a license will be required to print their book with a warning label.
Damn the WGA strike. Imagine Goldberg getting a slot on Jon Stewart to plug this joke. People might actually die laughing.
Seriously,
Jonah has just written his own Mein Kampf.
Redefining the political landscape. Check.
Tracing a vast conspiracy through history. Check.
Shit, that’s what I thought graduate school was for…
People who attempt to publish without a license will be required to print their book with a warning label.
The warning is right there on the cover where it says “Jonah Goldberg”
I was thinking today of how fun it would be to walk into Walden and flip through Master Shake’s book and laugh really loud and obnoxiously until asked to leave.
I live in Lancaster in north Los Angeles County, very, very conservative. I try to close my ears when I’m in public because the stuff I hear? The stupid! It burns!!! Just today I overheard a woman say that it’s too bad Arnold Schwarzenegger can’t be president because “he would go over to Iran and Iraq and make them stop.”
I wanted to shout “Make them stop what? What does that even mean, you ninny!”
The Walden history section has lots of books with titles like “The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History” and “The Truth About Thirty Myths of American History that the Liberals Don’t Want You to Know.” (I flipped through the latter a few weeks ago. The half that wasn’t straw man myths was composed of the usual half-truths and distortions.)
If Jonah’s book will be a welcome addition to bookstore’s stock, it would be here.
Because we all know that food appears magically for free whenever you want it and there’s no producing or exchanging that goes on in regards to food, no siree, and that farmers (if food didn’t magically appear for free, and they actually existed, that is) have nothing to do with politics.
Here’s what I think happened. Back in second or third grade, little Jonah ran out of Cheetos in the middle of class, and his liberalfascist female teacher decided to teach him a lesson. She made Jonah close his eyes, fold his hands, and pray to Jesus for more Cheetos. When he opened his eyes, the only thing on his desk was a bunch of organically grown carrots and a copy of The Complete Book of Running. Disappointed, Jonah started to cry. Then his teacher once again made him close his eyes, only this time she made him pray to the liberalfascist Maximum Leader, Herr Joedolfery McClintler. “Pleez, Deer Leedur, I kan haz mor Cheetos??” Jonah pleaded. He opened his eyes once again, and to his delight, there was a family size bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos right there on his desk! His teacher smiled, confident that she had won over another convert.
Alas, Jonah ate the whole bag in one sitting and then had to spend the rest of the day in the bathroom. This turned him against the liberalfascists, and he dedicated himself to bringing down the Swarthmore-educated hordes who had wrecked his colon and stolen his childhood.
The End.
That page is possibly the most asinine thing I’ve ever read. The closest it gets to being clever is a pathetic sleight of hand involving two definitions of “totalitarian”. The rest is just a laundry list of slurs. The most egregiously wrongheaded bit of it was pointed out by Kathleen: could anyone really argue that the politicization of sex is a liberal, rather than conservative, trait?
Another thing: Jonah seems very uncomfortable talking about faith. He knows that he has to do it (the rules of his team) but when he tries, he produces remarkably tone-deaf and hackneyed phrases: the only utopia awaits us in the next life, indeed. And he has to take a swipe at science in there, but he does it briefly and timidly because he’s embarrassed by it.
Then again, maybe he’s just a bad writer.
I wasn’t quite up to where Not various oysterz and scallopz said,
when I had christened this tome Mein Krapp.
“Holistic Liberals” doesn’t really have the same ring to it, even though he prettymuch acknowledges in this passage that it would be a more honest, less confusing title.
Is someone who actually wrote a book which–on its cover–equates Liberalism with Hitler (yes, that Hitler) allowed to use the word “Orwellian”? Really?
Coming soon from the Pantload:
War is Peaceful
Ignorance is, Like, Being Really Strong
Orwell was a Lightweight, He Totally…Whoa, is that a Twinkie?…
The idea that there are no hard choices — that is, choices between competing goods — is religious and totalitarian…
Frau Doktorin: You have to choose between buying that new book, or a replacement bottle of akvavit.
Me: It’s all right, I’ll put both of them on my credit card!
Apparently this makes me a totalitarian. My ‘personal wealth consultant’ at the bank has a harsher word for it, however.
I don’t know how one would go about determining what the worst book ever written actually is, but there’s little doubt this is a very strong contender.
If the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest had a political-science counterpart, this baby would win it hands down.
Referring to Jonah’s tome as political science raises another point: How do you classify it? Does the Dewey Decimal System have numbers for toilet paper?
It’s official: Jonah has no idea whatsoever what “fascism” means. Objectively no idea.
This fits Goldberg’s definition of fascism perfectly. Except that there is no mention of vegetarianism.
When I started reading these excerpts, I thought I was a fascist, because I’m a liberal. But then I realized I can’t be a liberal because I’m not a vegetarian pagan exercise enthusiast. So now, I don’t know what to think.
Reading this excerpt, I suddenly realize, Thank God at least that there is one political party in America, which, unlike the totalitarian Liberals, firmly believes that the sex life of private citizens is not political, and that government should not have anything to say about it. Huckabee/Santorum ’08!
Hehe. Fucking funny. He’s seriously taking the propaganda from the totalitarian regimes throughout history to explain what fascism/totalitarianism/evil is – and then creates parallels with what liberals/progressives/socialist/evil are trying to accomplish.
So fascism isn’t defined by action controlled by the state and an elite dictating the terms – no – it’s defined by how a state would protect and nurture the fatherland in a time of crisis. Oops. I mean, how the totalitarian nanny- state would protect the population from hunger and starvation (phew). And therefore foreign aid is evil on principle, because it’s fascist. Quod errat demitto.
But this is just a treasure- trove, isn’t it. He’s basically explaining everything he believes, how he came to believe it, and how he’s managed to come up with so much insane crap earlier on – he seriously believes that intentions alone is what makes reality. It’s evident in everything he writes – that he sees the intentions as the critical enemy. And that’s why it’s so important to explain how Hillary and the progressives are serious – and not frauds like the conservatives (minus the religious right), who merely play the game for good ulterior motives like freedom and liberty for all the world (bwhahahahahhaha!).
See, that’s the heart of his analysis, and the reason for his infatuation with elites and grand, utterly encompassing narratives about greatness. He explains them as tricks, and politics as tricks with occasional real impact – and therefore he wants anything to be controlled and buffered by responsibility and continuity. That’s just how his head is wired. He cannot imagine that people actually can use their votes and right to organise as a power for good. It’s inconceivable. Instead, the trick is necessary to develop a responsible society, so therefore anything that purports to be genuine is – not the high road to chaos, like Leo Strauss would say – but the high road to total state tyranny.
Which of course also explains how he manages to miss every single normal definition of political ideology – he has no concept of what the state is, in the same way as barnacles have no concept of the rising and falling tide. It just is – and any attempt at making it different is a progressive idea that will result in increased state control. And any attempt to conserve the state of business is traditionally conservative, no matter what the state actually is or may or has become. Rinse and repeat, until fascism “just is evil”, and “totalitarianism” just is a label we stick on people we don’t like for no discernible reason. Which of course is exactly what he and his friends do.
You know what’s funny? If Jonah had had an upbringing where he wasn’t rewarded for accepting the truths he was told – and instead rewarded for finding things out by himself, he might very well have developed into someone with a working mind. But instead he’s now the king of retard- town, because he can string two thoughts together without being caught in a contradiction by his peers.
Poor bastard. Do you think he believes he’s coming into his own with this one? I mean, he’s thorough – he actually spells out the batshit craziness that his “mentors” merely hint at with ominous and meaningful phrases like “the danger to american political continuity”. And “why preventive punishment – and therefore the death- penalty – is the foundation and most important part of US criminal care”, and so on.
…Btw, how old is Jonah? Fifteen? And he’s gotten some help from his father to get the paper turned in on time?
Pilgrim–I’m not so sure….back in about ’92 I saw rather large Seattle musician Tad. I was standing AT the stage, and he kept threatening to dive. I’m scrappy, but I am rather small and not too keen on being landed on by heftier folks. I’m not saying that Jonah would ever stage dive at a book talk, but I’m not taking any chances. OTOH, he might have a good audience here, and these people would probably eat his crap right up (pun definitely intended).
Exactly. But that’s his critique, no? He has a very firm view of what conservatism is/should be perceived as. But he has no concept of what he actually stands for himself. Incredible..
Fascisms differ from each other because they grow out of different soil. What unites them are their emotional or instinctual impulses, such as the quest for community, the urge to “get beyond” politics, a faith in the perfectibility of man and the authority of experts, and an obsession with the aesthetics of youth, the cult of action …
Much as I hate to admit it, being a holistic totalitarian fascist and all, Jonah really does a nice job of illustrating the nuances of fascism here. Sure, the fascism from clay soil and the fascism from sandy loam are not exactly the same; but if you plant some side by side and watch and listen very carefully you will surely catch them trying to unite and “get beyond” politics. It’s the damnedest thing.
But this is just classic conservative mental disease. Whatever affliction they suffer, they accuse their enemies of. Want to know a conservative’s view on something? Listen to what they say liberals believe. It’s really as simple as that.
All jokes aside (and lord knows Jonah has earned them all), this mindset displays a complete lack of empathy or human understanding that I find remarkably scary.
There is, in the text, a rough implication: somehow, it is supposed to be surprising or ironic that totalitarian regimes would justify their actions as being for the people.
Interestingly, this may be one of the most unsurprising facts of all of history.
I don’t know of too many examples throughout history where a totalitarian (or even authoritarian) state cracked down on its people and then declared,
EVIL TOTALITARIAN LEADERS: “All this harshness, all this cracking down, see, we are doing all of these things in order to make your life worse.”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “Oh. I was confused. Suddenly our lives were much worse, and now your saying that confirms my suspicions. Do you mind if we all panic now and destroy everything and flee to the best of our abilities, thus collapsing your economy and regime?”
EVIL TOTALITARIAN LEADERS: “Well, we’d really rather you didn’t. Is there anything, anything we might do to keep you from doing that, short of killing you all, which we would, but that’s really hard, and we’d run out of bullets & stuff, and there would be no one to make any more.”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “Have you considered telling us that you’re doing this all for our benefit, that it’s somehow inevitable, and our only choice, and it will all work out best in the end?”
EVIL TOTALITARIAN LEADERS: “Would that help?”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “A bit. I mean, those nice totalitarian leaders of that other regime continually tell their citizens that they are awesome and brave for all their suffering, and they also make up big stories about how there’s these really bad enemies that would crush them if they didn’t do all those totalitarian things.”
EVIL TOTALITARIAN LEADERS: “Hmmm. Okay. You got a deal. We’ll do it. But only if we can also put up lots of posters and stuff about us, the Evil Totalitarian Leaders, which you have to respect and all.”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “Um, it sounds nice, but, I don’t know… Could we have some food rations too, some basic social spending & investment?”
EVIL TOTALITARIAN LEADERS: “Deal. Did you totally think we forgot that we liked to go to other places in the world and try to look like we were doing something for our long suffering citizens, and maybe try for some Olympic medals?”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “Gosh, Totalitarian Regime, you’re the best! We’ll totally deal with you until we can escape or somehow overthrow you!!!”
SUFFERING CITIZENS OF TOTALITARIAN REGIME: “No, no, you guys are the best. And although we may have to wipe out roughly a quarter of you who live in the wrong part of the country or get a bit feisty or you’ve got this ethnic thing we don’t like, we totally are going to be the bestest totalitarian regime you’re going to not have the option of choosing!!!”
Wow. Random House (Doubleday) is really trying to live up to its name. Here we have the random assortment of bullshit. I wonder if I could interest them in a coffee table book featuring pictures of a random assortment of cat turds.
I think I get the Goldberg machine style. Basically what’s required is to forget whatever you said in the last sentence, while remembering to keep the present sentence also blaming everything on teh hitlerberals ™.
[…] foundations of political thought. The good folks over at Sadly, No! have bravely delved into this weighty tome. If you think you know what a fascist is, Goldberg’s got news for you: The quintessential […]
El Cid, may I steal your comment for a History paper?
I would also like to point out that, since Mussolini defined totalitarianism as “a place where everyone belonged,” and this clearly makes liberals fascists because of their inclusive nature:
If I define totalitarianism as “a land of happiness where children can learn letters and numbers,” does that make Sesame Street fascist?
..Well, he is the perfect authoritarian follower. Hitler would’ve made him jugend of the month for years, until he’d get freaked out by how serious Jonah would be about the communists, and gays, and poles, and so on.
Still – I have this suspicion sometimes.. that these people are merely more honest about it, more open and simply have advanced more clearly towards where their beliefs take them than many others – and that the respect for authority of this kind is more common than we like to think.
I mean, these idiots just don’t sprout out of nowhere. Jonah didn’t wake up one day and say: “Hah! I’m going to be a crazy idiot who say things that most people are too ashamed to say, if it happened to pop into their heads! And I’m going to tell the liberal idiots how insane they are when they insidiously indoctrinate people to appear to think about what they’re saying, and teach people to religiously hate the US through using “reason” and “science” and “arguments” for explaining their positions. Because I know it’s just a trick!”.
I know someone touched on his problematic experiences with intimidating female teachers in another post *cough*, but – he’s perfectly aligned with many influential people on the right and “center” at the moment, no? So where does it come from? This.. no holds barred ability and drive to wrap shit in shiny wrapping paper – and then the wish to write books about how nice the present is?.. *shakes head*
Much as I hate to admit it, being a holistic totalitarian fascist and all, Jonah really does a nice job of illustrating the nuances of fascism here. Sure, the fascism from clay soil and the fascism from sandy loam are not exactly the same; but if you plant some side by side and watch and listen very carefully you will surely catch them trying to unite and “get beyond” politics. It’s the damnedest thing.
It’s the terroir, I believe.
Well, okay. Ordinarily I would have thought the point was unnecessary to make, but given the apparent ability of someone like Jo’berg to get a major publisher to actually put that stuff in a book, those previous thoughts were wrong.
Yet this is not the classical wrongness of which some people speak. It is a new complete kind of wrongness, the type of which has never been made with such care or in such detail.
So it seems that the only thing that’s non-fascist is the rule by the economic overclass. Maybe Judeo-Christian theocracy as well. He does seem to have cast his definition a little wide on this.
Doughy:
Anything. Everything. Nothing. Cow. Chocolate. Oranges. A great big fuzzy bear. Physics. Hinduism. The North Atlantic Ocean. Radiohead. Pale ale. A rocket motorcycle. Compassion. Love. Hatred. Life. Death. Anything. Everything.
NOTHING.
Based on all the “But what do I mean by?”s …” and “Indeed”s, I suspect he got paid by the word.
Sophronia, way up above, said what I was going to say. On A SINGLE PAGE he writes that, to liberals, it’s all politics, and they want to get “beyond” politics.
BTW, wasn’t this edited by–appallingly–Saul Bellow’s son? Adam Bellow? Or am I thinking of something else?
I think I’m finally starting to understand. See, “totalitarian” is about the “total”, or all, and “holistic” is about the “whole”, which is also all. So totalitarianism equals holistic because they both are views that encompass everything, even though the actual views have nothing in common.
You learn something new every day.
Other words Hannah Arendt changed the meaning of:
– gay
– bad (after her, it means “cool”)
– cheese (what we now call “beef”)
– gotterdammerung (used to only refer to a very salty pretzel found in the areas around Munich)
– tofurkey (before she arrived it was what adults do when they love each other very much)
Why are Geologists such totalitarian liberal holistic fascists?
This totalitarian — or “holistic”, if you prefer — approach to telling people that there is only one “single environmental system” on the Earf is, in certain ways, and if you accept various of the definitions I have yet to offer, far more totalitarian than anything ever imagined by a hypothetical super-being comprised of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Hitlery Clinton.
This represents a departure from “classical geology”, but in invoking the dangerous prospect of “liberal fascist totalitarian holistic geography,” I believe you will see that this is not, and, however, this central to my point.
Wait, wait, I think I’ve got it. D’ohberg is saying that National Socialists weren’t dishing out a little socialism to make their rapacious nationalistic actions, like throwing other countries against walls, just to show they can, for instance, more palatable. In D’ohberg’s world, it’s the other way around, and the Fascisti were really only giving lip service to all that nationalism stuff so that they could destroy the free market by completely deregulating it and they even killed the Jews that I.G. Farben didn’t want them to kill because they were short on slave labor, which was totally progressive and liberal because it was government artificially tightening the labor market. And this was all actually to get the political capital necessary to institute national healthcare, which means eugenics. I think.
Guys, we’ve now had, what, seventy threads about this book? I think we could really score a major “Shorter” coup — however many pages are in the book, condensed into one sentence:
“If I redefine ‘fascism’ to mean everything I don’t like, then everything I don’t like is fascist.”
Was Jonah by any chance homeschooled?
I’d hate to think this is the result of our public education system. And if he went to private school, Mumsie should ask for her money back.
“nice, not brutal…”
Yet another way liberals are just like Hitler!
Calorie labels, food pyramids, national parks, consumer protection, public service ads, etc. = dictatorial centralized government which controls every facet of life, public and private. But abstinence programs, rating systems for video games, fines for naughty language on TV, loyalty tests for public officials, jail time for pot possession, boycotts for “happy holidays,” torture, eavesdropping on citizens, etc. = glorious democracy, of, by and for the people. IT’S JUST DIFFERENT.
People reading this thread might be shocked to find there are factual inconsistencies in Jonah’s master opus, but:
Isn’t he Jewish?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheol
Jonah,
Thou dost project too much.
How did this stupid mofo get through Harvard (oh yeah, I forgot, Duhbya did too)? That excerpt reads like a freshman poli-sci paper (an “F” paper, I might add). Some editor actually accepted this juvenile tripe for publication? Worse yet, the Doughy One was actually PAID for this??? He mentions Hannah Arendt and Zbigniew Breszinski, but he doesn’t cite anything. WTF??? Who edited this? Jonah’s mom??
Jeez Louise, the damn thing reads like a sophmore year poly-sci essay farted out the night before a deadline. “I do not deny this. In fact, it is central to my point”. This is the book that was five years in the making?
How did this stupid mofo get through Harvard
I believe it was Goucher College, first class of males admitted to an all women’s college:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Goldberg#Early_life_and_career
No further comments.
Holy shite! So it’s really gotten to the point that you (errr…..that is “you” if you’re a connected wingnut who’s Mommy is a *name* in the wacky world of the Right) can write a book that consists of a whole buncha stuff that you’ve just made up, no matter how how ridiculous your arguement is, no matter how bad your attempt to tie disparate concepts together, and it will be published????
I’m hoping his next book (which I’m sure will be ten years in the making) will address how he’s a “conservative”……that one would be even more splendidly psychotic than this one (yes, I know, hard to imagine)!!
fish said,
December 19, 2007 at 22:09
How did this stupid mofo get through Harvard
I believe it was Goucher College, first class of males admitted to an all women’s college:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonah_Goldberg#Early_life_and_career
I feel a Wikibomb is in order…
Fixed!
..”although”?
..But seriously, this is just shameful. He really did have a female hitler dominating his life, didn’t he. And now it’s revenge- time. ..Well, I got bad news for Jonah – I think the “prank” is still going on.
Fleinn,
I ran out of “ugh”s reading these excerpts.