Very informative, but I still felt there was something missing. ( )

Jonah Goldberg's book "Liberal Fascism" is long overdue. This should be evident to anyone who rejects the party line of the reigning collectivist orthodoxy in America. Such a person will have had the experience of being labeled a "reactionary" or an "ultra-conservative" and of being informed that his opinions, if taken a bit further, would make him a fascist.

This charge, as inevitable as death and taxes in a debate with a hard-core Leftist, leaves its victim stunned and confused, like the proverbial deer in the headlights. "But, wait..." stammers the besieged advocate of free markets and limited government. He replays in his mind the famous film clips of Hitler addressing the Nazi mass rallies, and thinks, such a thing could not be further from my heart. Yet he fails to utter a satisfactory rejoinder to his accusers.

Along comes Goldberg and unravels the myth of the "conservative fascist," one of the pre-eminent Big Lies of the post-War era. Not content to debunk it, he turns the tables, offering conclusive evidence that the contemporary American "liberal" (as opposed to the classic liberal of yesteryear) subscribes to an ideology that is a patchwork of the twentieth century's anti-democratic experiments: statism, collectivism, racialism, and nihilism--in a word, fascism. Today, it is a "feel-good" fascism; fascism with a caring face. But it is the same road to serfdom (to borrow Hayek's phrase), and it leads to a place where freedom, liberty, and the human spirit have been eliminated.

The book takes us on a journey through the ideological swamps of the American Left, featuring such highlights as pre-WWI Progressivism; Woodrow Wilson; the New Deal; the radicals of the 1960s; the Clintons; and Al Gore. In each case, Goldberg shows us the uncanny resemblance between the icons of the Left and the ideology and/or methods of the self-declared fascists--be they German, Italian, or some other variety.

We learn how Mussolini and the Nazis were first and foremost socialists, pure creations of the Left. Goldberg presents reams of testimony to highlight this seldom-discussed fact. For example:

"The Nazi ideologist--and Hitler rival--Gregor Strasser put it quite succinctly: 'We are socialists. We are enemies, deadly enemies, of today's capitalist economic system with its exploitation of the economically weak, its unfair wage system, its immoral way of judging the worth of human beings in terms of their wealth and their money, instead of their responsibility and their performance, and we are determined to destroy this system whatever happens!'"

Likewise, the original Nazi Party platform of 1920 was nothing if not a description of a Leftist nirvana. Explains Goldberg:

"The most striking thing about the platform was its concerted appeal to socialistic and populist economics, including providing a livelihood for citizens; abolition of income from interest; the total confiscation of war profits; the nationalization of trusts; shared profits with labor; expanded old-age pensions; 'communalization of department stores'; the execution of 'usurers' regardless of race; and the outlawing of child labor."

The similarities between the Nazi belief system and much of our own political correctness is chilling. Hitler and his cohorts were super-environmentalists, obsessed with animal rights and organic food. They had a well-developed cult of Mother Earth, which fed into their fantasies of a pagan, pre-Christian Germanic race. They waged fanatical anti-smoking campaigns, part of an overall focus on public health and care for the body. Sound familiar?

Mussolini and his followers were cut from the same Leftist cloth. We read that Mussolini's

"reputation as a radical grew slowly and steadily until 1911. He became the editor of La lotta di classe (Class War), which served as the megaphone of the extremist wing of the Italian Socialist Party...in a speech in Forli he called on the Italian people to declare a general strike, block the streets, and blow up the trains...He emerged from prison as a socialist star. At his welcoming banquet a leading socialist, Olindo Vernocchi, declared: 'From today you, Benito, are not only the representative of the Romagna Socialists but the Duce of all revolutionary socialists in Italy.' ... Mussolini joined the formal leadership of the party and four months later took over the editorship of its national newspaper, Avanti!, one of the most plum posts in all of European radicalism."

Mussolini enjoyed an immense popularity among the Leftist intelligentsia in Europe and the U.S. (and in many other sectors, as well). His long list of admirers included the New York Times, Lincoln Steffens, Columbia University, the Saturday Evening Post, and Sigmund Freud. How could they all support one of the world's premiere fascist dictators?

"The answer resides in the fact that Fascism was born of a 'fascist moment' in Western civilization, when a coalition of intellectuals going by various labels--progressive, communist, socialist, and so forth--believed the era of liberal democracy was drawing to a close. It was time for man to lay aside the anachronisms of natural law, traditional religion, constitutional liberty, capitalism...This was in every significant way a project of the left as we understand the term today, a fact understood by Mussolini, his admirers, and his detractors."

Another misconception that Goldberg deconstructs (if I may borrow a term invented by the Nazis), is that fascism is a derivative, or extreme version, of capitalism. Related to this is the myth that Hitler was catapulted into power by "big business," just as the big, bad corporations of today allegedly salivate at the thought of enslaving the masses and putting dissidents into concentration camps. This fabrication was as preposterous then as it is today. Fascism is virulently anti-capitalist, and the contemporary large corporation in America tends, if anything, to be aligned with the Left.

"If big business is so right-wing, why do huge banks fund liberal and left-wing charities, activists, and advocacy groups, then brag about it in commercials and publicity campaigns? How to explain that there's virtually no major issue in the culture wars--from abortion to gay marriage to affirmative action--where big business has played a major role on the American right while there are dozens of examples of corporations supporting the liberal side? Indeed, the myth of the right-wing corporation allows the media to tighten liberalism's grip on both corporations and the culture."

Today we face what Goldberg calls a "liberal fascist kulturkampf." Our own fascistic Left seeks to overturn the classic liberal democratic society. We are confronted by many of the same sentiments that propelled the Nazis to power: disenchantment with Western culture; the morbid fascination with race; the hatred of Judeo-Christian morality; the expectation that the realm of politics provide "meaning"; worship of the environment; attraction to paganism; and a puritanical spirit that is manifest in the obsession with public health.

The parallels do not end there. "The white male," says Goldberg,

"is the Jew of liberal fascism. The 'key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race,' writes the whiteness studies scholar and historian Noel Ignatiev. Whiteness studies is a cutting-edge academic discipline sweeping American higher education. Some thirty universities have WS departments, but many more schools teach the essentials of whiteness studies in other courses...The journal Race Traitor (ironically, a Nazi term) is dedicated 'to serve as an intellectual center for those seeking to abolish the white race'."

"Liberal Fascism" is an excellent work, but unfortunately it suffers from two defects. The first is an exaggeration of the fascistic tendencies of certain American leaders. In the case of Hillary Clinton, the argument is airtight. But when it comes to President Lyndon Johnson, I do not believe that the evidence presented supports Goldberg's assertion that the Great Society was "LBJ's fascist utopia."

The second defect is the organization and flow of the book, which is a bit erratic. In a few spots, the subject matter jumps back and forth chronologically and substantively, causing one to lose the thread of the argument.

Despite these shortcomings, Liberal Fascism is a devastating, meticulously documented indictment of the American Left: its methods, its ideology, and the myths it has manufactured to disguise its true nature and intentions. The book is a call to action for all concerned with the systematic destruction of our culture, perpetrated using the tools of feel-good totalitarianism. ( )

The information presented highlights the ongoing struggle over the past one hundred plus years between individualists and collectivists. The author's keen insights were much appreciated. Unfortunately, reading this book was a labor of love for me. I enjoyed the information but not particularly the read. ( )

(Note: Admittedly, I never finished this book. I read up to the chapter about the '60s, skipped ahead to the chapter about eugenics, skipped ahead to "The Tempting of Conservatism." Now, with that said. . . . )

Who would have guessed? The Nazis didn't call themselves the National SOCIALISTS because they just thought it was a cool name. And they never portrayed themselves as being conservative or traditional, but "progressive" and "scientific"--just as the earlier promoters of eugenics did. Fascists and communists weren't opposed to one another because their ideologies supposedly were strikingly different (i.e., because fascism supposedly was "right-wing"), but because they were competing for the same kind of totalitarian minds. And "totalitarian" originally was never intended to be a threatening term, but a comforting, inclusive one--gathered under the auspices of the all-powerful state, we're all in it together, right?

Goldberg does a fine job of presenting the facts which should have been obvious, but which have been obscured so badly that they're rarely presented. He also pulls out things that you rarely find in a history book, such as some scary details about the Wilson administration's actions during WWI. And, despite the way the title may sound, he carefully avoids the tackiness of the argumentum ad Hitlerum.