Kenny's review
Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton
by Jonah Goldberg
Kenny's review
Liberal Fascism: The Totalitarian Temptation from Mussolini to Hillary Clinton by Jonah Goldberg
Kenny's review
rating:
bookshelves:
current-events
In political circles, there is probably no word more misused and misunderstood than "fascism." Goldberg's exhaustive review of the sources and ideology of fascism prove, once again, that popular meanings are often diametrically opposed to the actual facts: that fascism has historically been a malady of the left, not the right, though there have been a few right-wing fascists, though they are nothing compared with the Mussolinis and Hitlers, both statists and corporatists par excellence. The book made me see that the unbridled "statism" of the social left, with a nanny-state government in the offing, is the closest thing we Americans have seen of true fascism, and that realization is chilling. "Anyone who would give up freedom for security deserves neither," said Benjamin Franklin, and he must have been talking about modern liberalism, which seeks to make the state an object of religious worship, the individual an endangered species, and self-reliance a qua...more
