Well. How odd is the right's making a big deal out of Obama's declaration that he would attack al Qaeda in Pakistan, if need be? A recent actual strike by the Bush administration didn't seem to mollify Obama's critics:
My response is that as much as I appreciate the idea of a dead terrorist, I don't like what we did in Pakistan, and I really don't like the fact that we're bragging about it, or that a presidential candidate would openly discuss it as an option. And if Obama hadn't recommended it in August in a bid to gain political credibility, then you wouldn't be defending it, either.
It's truly bizarre. One gets the distinct impression that the right opposes Obama's counter-terrorism position, not because he's wrong, but because he's a Dem whose opinions must be reflexively rejected regardless of merit. If Obama wants to pursue top al Qaeda operatives into Pakistan, Republicans argue, then the right answer is to not pursue top al Qaeda operatives into Pakistan.
Dead on. Conservative political tactics require that no part of a Democratic candidate's platform or belief system should be abetted or left unchallenged, even if the policy is good. (Bill Kristol's notorious opposition to the first Clinton health-care plan is the perfect example. Health care reform should be opposed, because it might be successful!)
Yes, believe it or not, many liberals do want to crack down on al Qaeda! Yes, many of us favor strong measures against Islamic terrorists, especially balanced by a practical foreign policy that would encourage allies, not pit us against the world. Iraq, of course, is the antithesis of good, practical foreign policy, and the worst possible way to deal with Islamic terror.
Is that so hard to understand? Well, we do have to remember that most neoconservative ideologues are not practical thinkers. (Thus, Iraq.) This kind of thinking only reinforces their incompetence and should serve as a reminder why our current brand of Republicanism shouldn't be trusted with major political offices.
(Kilgore has a pretty reasoned take on "Liberal Fascism," although I think he goes too easy on Goldberg. I'm not sure I'd agree that many conservatives actually prefer "classic liberal" economic policies, when most of recent GOP policy has been to promote certain corporate interest groups over everybody else... - promoted by Jay Stevens)
Neocon pundit and National Review on-line editor Jonah Goldberg has certainly created quite a stir with his recent book, Liberal Fascism, an attempt to tie modern progressivism to the policies of Italian dictator, Mussolini. After also considering the fervent use of the term Islamo-fascism among the Republican presidential candidates and the frequent slurs against the current Republican administration, I decided to spend the afternoon doing a little research into the meaning of the word "Fascism". Wiki(liberal)pedia had this to say:
Fascism is an authoritarian political ideology (generally tied to a mass movement) that considers individual and social interests subordinate to the interests of the state or party. Fascists seek to forge a type of national unity, usually based on (but not limited to) ethnic, cultural, racial, religious attributes. The key attribute is intolerance of others: other religions, languages, political views, economic systems, cultural practices, etc. Various scholars attribute different characteristics to fascism, but the following elements are usually seen as its integral parts: nationalism, statism, militarism, totalitarianism, anti-communism, corporatism, populism, collectivism, and opposition to political and economic liberalism.
Further research of the article led me to believe that both the far left and the far right are way off-base with their casual use of the term 'fascist'. It seems to me that, as several other thinkers have indicated, this word really has ceased to mean anything.
Here is what Mr. Goldberg has to say about his book:
Christopher Hitchens yesterday made a heroic effort to defend the term, "Islomfascism." Of course the f-word has been bandied about lately to smear those on the left, so it's interesting to hear what Hitchens has to say on the matter:
Both movements are based on a cult of murderous violence that exalts death and destruction and despises the life of the mind. ("Death to the intellect! Long live death!" as Gen. Francisco Franco's sidekick Gonzalo Queipo de Llano so pithily phrased it.) Both are hostile to modernity (except when it comes to the pursuit of weapons), and both are bitterly nostalgic for past empires and lost glories. Both are obsessed with real and imagined "humiliations" and thirsty for revenge. Both are chronically infected with the toxin of anti-Jewish paranoia (interestingly, also, with its milder cousin, anti-Freemason paranoia). Both are inclined to leader worship and to the exclusive stress on the power of one great book. Both have a strong commitment to sexual repression-especially to the repression of any sexual "deviance"-and to its counterparts the subordination of the female and contempt for the feminine. Both despise art and literature as symptoms of degeneracy and decadence; both burn books and destroy museums and treasures.
Fascism (and Nazism) also attempted to counterfeit the then-success of the socialist movement by issuing pseudo-socialist and populist appeals. It has been very interesting to observe lately the way in which al-Qaida has been striving to counterfeit and recycle the propaganda of the anti-globalist and green movements.
Hitchens does admit that "Islamo-facism" is missing its nation-state, corporatism, and racial politics, but, hey! The analogy isn't perfect.
