Positive LF Review by Richard Bernstein

Jonah links to a mostly positive review from Richard Bernstein. Excerpt:

But Goldberg's book takes the argument into new territory, reinterpreting large swaths of American history in order to support his point that the left has always been fascistic and the right, well, genuinely liberal - in the sense that true conservatives respect limits on governing power, encourage both individual choice and responsibility and disavow social engineering.

His main villain among those he calls American fascists is Woodrow Wilson, who, he argues, turned the United States during World War I into "a fascist country, albeit temporarily."

Before anybody had heard of Mussolini (who in his early years in power was widely admired by American progressives), Wilson established the first propaganda ministry, shut newspapers and magazines, encouraged vigilantes and formed dozens of boards to subordinate every aspect of life to the great cause of winning the war to end all wars.

That's a strong argument, because, after all, who would think of the moralistic and well-intentioned Wilson, whose decision to enter World War I was certainly a defensible one, a fascist? But Goldberg's point isn't to liken Wilson to Hitler. Wilson, he understands perfectly well, was entirely different than Hitler, whom he would have despised.

Goldberg's point is rather that a lot of what the American liberal culture takes as good - and he lists a lot of things, from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps to Hillary Rodham Clinton's ideas about it taking a village to raise a child - bears a similarity to some of the intellectual underpinnings of fascism.

And of course, the obligatory observation:

Goldberg is also insightful and thought-provoking in his treatment of some modern fads, showing their admittedly benign fascist connections. The contemporary cult of organic food, he says, is built on a deep wish to return to an imagined prelapsarian earth where everything was unpolluted and organic and a natural harmony prevailed, not all that different from the vegan Hitler's romantic cult of the organic, authentic Germanic connection with the soil.

But the fact is that it's a long way from eating organic tomatoes to committing genocide, even if Goldberg is right about the overlap between the whole earth cult of today and Germanic romanticism.

Of course there was a pre-lapsarian earth; it wasn't "imagined". But I'm sure the apple that Eve fell for was 100% organic, pesticide-free and contained no artificial colors. (Pun intended)