Liberal control freaks from Woodrow Wilson to Al Gore

David Oshinsky:

Coming of age in the 1960s, I heard the word “fascist” all the time. College presidents were fascists, Vietnam War supporters were fascists, policemen who tangled with protesters were fascists, on and on. To some, the word smacked of Hitler and genocide. To others, it meant the oppression of the masses by the privileged few. But one point was crystal clear: the word belonged to those on the political left. It was their verbal weapon, and they used it every chance they got.

Forty years have passed and not much has changed, complains Jonah Goldberg, a conservative columnist and contributing editor for National Review. Leftists still drop the “f word” to taint their opponents, be they global warming skeptics or members of the Moral Majority. The sad result, Goldberg says, is that Americans have come to equate fascism with right-wing political movements in the United States when, in fact, the reverse is true. To his mind, it is liberalism, not conservatism, that embraces what he claims is the fascist ideal of perfecting society through a powerful state run by omniscient leaders. And it is liberals, not conservatives, who see government coercion as the key to getting things done.

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According to Goldberg, fascism in America predated the regimes of Mussolini and Hitler. He believes that Woodrow Wilson turned the United States into a “fascist country, albeit temporarily” during World War I. Americans in 1917 were reluctant to join the slaughter in Europe. Their nation hadn’t been attacked; there was no defining event — a Fort Sumter or Pearl Harbor — to rally public support. So Wilson formed the country’s first propaganda ministry, the Committee on Public Information, to teach people what they were up against. The devil became German militarism — the merciless Hun — and Americans were encouraged to lash out at those of German ancestry inside the United States. Vigilante groups arose to mete out justice and spy on fellow citizens. Congress passed draconian laws banning “abusive” and “disloyal” language against the government and its officials. The Post Office revoked the mailing privileges of hundreds of antiwar publications, effectively shutting them down. Rarely if ever in American history has dissent been so effectively stifled.

At the same time, Wilson formed numerous boards to regulate everything from the production of artillery pieces to the price of a lamb chop. The result, Goldberg argues, was the birth of a socialist dictatorship that “whipped, cajoled and seduced American industry into the loving embrace of the state.” Though partly dismantled after the war, this model, we are told, became the blueprint for Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.

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The final chapters of “Liberal Fascism” are a rant, often deliciously amusing, against America’s numerous liberal-fascist elites. In unexciting times, when there are no calamities to be addressed, liberals push a more robust social agenda, Goldberg claims, using the state and the friendly news media to tar opponents of, say, affirmative action or same-sex marriage as bigots, fanatics and fools. The task facing conservatives, he adds, is to hold liberals accountable for these jackboot tactics. “For at some point,” Goldberg writes, “it is necessary to throw down the gauntlet, to draw a line in the sand, to set a boundary, to cry at long last, ‘Enough is enough.’”

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I think Jonah Goldberg is a terrific writer and I look forward to reading his new book. While I tend to call liberals control freaks, Goldberg makes a compelling case for also calling them fascist. I think both labels may fit. Global warming is particularly ripe with control freaks who want to take away your freedom. This review, is in the Sunday NY Times.