|
5ee56b4
|
The young activist who recycles Robert F. Kennedy's line "There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why . . . I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?" has no idea he's a walking, talking cliche, a non-conformist in theory while a predictable conformist in fact. But he also has no idea he's tapping into his inner utopian.... RFK didn't coin the phrase (JFK didn't either, but he did use it first). The line actu..
|
|
|
Jonah Goldberg |
|
d6276d0
|
Fascism's success almost always depends on the cooperation of the "losers" during a time of economic and technological change. The lower-middle classes--the people who have just enough to fear losing it--are the electoral shock troops of fascism (Richard Hofstadter identified this "status anxiety" as the source of Progressivism's quasi-fascist nature). Populist appeals to resentment against "fat cats," "international bankers," "economic roy..
|
|
|
Jonah Goldberg |
|
1b1d480
|
Given the benefit of hindsight, it's difficult to understand why anyone doubts the fascist nature of the French Revolution. Few dispute that it was totalitarian, terrorist, nationalist, conspiratorial, and populist. It produced the first modern dictators, Robespierre and Napoleon, and worked on the premise that the nation had to be ruled by an enlightened avant-garde who would serve as the authentic, organic voice of the "general will." The..
|
|
|
Jonah Goldberg |
|
9657917
|
No nation influenced American thinking more profoundly than Germany, W.E.B. DuBois, Charles Beard, Walter Weyl, Richard Ely, Richard Ely, Nicholas Murray Butler, and countless other founders of modern American liberalism were among the nine thousand Americans who studied in German universities during the nineteenth century. When the American Economic Association was formed, five of the six first officers had studied in Germany. At least twe..
|
|
|
Jonah Goldberg |
|
d506813
|
Making meaningful distinctions is not hypocrisy, it's called "thinking."
|
|
|
Jonah Goldberg |