He is intelligent, educated, and socially adjusted yet he has a remarkable ability to twist and pervert anything liberal into something to be despised.
He may have liberalphobia: a fear of liberals. Or at least a fear of things that may be considered liberal. Or perhaps he fears that others may find out the truth that being liberal means coexisting peacefully with others. And, of course, coexistence without conservative domination is to be rejected as a weakness by many.
His recent book, Liberal Fascism, is Mr. Goldberg’s attempt to show that using the force of government to establish progressive ideas like unions, welfare, and medical care is liberal fascism. Using the same force of government to promote industry, wealth , and religion is not conservative fascism though, I reckon. I have not read Mr. Goldberg’s book but I did watch him speak on it to the Heritage Club. One day soon I will read it.
Today I want to refer to his recent column in USA Today “Obama’s real patriotism problem”.
“He sees an America in which the cup is half empty. Is his America the same one most Americans think of as they wave flags and celebrate the Fourth of July?”
Let me begin by noting that Mr. Goldberg defines patriotism differently than others. Others define it as: ”Patriotism denotes positive and supportive attitudes to a ‘fatherland’ (Latin patria < Greek patris, πατρίς), by individuals and groups. The ‘fatherland’ (or ‘motherland’) can be a region or a city, but patriotism usually applies to a nation and/or a nation-state.”
Please note that patriotism means ‘positive and supportive attitudes’. Mr. Goldberg believes that patriotism is something different:
“ Definitions of patriotism proliferate, but in the American context patriotism must involve not only devotion to American texts (something that distinguishes our patriotism from European nationalism) but also an abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation. We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is.”
Mr. Goldberg thinks that patriotism means America is “fundamentally good as it is.” Ergo, one cannot be patriotic and think ill of America by Mr. Goldberg’s definition. To be fair Mr. Goldberg does say “ We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem,…” and leaves you to work out the details that there is a difference between disagreeing with a policy and disagreeing with the course that a nation may be taking at any point in time. I don’t know what that difference is myself but presumably Mr. Goldberg does.
Many of my liberal friends believe in the goodness of America. So do my conservative friends. But they see different things as the goodness of America. My liberal friends see the principles enshrined in the Bill of Rights as ‘good’ along with the freedom to be as they wish; my conservative friends see religious values in government as ‘good’, along with living their values in our society.
Mr. Goldberg likes to make sweeping generalizations when he writes and he likes to invoke socialism, Marxism, and other failed ideologies with liberalism. So he says things like this:
It’s the “good as it is” part that has vexed many on the left since at least the Progressive era. Marxists and other revolutionaries obviously don’t believe entrepreneurial and religious America is good as it is. But even more mainstream figures have a problem distinguishing patriotic reform from reformation. Many progressives in the 1920s considered the American hinterlands a vast sea of yokels and boobs, incapable of grasping how much they needed what the activists were selling.
Note how ‘left’ and ‘Progressive’ are linked in the same sentence and then ‘Marxists and other revolutionaries’ are brought into the conversation into the next. And then ‘patriotic reform’ is somehow different from ‘reformation’. And then progressives are somehow condescending towards the rest of America because of a failure to embrace “what the activists were selling.” By the end of this paragraph, Mr. Goldberg would have us believe that Progressives are a type of revolutionary and activist that think they are better than the rest of us.
You know, the type of revolutionary that says you should not be exploited by working in dangerous conditions, with dangerous chemicals, or dangerous machinery; the type of revolutionary that wants to use the wealth of America’s industry to take care of the labor force that sustains it, instead of discarding it when worn out; the type of revolutionary that says the ordinary man and his labor should have value and respect and not be subject to the character flaws of industry’s managers and their personal whims, that is the type of revolutionary that Jonah Goldberg speaks of.
This is Mr. Goldberg in his most twisted perspective of Progressivism. Elevating the worth of Man by protecting him from exploitation is Marxist, activistic, and revolutionary and is somehow to be considered unAmerican and unpatriotic.
But coming back to the article, Mr. Goldberg advises us that Sen. Obama’s problem is that he is not patriotic because Sen. Obama sees the glass as half empty. In other words, because the Senator sees “ We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem”, the Senator has a “real patriotism problem”.
And that is the twisted thinking of Jonah Goldberg. First, he acknowledges that something may reasonably exist and then he explains why this very reasonable thing is a problem and connects the whole thing to marxist revolutionaries, Obama, and Progressives.
But can Mr. Goldberg do more? Why certainly. He can link an ordinary man running for president to being a Messiah. How so?
The notion that what America needs is a redeemer figure to “remake” America from scratch isn’t necessarily unpatriotic.
But let’s read the whole paragraph:
The notion that what America needs is a redeemer figure to “remake” America from scratch isn’t necessarily unpatriotic. But for lots of Americans who like America the way it is, it’s sometimes hard to tell when it isn’t.
So here we have the definitive Jonah Goldberg: Because Obama sees that America needs fixing, he has a patriotism problem; however, fixing that problem is not necessarily unpatriotic. (huh?)
Ah yes, but let us equivocate just a little further and say that those who do not wish for change in America may find it difficult to tell that it is not unpatriotic. ( “…who like America for the way it is…”)
Now that we have gone round the circle, we have learned that Mr. Goldberg’s definitive assertion in the beginning of the article that Obama has a ‘real patriotism problem’ proves that his own statement is not true; however, he does believe that some people who aren’t as embracing of change (as Mr. Goldberg is) may believe that it is true. Along the way he has dragged in Marxism, revolutionaries, progressives, activists, and liberal condescension.
Is Jonah Goldberg an ass? After reading his article, I think so.
