Jonah Goldberg, fed up with the ignorance of leftist crackpots calling the kettle black, knocks down the top five complaints he hears from liberals. As for me, after hearing from ignorant authoritarian statists all of my life that conservatives are fascists, Jonah's answer number five is my favorite.
NRO
5. The populist anger out there is the real face of America's homegrown fascism.
Sigh. While I think Rick Perry's secession talk is idiotic and unfortunate (even accounting for Texas's unique history), I am at a loss as to how any of this stuff smacks of fascism. Even Perry is talking in the context of the federal government doing too much, taking away too much liberty, getting too involved in local communities, and interfering too much with the individual.
How do I say this so people will understand? Fascism isn't a libertarian doctrine! It just isn't, never will be, and it can't be cast as one. Anarchism, secessionism, extreme localism, or rampant individualism may be bad, evil, wrong, stupid, selfish, and all sorts of other things (though not by my lights). But they have nothing to do with a totalitarian vision of the state where individuals and institutions alike must march in step and take orders from the government.
If you think shrinking government and getting it less involved in your life is a hallmark of tyranny it is only because you are either grotesquely ignorant or because you subscribe to a statist ideology that believes the expansion of the state is the expansion of liberty.
Hallelujah, Brother Jonah!
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