Well tonight I was getting cozy on my Volkswagen bus home, enjoying my organic food, and toasting up a joint, as I got ready to watch the Daily Show and Colbert Report. You know, the usual. Well, I had been busy with my veggie munch and was not paying much attention to the television until I began to become alarmed by something that was being said on the show. Jonah Goldberg was on the show and he was saying liberalism in America was actually fascism and Nazism and bunch of other “ism’s”. DUDE. DUDE. Dude I’m a Fascist? No wayyyyy man.

Well Stewart coming out and saying that it was a sixteen-minute interview that had to be edited certainly let me know there was going to be some quibbles coming up.

I haven’t read Goldberg’s book so I don’t want to be too critical of the book but I have read his Blog. I couldn’t pick up much of what the book was about but apparently because the Nazi’s were environmentalists and ate organic food and liberals are environmentalist and like organic foods, that means that they are leading us to fascism?

I don’t really understand his position on much of anything. Does he really believe that unity is fascism? He writes about Obama’s message of unity saying, “But united toward what end, exactly? Or does it all boil down to being united about being hopeful and hopeful about being united? (Goldberg)”

I’m not sure maybe he hasn’t noticed that we are in the middle of a war, likely to be starting a new one, have an economic crisis, an environmental crisis, an energy crisis, social security crisis, national security crisis, nuclear proliferation crisis, middle class crisis, I could probably keep going but for brevity sake ill stop there.

Ok so he probably would deny most of those crisis’s, but he would at least have to acknowledge the Iraq war and I believe he has. Well I ask you is it better for a basketball team to be angry at each other over why they lost the last game or to be confident and united in order to win the next game?

We need to be united in our values, our goals, and our vision in order to be united in our plans for all these problems. He doesn’t seem to like that. He wants to do what we always do and agree to disagree and let nothing get done. George Bush leaves, Bill Clinton comes in and undoes everything he did. Bush strikes again, undoes everything Bill did. Now what Clinton strikes again undoes everything Bush did (this may be more of a necessity than it was with his father)?

The point of democracy is not to disagree. The point of the democracy is to give the freedom of speech and thinking to the people that a healthy discourse requires. That healthy discourse, will than lead us to our theoretical agreement. I am sorry but it is somewhat mind numbing to me to have any system that’s purpose is to pull people apart and put them at each other’s throats. But no I guess I need to read the book to learn that agreement is actually fascism.

According to wikipedia he, “supports finding an “Iraqi Augusto Pinochet” to bring stability to Iraq, stating that “Pinochets abuses helped create a civil society”. (Wikipedia)”

Well isn’t that what was there in the first place with Saddam Hussein, minus the anti American sentiment? If Goldberg believes trying to give democracy to Iraq is honorable than how could he say that the Iraqi people need a Pinochet. Because, Pinochet helped us in the cold war that makes his abuses ok? I mean I can’t understand any of this it makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

If anything it sounds like he is the fascist. Pinochet was a military dictator who persecuted all people who believed in socialism. Isn’t that one of the most anti democratic ideals: to be persecuted because of an idea that you believe in. I don’t know I was under the strange impression that when the military tortures and persecutes its citizens that believe differently than the government that is closer to fascism than Hillary Clinton. In fact that’s what I thought fascism was: submission to what ever the government believes because the military will torture you if you don’t agree.

There is one thing that Goldberg said on the Daily Show that I agree with. He said that when fascism comes, it will come with a smiling face. This may be so but that will have nothing to do with liberals or conservatives. That will have to do with the state of our culture and world. That will have to do with science and technology as in the book Brave New World.

I feel as though I don’t even need to read the book to know that there is no other point to his book than putting down so called “liberals” (apparently they are fascists though). It is my belief that, with all the crisis’s in our country and world that we need to be working beyond liberal and conservative democrat and republican. What exactly is he trying to accomplish by comparing Democrats to the Nazi’s? Why is he so obsessed with the whole “I hate liberals”. I think he should focus more on solving problems than creating them we already have plenty.

Anyway I don’t want to be to harsh on a book I haven’t read and a man I don’t know other than from Blog entries and Wikipedia. I don’t deny that he may be a very intelligent guy but these ideas I don’t agree with and believe that we need to some type of agreement. Or is that fascism?