Should Heaven send me any son,

I hope he’s not like Tennyson.

I’d rather have him play a fiddle,

Than rise and bow and speak an idyll.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s

I’ll delve into the meat of the book in future posts, but for today I’ll share Goldberg’s working definition of fascism:

“Fascism is a religion of the state. It assumes the organic unity of the body politic and longs for a national leader attuned to the will of the people. It is totalitarian in that it views everything as political and holds that any action of the state is justified to achieve the common good.It takes responsibility for every aspect of our life, including health and well-being; and seeks to impose uniformity of thought and action, whether by force or through regulation and social pressure. Everything, including the economy and religion, must be aligned with its objectives. Any rival identity is part of the “problem” and therefore defined as the enemy. I will argue that contemporary liberalism embodies all of these aspects of fascism.” p.23 (emphasis mine.)

My graduate studies have focused primarily on World War II and the interaction of fascism, Communism, Nazism and Ukrainian Nationalism. I’ve also spent some time on the Progressive Era. Goldberg has done a really solid job of interacting with the contemporary scholarship on the subject. For one thing, his work is transnational, which is all the rage these days. In the case of Liberal Fascism, transnational history isn’t just a trendy methodology, but an essential means of understanding the relationship between fascism and today’s liberalism. Both movements originated in the same historical period and grew from common intellectual roots — the socialist and “Progressive” movements of Europe and the United States.

What makes Goldberg’s treatment of the Progressive Era so compelling to me is that even many historians on the Left are criticizing the Progressive movement for its racism, nationalism, militarism, paternalism, and so forth. Woodrow Wilson comes in for strong criticism these days for his rather totalitarian actions during WWI. Goldberg simply takes this analysis a step further, drawing very credible lines between Progressivism in the U.S. and Fascism in Italy. This rings true to me.

As I read further, I’ll definitely be writing more. Be sure to check in!

Commies: A Journey Through the Old Left, the New Left and the Leftover Left

To those raised on the notion that American Communists were a McCarthyite myth, it will be a novelty to read of Radosh’s yearly vacations at one of four Communist summer camps operating in the U.S. (his was often frequented by Woody Guthrie) and his education at the “little Red schoolhouse” — Elizabeth Irwin School. Radosh began his activist career with the Communist youth, working to free the Rosenbergs after they were arrested for spying. From there he entered into the New Left during the 1960s, helping to found the movement. Along the way, Radosh rubbed elbows with practically everyone on the hard Left: Michael Harrington; Ed Asner; Obama’s terrorist pal Bernadine Dorn; Irving Howe; Bianca Jagger; Bob Dylan; Henry Wallace and a host of others.

Commies operates on multiple levels. Anyone looking for a big picture view of the hard Left will find it here (though Rise and Fall of the American Left by Diggins is more comprehensive.) More personally, Radosh recounts his journey from fervent Communist to staunch advocate of the United States and its way of life. This transition began with his attempts in the 1970s to prove the innocence of the Rosenbergs. When he discovered that they truly were spying for the Soviets, it shook his faith deeply. Moreover, his publication of these findings caused his expulsion from the Left, with old friends declaring him an enemy of the cause. In typical Soviet fashion, even respected Marxist historians such as Paul Buhle of Brown University and Columbia’s Eric Foner have written Radosh out of the history of the American Left. His memoir serves as a corrective to the official record. It isn’t hard to see why they want him forgotten — this is a man who knows quite a few inconvenient truths.

Camille Paglia is by far my favorite enemy-of-my-enemy. She’s a fun mix of art historian, psychologist, street performer and psychotic lesbian Dorothy Parker. I’ve read her tome Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson at least three times now. One of her central ideas — that Pop Culture is old paganism bursting forth again into Western Civilization — seems beyond dispute to me. On this subject we mainly differ on the desirability of such a bursting forth. We differ on a great deal of other issues, but I always find her ideas challenging and entertaining.

I just plunged into her collection of essays entitled Sex, Art, and American Culture: Essays and have to admit I’m not as thrilled by it. Quite the opposite of Saturday Night Live skits, which are brilliant in small bites but flop as full-length movies, Camille Paglia’s approach is so sweeping that it needs a book-length treatment to do it justice. In essay form it can come off gimmicky and unsatisfying.

Nevertheless, a collection of Paglia essays is still more valuable than the combined yearly literary output of the academic feminists she so despises. For anyone looking for a good, quick introduction to Paglian thought, her essay “Homosexuality at the Fin de Siècle” encapsulates it nicely. Here’s a taste:

“Contemporary feminists, who are generally poor or narrowly trained scholars, insist on viewing history as a weepy scenario of male oppression and female victimization. But it is more accurate to see men, driven by sexual anxiety away from their mothers, forming group alliances by male bonding to create the complex structures of society, art, science and technology.”

“Every gay man pursuing another man is recapitulating that civilization-forming movement away from the mother. Lesbians, in contrast, refuse to leave the mother. . . Male lust, I have written elsewhere, is the energizing factor in culture. They created the world we live in and the luxuries we enjoy. When women cut themselves off from men, they sink backward into psychological and spiritual stagnancy.”

Small Dead Animals is also blogging on “If Women Ran The World Mankind would still be living in caves.”

Roots of American Order - Russell Kirk

Roots examines the four cities which most influenced American core culture — Jerusalem, Athens, Rome and London — and traces their influence within American government and society. In his own way, Kirk was as influential on the intellect of modern conservatism as Bill Buckley was on its organizational side.

Seven Men Who Rule the World From the Grave - David Breese

Seven Men is an accessible introduction to intellectual history from a Christian perspective. It overreaches in its scope, but does get young people thinking about the impact of ideas on society, and inculcates a Christian intellectual worldview at the same time. Incidentally, your posthumous rulers are Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Julius Wellhausen, John Dewey, Sigmund Freud, John Maynard Keynes, and Soren Kierkegaard.

Men and Marriage - George Gilder

My wife gave this book to me when I was about 17. She liked the premise about how young men need marriage in order for women to ‘civilize’ them. The book is several years old now, but Gilder’s thought has aged well. His reflections on marriage, gender roles, the problems of the urban family, sexuality and the rest are as relevant today as they were fifteen years ago.

The Christ of the Covenants - O. Palmer Robertson

This is a bit more ambitious a read than the other books. But for a sharp student, this could be a really great addition to the list. Christ of the Covenants opened my eyes to the underlying structure of the Bible — the covenants of God which form the skeletal framework of the Word. As I realized the implications of the covenants, so many elements of the Word made sense to me for the first time.

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A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian (A Novel)
Marina Lewycka
Penguin Press (March 17, 2005)

The premise of this fun little novel is simple: An elderly Ukrainian widower in Britain falls in love with a voluptuous young Ukrainian woman and brings her over to the UK. Kanye West has told this story before — Now I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger, but she ain’t messin’ wit no broke . . . well, actually he is broke. And when she realizes the old man’s pension won’t provide the luxuries of the West, things get rocky. His two feuding daughters must then rescue him from her clutches, despite their mutual loathing.

I actually began the novel with some trepidation as it borders on Chick Lit, and I am a non-chick. Lewycka does include many conventions of the genre — intra-familial drama, chatty narration, Dark Family Secrets, and feckless male characters. Nevertheless, her wit and comic timing rescue the novel, as does the genuinely interesting history she weaves into the narrative. Her treatment of Ukrainian emigre life and her characterization are also spot on. The Ukrainian characters all rang true with me — the strong, matriarchal mother, the grasping, stilleto-heeled beauty and the cerebral, absent-minded “engineer” are types you often meet in Ukraine.

Much of Tractors coincides directly with my thesis topic, and I’m impressed with how well she drew in the history of Soviet Ukraine, World War II, and the plight of the Displaced Persons. If I have a quibble, it’s in her overly dark view of modern-day Ukraine. But this is a tiny flaw in an otherwise enjoyable read.

The Bible, God (with help from friends)
Roots of American Order, Russell Kirk
Keeping the Tablets: Modern American Conservative Thought, ed. Bill Buckley
The Intelligent Student’s Guide to Survival, Phillip Abbott Luce
Grace Unknown: The Heart of Reformed Theology, R.C. Sproul