Join us here in a few minutes for updated, live blogging of the Jonah Goldberg event!
And it begins . . .
[7:07pm] “Prognostigatorial?” (Anthony Dent, of course, learned that word from esteemed CR Editor Nash Keune)
[7:10pm] 1928 the Soviet Union let out a theory: that any group anywhere no matter how much it says it is progressive or red, it must be called fascist if they are not loyal to Stalin. Initially “fascism” = heretic.
[7:13pm] “Smoked an enormous amount of pot before I came here.” And a good slight: best definition of a fascist today is a conservative who is winning an argument.
[7:16pm] The left desires to seem that they are taking enormous risks under the “regime” (A.K.A. Bush). But, because we do not live in a totalitarian system we are able to do things such as suggest, as Naomi Wolf did, that Hitler is equivalent to Bush.
[7:19pm] Charlie Rangel: “Hitler wasn’t even thinking about talking about the contract for America” – zing!
[7:20pm] Nash’s idea about all cap emails is once again proven by those who email Jonah Goldberg and call him a Nazi.
[7:22pm] oh, and Jonah Goldberg is Jewish not a Nazi. . . oh nvm.
[7:24pm] Thesis: Fascism is of the “left” as we define left and right today. . . .
[7:27pm] Nazis are socialists. “We are socialists”
[7:30pm] Nazi platform profit sharing, expanded old age insurange, take over of businesses etc. Leftist anyone?
[7:31pm] Mussolini was a socialist as well. “I am a socialist.”
[7:32pm] “They thought it was the cat’s pajamas. I am trying to bring back that phrase.” — Facebook status anyone?
[7:35pm] Could have called the book “Enlightened Nazism” as HG Wells called his ideal progressivism?
[7:36pm] The idea that fascism and communism are both extremes of the opposite political spectrum . . . this is absurd. No where else in life do we say that two opposites meet together.
[7:40pm] The moral equivalence of war: the idea of rallying (progressives especially) around organized collectivism. If real war doesn’t work try environmentalism!
[7:41pm] Jonah Goldberg does indeed have a goatee.
[7:42pm] First propaganda organization was created in America under Woodrow Wilson.
[7:43pm] Woodrow Wilson was the first president of the united states that eschewed the constitution.
[7:45pm] The Republicans ran on a “return to normalcy” because the progressives had restricted liberty to such an extent that if you didn’t stand up for the national anthem at a baseball game you were beat up and the criminals weren’t arrested. Another example: someone who said Lenin was the smartest man in the world, in his home, was imprisoned.
[7:50pm] No bricks have been thrown nearly an hour into it! Yay!
[7:53pm] The argument that an autocracy would be better than our constitutional, two-party system still lurks within liberalism today. Example: Tom Friedman.
[7:55pm] “Poverty is the natural estate of man.” The question shouldn’t be why is there poverty but why is there wealth.
[7:59pm] “Unity is not a good within and of itself.” For example: rape gangs are unified. Why shouldn’t the individual who speaks against he mob be our hero?
[8:02pm] To Al Gore: “Screw you” — regarding the idea that there should be no more debate over global warming.
[8:07pm] Goldberg ends to uproarious applause.