David Frum vs. Jonah Goldberg on Bloggingheads
It’s a credit to both of them that they agreed to debate one another. Below is one of the clips I found most interesting.
It’s heartening to hear Mr. Goldberg acknowledge that the most powerful talk radio hosts in the conservative movement are making untrue claims, and that those claims have negative consequences, though he and I apparently disagree about whether things are worse now than before.
Jonah, who uses ‘FASCISM’ to sell hysteria, does not get to declare that his intent is to remove the “radioactivity and poison” from any discussion of socialism.
— Frank · May 4, 02:25 AM · #
thanks very much,i like it!
— juicy couture · May 4, 06:55 AM · #
So, let me get this straight – if you cannot define Obama as a hidebound Socialist, you can’t use the term at all to describe his policies? Apparently Frum feels that we have to use Nixon (?!) as the benchmark for want of a better word as “socialist-lite” or “socialist-esque”. Using that measure, Obama comes off more Nixon-like than Bush did. Which gets us no where in this debate.
Obama is no more a socialist than Bush was a fascist. However both engaged in behaviors that could be – loosely – defined by those terms. The “trouble” with talk radio is that its meant to attract listeners. To do that you have to use catchy, punchy terms. “Exhibiting socialist tendencies while not actually being a socialist” is neither.
I clearly remember the left anti-war drumbeat from the 60’s and 70’s against Johnson and Nixon – it was full of invective and short punchy terms like “war monger”, “baby killers” and yes, “fascist”. The networks carried this and it was generally un-moderated.
Today, we have a denser media stream with the same general messages, 24×7. Which, like in the 60’s/70’s the public wanted to hear with little regard for the actual nuanced truth.
This conversation can quite comfortably be called “navel-gazing” by the like of Conor, Sullivan and Krugman as it really addresses something that neither the conservative intelligensia nor anyone on the left really thinks can be dealt with massive violations of the 1st Amendment.
— m00se · May 4, 02:32 PM · #
Yes because Nixon, talked about ‘the fundamental transformation of the USA” quite a bit. He seems the epitome of the kind of President you would like, but the left detested him, no matter how many concessions were made to them. it would seem that there has been a good deal of ‘epistemic
closure in this crew, and this is true, across the board
— ian cormac · May 4, 03:07 PM · #
I’m not sure anyone’s complaint is about applying the term socialist to Obama, an inaccurate as that might be. It’s the defining of socialism as this horrible thing that will reduce America to a brutal Hell on Earth where the living will envy the dead.
Mike
— MBunge · May 4, 03:29 PM · #
Socialism is generally quite pleasant as it hurtles your society to eventual collapse. Greece and peripheral Europe have a good headstart on us, we’ll see how horrible it ends up being in due course.
— BrianF · May 4, 07:13 PM · #
“Socialism is generally quite pleasant as it hurtles your society to eventual collapse.”
If the choice is between eventual collapse (socialism) and sudden economic implosion (capitalism), I think most folks would prefer to die from a long, relatively painless illness rather than falling into a meat grinder.
Mike
— MBunge · May 4, 09:14 PM · #
I think the key thing in the Frum-Goldberg exchange, especially in light of all of Conor’s other blogging, is that Frum gets Goldberg to essentially admit that he’s not following his own intellectual lights in approaching this discussion and is happy to withhold his own presumably intellectually in-the-ballpark definition of socialism so that other of his allies can apply the term to Obama in a way that Goldberg probably rejects (because why, otherwise, all the dancing?). Frum asks Goldberg whether he cares to approach their discussion as a shill or professional sophist, on one hand, or a partner in discussion with an interest in nailing down a coherent conception of a canonical political word growing vague from polemical overuse, and Goldberg basically answers: “Sophist.” Don’t count me among the scandalized. It was just a rare clear look at someone embracing that role. It’s high time we brought the contemporary sophist Stanley Fish back into this discussion. He would find the likes of Conor and me to be naive Habermasian nancy-boys. But at least we would get to line the methodologically self-conscious Jonah Goldberg up with his true philosophical allies.
— Matt Feeney · May 4, 11:22 PM · #
Matt, you put it as well as it could be put. Thanks. I bet if we snuck into Goldberg’s library we’d find a heavily annotated copy of The Trouble with Principle.
— Alan Jacobs · May 5, 12:04 AM · #
While Goldberg is a reasonable guy more often than not, I think he should have fessed up to the fact that Nixon setting price controls in the 70s was at least as Socialist as Obama’s application of command and control to health insurance.
— David Mershon · May 5, 01:34 AM · #
One was an illconsidered response, the other was a deliberate choice, Cheney
and Rumsfeld among others gained perspective on the flaws in economic regulation by that experience
— ian cormac · May 5, 03:26 AM · #
“…Frum gets Goldberg to essentially admit that he’s not following his own intellectual lights in approaching this discussion…”
If you’ve ever spent time reading JG on the corner vrs reading his columns you would not in anyway be surprised by this. I used to visit the corner a lot and corresponded with JG and found him in this environment to be a funny, intelligent guy with rational views. But that is kind of off the clock. He is a conservative shill in his day job. He gets paid well for it and it is the family business. That whole book thing, I had the feeling in our email exchanges that it was actually painful for him to have to defend it (although he did defend it) but I think he was all too aware of the absurdities in the argument. But that book made him a ton of $, and demonstrated that he a was willing part of the noise machine. I think he is instructive of the nature of the conservative rabble rousing industry.
— cw · May 5, 04:30 AM · #
No, actually, this site with some exceptions, seems willing to give the liberal media a pass, and undermine every center right concept or idea.
there is no left shiboleth that you won’t uphold,
— ian cormac · May 5, 05:27 AM · #
Maybe I’m late to the discussion, but can someone refer me to a right-leaning criticism of Goldberg’s book? I found it to be a strong work, so if I’m off in my analysis, I’d love to hear another voice.
— Matt Stokes · May 5, 01:36 PM · #
Matt/Alan J. Excellent comments.
— jlr · May 5, 02:03 PM · #
“Maybe I’m late to the discussion, but can someone refer me to a right-leaning criticism of Goldberg’s book?”
You don’t need to read a critique of Goldberg’s nonsense. It would be like reading a critique of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Just go online and get…well, ANY OTHER book on the subject.
Mike
— MBunge · May 5, 02:40 PM · #
Matt Stokes, I’d recommend this review of Liberal Fascism by a conservative academic historian.
Mike Bunge, comments like that aren’t going to bring in a new era of post-partisan civility.
— Ben A · May 5, 04:50 PM · #
There’s a great critique of Goldberg’s book from a right-leaning historian/blogger at Athens and Jerusalem.
— Kate Marie · May 5, 04:51 PM · #
“Mike Bunge, comments like that aren’t going to bring in a new era of post-partisan civility.”
I think you have me confused with the black, Muslim, socialst anti-Christ in the White House.
That Athens and Jerusalem review is really well done, but I doubt anyone who already likes Goldberg’s book will be moved by it. That’s because those folks enjoy it as a polemic and they really enjoy passing it off as history.
Mike
— MBunge · May 5, 05:18 PM · #
I must warn you all, your critiques of Goldberg are getting me close to buying the book so that I can join in.
I guess the question needs to be – what do you find objectionable about facism, and why? Withywindle states:
Other writers argue that transnational movements can’t be considered fascist, because nationalism is an essential characteristic of fascism.
It may merely be the case that everyone who calls anyone fascist is probably an idiot, in the same way that anyone who calls Bush or Obama “the worst president in history” probably doesn’t know what they’re talking about.
But ultimately, the question needs to be “what’s bad about fascism and is it uniquely bad? If not, maybe we should drop the term and focus on the bad stuff as it is. If so, then we need to stress those bad things as the characteristics of fascism that need to be avoided.
— J Mann · May 5, 05:26 PM · #
Thanks, Kate Marie and Ben A, for the link. I’d never seen that discussion before, and, unfortunately, read not a single review of “Liberal Fascism” on its release that approaches Withywindle’s in rigor. I have not read Goldberg’s book, but it seems telling – and in keeping with present themes – that, instead of using its lineal connections to fascism as part of a larger, straight-ahead argument against progressivism, Goldberg uses the available ambiguities to make the more inflammatory, less sound argument equating the two. Of course, the lesson you take away from this will differ depending on whether you’re Withywindle or Frum, on one hand, or Goldberg’s agent or mortgage, on the other.
— Matt Feeney · May 5, 08:36 PM · #