Further thoughts on Liberal Fascism
by Kevin
After further thought, I realized I should provide full disclosure regarding Jonahs’ forthcoming book and its new and improved, and yet still apparently infuriating, title.
The reason I know that the book is a serious argument with important points to make is that I have read an early version of the manuscript and provided some feedback. I don’t want to get into the details until the book comes out, but it is a serious work of intellectual and political history. You may not agree with all of Jonah’s points or arguments but he draws out some fascinating aspects of history and makes some pretty compelling arguments about the faulty nature of the conventional wisdom surrounding fascism past and present. I learned things reading the book and I have a Masters in History and consider myself pretty knowledgeable about this area.
In fact, in the past I have often teased Jonah about the work he was putting into the book. Why was he putting himself through the work and stress of writing so serious and substantial a book when he could very easily crank out a humorous collection of essays massaged into the kind of current events/political opinion book that seem to be a dime a dozen these days.
Perhaps, this is why I get cranky when people attack him before the book is even out. It ticks me off when book like this, and Ramesh’s previously, get dismissed before they get a chance to prove their worth.
So all I am saying is give the book a chance before you dismiss it. Disagree all you want, but make an intelligent argument if you want to be taken seriously. I will try to do the same.
Mr. Holtsberry:
I too have read part of “Liberal Facism”-but only one chapter for Jonah. And I’ve also argued/discussed with Jonah how he will discuss a certain 18th century French-speaking philosopher in the book (as of now, I do not know what his final conclusion on this was/is). All of this was done either over email or by using the U.S. Postal Service. I am friendly with Jonah, but also I have never actually seen his face.
From my limited reading of LF, every word of praise you give it entirely justified. Readers should know that I too am trained in historiography (I was the valdictorian in history in my High School, majored in History & Policy at Carnegie Mellon University and was taught at Fordham Law School by the important legal historians Martin Flaherty-Ph.D. student of Edmund Morgan; Bill Treanor-Ph.D. student of Bernard Baylin; Rachel Vorspan; and Bob Kaczorowski, maybe America’s leading expert on Reconstruction legal history; I am the only Fordham lawyer I know of who ever took more than a year of his classes on legal history itself, or on constitutional law classes where I did nothing but write about legal history; I have been a member of the American Society for Legal History since I graduated from law school in 2004, and I attend every annual national convention/meeting).
And Jonah has already-in just this one chapter I reviewed-taught me very, very much about just how Woodrow Wilson was a “liberal facist”-and Jonah’s view of Wilson, which I was leaning to in the past, admittedly, I have now entirely adopted as being completely correct.
In my own version of full disclosure I’ll also say that I was very involved in Ramesh’s “Party of Death” and my peer reviewed writings on philosophical/legal history are cited in the book and I am listed in the acknowledgements. I consider Ramesh about as good a friend as a guy can get.
Having disclosed that I will also say that I think every word you write on Ramesh in the posts linked to here is correct. To say that Party of Death was treated “unfairly” is to engage in gross understatement.
Wow. Bradford W. Short is an awesome hilarious parody man! Except real.
Ah, yes! Mr. “Christopher M.” (why, I wonder, is it that these people never give their full names? could it be that they are cowards?) shows once again that the Left is always good for a nice brain burp.
Thanks for living up to expectations, Chris. It is nice to know that some things never change.