I'm Famous Again!

Longtime readers know that I have, sporadically, enjoyed a two-way correspondence with one of my heroes, Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism. Well, I didn't elicit a response from him with my latest missive: rather, I got it posted to his book-blog! Hooray!

And once again, I failed to plug the blog; moreover, he has a standing policy of redacting correspondent names unless express permission is given in advance, which of course I didn't think to do. Drat!

And to prevent this post from being completely content-free, here is my email, also available at the link:

Mr. Goldberg,

That email you posted today reminds me of something I recently concluded as I plod through your book (I'm the plodder -- your book is actually quite enthralling). Particularly in regard to your discussions of Nazism and Italian Fascism, it seems to me that there are two possible honest reactions to the book: either a rejection of modern progressivism because of its ties to fascism, or -- and here's a helluva unintended consequence for you -- the rehabilitation of Fascism in the eyes of the Left! I could particularly see them latching onto your own observations that Mussolini didn't start mistreating the Jews until the very end, or learning to disassociate the Holocaust from Hitler's social and economic agenda ("We all agree the Holocaust was a horrible, horrible thing, BUT...")

On the plus side, if they did take the latter path rather than the former, it'd be all that much easier to ridicule them. Of course, that's like transforming shooting fish in a barrel to shooting fish in a smaller barrel with a bigger gun.

My only regret is that I wish I had written "...shooting dumber fish in a smaller barrel with a bigger gun". That would have been funnier.