Serial Idiot Goldberg Annoyed At Fascist Name Calling, "Not What I Hoped"

I have a love/hate relationship with Jonah Goldberg. I love to write about him because he is such a rich source of material, one of my "serial idiots" that provides a column in just about everything he has to say because it is so ridiculous. Hate, because by writing about him, I give him and his delusions more attention than they deserve. Holding on tight to his post at the National Review, received shortly after the Monica events for which Jonah held a minor, supporting role which he inflated to get himself on the tv machine as often as possible, Jonah weighs in on the teabag use of the term "fascist."

Speaking on C-Span this weekend, he was quoted as saying:

"One of the great failures of my book is that it has popularized the use of 'fascism' as an epithet. And one of the things I was hoping to do, and I failed miserably, is shut down the use of the word 'fascist' as an epithet. Instead it's become bipartisan. And I don't like it. I don't think it's all that helpful. It might help my books sales, but that's not what I had hoped to do."

After one moves beyond the breathtaking egotism involved in his first statement (after all, fascism has been a discredited political movement since basically forever) you have to consider that one does not write a book with the title "Liberal Fascism" with the intent to remove the word fascist as an epithet. As a member of the "conservative movement" (that's Jonah, always after the main chance, a Democrat who flipped when he saw that that's where the money is) use of the term liberal is an epithet. Attaching anything to it makes it a pejorative and adding a term commonly used to characterize negative political ideology to the term liberal, he has attempted to equate liberals with negative politics. As the two--liberal and fascism--are ideological opposites with fascism typically a preserve of the extreme right, trying to link the two is nothing more than an attempt to demonize liberals.  According to dictionary.com, [emphasis added]

FASCISM:
[fash-iz-uhm] –noun
1.( sometimes initial capital letter ) a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive nationalism and often racism.
2.( sometimes initial capital letter ) the philosophy, principles, or methods of fascism.
3.( initial capital letter ) a fascist movement, esp. the one established by Mussolini in Italy 1922–43.
LIBERALISM:
[lib-er-uh-liz-uhm, lib-ruh-]–noun
1.the quality or state of being liberal, as in behavior or attitude.
2.a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.
3.( sometimes initial capital letter ) the principles and practices of a liberal party in politics.
4.a movement in modern Protestantism that emphasizes freedom from tradition and authority, the adjustment of religious beliefs to scientific conceptions, and the development of spiritual capacities.

Not sure I can find anything that equate the two or even links them other than they each represent a political philosophy. But, the mindset of someone who could equate the two, or believe it, is the same mindset that would believe that socialism and communism are the same thing, and that what was embodied by the Soviet Union was what was envisioned by Marx.

Ah well. Perhaps Jonah hadn't been able to get outside of the pages of the pages of his column lately and needed to get some face time on the tv machine again. If you are unfamiliar with Jonah, he has an amusing history and typically wacky ideas which I have written about here, here, and here.
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