The New Yorker Strikes Again

Hendrik Hertzberg writes

“One of the signs that a political movement may be approaching terminal decline is when its more excitable elements begin to see ‘fascism’ where none exists.”  And then he accuses me of accusing Obama of being a fascist.

One of the signs that a political guru may be approaching terminal decline is when he loses the ability to read.  I wrote that Newsweek was wrong to say “we are all socialists,” because Obama et. al. aren’t at all interested in abolishing private property.  But they are very interested in controlling large sectors of the economy, and of creating public-private partnerships and joint ventures.  Just as Mussolini was.  It’s what the “corporate state” was all about.

I said that this similarity with the fascist state did NOT extend beyond the economic sphere.  Had Mr. Hertzberg  still the ability to read, he’d have seen this:

The economics of the current expansion of state power in America are, as I said, “fascist,” but the politics are not.  We are not witnessing “American Fascism on the march.”  Fascism was a war ideology and grew out of the terrible slaughter of the First World War.  Fascism hailed the men who fought and prevailed on the battlefield, and wrapped itself in the well-established rhetoric of European nationalism, which does not exist in America and never has.  Our liberties are indeed threatened, but by a tyranny of a very different sort.

I’m sorry to see that Mr. H is losing it.  The ability to read, that is.