…is wrong.
Go take the quiz. A lot of interesting discussion in comments.
[Update a few minutes later]
This is an amusing comment, in response to a troll (who as usual, hasn’t really read the book):
Wheeler.. you’re reducing Voxiversity to an online version of a public school experience.
What a shock.
10 out of 10 baby!
I recommend this latest installment of Voxiversity on Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism” as it seems the country is lurching towards fascism.
All dogs have fleas, and Wheeler is one of Voxday’s more pestilent versions.
Do you read Vox Day (Theodore Beale) often? Are you even familiar with who he is? I want to make an ad hominem argument here: not against Jonah Goldberg, but against Vox Day. There are better ways to teach about “Liberal Fascism” than to uncritically suggest that people go visit the blog of the guy who wrote “The Morality of Rape” and “Why Women’s Rights are Wrong.” I do suggest reading these two pieces, just to clarify who Vox Day is — you can find links to them here:
“www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=47735”
“www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=45654”
Bob, if you want to make an ad hominem attack on someone, more is required than simply links (even broken ones that require one to paste them into a browser). What, specifically, do you disagree with in those pieces?
Not, of course, to imply that we find ad hominem attacks particularly useful for discourse, even when actually fleshed out…
The test, and comments, stand on their own, to those of us immune to logical fallacies like ad hominem attacks.
Hmm. I think the title of this post should read “Everything you know about the history of Fascism”.
5 out of 10, without reading the book. Not that I am bitter or anything — it means I know more about the history than “Progressives”.
Bob, that’s not really “ad hominem” since you didn’t say anything bad about him. An ad hominem attack would be “he wrote these two articles, and that makes him a jerk.” I’m afraid you’re still a decent, reasonable human being.
I’ve just read them both. The first’s assertion (in a Christian magazine) that only Christianity holds rape to be absolutely immoral hardly constitutes a defense that rape is moral. The second’s assertion, while I’m not sure I agree with it, is at least arguing that what he believes is in the best interest of women and not that the rights of women must be sacrificed for something else.
I clearly labeled my comment an ad hominem attack – I’m not inviting anyone to engage in a logical fallacy. I’m just suggesting that there are better ways to learn about Jonah’s book than to visit Vox Day’s website, and I’m suggesting that if you do visit the site, you should know who the moderator of the conversation is and what he believes.
In his Morality of Rape piece, Vox Day says “To put it more clearly, if a woman consents to extramarital sex, she is committing a moral offense which is equal to that committed by the man who engages in consensual sex with her, or by the man who, in the absence of such consent, rapes her. Christianity knows no hierarchy of sins.”
Christians and non-Christians can decide for themselves whether they agree or not, but I find it unrecognizable as a Christian idea, and utterly offensive. Every Christan I’ve ever known would find rape a repugnant and vile manifestation of evil while consensual extramarital sex a regrettable sin but not one equivalent to rape.
Vox Day also says “There may be a genuine moral argument against rape to be made outside of the Judeo-Christian ethic, but I have yet to hear it.”
I don’t know whether Vox Day’s ability to detect a “genuine moral argument” is clouded by his misogyny or by his weird version of Christianity or both or (?), but I believe the golden rule is a genuine moral argument against rape, and it shows up in a large number of cultures which either pre-date or were in isolation from Judeo-Christian ethics.
I don’t agree with Vox Day that women’s rights are “a disease that should be eradicated”, and I’m curious whether you, Rand, or anyone who enjoys your blog, wouldn’t find the sentiment an obnoxiously wrong-headed way to think about half the human race.
And yes, again, that’s got nothing to do with the quiz. If the quiz is somehow a gem, it has been dropped in the mud.
Ok, I’m wrong; it’s not a Christian site; I was thinking of World magazine.
Oh, and I got 8 out of 10, just from reading this blog. Oh, and from watching Jonah Goldberg’s tortuous visit to Jon Stewart’s show on Comedy Central.
The logic goes that all sin is all one sin: disobedience of the law. I don’t think I could tell you a denomination-by-denomination list of who believes that. It’s not uncommon, but it’s sort of an over-intellectualization; most Christians don’t act that way even in those denominations.
While rape is intuitively a great evil, the point of the article seems to me to be that the only religion that explicitly says so is Christianity; it’s a support of Chrisitianity, not a support of rape.
And his point about women’s rights is that they endangered women’s well-being, which if true would make them such a “disease”, even if I agree with you that it’s not true. His point about doubling the size of the labor pool suppressing wages makes sense, but I don’t know how you could test it.
Jonathan, thanks for the food for thought!
I hesitate to get into this discussion of sin, but…
In the Torah and the Christian scriptures, sin is perhaps best understood (broadly) as whatever damages or breaks proper relationships (with YHWH, society, others, or oneself).
Some broken relationships are easier to heal than others. Sometimes an apology (properly understood as an “explanation”), expression of regret, restitution, and a cessation of the damaging behavior suffices.
Sometimes it does not. The relationship never heals.
The Roman Catholic church does describe gradations of seriousness of sin. I can’t comment on other theologies.
Best regards,
I took that test. So the French Revolution was the first instance of fascism? I thought before only communists engaged in revisionism. The first ideology which called itself fascist and embodied the principles of fascism was Mussolini’s and it was a conservative reaction to Bolshevism.
The French Revolution is too different. While Mussolini and Hitler’s fascisms were supported by the currently reigning powers as an alternative to a communist rebellion (the Italian King and Hindenburg remained as figureheads), the French Revolution decapitated the previously reigning elites. There was no compromise. It was socially liberal rather than socially conservative: unlike fascist regimes, there was at least an attempt to have universal suffrage.
Ok, so Bob dislikes Vox enough that he feels compelled to tell all to avoid him like the plague by picking subjects Vox has written on that offend Bob. Seems childish to me.
I don’t go around on other blogs and tell everyone to watch out for that Simberg fellow because he’s an evolutionist and agnostic cause I’m not.
I’ve found that Vox’s blog has helped shape my transition from Conservative Republican to small “L” libertarian over the past 4 years. And while I started reading Rand for things space related, I’ve also appreciated his libertarian slant as well.
Bob, you would benefit in life by learning to eat the fish and spit out the bones.
I find Goldberg view of Fascism misses key points. Fascism was anti-democratic, nationalist, anti-Marxist, militarist and para-militarist.
Small “f” fascism had all these characteristics, if we look at political movements that actually claimed the name with pride.
America did have its own actual fascists, and they weren’t nice at all: Pelley’s Silver Shirts. Goldberg doesn’t like talking about them, understandably.
Goldberg doesn’t like talking about the Mosley Black Shirts either. Rather, he tries to get the best of both worlds: a brief mention of the leftist elements to Mosley’s economics, while avoiding any mention of Mosley’s support for the monarchy and established religion.
Fascism was anti-democratic
You mean like the Soviet Union?
nationalist
What’s your point?
anti-Marxist
Despite the fact that Mussolini considered himself a man of the left?
militarist and para-militarist.
Yeah, we never saw anyone goose stepping through Red Square behind tanks and missiles…
America did have its own actual fascists, and they weren’t nice at all: Pelley’s Silver Shirts. Goldberg doesn’t like talking about them, understandably.
Without elaboration, this is meaningless, and doesn’t allow us to mock it in the way that your previous contribution does.
Politics as a religion ? By that token, Egyptians during the time of Pharaohs were fascist.
I wrote:
Fascism was anti-democratic
Rand replied:
You mean like the Soviet Union?
Sort of. Or like the France of Louis XIV.
Politics as a religion ? By that token, Egyptians during the time of Pharaohs were fascist.
Exactly. I’m pretty sure the first fascists were even earlier than the Pharoahs. The Italian and German fascist movements were deliberately trying to tap into the same human behaviors that shaped ancient societies. They admired and sought to learn from previous practioners of absolute power in the shape of one man. A capable ruler who seeks absolute power can definitely take advantage of something with the basic form and functions of religion.
Yours,
Tom
Did Mussolini actually call himself a man of the left after 1919? If so, where?
Did Mussolini actually call himself a man of the left after 1919?
I don’t know, but I’m not sure what difference it makes what he called himself. He certainly acted like one:
Rand:
Your source is quoting the Fascist 1919 program. They dropped almost all of that very quickly after they were trounced in the following election. What they did in power was often the opposite: such as mandating crucifixes and the Catholic catechism in the Italian schools.
such as mandating crucifixes and the Catholic catechism in the Italian schools.
Are you saying that socialism, or being on “the left” is incompatible with Catholicism? I know a number of radical priests who would find that amusing.
I’m saying that state support for a particular religion like Catholicism is an idea that had more support on the right. Likewise preserving the monarchy and titles of nobility, which is what Mussolini actually did.
It’s all a matter of how one defines “right” and “left.” As has been noted in the past, there is more than one axis. Jonah is pointing out that if you view left/right as collectivist versus individualist, both fascism and socialism/communism are much more alike than they are different.
If your axis is collectivist versus individualist, then you should just say that, and avoid confusion. The parties didn’t line up that way in Italy in the 1920s.
Assume for the sake of argument that there was at that time some faction on the socialist left that pegged exactly the same point on the collectivism meter as Mussolini’s Fascist, you still had disagreement on the rather vital questions of what the collective good is, and what particular groups of individuals make what sacrifices for that good on what theory, and whether the relevant collective is the nation state or something else, and who gets to decide and who are they accountable to. These are not petty doctrinal details, but quite literally matters of life and death.
No, sorry, but compared to the differences between collectivism and individualism, those are utterly trivial details. Once you decide that those are only matters of whose ox gets gored, and it’s for the State to decide, the difference is immense.
It’s never a binary choice between collectivism and individualism. In all states the freedom of the individual will be subordinated to the common good to some degree. Without people like Nathan Hale, the American Revolution might have been lost. Where you strike that balance is important.
But other issues are not trivial details. Whose ox gets gored matters quite a bit to the ox.
And there are other issues beyond that. Great Britain under Old Labour was fairly collectivist. The same collectivist values under a dictatorship not subject to electoral challenge would have been a lot worse. Worse still would have been a dictatorship that valued violence as an end in itself, continually looking for weaker neighbors to pick a fight with.
Worse still would have been a dictatorship that valued violence as an end in itself, continually looking for weaker neighbors to pick a fight with.
Yes, that’s bad, but I’m not sure that it’s instrinsic to fascism and not (for example) to Stalinism. For example, what “weak neighbors” was Mussolini continually looking for to pick a fight with?
I scored 70%, and never read Liberal Fascism.
The three I got wrong:
“Liberal Fascism” coined by H. G. Wells (I said Goldberg, and knew I was probably wrong)
Mussolini impacted by “The Moral Equivalent of War” by William James (I said by “Science of Logic” by Georg Hegel)
The individual who conceived the brilliant tactic of labeling all inconvenient ideas and movements “fascist” was Stalin (I had no bleeding idea and threw out Adlai Stevenson)
On Vox Day, I can’t speak for the general body of his work, but I did enjoy “The Condottieri of Capitalism”
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php?pageId=18739
Going off topic, but…if CEOs are the condottieri, what does that make Obama?
Glorification of violence was pretty intrinsic to Fascism (the archetypical Italian prototype, accept no substitutes). The manly virtue of literal martial struggle was one of the few things that Mussolini was consistent about. Before he ran the government he was proud of his party’s willingness to break the bones of the trade unionist next door.
Once he ran the country he occupied the Greek island of Corfu in 1923, and invaded Ethiopia, Albania and Greece. Also France, once most of its forces were thrown into the fight against Hitler.
He was not a good neighbor.
The extent to which this applies to small “f” fascism depends on who you include. I prefer a narrow definition: parties that considered themselves fascist and proud of it. This would include the Nazis, Mosley’s black shirts and Pelley’s silver shirts, all of whom thought that ultraviolence was awesome.
…The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone….