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Beowulf (Unrated Director's Cut)
Beowulf (Unrated Director's Cut)
Spectacular animated action scenes turn the ancient epic poem Beowulf into a modern fantasy movie, while motion-capture technology transforms plump actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast) into a burly Nordic warrior. When a Danish kingdom is threatened by the monster Grendel (voiced and physicalized by Crispin Glover, River's Edge), Beowulf--lured by the promise of heroic glory--comes to rescue them. He succeeds, but falls prey to the seductive power of Grendel's mother, played by Angelina Jolie... and as Jolie's pneumatically animated form rises from an underground lagoon with demon-claw high heels, it becomes clear that we're leaving the original epic far, far behind. Regrettably, the motion-capture process has made only modest improvements since The Polar Express; while the characters' eyes no longer look so flat and zombie-like, their faces remain inexpressive and movements are still wooden. As a result, the most effective sequences feature wildly animated battles and the most vivid character is Grendel, whose grotesqueness ends up making him far more sympathetic than any of the mannequin-like human beings. The meant-to-be-titillating images of a naked Jolie resemble an inflatable doll more than a living, breathing woman (or succubus, as the case may be). But the fights--particularly Grendel's initial assault on the celebration hut--pop with lushly animated gore and violence. Also featuring the CGI-muffled talents of Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs), Robin Wright Penn (The Princess Bride), and John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons). --Bret Fetzer
Customer Review: Beouwulf
Have not watched it yet, so I can really pass on my take on the movie. I heard lots of good things about the movie from others and wanted to own it.
Customer Review: Flawed in the Re-telling
There are many good things in this movie: The actual characters from the Epic, the basic setting, the intense violence, Grendel, even Grendel's mother. However, and I admit that I am biased here,I just don't think you can re-write a mythic tale that has survived for 1000 years to satisfy a modern director's idea of a good plot.
This movie is not Beowulf, it is a movie based upon the Beowulf epic. As such, it changes the central theme of the actual epic: The war between heaven hell being fought on earth as a struggle between good and evil, man and monster. I suppose that modern ideas of heroism can not accept the mythic heroism of the epic, but I feel that those very ideas are what make the original epic a truly great story.
Taking those elements out make this movie a morality tale about a false hero reaching redemption at last. The movie reflects the cynicism of the modern era I suppose, but it loses the epic qualities of the original poem.
Jersey Boys (2005 Original Broadway Cast Recording)
Jersey Boys (2005 Original Broadway Cast Recording)
Recounting the rich history and reliving the timeless sounds of the phenomenal Frankie Vallie & The 4 Seasons, the new Broadway musical Jersey Boys answers the musical-and philosophical question, "How did four would-be wise guys from Newark, NJ, become one of the greatest chart-topping successes in pop music history?" Jersey Boys celebrates legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi who, as the 4 seasons, wrote their own songs, invented their own identity, and sold 175 million records worldwide-all before they were 30.
Customer Review: Awesome
If you loved the show, you will love this CD! Great music with clips from the Broadway production.
Customer Review: Great CD
I Loved the Jersey Boys Play. Saw it twice!!! Would see it again. The singing is awesome and the CD is just as great!
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Other Boleyn Girl
"Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands. A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart. "
Customer Review: fascinating book
This was a terrific book! It grips you in the first chapter and doesn't let go! I am not a person who is all that much into reading period pieces but this was just an intriguing story that was well written.
I really enjoyed this book alot. Warning: this book will consume you! I found myself up reading until 2 am on many nights without even realizing it...
Customer Review: Tudor Harlequin Romance
I did not begin reading this novel expecting anything other than an easy weekend read, but was more disappointed than I could have imagined. An educated reader knows that in historical fiction, real characters are blended with fictional ones, and events are created or recreated to advance the plot. If the plot and writing are good, then the reader may suspend the facts momentarily for the sake of the work. In this novel, however, the historical inaccuracy and writing are so far-fetched as to cause the reader to pause frequently, thus interrupting the flow of the story.
If the book is about Mary (older sister, younger sister - historians in dispute), we are not given a very accurate picture of her true nature. There are established facts about Mary, such as that she was considered loose and had affairs with several men (including King Francis I of France, who called her "a great whore, the most infamous of all") which led to her dismissal from the French court. She was not the simpering dolt portrayed in the book.
The other interuption for me was the language. In places the dialogue represented the crisp, well-versed language one would expect of courtiers, while in others I felt like I was overhearing 21st century teenagers at the mall. One pet peeve of mine is the overuse of a word or phrase throughout a work. I feel that the writer simply could not bother to think of other descriptors or was unable to. For example, Gregory uses the word 'sulk' (not a bad word if used a time or two) and every other variant of the verb...'sulky' (adj - not very good word choice), and the worst...'sulkily' (adv. - I wasn't even sure these last two were real words - they are- but she uses this adverb form over and over. I actually wanted to go back and count how many times she used it.) Another instance of questionable usage was "D'you?" This was always used in dialogue, and I don't know if it was intended to be the recreation of a commonly used diction of the time. If it is not, it doesn't seem to fit in with the otherwise learned, courtly, formal speech used in every other case. In actual speech the pronunciation of "D'you" is probably much the same as "Do you." No where else is diction implied, so this contraction seems unnecessary and anachronistic.
At best the reading of this novel may inspire readers to become more informed about the Tudor period and the actual historical effects of the events in the book, which reduces the history to a mere backdrop for the unseemly behavior of a greedy and two-dimensional family. There are some excellent websites devoted to this period. You may find the portraits of the actual participants quite interesting as well.
Worse books have, of course, been written. For that reason only, perhaps this one deserves two stars - one and a half. Judging by sales, many people like Harlequin Romances. This book is probably a fair success on that level.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book as anything other than a Harlequin Romance, complete with heaving bosoms, soap-opera dialogue, and predictable, static characters.
New York Giants - Super Bowl XLII Champions - Commemorative Paperback Book
New York Giants - Super Bowl XLII Champions - Commemorative Paperback Book
Relive the greatest moments of Super Bowl XLII with this beautiful new commemorative book, capturing the action and pageantry of the New England Patriots and New York Giants title clash. It's the perfect addition to your sports library and for display in your home or office. This 128 page softcover book is filled with quality color photography and highlights of the Patriots Undefeated Season. Officially licensed by the NFL.
Customer Review: Great Story and a Poster Too!
The Giants may not have been perfect during the regular season but they were in the playoffs with one exciting win after another, each being more spectacular than the previous one! The Patriots came into the game forgetting the one big rule in most team sports that great defense will always beat a great offense!
The Giants grew as a team during the season and learned from each game. Having lost to Dallas, Green Bay and New England, they made adjustments to compensate for those loses and as rookie players began to shine, the Giants morphed into a team of destiny winning the most exciting Super Bowl ever! A must have for any Giants fan.
Comanche Moon
Comanche Moon
Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae pursue three outlaws, Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump, Comanche horse thief Kicking Wolf and a Mexican bandit king. Now in their middle years, they also struggle with their personal lives, Gus with Clara Forsythe, the love of his life, and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young prostitute who loves him. Meanwhile their partners-in-arms Deets, Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker help the Rangers protect the advancing western frontier from the defiant Comanches who are determined to defend their land and way of life. Prequel to Lonesome Dove, and based upon the novel by Larry McMurty.
Customer Review: A Bad western movie!
The acting and dialogue are bad. The file is slow and boring. The are no "fighting scenes" in the whole movies. What I mean is that in all those scenes, only one side was shooting at the other for a couple of minutes. Then it ended.
Save your money on this.
Customer Review: Excellent
If you love the Lonesome Dove series from Dead Man's Walk, Lonesome Dove, "Return to Lonesome Dove," and Streets of Laredo and then Lonsome Dove the series and The Outlaw years. Then your going to love Comance Moon. Now all we need is a better
Closure to Newt's life as a final chapter. If you don't understand this, start to watch from the biggining to the missing end.
Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac)
Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac)
Comic Life Deluxe gives you numerous ways to explore your creativity. With a comprehensive set of features, Comic Life makes it easy to liven up holiday snaps, tell a story&even create how-to guides. Lettering nowfaster and glitch-free Custom page sizes, normalized image filtering and zoom to fit images
Customer Review: Comic Life: Computer program for Macs
HIGHLY reccomended
I use this every year with my special needs class, they make comic books with it.
The kids still have to draw their own stuff, and you scan it in.
LOVE the program so much and so do my students!
Customer Review: Wonderful software for Kids or Adults
I have used this software on a Mac for several years but I understand it is now available for Windows users as well. This is a great value and offers a creative outlet for all types of projects. I have made photo pages for a scrap book, a comic birth announcement, and more. Not-for-profit institutions can purchase a "Site" license for all their computers for only $500 from the company (direct buy. Our local school district purchased that license for some 5,000 computers or .10 cents per machine. Many student with "writing problems" have enjoyed this software to write simple reports.
Easy to use and ties into your iPhoto library for Mac users.
Western Digital My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive - 320 GB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA (WDH1CS3200)
Western Digital My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive - 320 GB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA (WDH1CS3200)
E-SATA - USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 Interface
Customer Review: The Software IS Included!
Just fyi, but the software is included with this device. You need to enter the software key that is printed on a lable and stuck to the "installation guide". If you do that, the backup software shifts from being a "trial version" to a fully licensed and functional version. Thus far, it seems to work well.
Customer Review: Can't speak for the software, but the hardware is great!
Apart from making my other portable hard drives look rather frumpy, I have no complaints about this hard drive. It turned itself on when I first plugged it in and autoran the installer for the software that is included. I deleted the stuff, so I can't say whether it was good or not, but it was bundled software, so you can probably guess. Regardless, all I needed was more space to store my stuff, and the fact that it sits there all black and sleek and pulses with light in the front makes it good eye-candy, too. It's a portable hard drive, it works, it's cheap, and it's sexy. I win!
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.
Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.
Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.
Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.
These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.
Customer Review: Enough is Enough!!!!
I'M AM SICK & TIRED OF THE RIGHT VILLIFING EVERY LIBERAL! WE WERE'NT THE ONE'S THAT LEAKED A CIA AGENTS NAME, WE WERE'NT THE ONES THAT LIED GETING INTO THE WAR, & GETTING OUR TROOPS KILLED, WE WERE'NT THE ONE THAT TURNED OUR BACK ON KATRINA VICTUMS & VETS AT WALTER REED, & WE WERE'NT THE ONES THAT BULLIED 911 WIDOWS. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Customer Review: American Fascism: Progressives, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Useful Historical Idiots
"History is written by the winners." So goes the discipline-denigrating cliché. A more accurate observation, as Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism, suggests, is that history is written by historians--and especially, in recent decades, by academics whose biases predispose them to serve as useful idiots for Joseph Stalin's defunct propaganda ministry. Though Goldberg's well-researched book doesn't focus minute attention on the culpability of leftist historians, it does provide convenient targets (Richard Hofstadter and William Shirer) who might be blamed for abetting the greatest intellectual ruse of the twentieth century--the absurd designation of fascism as an ideology of the political right.
Anyone looking for Coulteresque theater in Goldberg's work (the product of four years' labor) will be disappointed. The book isn't meant to toss "f-bombs" at liberals the way liberals regularly toss that seven-letter epithet at conservatives. Indeed, Goldberg reiterates again and again that he doesn't employ the word "fascism" as a synonym for Nazism, racism, or "evil." Rather, he uses the term to label a method of governing that expressed itself differently in different countries. Given that caveat, anyone who chooses to read this engrossing analysis of the origins of fascism will likely be rewarded with a paradigm-shifting experience that puts the history of the twentieth century in a new light--a history that places Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt in the same political neighborhood as Benito Mussolini.
The story of fascism, Goldberg notes, begins with the "holistic" philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his revolutionary progeny--men whose boundless conception of national communion (via a general will) led to the odd idea that dissidents would be "forced to be free"--a fate more benign than the guillotine that "freed" enemies of the state from error during the French Reign of Terror. Hegel's philosophy, where the state incarnates God's work in history, provides another piece of the ancestral puzzle, while Nietzsche's romantic and relativistic "will to power" adds a third leg to fascism's Continental heritage. A fourth progenitor was Otto von Bismarck, whose comprehensive welfare package for the new German Empire provided Western intellectuals with a top-down model of social policy that they yearned to replicate.
These historical connections aren't exceptionally novel, but the American branches of fascism's genealogical tree are unexpected--limbs that include the pragmatic philosophers William James and John Dewey as well as political writers like Henry George (Progress and Poverty), Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), and Herbert Croly (The Promise of American Life). Drawing on these and other sources, Goldberg not only shows that European fascism is a product of the political left, he also argues persuasively that America's version of that system is rooted in the Progressive movement and was first given national expression in the war socialism of Woodrow Wilson.
Not surprisingly, Goldberg's first two chapters are devoted to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. But contrary to the impression given by pop-history, Mussolini isn't relegated to the status of an absurd fifth wheel. Instead, Il Duce's role as the "Father of Fascism" is clearly laid out. The portrait of his rise to power in 1922--more than a decade before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany--is the story of an intellectual whose communist sympathies were developed from infancy. (Even his given names, Benito Amilcare Andrea, conjured up leftist heroes from the past.) Those socialist sentiments remained with Mussolini to the day of his death--alongside his obsession with sexual conquest and his contempt for Christianity.
As Goldberg notes, Mussolini's state-centered, anti-capitalist rhetoric could only be declared "right-wing" by ideologues who were fighting over the same political bone. In other words, it was the internecine struggle between fascists and communists that gave birth to the longstanding practice of separating the terms "fascist" and "socialist." This linguistic divorce was mandated by Stalin to stigmatize the socialist heresy Mussolini promoted in light of his comrades' nationalistic response to World War I.
Goldberg also emphasizes that fascism itself varied from nation to nation. Most significantly, the Jew-hatred that characterized Hitler's regime wasn't integral to Italian Fascism--a movement that included a disproportionate number of Jews. Indeed, Mussolini scoffed at the Aryan myth that animated German Nazism, preferring for his part to play the role of a latter-day Caesar who was destined to resurrect Rome's ancient greatness.
The most unexpected part of Goldberg's Mussolini portrait is the way the Italian leader was hailed in American Progressive circles (e.g. in issues of Herbert Croly's New Republic) and in American pop-culture. Even as late as 1934, Cole Porter's song, "You're the Top," exhibited this adulatory attitude toward the Italian idol. Only after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935 did this admiration begin to wane. Significantly, the American President that Mussolini praised effusively in 1919, three years before his march on Rome, was Woodrow Wilson.
As far as Hitler's left-wing credentials are concerned, Goldberg's discussion of the Nazi Party Platform does a good job of demonstrating that the word "socialist" in National Socialist wasn't mere window dressing. After summarizing that ambitious document, Goldberg offers this sarcastic conclusion:
"Ah, yes. Those anti-elitist, stock-market-abolishing, child-labor-ending, public-health-promoting, wealth-confiscating, draft-ending, secularist right-wingers!"
Analysis of the groups from which Nazism drew its support also shows that corporations weren't (as Moscow insisted) pulling strings behind the scene. Rather, Nazism emerged as a populist movement that was so cash-strapped Hitler frequently rode to rallies "in the back of an old pickup." As the historian Henry Ashby Turner concludes, corporate funding of the Nazi party was "at best" of "marginal significance." Were it not for decades of leftist disinformation, that conclusion would have been a foregone conclusion, given the virulently anti-capitalist language of Mein Kampf--language Hitler still employed in 1941. In short, Goldberg provides extensive evidence that Hitler's political program was just as "right-wing" as the politics of Leon Trotsky--whom Stalin also labeled a "fascist."
It is one thing to assert that fascism is a product of the political left--one of the "heresies of socialism" according to Harvard Professor Richard Pipes. It is something else to argue that fascism has its own American expression that grew out of the Progressive political tradition and that "Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator." That, however, is precisely the proposition put forward in Goldberg's third chapter: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism.
To bolster this hypothesis, Goldberg highlights connections between the intellectual milieu that fostered fascism in Europe and the milieu that begat American Progressivism. Henry George's Progress and Poverty, for example, was received enthusiastically in Europe where it helped to shape populist and socialist economic theory. Similarly, Edward Bellamy's utopian vision in Looking Backward (where a single municipal umbrella would one day shield all Bostonians from the rain) drew inspiration from Bismarck's top-down political example in Germany. These and other "holistic" visions of society fed into an American Progressive movement whose moral energy was derived largely from legions of Social Gospelers. As Goldberg notes, the party's 1912 presidential convention was described in the New York Times as a "convention of fanatics" and "religious enthusiasts." This fusion of social reform and religious fervor is central to what Goldberg calls "liberal fascism."
On the philosophical side of the ledger, American Progressivism looked to William James, John Dewey, and Charles Darwin. The former duo provided a relativistic and pragmatic outlook that coincided nicely with bold social experimentation. Dewey, in particular, advocated an "organic" Darwinian approach to society that consigned American individualism to the dustbin of evolutionary history. Darwinism also brought to the Progressive project a focus on racist genetics that (alongside the movement's militant imperialism) subsequent historians have been eager to forget. Furthermore, the polite moral relativism of James and Dewey echoed the unequivocal relativism expressed by Nietzsche (whose philosophy, according to H. L. Mencken, Theodore Roosevelt had swallowed whole). Finally, the attachment of elite progressives to Hegel's political philosophy (Goldberg notes that Woodrow Wilson "even invoked Hegel in a love letter to his wife.") reinforced the idea that society is an organic whole and that reformers are, quite literally, God's instruments on earth.
Woodrow Wilson is the unexpected villain of Liberal Fascism. Based on a review of his academic writings, Goldberg demonstrates that Wilson was a devotee of power--power utilized according to the pragmatic lights of John Dewey. Consequently, the twenty-eighth president denigrated, with the confidence of a divinely anointed leader, those constitutional provisions that limited his ability to mold the nation into a healthy organism that worked for the good of all. This "evolutionary" vision of history provided the intellectual justification for that modern legal theory that dissolves all governmental boundaries--the living Constitution. It also paved the way for an approach to education that transferred the locus of pedagogical authority from parents to the state. In Professor Wilson's words: "Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life...[but] to make them as unlike their fathers as we can."
World War I gave President Wilson the crisis he needed to implement the top-down vision of social coordination he had written about for decades. Government instruments employed in this massive effort (whose only near precedent was Lincoln's response to the Civil War) included the War Industries Board, a vigorous and widespread propaganda ministry, and a justice department that, Goldberg notes, presided over the arrest and jailing of more dissidents than Mussolini incarcerated during the entire 1920s. From censorship, to price-fixing, to Palmer raids, to patriotic nursery rhymes designed for toddlers, mobilization gave Wilson's government unprecedented access to and control over people's lives. This whipping of individualistic Americans into collective shape was cheered by progressives like Walter Lippmann who saw in the war an opportunity to bring about a Nietzschean "transvaluation of values as radical as anything in the history of intellect." No wonder Warren Harding won the presidency in 1920 with a campaign that promised a return to "normalcy."
With the advent of the Great Depression, Progressives were given an opportunity to reprise the coordination achieved under Wilson's war socialism. The British journalist Alistair Cooke doubtless turned many heads when, in the 1970s, he announced on his popular PBS history series that America under FDR "flirted with National Socialism." Goldberg argues that the amorous relationship was a good deal more intimate--a relationship fanned by the populist hot air that emanated from Father Coughlin and Senator Huey Long and consummated by many of the individuals that ran Wilson's war agencies. A prime example of these fascist retreads was Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, whose "sock in the nose" style at the National Recovery Administration doubtless drew positive reviews from one of FDR's early admirers, Benito Mussolini. Even Germany's new Fuhrer had words of praise for the government-business partnerships that typified Roosevelt's New Deal.
The expansion of government under Franklin Roosevelt is well known. What isn't acknowledged in polite historical circles, as Goldberg notes, is how "the fascist flavor of the New Deal was not only regularly discussed" but even "cited in Roosevelt's favor." Why this inconvenient fact was dropped down the historical memory hole is clear. Leftist historians had no desire to link the paragon of modern "liberalism" with "right-wing" fascism. Stated more honestly, they didn't want to acknowledge that fascism was a left- wing philosophy and expose the ongoing historical ruse that kept conservatives (i.e. classical liberals) off balance.
The remainder of Goldberg's book (more than half) discusses progressivism's third wave of influence on American life in the 1960s and explains how its fascist traits have been incorporated into modern "liberalism." While not as narrowly focused as his first four chapters, these materials do give further definition to the concept of "liberal fascism"--a phrase coined in 1932 by H. G. Wells to promote an ambitious "liberal" variant of Europe's burgeoning political system.
Among the concepts that Goldberg identifies as integral to sixties radicalism are these: the romantic embrace of youthful impulsiveness and sexuality, the denigration of reason and tradition, the extension of politics into all areas of life, the exaltation of identity politics (initially in terms of race and gender), and the justification of violence committed by revolutionaries intent on creating a mythical heaven on earth (e.g. the Black Panthers). All these themes, Goldberg notes, have significant corollaries in the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.
What separates these 60s street radicals from Great Society and contemporary progressives, however, is the smothering maternalism that characterizes the latter groups. Today's "liberal fascists," unlike their European and turn-of-the-century American forebears, promote a religion of the state that is non-militaristic. As such, it resembles Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, not George Orwell's 1984. No better example of this smothering maternalism exists than Hillary Clinton's magnum opus, It Takes A Village--a mythical world where helpful government programs cover the social landscape and where repetitive video messages inculcate useful parenting tips "any place where people gather and have to wait."
Another Goldberg chapter, Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine, shows how "eugenics lay at the heart of the progressive enterprise"--an assertion backed by historian Edwin Black, who noted that the eugenic crusade was "created in the publications and academic research rooms of the Carnegie Institution, verified by the research grants of the Rockefeller Foundation, validated by leading scholars from the best Ivy League universities, and financed by the special efforts of the Harriman railroad fortune." This embarrassing skeleton in the Progressive closet is compared with the implicit pro-abortion subtext in the best-selling book, Freakonomics--namely, "fewer blacks, less crime."
Regrettably, Goldberg's final chapter, The New Age: We're All Fascists Now, begins to treat fascist traits so eclectically that the precision and focus of earlier chapters is lost. Looking for fascist themes in Dirty Harry and Whole Foods Market is a bit like searching for grandmother's features in little Ricky's newborn mug. One is bound to find something, but isolated traits don't amount to a close likeness. A similar critique applies to Goldberg's afterword, The Tempting of Conservatism, where playing (perhaps badly) at the only governmental game in town seems to be confused with religious devotion to the political Weltanschauung exhibited in It Takes A Village.
Despite these end-of-book drawbacks, Goldberg has produced a popular book of rare historical depth and quality--a book that promises to scrap those ridiculous history-class charts that put democracy midway between "socialism" on the left and "fascism" on the right, then justify their totalitarian extremes by bending the linear ends into a globe where left and right magically "meet."
An old Soviet joke asserted that loyal comrades know the future; it's only the past that keeps changing. With Goldberg's assistance, Americans can begin to rewrite their own political history, this time putting the "fascist" label where it belongs. That single alteration would be a momentous accomplishment--one that would make the architects of democracy's future more sure-handed.
Review by Richard Kirk
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer and a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times. His book reviews have appeared in American Spectator Online, Touchstone, The American Enterprise, and First Things. See his blog, Richard Kirk on Ethics: Musing With A Hammer.
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Interview: Daniel Arenson, Fantasy Author
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:31:39 GMT
Reprinted from The Website of Joan Reeves, August 2008, . Here's the information you need in order to ask your local library to order his book if it hasn't already done so or for you to purchase it from your ...
Medford murder case subject of upcoming book
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:49:40 GMT
Chilling stuff in this morning's Medford Mail Tribune, which recounts the murders 24 years ago of Bill and Linda Gilley and their daughter Becky at the hands of their son, Billy Frank Gilley Jr.
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Beowulf (Unrated Director's Cut)
Beowulf (Unrated Director's Cut)
Spectacular animated action scenes turn the ancient epic poem Beowulf into a modern fantasy movie, while motion-capture technology transforms plump actor Ray Winstone (Sexy Beast) into a burly Nordic warrior. When a Danish kingdom is threatened by the monster Grendel (voiced and physicalized by Crispin Glover, River's Edge), Beowulf--lured by the promise of heroic glory--comes to rescue them. He succeeds, but falls prey to the seductive power of Grendel's mother, played by Angelina Jolie... and as Jolie's pneumatically animated form rises from an underground lagoon with demon-claw high heels, it becomes clear that we're leaving the original epic far, far behind. Regrettably, the motion-capture process has made only modest improvements since The Polar Express; while the characters' eyes no longer look so flat and zombie-like, their faces remain inexpressive and movements are still wooden. As a result, the most effective sequences feature wildly animated battles and the most vivid character is Grendel, whose grotesqueness ends up making him far more sympathetic than any of the mannequin-like human beings. The meant-to-be-titillating images of a naked Jolie resemble an inflatable doll more than a living, breathing woman (or succubus, as the case may be). But the fights--particularly Grendel's initial assault on the celebration hut--pop with lushly animated gore and violence. Also featuring the CGI-muffled talents of Anthony Hopkins (Silence of the Lambs), Robin Wright Penn (The Princess Bride), and John Malkovich (Dangerous Liaisons). --Bret Fetzer
Customer Review: Beouwulf
Have not watched it yet, so I can really pass on my take on the movie. I heard lots of good things about the movie from others and wanted to own it.
Customer Review: Flawed in the Re-telling
There are many good things in this movie: The actual characters from the Epic, the basic setting, the intense violence, Grendel, even Grendel's mother. However, and I admit that I am biased here,I just don't think you can re-write a mythic tale that has survived for 1000 years to satisfy a modern director's idea of a good plot.
This movie is not Beowulf, it is a movie based upon the Beowulf epic. As such, it changes the central theme of the actual epic: The war between heaven hell being fought on earth as a struggle between good and evil, man and monster. I suppose that modern ideas of heroism can not accept the mythic heroism of the epic, but I feel that those very ideas are what make the original epic a truly great story.
Taking those elements out make this movie a morality tale about a false hero reaching redemption at last. The movie reflects the cynicism of the modern era I suppose, but it loses the epic qualities of the original poem.
Jersey Boys (2005 Original Broadway Cast Recording)
Jersey Boys (2005 Original Broadway Cast Recording)
Recounting the rich history and reliving the timeless sounds of the phenomenal Frankie Vallie & The 4 Seasons, the new Broadway musical Jersey Boys answers the musical-and philosophical question, "How did four would-be wise guys from Newark, NJ, become one of the greatest chart-topping successes in pop music history?" Jersey Boys celebrates legendary Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito, and Nick Massi who, as the 4 seasons, wrote their own songs, invented their own identity, and sold 175 million records worldwide-all before they were 30.
Customer Review: Awesome
If you loved the show, you will love this CD! Great music with clips from the Broadway production.
Customer Review: Great CD
I Loved the Jersey Boys Play. Saw it twice!!! Would see it again. The singing is awesome and the CD is just as great!
The Other Boleyn Girl
The Other Boleyn Girl
"Two sisters competing for the greatest prize: the love of a king When Mary Boleyn comes to court as an innocent girl of fourteen, she catches the eye of Henry VIII. Dazzled by the king, Mary falls in love with both her golden prince and her growing role as unofficial queen. However, she soon realizes just how much she is a pawn in her family's ambitious plots as the king's interest begins to wane and she is forced to step aside for her best friend and rival: her sister, Anne. Then Mary knows that she must defy her family and her king, and take her fate into her own hands. A rich and compelling tale of love, sex, ambition, and intrigue, The Other Boleyn Girl introduces a woman of extraordinary determination and desire who lived at the heart of the most exciting and glamorous court in Europe and survived by following her own heart. "
Customer Review: fascinating book
This was a terrific book! It grips you in the first chapter and doesn't let go! I am not a person who is all that much into reading period pieces but this was just an intriguing story that was well written.
I really enjoyed this book alot. Warning: this book will consume you! I found myself up reading until 2 am on many nights without even realizing it...
Customer Review: Tudor Harlequin Romance
I did not begin reading this novel expecting anything other than an easy weekend read, but was more disappointed than I could have imagined. An educated reader knows that in historical fiction, real characters are blended with fictional ones, and events are created or recreated to advance the plot. If the plot and writing are good, then the reader may suspend the facts momentarily for the sake of the work. In this novel, however, the historical inaccuracy and writing are so far-fetched as to cause the reader to pause frequently, thus interrupting the flow of the story.
If the book is about Mary (older sister, younger sister - historians in dispute), we are not given a very accurate picture of her true nature. There are established facts about Mary, such as that she was considered loose and had affairs with several men (including King Francis I of France, who called her "a great whore, the most infamous of all") which led to her dismissal from the French court. She was not the simpering dolt portrayed in the book.
The other interuption for me was the language. In places the dialogue represented the crisp, well-versed language one would expect of courtiers, while in others I felt like I was overhearing 21st century teenagers at the mall. One pet peeve of mine is the overuse of a word or phrase throughout a work. I feel that the writer simply could not bother to think of other descriptors or was unable to. For example, Gregory uses the word 'sulk' (not a bad word if used a time or two) and every other variant of the verb...'sulky' (adj - not very good word choice), and the worst...'sulkily' (adv. - I wasn't even sure these last two were real words - they are- but she uses this adverb form over and over. I actually wanted to go back and count how many times she used it.) Another instance of questionable usage was "D'you?" This was always used in dialogue, and I don't know if it was intended to be the recreation of a commonly used diction of the time. If it is not, it doesn't seem to fit in with the otherwise learned, courtly, formal speech used in every other case. In actual speech the pronunciation of "D'you" is probably much the same as "Do you." No where else is diction implied, so this contraction seems unnecessary and anachronistic.
At best the reading of this novel may inspire readers to become more informed about the Tudor period and the actual historical effects of the events in the book, which reduces the history to a mere backdrop for the unseemly behavior of a greedy and two-dimensional family. There are some excellent websites devoted to this period. You may find the portraits of the actual participants quite interesting as well.
Worse books have, of course, been written. For that reason only, perhaps this one deserves two stars - one and a half. Judging by sales, many people like Harlequin Romances. This book is probably a fair success on that level.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend this book as anything other than a Harlequin Romance, complete with heaving bosoms, soap-opera dialogue, and predictable, static characters.
New York Giants - Super Bowl XLII Champions - Commemorative Paperback Book
New York Giants - Super Bowl XLII Champions - Commemorative Paperback Book
Relive the greatest moments of Super Bowl XLII with this beautiful new commemorative book, capturing the action and pageantry of the New England Patriots and New York Giants title clash. It's the perfect addition to your sports library and for display in your home or office. This 128 page softcover book is filled with quality color photography and highlights of the Patriots Undefeated Season. Officially licensed by the NFL.
Customer Review: Great Story and a Poster Too!
The Giants may not have been perfect during the regular season but they were in the playoffs with one exciting win after another, each being more spectacular than the previous one! The Patriots came into the game forgetting the one big rule in most team sports that great defense will always beat a great offense!
The Giants grew as a team during the season and learned from each game. Having lost to Dallas, Green Bay and New England, they made adjustments to compensate for those loses and as rookie players began to shine, the Giants morphed into a team of destiny winning the most exciting Super Bowl ever! A must have for any Giants fan.
Comanche Moon
Comanche Moon
Texas Rangers Woodrow Call and Augustus McCrae pursue three outlaws, Comanche war chief Buffalo Hump, Comanche horse thief Kicking Wolf and a Mexican bandit king. Now in their middle years, they also struggle with their personal lives, Gus with Clara Forsythe, the love of his life, and Call with Maggie Tilton, the young prostitute who loves him. Meanwhile their partners-in-arms Deets, Jake Spoon and Pea Eye Parker help the Rangers protect the advancing western frontier from the defiant Comanches who are determined to defend their land and way of life. Prequel to Lonesome Dove, and based upon the novel by Larry McMurty.
Customer Review: A Bad western movie!
The acting and dialogue are bad. The file is slow and boring. The are no "fighting scenes" in the whole movies. What I mean is that in all those scenes, only one side was shooting at the other for a couple of minutes. Then it ended.
Save your money on this.
Customer Review: Excellent
If you love the Lonesome Dove series from Dead Man's Walk, Lonesome Dove, "Return to Lonesome Dove," and Streets of Laredo and then Lonsome Dove the series and The Outlaw years. Then your going to love Comance Moon. Now all we need is a better
Closure to Newt's life as a final chapter. If you don't understand this, start to watch from the biggining to the missing end.
Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac)
Comic Life Deluxe: Comic Strip, Comic Book Creator (Mac)
Comic Life Deluxe gives you numerous ways to explore your creativity. With a comprehensive set of features, Comic Life makes it easy to liven up holiday snaps, tell a story&even create how-to guides. Lettering nowfaster and glitch-free Custom page sizes, normalized image filtering and zoom to fit images
Customer Review: Comic Life: Computer program for Macs
HIGHLY reccomended
I use this every year with my special needs class, they make comic books with it.
The kids still have to draw their own stuff, and you scan it in.
LOVE the program so much and so do my students!
Customer Review: Wonderful software for Kids or Adults
I have used this software on a Mac for several years but I understand it is now available for Windows users as well. This is a great value and offers a creative outlet for all types of projects. I have made photo pages for a scrap book, a comic birth announcement, and more. Not-for-profit institutions can purchase a "Site" license for all their computers for only $500 from the company (direct buy. Our local school district purchased that license for some 5,000 computers or .10 cents per machine. Many student with "writing problems" have enjoyed this software to write simple reports.
Easy to use and ties into your iPhoto library for Mac users.
Western Digital My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive - 320 GB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA (WDH1CS3200)
Western Digital My Book Home Edition External Hard Drive - 320 GB, USB 2.0, FireWire 400, eSATA (WDH1CS3200)
E-SATA - USB 2.0 and Firewire 400 Interface
Customer Review: The Software IS Included!
Just fyi, but the software is included with this device. You need to enter the software key that is printed on a lable and stuck to the "installation guide". If you do that, the backup software shifts from being a "trial version" to a fully licensed and functional version. Thus far, it seems to work well.
Customer Review: Can't speak for the software, but the hardware is great!
Apart from making my other portable hard drives look rather frumpy, I have no complaints about this hard drive. It turned itself on when I first plugged it in and autoran the installer for the software that is included. I deleted the stuff, so I can't say whether it was good or not, but it was bundled software, so you can probably guess. Regardless, all I needed was more space to store my stuff, and the fact that it sits there all black and sleek and pulses with light in the front makes it good eye-candy, too. It's a portable hard drive, it works, it's cheap, and it's sexy. I win!
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning
“Fascists,” “Brownshirts,” “jackbooted stormtroopers”—such are the insults typically hurled at conservatives by their liberal opponents. Calling someone a fascist is the fastest way to shut them up, defining their views as beyond the political pale. But who are the real fascists in our midst?
Liberal Fascism offers a startling new perspective on the theories and practices that define fascist politics. Replacing conveniently manufactured myths with surprising and enlightening research, Jonah Goldberg reminds us that the original fascists were really on the left, and that liberals from Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton have advocated policies and principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism and Mussolini's Fascism.
Contrary to what most people think, the Nazis were ardent socialists (hence the term “National socialism”). They believed in free health care and guaranteed jobs. They confiscated inherited wealth and spent vast sums on public education. They purged the church from public policy, promoted a new form of pagan spirituality, and inserted the authority of the state into every nook and cranny of daily life. The Nazis declared war on smoking, supported abortion, euthanasia, and gun control. They loathed the free market, provided generous pensions for the elderly, and maintained a strict racial quota system in their universities—where campus speech codes were all the rage. The Nazis led the world in organic farming and alternative medicine. Hitler was a strict vegetarian, and Himmler was an animal rights activist.
Do these striking parallels mean that today’s liberals are genocidal maniacs, intent on conquering the world and imposing a new racial order? Not at all. Yet it is hard to deny that modern progressivism and classical fascism shared the same intellectual roots. We often forget, for example, that Mussolini and Hitler had many admirers in the United States. W.E.B. Du Bois was inspired by Hitler's Germany, and Irving Berlin praised Mussolini in song. Many fascist tenets were espoused by American progressives like John Dewey and Woodrow Wilson, and FDR incorporated fascist policies in the New Deal.
Fascism was an international movement that appeared in different forms in different countries, depending on the vagaries of national culture and temperament. In Germany, fascism appeared as genocidal racist nationalism. In America, it took a “friendlier,” more liberal form. The modern heirs of this “friendly fascist” tradition include the New York Times, the Democratic Party, the Ivy League professoriate, and the liberals of Hollywood. The quintessential Liberal Fascist isn't an SS storm trooper; it is a female grade school teacher with an education degree from Brown or Swarthmore.
These assertions may sound strange to modern ears, but that is because we have forgotten what fascism is. In this angry, funny, smart, contentious book, Jonah Goldberg turns our preconceptions inside out and shows us the true meaning of Liberal Fascism.
Customer Review: Enough is Enough!!!!
I'M AM SICK & TIRED OF THE RIGHT VILLIFING EVERY LIBERAL! WE WERE'NT THE ONE'S THAT LEAKED A CIA AGENTS NAME, WE WERE'NT THE ONES THAT LIED GETING INTO THE WAR, & GETTING OUR TROOPS KILLED, WE WERE'NT THE ONE THAT TURNED OUR BACK ON KATRINA VICTUMS & VETS AT WALTER REED, & WE WERE'NT THE ONES THAT BULLIED 911 WIDOWS. ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Customer Review: American Fascism: Progressives, Woodrow Wilson, FDR and Useful Historical Idiots
"History is written by the winners." So goes the discipline-denigrating cliché. A more accurate observation, as Jonah Goldberg's new book, Liberal Fascism, suggests, is that history is written by historians--and especially, in recent decades, by academics whose biases predispose them to serve as useful idiots for Joseph Stalin's defunct propaganda ministry. Though Goldberg's well-researched book doesn't focus minute attention on the culpability of leftist historians, it does provide convenient targets (Richard Hofstadter and William Shirer) who might be blamed for abetting the greatest intellectual ruse of the twentieth century--the absurd designation of fascism as an ideology of the political right.
Anyone looking for Coulteresque theater in Goldberg's work (the product of four years' labor) will be disappointed. The book isn't meant to toss "f-bombs" at liberals the way liberals regularly toss that seven-letter epithet at conservatives. Indeed, Goldberg reiterates again and again that he doesn't employ the word "fascism" as a synonym for Nazism, racism, or "evil." Rather, he uses the term to label a method of governing that expressed itself differently in different countries. Given that caveat, anyone who chooses to read this engrossing analysis of the origins of fascism will likely be rewarded with a paradigm-shifting experience that puts the history of the twentieth century in a new light--a history that places Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt in the same political neighborhood as Benito Mussolini.
The story of fascism, Goldberg notes, begins with the "holistic" philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau and his revolutionary progeny--men whose boundless conception of national communion (via a general will) led to the odd idea that dissidents would be "forced to be free"--a fate more benign than the guillotine that "freed" enemies of the state from error during the French Reign of Terror. Hegel's philosophy, where the state incarnates God's work in history, provides another piece of the ancestral puzzle, while Nietzsche's romantic and relativistic "will to power" adds a third leg to fascism's Continental heritage. A fourth progenitor was Otto von Bismarck, whose comprehensive welfare package for the new German Empire provided Western intellectuals with a top-down model of social policy that they yearned to replicate.
These historical connections aren't exceptionally novel, but the American branches of fascism's genealogical tree are unexpected--limbs that include the pragmatic philosophers William James and John Dewey as well as political writers like Henry George (Progress and Poverty), Edward Bellamy (Looking Backward), and Herbert Croly (The Promise of American Life). Drawing on these and other sources, Goldberg not only shows that European fascism is a product of the political left, he also argues persuasively that America's version of that system is rooted in the Progressive movement and was first given national expression in the war socialism of Woodrow Wilson.
Not surprisingly, Goldberg's first two chapters are devoted to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. But contrary to the impression given by pop-history, Mussolini isn't relegated to the status of an absurd fifth wheel. Instead, Il Duce's role as the "Father of Fascism" is clearly laid out. The portrait of his rise to power in 1922--more than a decade before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany--is the story of an intellectual whose communist sympathies were developed from infancy. (Even his given names, Benito Amilcare Andrea, conjured up leftist heroes from the past.) Those socialist sentiments remained with Mussolini to the day of his death--alongside his obsession with sexual conquest and his contempt for Christianity.
As Goldberg notes, Mussolini's state-centered, anti-capitalist rhetoric could only be declared "right-wing" by ideologues who were fighting over the same political bone. In other words, it was the internecine struggle between fascists and communists that gave birth to the longstanding practice of separating the terms "fascist" and "socialist." This linguistic divorce was mandated by Stalin to stigmatize the socialist heresy Mussolini promoted in light of his comrades' nationalistic response to World War I.
Goldberg also emphasizes that fascism itself varied from nation to nation. Most significantly, the Jew-hatred that characterized Hitler's regime wasn't integral to Italian Fascism--a movement that included a disproportionate number of Jews. Indeed, Mussolini scoffed at the Aryan myth that animated German Nazism, preferring for his part to play the role of a latter-day Caesar who was destined to resurrect Rome's ancient greatness.
The most unexpected part of Goldberg's Mussolini portrait is the way the Italian leader was hailed in American Progressive circles (e.g. in issues of Herbert Croly's New Republic) and in American pop-culture. Even as late as 1934, Cole Porter's song, "You're the Top," exhibited this adulatory attitude toward the Italian idol. Only after Mussolini invaded Ethiopia in 1935 did this admiration begin to wane. Significantly, the American President that Mussolini praised effusively in 1919, three years before his march on Rome, was Woodrow Wilson.
As far as Hitler's left-wing credentials are concerned, Goldberg's discussion of the Nazi Party Platform does a good job of demonstrating that the word "socialist" in National Socialist wasn't mere window dressing. After summarizing that ambitious document, Goldberg offers this sarcastic conclusion:
"Ah, yes. Those anti-elitist, stock-market-abolishing, child-labor-ending, public-health-promoting, wealth-confiscating, draft-ending, secularist right-wingers!"
Analysis of the groups from which Nazism drew its support also shows that corporations weren't (as Moscow insisted) pulling strings behind the scene. Rather, Nazism emerged as a populist movement that was so cash-strapped Hitler frequently rode to rallies "in the back of an old pickup." As the historian Henry Ashby Turner concludes, corporate funding of the Nazi party was "at best" of "marginal significance." Were it not for decades of leftist disinformation, that conclusion would have been a foregone conclusion, given the virulently anti-capitalist language of Mein Kampf--language Hitler still employed in 1941. In short, Goldberg provides extensive evidence that Hitler's political program was just as "right-wing" as the politics of Leon Trotsky--whom Stalin also labeled a "fascist."
It is one thing to assert that fascism is a product of the political left--one of the "heresies of socialism" according to Harvard Professor Richard Pipes. It is something else to argue that fascism has its own American expression that grew out of the Progressive political tradition and that "Woodrow Wilson was the twentieth century's first fascist dictator." That, however, is precisely the proposition put forward in Goldberg's third chapter: Woodrow Wilson and the Birth of Liberal Fascism.
To bolster this hypothesis, Goldberg highlights connections between the intellectual milieu that fostered fascism in Europe and the milieu that begat American Progressivism. Henry George's Progress and Poverty, for example, was received enthusiastically in Europe where it helped to shape populist and socialist economic theory. Similarly, Edward Bellamy's utopian vision in Looking Backward (where a single municipal umbrella would one day shield all Bostonians from the rain) drew inspiration from Bismarck's top-down political example in Germany. These and other "holistic" visions of society fed into an American Progressive movement whose moral energy was derived largely from legions of Social Gospelers. As Goldberg notes, the party's 1912 presidential convention was described in the New York Times as a "convention of fanatics" and "religious enthusiasts." This fusion of social reform and religious fervor is central to what Goldberg calls "liberal fascism."
On the philosophical side of the ledger, American Progressivism looked to William James, John Dewey, and Charles Darwin. The former duo provided a relativistic and pragmatic outlook that coincided nicely with bold social experimentation. Dewey, in particular, advocated an "organic" Darwinian approach to society that consigned American individualism to the dustbin of evolutionary history. Darwinism also brought to the Progressive project a focus on racist genetics that (alongside the movement's militant imperialism) subsequent historians have been eager to forget. Furthermore, the polite moral relativism of James and Dewey echoed the unequivocal relativism expressed by Nietzsche (whose philosophy, according to H. L. Mencken, Theodore Roosevelt had swallowed whole). Finally, the attachment of elite progressives to Hegel's political philosophy (Goldberg notes that Woodrow Wilson "even invoked Hegel in a love letter to his wife.") reinforced the idea that society is an organic whole and that reformers are, quite literally, God's instruments on earth.
Woodrow Wilson is the unexpected villain of Liberal Fascism. Based on a review of his academic writings, Goldberg demonstrates that Wilson was a devotee of power--power utilized according to the pragmatic lights of John Dewey. Consequently, the twenty-eighth president denigrated, with the confidence of a divinely anointed leader, those constitutional provisions that limited his ability to mold the nation into a healthy organism that worked for the good of all. This "evolutionary" vision of history provided the intellectual justification for that modern legal theory that dissolves all governmental boundaries--the living Constitution. It also paved the way for an approach to education that transferred the locus of pedagogical authority from parents to the state. In Professor Wilson's words: "Our problem is not merely to help the students to adjust themselves to world life...[but] to make them as unlike their fathers as we can."
World War I gave President Wilson the crisis he needed to implement the top-down vision of social coordination he had written about for decades. Government instruments employed in this massive effort (whose only near precedent was Lincoln's response to the Civil War) included the War Industries Board, a vigorous and widespread propaganda ministry, and a justice department that, Goldberg notes, presided over the arrest and jailing of more dissidents than Mussolini incarcerated during the entire 1920s. From censorship, to price-fixing, to Palmer raids, to patriotic nursery rhymes designed for toddlers, mobilization gave Wilson's government unprecedented access to and control over people's lives. This whipping of individualistic Americans into collective shape was cheered by progressives like Walter Lippmann who saw in the war an opportunity to bring about a Nietzschean "transvaluation of values as radical as anything in the history of intellect." No wonder Warren Harding won the presidency in 1920 with a campaign that promised a return to "normalcy."
With the advent of the Great Depression, Progressives were given an opportunity to reprise the coordination achieved under Wilson's war socialism. The British journalist Alistair Cooke doubtless turned many heads when, in the 1970s, he announced on his popular PBS history series that America under FDR "flirted with National Socialism." Goldberg argues that the amorous relationship was a good deal more intimate--a relationship fanned by the populist hot air that emanated from Father Coughlin and Senator Huey Long and consummated by many of the individuals that ran Wilson's war agencies. A prime example of these fascist retreads was Hugh "Iron Pants" Johnson, whose "sock in the nose" style at the National Recovery Administration doubtless drew positive reviews from one of FDR's early admirers, Benito Mussolini. Even Germany's new Fuhrer had words of praise for the government-business partnerships that typified Roosevelt's New Deal.
The expansion of government under Franklin Roosevelt is well known. What isn't acknowledged in polite historical circles, as Goldberg notes, is how "the fascist flavor of the New Deal was not only regularly discussed" but even "cited in Roosevelt's favor." Why this inconvenient fact was dropped down the historical memory hole is clear. Leftist historians had no desire to link the paragon of modern "liberalism" with "right-wing" fascism. Stated more honestly, they didn't want to acknowledge that fascism was a left- wing philosophy and expose the ongoing historical ruse that kept conservatives (i.e. classical liberals) off balance.
The remainder of Goldberg's book (more than half) discusses progressivism's third wave of influence on American life in the 1960s and explains how its fascist traits have been incorporated into modern "liberalism." While not as narrowly focused as his first four chapters, these materials do give further definition to the concept of "liberal fascism"--a phrase coined in 1932 by H. G. Wells to promote an ambitious "liberal" variant of Europe's burgeoning political system.
Among the concepts that Goldberg identifies as integral to sixties radicalism are these: the romantic embrace of youthful impulsiveness and sexuality, the denigration of reason and tradition, the extension of politics into all areas of life, the exaltation of identity politics (initially in terms of race and gender), and the justification of violence committed by revolutionaries intent on creating a mythical heaven on earth (e.g. the Black Panthers). All these themes, Goldberg notes, have significant corollaries in the fascist regimes of Italy and Germany.
What separates these 60s street radicals from Great Society and contemporary progressives, however, is the smothering maternalism that characterizes the latter groups. Today's "liberal fascists," unlike their European and turn-of-the-century American forebears, promote a religion of the state that is non-militaristic. As such, it resembles Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, not George Orwell's 1984. No better example of this smothering maternalism exists than Hillary Clinton's magnum opus, It Takes A Village--a mythical world where helpful government programs cover the social landscape and where repetitive video messages inculcate useful parenting tips "any place where people gather and have to wait."
Another Goldberg chapter, Liberal Racism: The Eugenic Ghost in the Fascist Machine, shows how "eugenics lay at the heart of the progressive enterprise"--an assertion backed by historian Edwin Black, who noted that the eugenic crusade was "created in the publications and academic research rooms of the Carnegie Institution, verified by the research grants of the Rockefeller Foundation, validated by leading scholars from the best Ivy League universities, and financed by the special efforts of the Harriman railroad fortune." This embarrassing skeleton in the Progressive closet is compared with the implicit pro-abortion subtext in the best-selling book, Freakonomics--namely, "fewer blacks, less crime."
Regrettably, Goldberg's final chapter, The New Age: We're All Fascists Now, begins to treat fascist traits so eclectically that the precision and focus of earlier chapters is lost. Looking for fascist themes in Dirty Harry and Whole Foods Market is a bit like searching for grandmother's features in little Ricky's newborn mug. One is bound to find something, but isolated traits don't amount to a close likeness. A similar critique applies to Goldberg's afterword, The Tempting of Conservatism, where playing (perhaps badly) at the only governmental game in town seems to be confused with religious devotion to the political Weltanschauung exhibited in It Takes A Village.
Despite these end-of-book drawbacks, Goldberg has produced a popular book of rare historical depth and quality--a book that promises to scrap those ridiculous history-class charts that put democracy midway between "socialism" on the left and "fascism" on the right, then justify their totalitarian extremes by bending the linear ends into a globe where left and right magically "meet."
An old Soviet joke asserted that loyal comrades know the future; it's only the past that keeps changing. With Goldberg's assistance, Americans can begin to rewrite their own political history, this time putting the "fascist" label where it belongs. That single alteration would be a momentous accomplishment--one that would make the architects of democracy's future more sure-handed.
Review by Richard Kirk
Richard Kirk is a freelance writer and a regular columnist for San Diego's North County Times. His book reviews have appeared in American Spectator Online, Touchstone, The American Enterprise, and First Things. See his blog, Richard Kirk on Ethics: Musing With A Hammer.
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Interview: Daniel Arenson, Fantasy Author
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 12:31:39 GMT
Reprinted from The Website of Joan Reeves, August 2008, . Here's the information you need in order to ask your local library to order his book if it hasn't already done so or for you to purchase it from your ...
Medford murder case subject of upcoming book
Sun, 17 Aug 2008 11:49:40 GMT
Chilling stuff in this morning's Medford Mail Tribune, which recounts the murders 24 years ago of Bill and Linda Gilley and their daughter Becky at the hands of their son, Billy Frank Gilley Jr.
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