Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Bingo

But I know they are wrong because I know many serious and important liberals who do not know that Progressivism was steeped in eugenics, that Progressives were imperialist jingoists, that the editors of The New Republic, the muckrakers, and vast swaths of American liberalism were pro-Mussolini,

Lastly, Tomasky should ponder something. If, as he agreed when he wasn't playing hatchet man, that liberals are ignorant of their own intellectual history, does it make much sense to talk about real-world liberalism as anything more than a collection of passions and impulses? If you don't know where your ideas comes from, isn't possible that they aren't really ideas at all? Perhaps they are merely vague opinions, reflexes and prejudices? And if that's the case, if liberalism is merely an agglomeration of passions and knee-jerk popular frontism, dictated by a majority of the crowd, isn't it possible that there's something a bit fascistic to liberalism after all?