It Continues...

Well, I really should rename my blog "A Smoochy, Smoochy Love Letter to Jonah Goldberg." It's getting a bit ridiculous, but it cannot be avoided.

This article in Commentary Magazine is probably the most important analysis of the Obama administration's ideological orientation that I've seen. I think it does several important things:

1. It exposes the disingenuous effort to marginalize as thoughtless reactionaries those conservatives who use the term "socialist" to describe Obama's policies. Leftists, who generally have a favorable view of those Western European and Scandinavian nations that describe themselves as "socialist," dissonantly assume that when conservatives describe Obama as a "socialist" they mean something very different and intensely sinister. But when conservatives say they don't want socialism, they don't mean they're afraid that Bolshevism is in our future. They're afraid that the British Labour Party is in our future. That, not soviet-style statism, is the immediate concern. It's just dishonest to brand conservatives as crazies who think Obama is a Manchurian Candidate counting the minutes until he can install himself as dictator-for-life.

2. It clearly distinguishes this brand of socialism from the straw-man socialism conjured by the Left. It is less a nebulous controlling ideology and more a practical necessity for societies pursuing "social justice." Goldberg explains: "It is an orientation, a way of thinking about politics and governance—it is oriented toward government control but is not monomaniacally committed to it as the be-all and end-all. Social-ism is about what activists call “social justice,” which is always “progressive” and egalitarian but not invariably statist."

3. It shows how the this brand of socialism permits all criticisms of its failings to be deflected away from the expansive state and back onto majoritarian systems and free markets. Goldberg explains: "The political virtue of Fabianism is that since “socialism” is always around the corner and has never been fully implemented, it can never be held to blame for the failings of the statist policies that have already been enacted. The cure is always more incremental socialism. And the disease is, always and forever, laissez-faire capitalism. That is why George W. Bush’s tenure is routinely described by Democrats as a period of unfettered capitalism and “market fundamentalism,” even as the size and scope of government massively expanded under Bush’s watch while corporate tax rates remained high and Wall Street was more, not less, regulated.

4. Finally, it puts a distinctive and useful name to the administration's unique brand of progressivism/Fabianism/social democracy - Neosocialism.